Category Archives: Russian Church

Patriarch Kyrill in China

Twenty five years ago the largest country in the world, the Soviet Union, began to throw off official atheism, allowing the Russian Orthodox Church to celebrate publicly the 1,000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus. Is it possible that today, a generation later, the most populous country in the world, China, will also throw off official atheism, at last giving freedom to the Chinese Orthodox Church to operate there?

Today, 10 May 2013, Patriarch Kyrill has arrived in China and been in talks with the Chinese President. During his visit he will celebrate the liturgy in Orthodox churches and meet senior Chinese officials. The Patriarch’s press service told the RIA-Novosti news agency, ‘Our First Hierarch will meet government leaders in China, leaders of religious groups, and also Chinese officials responsible for religious affairs”. During his five-day visit, the Patriarch will serve at the Cathedral of the Protecting Veil in Harbin and meet Orthodox from China at the Russian Embassy in Beijing’.

The Russian Mission in China stretches back to the seventeenth century; by 1949 over 100 Orthodox Churches existed in China. However, after Communist China was established, the USSR signed agreements with the new government that it would transfer jurisdiction over those churches to the Communists and effectively they were closed. The Chinese Orthodox Church became autonomous in 1956, ending the Russian Mission. Today, although there are thirteen active parishes in the country, their activities are strictly limited. However, China, part of the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church, may now at last be opening itself to take part in the worldwide mission of Russian Orthodoxy.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20130510/181065570.html

What Can Each Western European Land and People Bring to the Church?

In Central and Eastern Europe, each land and people can learn of Orthodoxy from both its history and its present neighbours, so bringing its particular genius to the Church of God. Thus, from north to south:

Finland learns Orthodoxy from neighbouring Russian Karelia and its saints like St Tryphon of Pechenga, Enlightener of Lappland (+ 1583).

Poland learns its Orthodoxy from Mieszko I, baptized from Moravia in 966, and today learns from Belarus, the Ukraine and its native Lemko Carpatho-Russians.

Slovakia learns its Orthodoxy from Sts Cyril and St Methodius, as well as from the Carpatho-Russians, both native and in neighbouring Transcarpathia.

The Czech Lands learn from the glorious heritage of St Rastislav and Sts Cyril and Methodius in Moravia, St Ludmila and St Viacheslav in Prague, and learn from the struggles of Jan Hus in Bohemia.

Hungary learns from the ancient heritage of its first Christians, come from New Rome with Bishop Hierotheos in c. 950, as well as from its Orthodox neighbours.

Slovenia and Croatia learn from the first Slav missions of Sts Cyril and Methodius and their disciples.

But what of the Western European lands, which, although they have a glorious but distant Orthodox past, have no Orthodox neighbours and so have to learn from new immigrant populations? What can they bring?

The German Lands, Germany, Austria and most of Switzerland, can bring order and discipline. It is no coincidence that the first liturgical book translated into German was the Typicon.

The French Lands, France, southern Belgium and eastern Switzerland, can bring the contemplation of God, the philosophy of faith.

England and the Celtic Lands, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, can bring asceticism. It is no coincidence that the first liturgical book translated into English was the Lenten Triodion.

Italy, that storehouse of Church relics, can bring the sense of Church history as the historic centre of Orthodoxy in the West.

Spain and Portugal can bring their sense of beauty, ritual and vestments.

The Dutch Lands, the Netherlands, Flanders and Luxembourg, can bring co-operation and co-ordination.

Scandinavia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland, can bring efficiency and practical effectiveness.

If a Russian Orthodox Metropolia is to come into existence in Western Europe, we can then suggest how each of its lands and peoples can contribute their history from the first millennium and also their qualities as they developed in the second millennium.

The 400th Anniversary of the House of Romanov

Moscow, 6 March 2013

On 6 March, the 400th anniversary of the election of Michael Feodorovich Romanov to be Tsar, His Holiness Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow and all the Russias celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Dormition in the Moscow Kremlin.

Concelebrating with His Holiness were: Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, Chairman of the Church’s External Relations Department; Archbishop Mark of Egorievsk, Head of the Department for Foreign Institutions of the Moscow Patriarchate; Bishop Agapit of Stuttgart; Bishop Theophylact of Dmitrov; Bishop Ignaty of Bronnitsy, Chairman of the Synodal Department for Youth Affairs; Bishop Sergy of Solnechnogorsk, Head of the Secretariat of the Moscow Patriarchate; Bishop Panteleimon of Smolensk and Vyazma, Chairman of the Synodal Department for Church Charities and Social Services; Archpriest Vladimir Divakov, Secretary of the Patriarch of Moscow and all the Russias for the City of Moscow; Archimandrite Tihon (Shevkunov), Superior of the Stavropegic Sretensky Monastery; Archimandrite Savva (Tutunov), Deputy Chancellor of the Moscow Patriarchate; Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, Head of the Synodal Department for Relations between Church and Society; Archpriest Vladimir Siloviev, Head of the Moscow Patriarchal Publishing House; Archpriest Michael Riazantsev, Priest in Charge of the Cathedral Church of Christ the Saviour; Archpriest Alexander Dasaiev, Dean of the Voskresensky District of Moscow; Archpriest Anatoly Kozha, Dean of the Paraskevo-Piatnitsky District of Moscow; Archpriest Anatoly Rodionov, Dean of the Vlahernsky District of Moscow; Archpriest Oleg Korytko, Head of the Review Department of the Moscow Patriarchate; Hieromonk Nikon (Belavenets) and other clerics of the City of Moscow.

Also present at the service were: the Head of the Russian Imperial House Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, the great-great-grandson of Emperor Alexander III, P.E. Kulikovsky, the Chairman of the Association of Russian Nobility, Prince G. G. Gagarin, and the Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee of the Russian Federation for Public Associations and Religious Organizations, M.Y. Markelov.

The Moscow Synodal choir, led by Alexei Puzakov, and the choir of the Academy of Choral Arts, led by Alexei Petrov, sang at the service. Archpriest Artemy Vladimirov, the Rector of All Saints Church in Krasnoye Selo in Moscow, gave a sermon before communion.

At the Liturgy prayers were said ‘for the eternal repose of the souls of the departed servants of God, the ever-memorable rulers of Holy Rus, faithful Princes and Princesses, Tsars and Tsarinas, and all who were in authority and with diligence cared for the purity of the faith and ruled our land in the faith of the Christian law’, and the names of Tsars, Emperors and Empresses of the House of Romanov were enumerated.

After the Liturgy a short service of intercession to the Holy Royal Martyrs was celebrated: to Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra and the Royal Children, Alexey, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia.

His Holiness Patriarch Kyrill gave a speech as First Hierarch to those who took part in the service.

This was followed by a procession to the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael – the burial place of many rulers of Russia, including Romanovs. A short memorial service was celebrated in the Cathedral for the repose of the souls of Russia’s rulers, ‘buried in this place of repose and elsewhere’ with the enumeration of the names of rulers from the House of Romanov. (Report from the Press Service of the Patriarch of Moscow and all the Russias).

The procession to the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael was accompanied by ‘the solemn ringing of bells’, a peal used for processions. After the short memorial service in the Cathedral a triumphal royal peal of bells was performed – revived by the bell-ringers of the Kremlin and the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour on the basis of the peal of bells in the coronation scene in Musorgsky’s opera ‘Boris Godunov’. It was performed on the bells of the first, second and third stages of the bell-tower of Ivan the Great, using the ‘Reut’ bell, which hangs in the Dormition belfry. The ‘Reut’ is the oldest 1000-pood (over 16 tons) Russian bell, and was cast in 1622 by the master-founder Andrei Chokhov. The inscription on the bell mentions Tsar Michael Feodorovich Romanov and his father, Patriarch Philaret Nikitich Romanov.

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/news/59960.htm

The Sunday of the Last Judgement 2013

The Forces Behind Pussy Riot

Some eight years ago now I had the honour of speaking on the spiritual essence of Western Europe at a Conference in London, where also spoke Alexander Dugin. Having renounced a compromising past, he is today one of the foremost Russian philosophers, the founder of the contemporary Eurasian Movement and a very influential speaker and adviser. Here he explains what lay behind Pussy Riot, that synonym of sex and violence.

The Three Temptations of the Russian Church Diaspora

Introduction

The emigration of Russian Orthodox, for political or for economic reasons, has brought temptations, not of theology, but of psychology. All these temptations are sectarian in nature because they result from a separation from the Centre. Therefore, all these temptations test spiritual maturity. Although these temptations, three in number, tend to come in generational order, this is not always the case. They can come in any order, or even all together, and a generation in this context may not represent 25 years, but just a few years or on the other hand very many years. Moreover, whether the temptations come from the left side or from the right side, they still lead to the same negative spiritual consequences if they are not resisted, which they can of course be.

Temptation One

The first temptation, found particularly among the first generation of emigration, is to retreat into a self-created ghetto and narrow nationalism, for example never learning the local language and entirely rejecting the local culture. This is a self-defence reflex, a reaction to an indifferent or even hostile environment. Unable or unwilling to adapt, there is no ability or desire to understand the foreign culture, let alone to accept the best of it, let alone to shine the light of Orthodoxy before it in a way that makes it accessible to it.

However, in a ghetto, it is all too easy to lose the big picture, to lose all sense of catholicity. Narrow nationalism, inward-looking provincialism and self-destructive parochialism may take over from the right side. However, the left side can lead to the creation of communities which sideline themselves into personality cults and the stagnant and obscure meanders of personal agendas and complexes, equally far from the mainstream. This introversion is equally self-destructive. The result from either side is the same, for ghettos always die out.

Temptation Two

The second temptation, found particularly among the second generation of emigration, is to conform to Non-Orthodox life, for example submitting to local politics or values, whether of left or right. This is a result of the instinct for survival. Out of an inferiority complex, and also as a reaction to the closed communities of the parental first generation, the second generation may, artificially, become ‘more local than the local’. This can even mean a readiness to enter into treacherous combat against their own parents’ country of origin.

An example from the right side is Russian emigres who during the Cold War joined Western Secret services, MI6 or the CIA, and then from Sovietophobia fell into Russophobia, naively swallowing the Western democracy and freedom myth. An example from the left side is that of emigres who protestantise Orthodoxy when they live in a Protestant culture, like the USA or the UK, and Catholicise (Uniatise) Orthodoxy when they live in a Catholic culture, like France or Italy.

Temptation Three

The third temptation, found particularly among the third generation of emigration, is self-justification, for example falling into a superiority complex with regard to the country of origin of the grandparents. This is a result of isolationism and ignorance of the present conditions in the country of origin and a conformist dependence on the country of residence. Out of pride, often linked to worldly success and self-satisfaction in the country adopted, comes an illusion of complacent superiority and self-righteousness.

The pride of self-justification leads to phariseeism of both the left and the right sides. On the left side, we find the aloofness of those who put themselves above both the local culture and the culture of origin and who stand in judgment above them both; know-it-alls, who have ‘nothing to learn’, wanting to teach all and despising all. On the right side, we find the pride of those who see themselves as pure, ‘we have done nothing wrong’, ‘we do not have anything to repent for’, ‘we will not pollute ourselves by mixing with others’.

Conclusion

The spiritual results of all three temptations are always negative and restricting. Pride always leads to self-justification, the illusion that there is nothing to repent for. And when there is nothing to repent for, there is nothing to hope for, hence negativity and restriction, whether the pride comes from the left side or the right side. It is possible to avoid all three layers of spiritual impurity – to fall into temptation is not inevitable. They can all be resisted and indeed often have been. All three temptations and the spiritual impurity that causes them can be overcome by showing patience and waiting for the Mother-Church to become free and then returning to it. Fortunately, the majority of the Russian Church Diaspora witnesses to this, overcoming these temptations through spiritual maturity and balance.

The Father and the Son: Christendom, the West and Patricide

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Foreword: Patricide

The above is the revelation to all mankind, written in the Prologue of St John’s Gospel. However, we also know that after the beginning and after the creation of heaven, of the invisible world, there came a fall in that invisible world. Jealous of God, Lucifer with half the angelic host fell away in a revolt against the Father. This was attempted patricide, which is why his name is also the slanderer, ‘o diavolos’, he who slanders the Father. Some 150 years ago the Orthodox thinker, Alexis Khomiakov, called the filioque that lay behind the Western Schism of 1054 ‘fratricide’. We wonder if the word ‘patricide’ might not have been more suitable here too.

The Ideology of Patricide

The death of the Old Orthodox West and the birth of the new, anti-Orthodox West began with the sin of the Frankish iconoclast Charlemagne. This consisted of adopting a provincial expression of faith from Spain, used there to bolster Orthodoxy against Arianism by emphasising the Divinity of Christ, and making that into the Ideology of the New West. This was the Ideology of Illusory Superiority. In itself innocent, though also profoundly ignorant, unScriptural, unApostolic and unPatristic, this expression, called the filioque, became the flag and motto of a new and aggressive anti-Orthodox ideology. This asserted that the Father was irrelevant, because the Father is absent, never having become incarnate, and that therefore the Father (Christian New Rome) had been replaced by the Son (pagan Old Rome).

This attempt to usurp legitimate authority was dismissed by the Orthodox Popes of Rome. As Pope John VIII condescended in the ninth century, the expression could be allowed the barbaric Germans for a time on account of their ignorance. Sadly, that time and their ignorance has lasted for 1200 years and during that time has spread worldwide. From the representative of the Son in Old Rome – called from the eleventh century onwards ‘the Vicar of Christ’ – flowed all spiritual authority. From him proceeded the Holy Spirit. Inevitably, this claim of universal authority ultimately meant declaring as a dogma that the Pope of Rome is infallible. He had taken over from the pagan Roman Emperor and became a new Pontifex Maximus. Thus, the popes took over from the emperors, claiming that they, and not the emperors, incarnate Christ on earth. In this way the popes of Rome became secular and not spiritual rulers.

The Patricide in Constantinople

By its return to pagan Rome, the whole Church in the West fell out of Christendom. In order to justify itself, the Western elite had to discredit and then kill the Father. This came with accusations that the Church was disloyal to the Creed by ‘leaving out the filioque’. This ignorance was compounded in 1098 when Anselm of Canterbury, the Father of Scholasticism, spoke aggressively ‘against the Greeks’, justifying the Western heresy by syllogism. At that time Western warriors had already set off for areas outside Western Europe on their ‘Crusades’. (Even before this they had conducted centralising military operations against outlying parts of Western Europe, in southern Italy, Sicily, Spain and in 1066 England and from there the rest of the Isles). All this was to discredit the Father. But in 1204 the Son set about killing the Father by bloodily sacking and looting New Rome, the Capital of Christendom, of Romanitas.

With their conversations in Lyon in the thirteenth century and in Florence in the fifteenth century, the patricidal Western elite did its utmost to destroy the Father. Indeed, once it had bribed the elite in Constantinople to betrayal and apostasy, in 1453 Constantinople fell. It is significant that the Schismatics themselves see this date as ‘the end of the Middle Ages’. In other words, the fall of the City was their own spiritual loss. So they set out on the road to Protestantism, in which every individual is a pope and Christ is no more than a private opinion, at best personal pietism, ‘Jesusism’. Although schismatic historians state that Rome had already fallen some thousand years before 1453, Rome did not fall, not even in 1453. Escaping the decadence of the neo-pagan Renaissance and the unspeakable popes of that age, the Capital of Christendom, of Romanitas, was transferred for a second and final time, this time to Moscow, where Romanitas is called Rus.

The Patricide in Moscow

There began a constant self-justifying struggle by the Western elite to discredit and kill the Father here also, to prevent Moscow from ever freeing Constantinople by wiping Russia off the map. Already in the thirteenth century that elite had sent out Teutonic Crusaders to destroy Russia. St Alexander Nevsky had saved it by paying tribute to the East, which at least left Russia free to practise the Christian Faith. However, now came full-scale invasions. First came the Polish-led invasion of 1612, with Lithuanians, Germans and Swedes, occupying Moscow. Then, 200 years later in 1812, came Napoleon and the twelve tribes of neo-pagan Europe. The new Frankish knights now occupied Moscow. Just as in Constantinople in 1204, now too they destroyed churches, raped nuns, slaughtered priests and made bonfires of icons, proving once more that like the iconoclast Charlemagne before them they too had no concept of the Incarnation.

Seeing Christian Russia mighty after it had freed Paris in 1814, throughout the nineteenth century the British Establishment mounted attacks on it, organising the Decembrist revolt in 1825, allowing anti-Christian terrorists to set up shop in London, Lenin to study at the British Museum, even glorifying those terrorists in the early twentieth century children’s book ‘The Railway Children’. In 1854 came another ‘Crusade’, that of the French and the British, allied with the anti-Christian Ottomans, to prevent the freeing of Constantinople. Then, sixty years later, came the German and Austrian invasion of 1914 and in 1915 the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, again to prevent the freeing of Constantinople. This was followed by the British-organised, French-greeted and American-financed coup d’etat of 1917. Ironically, the ‘useful idiots’ were the US-financed, murderous atheist Trotsky-Bronstein and the other foreign Bolsheviks, who replaced the Third Rome with their Third International.

The Father Answers the Son

Ironically, the Bolsheviks’ Western atheism was defeated by yet another Western anti-Christian Crusade, the invasion of the multinational Axis forces in 1941. Then even the atheist Soviet tyrant realised that he could not defeat this evil without Holy Russia. Sovereign Russia had overcome Trotskyist internationalism. When fifty years after this in 1991, the old atheist ideology of the West finally fell in the Soviet Union made bankrupt by it, the traitors then in power adopted the new atheist ideology of the West, the consumerist worship of the golden calf. But this lasted only a few years as Russia began to return to her roots. In 2000 the Russian Orthodox Church at last glorified the New Martyrs and Confessors, the glorious sacrificial victims of the patricidal West. This was a turning point.

Since then national healing and recovery, however hesitant and fragile at times, has gone forward. And with it comes the possibility of international, inter-Orthodox, healing and recovery, the recovery of the old vision, role and calling of Russia as the centre of Christian (Orthodox) civilisation. 2012, the fourth centenary of the occupation of Moscow by the Poles, Lithuanians and Germans and the second centenary of the occupation of Moscow by the twelve tribes of Western Europe, was a key year. In that year, there was a repeat of the anti-Russian Western propaganda onslaught of 1916. This new attempted patricide failed. The Western elite and the fifth column Russian traitors who orchestrated it betrayed themselves and were seen to be ridiculous. Their little plot to discredit and destroy failed lamentably. Now, 2013 is the fourth centenary of the House of Romanov, Roma Nova, New Rome, and hopes for the long-awaited restoration rise in our hearts.

Afterword: Prophetic Times

The West, not content to be an outlying province of Christendom, invented its own self-justifying ideology. The Son wanted to take the place of the Father and, following the Luciferan principle, attempted patricide. Despite this, that which we have been praying for all these long years, ‘the peace of the whole world, the good estate of the holy Churches of God and the union of all people’ may yet be coming for a brief time before the end. Prophecies, old and new, speak of the Liturgy being finished in the Church of Christ the Wisdom of God (Aghia Sofia) in Constantinople. Perhaps – but we must know that all prophecies are conditional, dependent on our repentance. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

The Roman Catholic Crisis and the Orthodox Future

On July 18th, 1870, the (First Vatican) Council met for the last time. As the first of the Fathers stepped forward to declare his vote (on papal infallibility), a storm of lightning and thunder suddenly burst over St Peter’s. All through the morning the voting continued, and every vote was accompanied by a flash and a roar from heaven.

Lytton Strachey, on ‘Cardinal Manning’ in his ‘Eminent Victorians’

The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI last week shocked many, not least Roman Catholics. Conspiracy theories are rife, all the more so since on the evening of his resignation a violent thunderstorm erupted over Rome and, dramatically, lightning struck St Peter’s Basilica. Some of these theories assert that the Pope of Rome is dying of cancer and has not long to live, others that he resigned in order to escape a deepening of the pedophile scandal, or else a financial scandal. Others believe that the next Pope will be the last Pope and will call a Third Vatican Council, which will be the end of millennial Roman Catholicism.

According to these crisis theories, this last Pope will either be a saintly man or else a profoundly evil one, and that either the Vatican will come under persecution and disappear, or else that a new Church will replace it. In the latter case, for us, this can only mean a Western European Metropolia under the Russian Orthodox Church, the only multinational Local Church, and the only Local Church large enough to establish such a Metropolia. One wonders if this Friday’s meteor that appeared over Russia and then exploded just south of Ekaterinburg, the place of martyrdom of the Royal Martyrs in 1918, is not linked with this.

Against this background do we not see the genocide of Orthodox Syria, organised and financed by the anti-Christian Western Powers and their Islamist allies? It is written: ‘Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom…land fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven…’ (Lk 21, 10-11). However, let us remain sober. What practically are the prospects for such a Metropolia to come into being? The Orthodox Diaspora seems to be divided into narrow ethnic ghettos, generally unable to see beyond temporary nationalistic or political interests. Such ghettos have only one destiny – to die out. They are history.

A great move forward occurred six years ago, when the two parts of the Russian Orthodox Church were reunited, after it had been proved that the Church inside Russia was free of State interference. Now together and growing with 824 parishes and monasteries in countries of the Diaspora, Russian Orthodox churches outside Russian Orthodox canonical territory are clearly a vital part of Orthodox life in the Diaspora. It is obvious then that no Metropolia can be built on political division, or on groups used for Cold War purposes and financed by Non-Orthodox Powers, who are at present orchestrating the destruction of Orthodox Syria.

The regular meetings of all local Orthodox Bishops in different countries or groups of countries (North America, Latin America, France, Great Britain and Ireland etc) only became possible after this reuniting of both parts of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2007. Until then the Russian Church of the Diaspora was excluded for political reasons and so any meetings were unrepresentative, political manipulations. The next step is an inter-Orthodox step to unite the Diaspora in regional Metropolias. Such regional Metropolias, in Western Europe, in the Americas and in Australasia, cannot be built on the lowest common denominator.

The fact is that Metropolias, the essential basis for new future Local Churches, will be built on the maximum of Orthodox practice, not on some artificially contrived minimum and compromise. The concept that a Church can be built on the lowest common denominator of different Orthodox dioceses (so-called ‘jurisdictions’) is surreal. It must be built on the maximum and only then can economy be applied. Any other ‘solution’ would be a grave mistake. Indeed, it was tried experimentally in the USA during the Cold War and has been a moral and financial fiasco. This is an experiment not to be repeated.

For example, all Local Churches believe that there are no sacraments outside the Orthodox Church; however, all regularly apply economy in their reception of heterodox. All Local Churches agree that there is only one Church calendar. However, all apply economy, that is allow temporarily for pastoral reasons, the use of the secular calendar for the fixed feasts, to those communities which are not spiritually strong enough to live the Orthodox calendar. Similarly, all Local Churches clearly need traditional monastic life, as with the Greek Archdiocese in the USA, which has been saved by the monasteries of Fr Ephraim.

Of course, all can also agree that some extreme practices are simply unacceptable, even out of economy. We can think of intercommunion, the abolition of fasting and confession, cremation, or other strange practices of small marginal convert groups, who have never integrated the Orthodox Faith. These of course we exclude. The time is coming when new Orthodox Metropolias, composed voluntarily, will be born. Orthodox need them so as to be stronger together. But also the failing heterodox world, which is clearly in crisis, needs a canonical Church with a married priesthood and sacraments. It has only one choice.