Category Archives: Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia

On St John of Shanghai and Western Europe and the Old ROCOR

Introduction

Faithfulness to the beliefs and practices of St John and the Old ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia), to which he belonged, is vital for us his spiritual children, for he is a saint. The Old ROCOR of St John greatly venerated the martyred Tsar, who so loved and supported Orthodox of all nationalities, However, this heritage has largely been lost among the politicised bishops of today’s North America, who have adopted the practice of rebaptising other Orthodox into the Church, contrary to the Creed. Ironically, concelebration there with other Local Churches is rarer now than before the Act of Canonical Communion.

That was signed in Moscow in 2007, and we had fought for it for decades. This isolation is especially so in various dioceses, which today are virtually becoming a de facto American Russian Old Calendarist Church Outside Russia. All in St John’s life and writings contradicts the sectarian-minded, old calendarist bishops of today. Whether it is his attitude to the Catholicity of all the Orthodox Churches, his attitude to the Russian Church inside Russia, to the Tsar, to missionary work, and to money, all is different. To throw away his attitudes has been an act of spiritual suicide.

The Catholicity of the Church

In St John’s time, as in my time in the generation after him, the time of our beloved Abba Vladyka Antony of Geneva, the successor to St John in the see of Western Europe, our Archdiocese was in communion with all, whether the Churches of Constantinople, Serbia and Jerusalem or, already from 1991 on, with the Russian Church inside Russia, known as the Moscow Patriarchate. And ROCOR’s new calendar Romanian parish in Paris, with three priests, was the Archdiocese’s largest. There were no connections between him and old calendarist sectarians.

As St John said at the ROCOR Council in 1938: ROCOR must not cut off communion with other Local Churches (1). And in 1960 he preached that: We in ROCOR keep our unity, in communion with all the Churches, with whom it is possible to be in communion with (2). He concelebrated with all he could concelebrate with, just like Vladyka Antony and all of our generation. This is quite unlike today’s proud schismatics, who consider that communion with others would dirty them, for only they are ‘the One True Church’.

In St John’s time, ROCOR never declared that it was a separate Church or the whole Church, but simply an inseparable part of the Russian Church, temporarily working on a self-governing Synodal basis, until such time as the atheist regime in Russia has been abolished. St John wrote that each Local Church has a significance of its own…all together make up the one Universal Church and contribute to it their own specialities and gifts…Our ROCOR is the free part of the Russian Church…Spiritually the Russian Church is indivisible…

The Russian Church Inside Russia

You ask why I commemorate Patriarch Aleksei of Moscow. You say, ‘He’s a Soviet!’ I tell you, ‘Inside Soviet Rus is Holy Rus! God hasn’t abandoned our people. The Soviet Union is still Holy Russia’.

St John was clear that ROCOR was only part of the Local Russian Church and that it maintained spiritual unity with the other part, but it had been only temporarily forced to reject its administration. Just like us today. In 1960 he wrote that ROCOR is not spiritually divided from its suffering Mother, It prays for Her and at the same time is united with Her, until such time as the reasons for disunity have vanished (3).

In other words, just as in our case, corrupt administration did not mean spiritual division, only administrative separation and so freedom from its hatred, corruption and decay. Therefore, we live within a canonical Church, even if not in the Russian Church, which today is no longer captive to Communist atheism, but which is captive to Capitalist mammonism, the dollar, with all its forces of self-interested schism.

St John added that: ROCOR, no longer administratively submitted to Metropolitan Sergius and his Synod, remains as before, feeling spiritually one with the suffering Mother Church (4). Naturally, at that time the Synod never declared that the Church inside Russia was without grace. Indeed, Vladyka John said that the official Church in Russia does of course have grace, even if individual bishops behave unworthily (5). Moreover, in 1945 in Shanghai St John restored the commemoration of Patriarch Alexei II in his diocese and encouraged others to do so.

On 31 July 1945 he wrote to Archbishop Viktor of Beijing:  In view of the lack of information about the Synod Abroad for several years, any other decision of our diocese would make it completely independent, autocephalous. There are no canonical reasons for such independence…and would not be recognised by the Patriarch. Relations with the administration of the Church are now possible (6).

In his Epistle to his flock in Shanghai, written on 2 August 1946, he said: The information that canonical communion with the Moscow Patriarchate has been restored without hindrance has brought us sincere joy…We pray to the Lord, that he will hasten that desired and awaited moment when the First Hierarch of All Rus, going up to his Patriarchal place in the Church of the Dormition in Moscow will gather around himself all the Russian hierarchs who have come from all the Russia land and all foreign lands (7). This prophecy was realised in 2007.

True, in obedience to Metr Anastasy, St John later ceased publicly commemorating the Patriarch in the litanies, but he still commemorated him at the Great Entrance and the Proskomidia. Indeed, he continued to commemorate the Patriarch every day when he was in Paris. He is the Patriarch. And our prayer for him remains…liturgically we are one. The Russian Church, like the whole Orthodox Church, is united in the eucharist, we with it and in it (8). When he was in Western Europe, for almost four times longer than he was in America, St John continued to correspond with Patriarch Alexei II and blessed parishioners to go to Patriarchal churches.

He certainly never accused the Moscow Patriarchate of heresy. Fr Peter Perekrestov pointed out that: ‘St John never in a single piece of writing, sermon or letter used the term ‘Sergianist’’. This was of course the purely political accusation, a pseudo-heresy invented for political reasons by the CIA and its asset Count Grabbe and their others. And they themselves later did fall away from the Church in the first manifestation of the ROCOR rebaptism heresy in the 1970s, so resisted by Vladyka Antony of Geneva (9). This was followed by the second manifestation of this same heresy in 2021.

The Tsar

The greatest crime committed with regard to the family of the martyred Tsar must be erased by ardent veneration for them and glorification of their spiritual feat.

The Russian Imperial Family in exile stayed in Tobolsk, the city of St John’s 18th century ancestor and patron saint, also called St John (Maximovich). Here too is another spiritual link. Increasingly, especially in Russia, St John the Wonderworker (another of his titles) is venerated as a second St Nicholas the Wonderworker, as he helps travellers. He is after all ‘Wonderworker of the latter times’, as we sing to him in his Akathist, composed by one of his spiritual children, who also later composed an Akathist to the martyred Tsar.

In his preaching St John rejected the lies of both liberals and conservatives about the Tsar and always sought the truth. The cosmopolitan, anti-patriotic bourgeois liberals, who helped depose the Tsar in February 1917, openly mocked and slandered him. They called him reactionary, corrupt and bloody, and most of them wanted to adopt an atheist Republican or possibly agnostic Constitutional (as in the UK) political system. Thus, they naively led the country into the bloody tyrannical yoke of the Communist atheists, who followed a German rabbi’s grandson, Marx.

The Western-loving conservatives, who also helped depose the Tsar in February 1917, bishops among them, lost their careers, money or estates and were bitter for this reason. They called the Tsar weak, indecisive, stupid, a religious fanatic and they murdered the slandered, pious family man Gregory Rasputin. Some of them said that the peace-loving Tsar should have murdered all his opponents (as they did under the White flag – it is little known that most so-called Whites were anti-Tsar) and especially hated anyone who reminded them of the state of the poor in Russia. Having sold out to Western countries in 1919, most went to live in Western Europe and some of them later even fought for Hitler.

St John considered that the Emperor Nicholas II had always been a model of piety and total dedication to God’s will, showing the patience of the Righteous Job, on whose day Tsar Nicholas had been born. St John deemed that the crime against the Tsar and his Tsarina was made all the worse by the murder of their innocent children. He said that such crimes do not go unpunished. They cry to heaven and bring down the wrath of God onto the earth. And so he called all in the Russian Lands to repentance:

Rus’ must bow down before the humiliated, slandered and martyred Passion-Bearer Tsar. Only then will he will have that daring before God, and his prayer will save the Russian Land from the misfortunes that it has had to bear. St John constantly repeated to others that only in such a case would the martyred Tsar and his Holy Family become new heavenly defenders of Holy Rus’ and that their innocently spilled blood would regenerate Russia.

Missionary Work

Orthodoxy in the West will revive. There will be Orthodoxy in Britain and Ireland, in France and Germany, in Holland and Spain and in America, too. Every language and nation will have Holy Orthodoxy. This is the charge laid on our Russian immigration for our repentance.

St John converted people to the faith wherever he lived, in Serbia, in Macedonia, in China, in the countries of Western Europe and in the USA. And he also united people. In Shanghai, he brought warring, nationalistic Russians, Ukrainians, Serbs and Chinese together. Later he did the same in San Francisco. For he was no Russian nationalist and imperialist, unlike the ROCOR bishops who put him on trial in America.

This openness to all nationalities, which he took from the Tsar, who had wanted to establish an Orthodox church in every European capital, is why St John was much criticised for his pastoral concern that brought him to allow a Western rite. Unlike Western Europe, where he lived for nearly twelve years, he lasted only three years among the Russian nationalists in the USA. What the critics of the Western rite at that time do not understand is that in the 1950s and early 60s there was a real Western liturgical rite, a living tradition. It then existed, just as St Tikhon had understood fifty years before St John.

All the rite then needed was modifying, returning to Orthodoxy. This is quite unlike today’s situation, when fantasy Western rites are developed. Since there is no living Western rite, all was tragically done away with in the 1960s, today’s ‘Western rites’ are artificial, inorganic restorations, resurrected museum pieces. They attract and live very few, they are not passed down organically from generation to generation. This is unlike the Orthodox rite which is organic, living, is passed down, and for which people know how to sing and read and feel the spontaneous gestures that go with it.

Love of Money

America is a great country, but greed and sensuality will be its downfall.

Here is the prophecy which says everything and for which some so much hate him. For they suffer precisely from these two passions – love of money and perversion. This is why they proclaim that St John did not wear shoes and gave them away to the poor, only because he found them uncomfortable! They need the very expensive vestments from Belarus, gold and diamonds.

For the new, dollar-driven Americanised bishops in their very expensive black leather shoes and with the obsessive personal cleanliness of the sensual, to dress barefoot and in an old cassock and vestments like St John (or St Seraphim) is unthinkable. They need silk and velvet. The most terrifying thing is that in the sixty years since St John was tormented to death, we have seen his above prophecy come true.

Notes: 

[1] Acts of the Second ROCOR Council, Belgrade 1939, P. 402

[2] St John Maximovich. On the Spiritual and Moral Significance of ROCOR, Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, No 6 (2007)

[3] Archbishop John (Maximovich), Brussels 1960, P. 13

[4] Ibid. P. 9.

[5] Letters of Archbp Antony of Geneva to Fr Dimitry Dudko (Posev, 1979 No 12

[6] Decree No 650 of 6 September 1945. Priest Dionysy Pozdnyayev, The Acceptance of the Jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Church Schism in Shanghai. Alfa and Omega No 2 (13) 1997, Pp. 150-151

[7] Ibid. Pp.153, 158.

[8] Bishop Basil Rodzyanko, On Vladyka John. http://www.episkopvasily.ru/ru/works/

[9] Archpriest Peter Perekrestov. The Helmsman of the Church, then and now – the All-Powerful Spirit.  http://www.pravos.org/docs/doc466.htm

 

 

 

The Russian Nationalist and Imperialist Church or a Trinity of East Slav Orthodox Churches?

By this all men shall know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

Jn. 13, 34

You ask why I commemorate Patriarch Aleksei of Moscow. You say, ‘He’s a Soviet!’ I tell you, ‘Inside Soviet Rus is Holy Rus! God has not abandoned our people’.

St John of Shanghai and Western Europe

Foreword: ‘Princes of the Church’

I was brought up in the old, persecuted Russian Orthodox Church of St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, who himself was persecuted, suspended and put on trial by nationalist and imperialist ROCOR bishops, who also wanted to defrock him. For forty-seven years I remained faithful to that Church, until it became abundantly clear, in early 2022 before operations in the Ukraine, that the once Persecuted Church, which we had so loved, had become the Persecuting Church.

Worse still, the persecutors were shown to be none other than ROCOR’s newly-appointed, untrained, half-baked bishops. Those who called themselves ‘princes of the Church’ were those who loved money, stole, lied, slandered and cheated. The old bishops who belonged to the Tsar and whom we so loved and respected, must be spinning in their graves. How did this happen? Below I recount the story.

The Ukraine Tragedy and the Future of the Russian Church 

The armies of two brotherly peoples, both East Slav and both largely Orthodox Christian by history and culture, have been slaughtering one another for nearly five years in a war of attrition, just as in WWII. As a war of attrition, it will end just as suddenly. Two million have been killed or maimed, some 90% of them Ukrainians. Several thousand civilians have also been caught up in this since 2014 and died, mostly Russians (14,000 between 2014 and 2022 alone), let alone those killed in the NATO-armed Ukrainian invasion of Russia in 2024, run by NATO from Wiesbaden. And well over seven million Ukrainians have fled their country, heading, in almost equal numbers, east to Russia and west to Western Europe. They refused to be recruited by violence and needlessly die for the Globalists, who are being paid for Kiev’s NATO proxy Army to die.

Meanwhile, the majority of baptised Orthodox, whether practising or not, in both countries, as well as in Belarus and other countries in the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church, look on many bishops as bullying bandits, feudal mini-oligarchs (I quote Russian clergy and laity here), who, like the New ROCOR ones, are out to steal their churches. And that mentality feeds down to many priests, obliged to squeeze money out of their flocks for their bishops. Then the clericalist contagion spreads to them and they squeeze some out for themselves. The example comes from the top. Many freshly-baptised, post-Soviet clergy (and then by imitation ROCOR bishops) fell into the money-loving, ‘Wild East’ Capitalism of the 1990s and got stuck there. (There are also the sexual scandals with bishops, but that is another story).

How is all this possible? Only when the majority of ‘baptised Orthodox’ in both countries long ago renounced Christ and are only nominally Orthodox Christians, if Orthodox Christians at all. (As they say, ‘many are Orthodox, but few are Christians’). And only when a majority have patriots and not the politicians, who prefer hundreds of billions of dollars, euros and pounds and huge quantities of lethal Western arms to peace. In reality, most in both countries, baptised but never instructed (despite Christ’s commandment in Matt. 28.20), are pagans who have not accepted Christ, Who told us to love one another. And most want to dominate one another as imperialists, again contrary to Christ, Who told us to serve one another. How do this paganism and imperialism manifest themselves in the Church?

Paganism

The paganism of both peoples can be seen in their superstitiousness, the use of witchcraft and the evil eye, which have always been very widespread in all the Slav (as also in Catholic Southern European) lands. This comes from the underlying paganism, which has never been completely defeated by the Church, as is witnessed to by accounts both in the nineteenth century and in Soviet times, and which then revived enormously in the spiritual vacuum after the ideological collapse of the USSR, with a fascination for ‘extrasenses’, that is, for occultists, magicians, wizards and gurus and their weird, exploitative sects for the naïve and disoriented, who felt lost after the Soviet fall. This paganism is clear in the utter confusion between the spiritual and inward, that is primary, and the material and outward, that is secondary.

This can be seen, for example, in the aggressive preference for secondary Church rituals and customs of dress over kindness and tolerance for one another, in a belief in magic, ‘miracles’, ‘prophecies’ and ‘elders’, rather than in the effort to overcome our sinful, fallen nature. Again, the outward and bodily prevail over the inward and spiritual. And the spiritual is what is required in order to acquire Divine grace. For these pagans, everything is automatic, as in magic – which the devil can indeed provide, if people do not exercise their own will and sell themselves to his occultist magicians and witches. In the real world, nothing comes automatically, including the grace of eucharistic communion. And acquiring grace, as St Seraphim of Sarov said, is the aim of our lives, needs effort – the meaning of the word ‘ascetic’.

This superficiality was also manifest in the Russian Emigration, where One Church split into three warring, spiteful and hateful sectarian groups, not because of any difference in doctrines and beliefs, but because of politics. Love one another, said Christ, but the main practice of each group appeared to be, Hate one another. Similarly, as is well-known, many Russian churches, run by careerists who are devoid of pastoral activity and interest, appear to have a bigoted and ignorant woman or two at their entrance, who enjoy shouting at visitors and insulting them because they have committed some ritual error or are not dressed according to the taste of the insulters. Poorly-trained priests or laity who make others cry through their insults appear to be the anti-pastoral norm in certain churches, especially at confession and during sermons.

In turn, superstition, the almost fanatical attachment to mere outward rites, grew into a love for schism. It is deeply significant that the main, State-enforced schism in Russian Church history is called ‘Old Ritualism’. There was never any difference in doctrine between the Old Ritualists and the majority, who may be called ‘New Ritualists’, all was about ritual differences, all about the arrangement of the fingers in making the sign of the cross. Superstition bred obscurantism, the spiritual disease of pharisaically and joyfully condemning and denouncing others, and the obsession with finding and identifying ‘heresies’ and ‘schisms’, words hatefully and lovingly bandied about in Russian as the ultimate insult. In the land of record numbers of abortions and divorce, all agree on the Creed, but as for someone who differs in ritual…

Here is the origin of the cult of holy water among some Russian Orthodox. Clearly, this relates back to Slavic paganism. Now there is a great need for holy water, to be baptised in it, to drink it and to sprinkle it, but the concept that a child will be magically protected from colds by it, or that you can virtually trample on other people in church in order to get some at the Feast of Theophany or at water-blessing services of intercession after the Liturgy, having ignored confession and communion, is not Christian. And the concept that the use of holy water will magically heal or transform everything is pagan. I remember being asked if I could bless a Russian brothel. I refused. Again, others have been asked to bless the palaces and limousines of Slav oligarchs, who obtained their money over the dead bodies of others. I would refuse.

It has often been said that if the Russian Revolution took place, it was because of the virtual clerical prohibition before it to take communion more than once a year, a practice long conserved by ROCOR, as I only too well remember. In other words, church practice had become a ritual of private services, memorials or intercessions, rather than the common act of taking communion and so becoming a community. The secondary and outward had taken over from the primary and inward. Most Russian town churches today appear to be railway stations, people coming and going, staying for a few minutes to light a candle, or coming only after communion for some private service they have ordered. There are in fact very few parishes in Russia, in the correct sense of communities. Indeed, they are almost unknown.

Imperialism

Like Rome and then Constantinople (the ‘Second Rome’), Russia became an Empire and so was in its turn called the ‘Third Rome’. In other words, all three of these important historical Christian centres were tainted by one and the same Imperialism. The worst case was Rome, which actually developed a systematic, theologically justified and institutionalised structure of centralised power, called Papism, which actually changed the Creed, in order to vindicate its desire to control the whole world. According to this, a mere human-being, the Pope of Rome is the Vicar (Replacement) of Christ, the Head of the Church, the Holy Spirit proceeds from Him, and he is therefore infallible. All this is logical, if you accept a human-being as the replacement for Christ. But that leads to humanist idolatry, as the God-man is replaced by a mere man.

However, if you think that this article is some anti-Roman Catholic polemic, you are mistaken. The Second and Third Romes have exactly the same Imperialism as the First Rome, even if they have not (yet) justified it theologically. Thus, there are virulent Greek nationalists who will tell you in all seriousness (!) that nobody can be Orthodox, if they are not in communion with their favourite Turkish citizen, their Greek ethnarch (‘the first without equals’, as some heretically call him), the Patriarch of Constantinople (by the way, that has not existed for 573 years, it is called Istanbul). However, there are Russian imperialists/nationalists who will tell you that anyone who does not commemorate the Russian ethnarch, the Patriarch of Moscow (his present title), in services is a schismatic. (That favourite Russian word again!)

The Greek case is very strange, since many Patriarchs of Constantinople were heretics, especially in the first ten centuries, until the fall of the City in 1453, though more recently too. So we have to be in communion with a heretic in order to be an Orthodox Christian?! What about being in communion with Christ? As for the equally strange Russian case, it is a result of superstition and in turn of nationalist ignorance. The average baptised Russian Orthodox has no idea that there are 16 Orthodox Churches and that only one of them, the Russian, commemorates its Patriarch or main bishop in the litanies in services. What about commemorating Christ? Does this mean then that the Russian Orthodox Church is the only true Church, as the Old Ritualists claim, and all others are schismatics? (That favourite Russian word again!)

Moreover, the Russian Church had itself to grant independence (autocephaly) to three of the 15 other Local Churches, the Polish, the Czechoslovak and the American – and therefore they do not commemorate the Russian Patriarch. And parts of the Russian Church outside the Russian Federation do not commemorate the Patriarch (as in France), or are not allowed to do so, by law, (as in the Ukraine and Latvia). Indeed, the Russian Patriarch is banned from even visiting such countries. The imperialist ignorance of many Russian Orthodox that there is a much older Orthodox world that exists outside Russia is astounding. Yes, diversity exists. The Church is like a bouquet of 16 flowers, all flowers, but all different. Accept the real Church, instead of living in a narrow nationalist ghetto, ignorant of history and reality.

Here we come to the essence of the ecclesial problem of both Greeks and Russians. Both have reduced the Church to a Greek or Russian Imperialist/Nationalist Church, they have put Caesar above Christ. This explains in the Russian case the aggressiveness, ignorance and even hatred towards Non-Russians, as displayed by Russians who were adults before the Revolution (I knew plenty of them), let alone by those after the process of Sovietisation. That Imperialisation of the local mentality has led to aggressive militarism, as can be seen in the recently-built Military Cathedral near Moscow, as can be seen in the behaviour of preachers such as Fr Andrey Tkachov, who appear to think, like other anti-pastors, Russian bishops and priests, that insulting Orthodox people is normal. How many women did you make cry today?

Some Russians were hated even before the Revolution, most notably in Poland, the Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltics, wherever people had been oppressed by centralised Russian nationalism and militarism. Nothing that happened after 1917 did anything to change that – indeed, Sovietisation made it all much worse. ‘We have the right to do anything we want, and local people must use our language in order to live’, they said, talking exactly like brash American Imperialists from ROCOR. Here is why the Estonian Kaja Kallas, the Pole Donald Tusk, the Moldovan Maya Sandu, the Ukrainian Yuliya Timoshenko and many a Georgian, came to hate Russians. And they found plenty of hypocritical and equally Imperialist Westerners, very jealous of Russia and greedy to steal its resources, to fund them for purely selfish reasons.

Towards the Restoration of Orthodoxy in the East Slav Lands

As the end of the Ukrainian tragedy and the Ukraine in its Soviet form draws near and it is carved up between the different countries, from which parts of it were taken, what is the future for the ‘Moscow Patriarchate’? For this is still the Soviet-invented name for the Russian Orthodox Church. Clearly, both names are incorrect in the sense that a Patriarchate in Moscow and a Russian Orthodox Church can only be relevant to the territory of the Russian Federation. Therefore, it has to stop imperialistically clinging on to territories outside the Russian Federation. Let the Baltics, Moldova, Belarus and the future Ukraine, whatever its actual national borders and future name (Kievska Rus?) will be, have their independence, just as the Orthodox in Georgia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and America had theirs generations before them.

Many Russians, and not only Russians, speak of Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine as a trinity. Indeed, they are, as all are East Slav nations, all speak similar, if not the same, languages, all are Orthodox by culture and history, all are closely related, with intermarriage normal. Now, the Holy Trinity is the model of Unity in Diversity, three Separate Persons in One ‘Undivided and Consubstantial Trinity’ in Church language. Is it not time for the three peoples and countries to have their own independent Churches, a trinity of Churches of Unity in Diversity, as is our model? Let each of them co-exist as friends, not as enemies, loving one another and intermarrying with one another, and not hating and warring against one another. Then we will see that they are really, and not merely nominally, Orthodox Christians.

For the moment, our hope is that all will start referring to the common spiritual heritage of the Russian Orthodox Church, that is, to the saints of all, perhaps especially to the New Martyrs and Confessors. The problem is that at present many only pay lip-service to the latter. The lives of the tens of thousands of those canonised so far are virtually unknown. Significantly, the baptised Orthodox masses still often prefer Stalin to his victims. The reason for this is that in their heads they belong to the Russian Nationalist and Imperialist Church, not to the Russian Orthodox Church. And this concerns not only many people, but also many clergy. The sad fact is that there has not yet been repentance for the past. And that is why they are still killing one another, idolising Lenin and Stalin, and massively aborting, divorcing and swearing.

Afterword: The King is Coming

Those who find this story sad or are scandalised by these truths should take consolation, recalling that the 16 Local Orthodox Churches number nearly 200 million. We, the masses of honest clergy and people, have suffered from or been misled by just a few thousand, who have like bandits seized and cling onto power and riches and war. Now when, as the proverb says, the fish rots from the head, then the head will be replaced by those rejected and placed at the bottom. Those despised, neglected, abandoned and hated at the bottom will replace the head. For when the King comes, and He is coming, the ‘princes of the Church’ will be swept away like so much chaff. This is not our doing, it is the doing of the Lord and it is marvellous in our eyes, for the stone that the builders rejected will become the head of the corner.

In the words of the Tsar’s Archbishop, St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, on the 950th Anniversary of the Baptism of Rus:

The reality of Holy Rus is not a delusion or a phantom, but true. The prayer of the saints does not cease to rise up to heaven, those who shone forth in the Russian Lands pray for them now at the throne of God. But not only in heaven, but also here, on our sinful earth Holy Rus continues to exist. The power of those who fight against God has enslaved, but not destroyed Her. The Council of the ungodly who have dominion over the Russian people is alien to them, for it has nothing in common with the essence of Russia.

St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, on the 950th Anniversary of the Baptism of Rus

 

 

Q and A: On the Suicidal Path Taken by ROCOR since 2007

Nobody goes to heaven by sending others to hell.

Q: Looking back twenty years after the 2006 Church Council on the relics of St John of Shanghai, what do you think that the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) should have done after its reconciliation with the Moscow Patriarchate in 2007?

A: ROCOR played a very important role in the last half of the last century. Do not forget that from 1950 until 1966, it had a saint in its midst, Archbishop John of Shanghai and Western Europe. Then it witnessed to the Western world of the persecution of the Church by the Soviet atheist State, the inherent worldliness of KGB-manipulated ecumenism and modernism, it spoke in spiritual freedom in the place of its brothers and sisters in the Patriarchal Church, who were enslaved as hostages inside Russia. Having sent representatives to the Second Vatican Council, ROCOR’S greatest moment came in 1981, when, although sixty-four years late, it began the work of canonising the New Martyrs and Confessors. This work is not complete, as archives open, as we see from the July 2026 Synod in Moscow, where new names of New Martyrs and Confessors have entered the Church calendar.

Indeed, from the Year 2000 on, ROCOR no longer served a purpose, since the Church inside Russia had been freed from the State, as proved by the fact that it too had at last begun to canonise even more New Martyrs and Confessors. Since the generation of those who had been adults before the Revolution of 1917 had all but died out by 2000, ROCOR’s destiny was to become four autonomous Metropolias, part of the Mother Church, taking over its Diaspora, as its title of ‘Russian’ was already becoming mythical. If it had joined in with Moscow, it could have spearheaded Russian Orthodox missionary work and witness in the Diaspora, co-operating with others, separating out into four regional Diaspora Metropolias. It would not have become the Moscow Patriarchate, but simply the Russian Orthodox Metropolias of Northern America, Latin America, Western Europe and Oceania.

This is exactly what I worked for after 2007, the event of unity for which we had patiently been waiting since the repentance of Moscow at its Jubilee Council in August 2000. But ROCOR did not work for this after 2007. In May 2006, standing at the Fourth ROCOR Council in San Francisco, where I was one of the ten speakers, I heard the former US ambassador to Kiev, John Herbst, whispering behind me to the then Bishop Agafangel from Odessa, saying: ‘This looks bad. We shall have to work against it from inside’. He was talking about ROCOR’s Conciliar decision (by over 95% to under 5%) to merge with Moscow. He meant that since the decision had been taken, ROCOR would have to be sabotaged from inside, its infiltrated key assets, jealous narcissistic psychopaths, would be activated. And that is exactly what they did, using their agents, who had long ago been planted inside ROCOR for future promotion.

The Moscow Patriarchate? How naïve they are, just like the Russian State, outwitted, as usual, by the infiltration of the CIA! The first indication came immediately in May 2007, when directly after the service in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, where I had concelebrated, one of the most senior CIA-asset priests in ROCOR (he is still alive) turned to me and said in English: ‘We’ve done it’. I knew what he meant by that, though he thought that I did not. I was not a recruit. In May 2007, after the Act had been signed, one ROCOR bishop returned to his country to be greeted by his colleague, the local Moscow bishop, with a smile and the words: ‘Now we are one, we can work together as one’. The ROCOR bishop, a CIA asset since the 1960s, answered him shockingly, that nothing of the sort was going to happen. And herein lies the sin of ROCOR – it did not merge and so lead the way in the Diaspora.

At best it became a museum Church, a relic of the past, turning in on itself, and claiming exclusivity before the outside world as an ideological ghetto, all financed by you know who. Incredibly enough, some extreme right-wingers, later schismatics, in ROCOR before 2007 had actually predicted that Moscow would take over and destroy ROCOR, once the Act of Canonical Communion had been signed in 2007. This was a lie born of the paranoia of elderly pharisees, who were afraid of losing power. In fact, as we have said, it was just the opposite, it was ROCOR which deceived naïve Moscow, using its newly-obtained paper unity with Moscow in order to claim canonicity and so destroy itself. In reality, the small but poisonous American faction gradually destroyed the ROCOR of St John of Shanghai, whom it had already persecuted, suspended and effectively killed in 1966, now hypocritically claiming him as their own!

It denied that he had ever given his shoes away to the barefoot poor, saying that he did not wear shoes because he found them uncomfortable! (I quote a ROCOR bishop). ROCOR sent its control freaks outside the USA to impose its unexportable, Protestant-based, US imperialism on other countries, so ‘draining the swamp’, in fact, however, creating the swamp. It set up the new ROCOR as a sect, that was de facto in communion with no-one, because it considered that all other Orthodox were hated heretics and needed rebaptising. This was to reject the Catholicity and communion of the Church, as is typical of all sects. All it could do from this moment on, as the Russians and Russophiles of the Tradition left ROCOR or were even openly expelled from it, as we were, was to recruit young, naïve, male Protestant converts of the Zionist Evangelical type to replace the people and refill their ranks.

The old ROCOR was killed and the new ROCOR of ignorance of history and Russia, pharisaic condemnation and right-wing fanaticism (the same playbook as had been tried by the Grabbe faction in the 1960s and 1970s) and podcasts for incels, was substituted for it. The new ROCOR flattered their pride, telling neophytes that they had at last found ‘the One True Church’, hypnotising them into spiritual illusion (in Russian ‘prelest’). It was spiritual corn syrup for naïve Americans and a pool of votes for the desperate Republican Party, openly and naively supported by the then ROCOR Metropolitan. ‘You see’, he said, ‘we must vote Trump, as he took part in the anti-abortion march for life in Washington’. Astounded by his naivety, I thought, does he not understand that some politicians will do anything for votes? Does he not know about the misogyny of this man? Does he not know about his Epstein connections?

One day, after this nightmare is over, Moscow will wake up, ceasing to be distracted by the tragedy in the Ukraine, by the Greek invasion of its canonical territory there and in the Baltics, by nationalist centralisation, by the error in Africa, the distressing episcopal scandals of careerism, corruption and depravity, and behave as pastors and not as politicians. Then it will at last deal with ROCOR’s rebellion against the Orthodox Tradition and communion, and apostasy from it, too late realising the huge self-imposed losses of pastors, people and international credibility. Meanwhile, the other fifteen Local Orthodox Churches continue to witness, and we continue in them and with them. Moscow will have to catch us, through overcoming its schisms, restoring communion and concelebration, decentralising its Non-Russian parts, returning to the canonicity/conciliarity/catholicity of the Church.

 

 

More on Fr Seraphim (Rose)

The latest article by Sergei Chapnin, Canonization and the Act of Betrayal,  https://publicorthodoxy.org/2026/05/11/canonization-and-the-act-of-betrayal/ highlights the catastrophic identity crisis of the new ROCOR. Having ejected the old traditional ROCOR priests (yet another one has left the tiny Western Europe Diocese, mainly staffed by converts and Moldovans, this time for South America), the latest crop of American bishops has no idea of what ROCOR was and is. The proposed canonisation process for Fr. Seraphim Rose (1934–1982), the first possible convert-saint of recent years, unlike the wonderful non-convert St Olga of Alaska. As Sergei, press officer of Patriarch Alexei II, who loved the old ROCOR ever since his visit to us in 1997, points out:

The decision to move toward Fr. Seraphim’s glorification forces ROCOR to confront the inner logic of his own ecclesiology—and it is precisely here that the Synod may already have stepped into a trap….I suggested that ROCOR is now opening the way to a political canonization, responding to a specific demand for ideological Orthodoxy in the contemporary American context.

Sergei refers here to the sectarian and schismatic ideology of the new, post-2017 ROCOR. He continues:

A church body that has severed itself from the ecclesiological horizon within which Fr. Seraphim understood truth, apostasy, and fidelity cannot quietly edit away the sharpest lines of his worldview and then glorify him as though no contradiction existed. In his own eyes, the present ROCOR would no longer obviously belong to the “genuine Holy Orthodoxy” of which he wrote. And if a church community has lost its own living bond with what he regarded as true Orthodoxy, then it has also lost the spiritual right to deliberate about his sanctity. In that light, a canonization carried out by the present ROCOR would appear, from within Fr. Seraphim’s own ecclesiological logic, not as a triumph of holiness, but as a cheap spectacle.

In 2021 we left the new schismatic American ROCOR after the old ROCOR had been assassinated by American converts. We duly returned to the Western European Archdiocese, from which we had been loaned in 1988, our 2007 mission to return ROCOR to canonical communion completed. When Metropolitan Jean was forced by Moscow career politicians to abandon us after fifty years of fidelity to the real Russian Orthodox Church, he issued us with letters of canonical leave, which took us at once to the Patriarchate of Romania. Unlike Russian bishops, Romanian bishops at once blessed our missionary work, did not try to steal our churches and even awarded us, not persecuted us, for resisting theological schism.

 

 

On Fr Seraphim (Rose)

We are not examining here whether the late Californian monk, Fr Seraphim (Rose), who in the 1960s joined the then Russian Orthodox Church in exile (ROCOR), was a saint or not. That is not our task and we are not qualified to do this. In the 1970s we always found his works logical and obvious, with common sense, opposed to ‘super correct’ fanaticism, but no more. I remember saying at the time that if you did not already know what he was writing, then you could not be a conscious member of one of the Orthodox Churches.

We cannot find proofs for or against his possible holiness. Perhaps God will reveal something and then all will be clear, one way or the other. Our task here is to examine why many members of the American Synod of Bishops, still called ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia), despite the fact that it has been almost completely Americanised and most of its bishops cannot even speak correct Russian, want to canonise him today. There are clear reasons for this which are to do with the Synod’s historic crisis of identity.

Now, all Local Orthodox Churches in Western countries are primarily composed of immigrants or exiles from Orthodox countries, from Romania, Greece, Russia, the Ukraine, Serbia, Bulgaria, Syria etc. However, unlike all others, ROCOR, founded after the 1917 ‘Russian Revolution’, no longer has a natural constituency. Normal Orthodox Russians, not many of whom live in Western countries, do not join the New York-based ROCOR, if they can join what they prefer, their own Moscow-based Church of present-day Russians.

The latter is nearly 200 times bigger than ROCOR. Some wonder why it bothers with such a small group abroad. The reason is political, as the Russian Patriarch told a Metropolitan-friend. The Moscow Church needs to be represented in the USA, ROCOR is good for that, even though ROCOR has in the last decade become increasingly strange, even to the point of schism. For reasons of State, Moscow has chosen to overlook that. However, behind the shield of Moscow, which alone gives ROCOR official canonicity, ROCOR has an identity crisis.

Originally a part of the pre-Revolutionary Russian Church, today its third, fourth, fifth and even sixth generations, few in number, hardly speak a word of Russian. Most Russians were assimilated generations ago and lost all interest in Russian Church life. This membership has been much supplemented by converts, who have no Russian origins, with the result that a once Russian Church has largely become an American Church. However, most converts join mainstream Orthodox groups. Why join a historical fragment, ROCOR?

Most American converts to Orthodoxy join their own Church, the OCA (Orthodox Church in America) or other US groups. However, ROCOR in the USA has attracted a niche group, or constituency, often called ‘crazy converts’. These are highly conservative and even pathological converts, apparently quite common in the USA and in California, though there are a few such people especially in other English-speaking countries, who are drawn to what is exclusive and anti-Protestant (ironically, most converts are Protestants).

Today, the American episcopate of ROCOR wants to canonise a convert, which is what Fr Seraphim (Rose) was. He will then be the saint of their converts, a self-justification for their schismatic behaviour and condemnation of all others, a kind of national flag, a unique and exclusive identity, which they hope will attract even more crazy converts. And they are necessary, as the old ROCOR Russian core is today growing ever smaller. However, it is pathological converts who have created the anti-woman and anti-family ethos of today’s ROCOR.

After its long-awaited submission to the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church and so the restoration of full canonicity in 2007, ROCOR had the opportunity to merge with the Moscow-based Church and also contribute positively to the other Orthodox living in Western countries from the mainstream. Tragically, by 2017 ROCOR had turned its back on this God-given opportunity and turned inwards, cutting itself off from others, refusing concelebration and communion, openly supporting Trump’s Republican Party.

In choosing the uncanonical and politically-driven path of the Protestant sect and condemning other Orthodox like pharisees, taking their clergy without letters of leave, the American Synod has isolated itself and discredited itself. Its intention to canonise an American convert, a repentant homosexual, but who did then spend many years with a pedophile, has cast further doubt on it, already compromised by its links with the CIA. In any case, as regards a possible canonisation of Fr Seraphim Rose and after the war in the Ukraine is over, Moscow will have the last word.

 

 

NOTHING HAS CHANGED: ON THE RUSSIAN CLERGY ON THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION

From the Memoirs of St. Mardarije (Uskoković)

Fpr those who do not know the Russian Church and Russian history well, below is the key to everything. Having read it, you will understand why the Russian Revolution, with the brutal persecution of Russian Orthodox, carried out mainly by baptised Russian Orthodox, took place.

Mitred Archpriest Andrew Phillips

St Mardarije (Uskoković)

The future St. Mardarije (Uskoković) (1889–1935), the first Serbian bishop in the United States and Canada, spent more than ten years in Russia on the very eve of the revolutionary events that brought tragic and unprecedented trials to the Church. The uniqueness of the young Serbian hieromonk from Montenegro lay in the fact that during his years of study and service in Russia he interacted with a remarkably broad circle of public and ecclesiastical figures, from Volhynia and Kishinev to Kiev and St. Petersburg. As a vivid and exceptional personality, he was welcomed into various homes and circles and spoke extensively with bishops and other representatives of the Russian clergy. At the same time, he was always filled with ardent love for the Russian Church, Russia itself, its spirituality, history, and culture, to which he became deeply spiritually akin in the fullest sense.

Hieromonk Mardarije (Uskoković)

He began early to write and speak about various problems in society and Church life. It is possible that his judgments and actions were marked by a certain youthful fervour and naivety, but they were also entirely sincere. The young servant of the Church soon revealed a gift for preaching, which was especially appreciated by the Russian flock. Several collections and pamphlets by the future saint were published in Russia, and he himself took part in the Local Council of 1917–1918. As a man deeply immersed in Church life and personally acquainted with it from within, the future bishop wrote with pain about certain phenomena he observed.

It is interesting that the young hieromonk repeatedly expressed his views on the state of the Russian clergy and on relations between bishops and priests in private conversations with outstanding hierarchs and pastors of the Church in Russia. Many of them listened to his assessments with attention and interest; some agreed, while others disagreed less with his conclusions than with the practical steps he proposed for changing the situation as he saw it from distant Montenegro. Nevertheless, the memoirs and descriptions of the future saint are of special value, first and foremost because they illuminate important aspects of the life of the Russian Church on the eve of the terrible trials that befell it after the Revolution, and they compel us to reflect on what lessons and examples we may draw from the tragic experience of the Russian clergy more than a century ago.

The memoirs Incomprehensible Russia was written by St. Mardarije in the 1930s, though it is possible that it was based on periodic notes written earlier and later assembled into a unified work. Its English-language text, entitled Incomprehensible Russia, was discovered only relatively recently and is dated 1935. A Serbian translation was published in 2017 with the blessing of Bishop Longin of New Gračanica and Midwestern America at St. Sava Monastery in Libertyville.

From the Chapter ‘On the Russian Clergy’

Representatives of the Russian episcopate, for the most part, very rarely descended from their thrones into the midst of ordinary life. Avoiding contact with common people, they also tried not to allow the lower clergy to come too close to them.

Such aloofness was explained by the belief that close interaction with parishioners and priests could undermine the authority of the “princes of the Church,” whereas distance only elevated them further.

Only a few fortunate members of the lower clergy ever received a “gracious” invitation to dine at a bishop’s table. Fewer still were those who could freely visit a bishop expecting a warm reception.

The attitude shown toward me by the higher Russian clergy was, of course, exceptional. To this day I gratefully remember the hospitality with which certain bishops and the rector of Kazan Cathedral, Archpriest Ornatsky—who was not only a priest but also a philosopher—received me. But things were quite different with the Russian priesthood generally, as I repeatedly observed while traveling throughout Russia.

Yet there are no rules without exceptions, and among the one hundred and thirty Russian bishops there were notable exceptions to the rule I have described of proud isolation. It would perhaps be more accurate to say that the Russian episcopate was divided into two classes: those who kept themselves apart and enjoyed a lifeless authority sustained by vanity formed the first and much larger class, while the second, smaller group consisted of those unconcerned with their own dignity, who believed in spiritual communion with the people and regarded the clergy not as subordinates but as fellow labourers in the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth.

This smaller group did not lose authority; on the contrary, it raised its authority in the eyes of clergy and parishioners alike by creating a living bond of mutual love and respect in place of the armour of cold formalism. How far the first group stood from the meek image of the Savior, walking through the wheat fields of Galilee with words of love on His lips and seeing nothing degrading in washing the feet of His disciples. Nothing but mutual love and faithfulness explains why the Lord’s disciples were ready and glad to die for Him.

I recall a typical example from the first, larger group, which I once witnessed in a bishop’s reception hall.

In a large round chamber, petitioners and visitors stood waiting along the walls, as was customary in the offices of ministers and government officials, while important and highly placed persons were received in the bishop’s private study.

After some delay, the bishop appeared accompanied by a secretary carrying pencil and paper. The bishop began walking around the room while the secretary followed behind, taking notes concerning the business of the petitioners.

At first the bishop was cold, dry, and formal. Suddenly something displeased him in one of the priests who had come with a petition, and he unleashed the full force of his anger upon him. The petitioner was stunned and too frightened to gather himself and explain; besides, the bishop gave him no opportunity to do so.

Nearby stood a rural priest with an ascetic, deeply wrinkled face resembling one of the fathers of the ancient Church. It seemed as though St. Anthony the Great, Paul of Thebes, or Pachomius the Great had come there from the Egyptian desert. In his aged hands he held a petition requesting the ordination of his grandson so that he himself might retire.

But he could not withstand the bishop’s fury. Trembling, he dropped the petition from his weak hands, as though expecting that the bishop’s wrath would soon fall upon him as well.

Distressed by this sad and unseemly scene, I turned my gaze toward the corner of the reception room, where there stood a blessed icon of the Savior, who patiently endures even those who have sinned deeply.

Although the bishop kept an icon of the Savior in his reception room, I saw no evidence that this stern, thunderous hierarch carried that image within his own heart.

During my years in Russia I encountered bishops from both groups, and now I would like to sketch a pair of contrasting portraits.

I remember one bishop from the first group very clearly, because I studied together with him.

As an academy student he distinguished himself in nothing except his enormous stature and thunderous voice. In these he had no equal.

Lacking particular spirituality, he paid great attention to the external appearance of a priest. If one of his fellow students—a monk gifted with talent, spirituality, and a true pastoral calling—merely trimmed his beard, our future bishop sharply criticized him. His own beard was always very large, since he regarded it as a necessary outward symbol of three qualities he himself did not possess: piety, spirituality, and monastic restraint.

Even during his student years, while still only a monk, he openly declared that he expected to become a bishop. At the time this amused us more than impressed us. But he had influential friends, and after graduating from the Theological Academy he advanced through the ecclesiastical hierarchy twice as fast as normal. A talented graduate without connections needed about ten years to reach a bishop’s see. He achieved it in four. He quickly became a vicar bishop, and soon afterward received his own diocese.

Before departing for his diocese, he summoned representatives of the diocesan clergy to the capital in order to instruct them regarding the ceremonial arrangements for his solemn entry into his new episcopal residence. Everything was carefully prescribed, and they returned with detailed instructions on how he was to be received generally and, in particular, how he was to be greeted at the diocesan border.

Before boarding the train, he changed his appearance, replacing his modest black monastic cassock with a purple one and decorating his mighty chest with all the honours he possessed.

The train arrived at the station, where officials had gathered on the platform awaiting the new bishop. His personal railway carriage, adorned with flowers and branches, stopped opposite a special reception area, and from it emerged the bishop in solemn procession, immediately surrounded by the crowd ordered to greet him.

At the appointed hour he arrived at the cathedral for the solemn liturgy, where a great crowd awaited him, including clergy, officials, and military officers. Seeing his immense stature—for physically he resembled Ilya Muromets—and hearing his powerful voice, those present imagined that a giant both of spirit and body stood among them.

But disappointment awaited them. At the conclusion of the brief service the bishop addressed the people, as was customary. His voice carried beyond the cathedral walls, but his words were banal, empty, and devoid of spiritual meaning.

An even greater disappointment awaited those who sought an audience with him the next day. Despite carefully prepared letters of recommendation, it proved far from easy to obtain access to the new bishop. By the evening rumours had spread throughout the city and diocese that a steel barrier, embodied in the secretary and the bishop’s lay brother-assistant, had arisen between the bishop and his flock. Visitors had to pass through the purgatory of double interrogation. Moreover, it was their practice not to admit petitioners and not even to listen to those seeking spiritual support. Such people were sharply dismissed: “The bishop should not be troubled over trifles.”

Nor did the bishop himself show much hospitality toward those wishing to visit him—whether bishops from other dioceses or former fellow students, even those who had become outstanding preachers.

He politely declined such visits. In this way he succeeded in protecting not only his cathedral but the entire diocese from visits by authoritative, energetic, and talented individuals.

Thus he became a highly successful representative of the first group of bishops already described.

And now—a portrait of a very different kind of bishop, a man who made an unforgettable impression on me.

A large crowd of people, myself among them, waited beneath the warm spring sun for the arrival of the train. That day too there was a crowd, but with one important difference. The people had come not because of an episcopal order, but voluntarily, having heard many good things about him.

Animatedly conversing, everyone watched intently as the train approached the platform, then rushed toward the last carriage, where governors and bishops usually travelled.

We waited for the bishop to appear. A minute passed, then another. Our impatience grew, but no one emerged onto the platform. Someone bolder asked the conductor and then turned to us and announced that the bishop had arrived in a third-class carriage attached directly behind the locomotive.

Without losing a moment we hurried there, but it was too late. The bishop had already left the station through a side exit, hired the first cabman he found, and gone to the cathedral.

At first those standing in the cathedral were perplexed by his modesty and simplicity of dress. But the opening words of his address explained everything. His speech was fiery, and the hearts of the listeners “burned within them” (Luke 24:32). Some even wept. The sermon concluded with the words of the Great Shepherd: “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28), to which the bishop added: “Believe me, the doors of my home will always be open to all who are in need of help and counsel.”

Those present at the reception of the new bishop departed with warmth in their hearts and the joyful news: “This new bishop is right for us.”

In the first months of the Russian Revolution, a phenomenon occurred in many dioceses that at first glance seemed surprising. Priests gathered together to vent their anger against their bishops. I witnessed such scenes many times, but I was not surprised. In those dioceses no spiritual bond united bishop and flock, and there was nothing surprising in their desire to replace a worthless bishop with a better one. In some dioceses the bishops were better, and everyone knew it.

During those revolutionary days I attended an assembly in one such diocese. At the mere mention of the bishop’s name, thunderous applause broke out, although he himself was a thousand versts away in Petersburg on diocesan business.

I understood well what had provoked such an ovation. Several years before the Revolution I had accompanied him on an inspection tour through the diocese. He visited peasants in their humble village homes. He spent much time with his clergy, instructing them, paying attention to their children, and explaining to their wives how they might become true friends to their husbands and help them bear the heavy burden of responsibility. With interest and love he asked about their troubles and emphasised the importance of their labours for the welfare of the Russian people.

It is no wonder that when the Revolution began, priests and laypeople unanimously demanded the return of absent bishops such as this one. They knew they could rely on him in difficult times.

 

 

 

 

 

Half a Century in the Orthodox Church in Western Europe (2)

Fleeing the Extremes

The first Christian Emperor was called Constantine. The last Orthodox Emperor was called Nicholas. He was overthrown in the so-called 1917 Revolution, that is, in the palace coup of the aristocratic traitors to the Tsar, orchestrated by the British ruling class. As a result, all the Orthodox Churches, which the Tsar had protected when still in power lost their protector and were called either to martyrdom or else to confessordom. Once infiltrated, the Churches had to resist either the CIA, by confessordom, or else of the KGB, by martyrdom and their earlier equivalents. (Earlier they had had different names, but they were still engaged in the same intrigues). Our balancing act has meant avoiding both these extremes. In our context this has not yet meant becoming martyrs, but it has meant becoming confessors.

Combating the extremes has on the one hand meant avoiding and combating globalism, liberalism, modernism, freemasonry and Vatican-style perversions and, on the other hand, avoiding and combating sectarianism, phariseeism, hateful censoriousness, political ultra-conservatism and Old Ritualist style obscurantism. Both extremes are marked by anti-Christian ‘bishops’, who are in fact thieves, homosexuals and pedophiles. Thus, we fought against the influence of the liberal modernists in the Orthodox Churches in the 1970s and 1980s and then against the sectarian pharisees in the Orthodox Churches in the 1990s and 2000s, until Russian Church unity was achieved in 2007. This was a victory over both extremes, a miracle. But the devil does not like miracles and those who announce that God is Love.

The devil attacked the Greek Church of Constantinople through nationalist racism, called ‘phyletism’ in Greek. However, he attacked the Russian Church, replacing faith and piety with the negativity of nationalist politics, which led to State-orchestrated ritualism, rigid militarism with its blind obedience and harsh punishments, instead of integrity. Professional choirs assured that everything was provided and the people were made passive, without responsibility. From there it was only one step to anti-clericalism. As they say in Russian, ‘mnogo popov, malo batjushek’, ‘there are many fake priests, but few real ones’. And so in the Russian Church, persecution always comes from the bishops. Thus, the Russian Church isolated itself and fell out of communion and catholicity with the 15 other Local Orthodox Churches.

The USA

Thus, our 2007 victory was to give us only temporary respite, a decade of peace. The programme of Americanisation, or more precisely of Trumpisation, of the American Synod of the Russian Church, known as ROCOR, began in 2017. It sent out its US agents to the still ‘unreformed’ (= normal and traditional) parts of ROCOR in Western Europe and Australia to transform these too into ignorant and arrogant convert crazy zones, like themselves, who yearned to create a rigid and ritualistic sect. This all coincided, and not coincidentally, with President Trump’s first term of belligerent Americanism and also with the second phase of the infiltration of ROCOR by the CIA. The latter activated its sleeping agents in the American Synod and recruited new ones, sending them out worldwide to what is an ecclesiastical NGO.

The Age of Trump also coincided with the consequences of the earlier activities of the notorious Mossad agents, Maxwell and Epstein, who worked hand in hand for the greater glory of worldwide Zionism. Epstein was before his murder the model psychopath: charming, superficially brilliant, very manipulative, narcissistic, a pathological liar, with no sense of empathy, a ruthless pervert and a cynical egomaniac. His psychopathic spirit became the standard for the Age and for the CIA agents in question. So much for the psychopathic narcissists of the USA and its Epstein regime. What of the other half of the Western world, Europe and the UK? Here we have not narcissistic psychopathy, but the creeping power grab of centralising Sovietisation, the old megalomaniac temptations of power and money.

Europe and the UK

Immediately after the fall of the SU (Soviet Union) at the end of 1991, the EU (European Union) was founded. The demons behind the former Union had simply fled westwards to an easier prey, the new Gadarene swine of Western Europe. Russia was no longer attractive, as it cast off the yoke of compulsory atheism. Thus, with the Treaty of Maastricht, signed in 1992, the EU became a geopolitical project. Instead of a trading community, it had become the political wing of militaristic NATO. The creeping centralising Sovietisation and Epsteinisation of the EU, obvious in its practices, was also clear in its vocabulary. Thus, the (European) Council is the translation of ‘Soviet’, the EU Commissioners mirror Soviet Commissars, the oligarchy mirrors the nomenklatura and the ‘narrative’ mirrors ‘the Party line’. SU = EU.

As for England, it continued on its historic cycle. In 597 it was converted to Christ from that Old Rome, which still openly condemned universal pretensions. In 1066 it was converted to barbarianism from Norman France, sponsored by the ideology of the new schismatic and ‘universal’ Rome, which stifled Christ with the Pope and England with Britain. In 1535 it was converted to anti-sacramentalism from Luther’s neo-pagan Germany. In 2004 it was converted to imperial delusions from Nazi Ukraine and its orange revolution. The cycle is repeated every 469 years. Today, the British Establishment is trying to revive its long-lost past glory, which was not glory, but shame. This imperialism is repeated all through the ex-imperialist Western European ruling class, nostalgic for its delusions of greatness.

The Collapse of Kiev Creates Regime Changes in the USA, Europe and the UK

What the ruling elites in both the EU and the UK have not understood is that all unions break up. The Soviet Union, the USSR, broke up. So did Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and now the Ukraine, so will Belgium, the EU, the UK, and quite possibly the US. The Four Nations of Britain and a reunited Ireland can work together, not in a Union or a Federation (which is a half-way house from a Union, as is the semi-Soviet Russian Federation), but in a Sovereign Confederation, the Ionan Confederation, IONA, the ‘Isles of the North Atlantic’. England must yet depose the British monarchs who have ruled it for so long, invited by the merchant-oligarchs of the City of London from Germany to become an Imperial House, but the Imperial Age is long over and so are they. A new Sovereign England must restore its own English Royal House.

As for the EU and the UK, they are entirely dependent on the black hole of the Kiev regime. They have bet everything on that loser, playing at the casino wheel of geopolitics, without knowledge and understanding, but with a fanatical and blinding, ever-expanding ideology of European unionism. But every time that Europe falls to union, and it is always a fall, whether under Napoleon, or Hitler, or the EU, it then sets about attacking Russia. ‘Europe’ always attacks European Russia, because Russia does not conform to the morally and financially bankrupt ideological narrative of the Eurocommissars. This is why they do not want peace. War is their self-justification, as only war gives them a unifying purpose. However, the Russian Federation frustrates them immensely, for it is playing the long game against the Kiev regime.

Moscow’s methodical advance by attrition, metre by metre, keeping its losses very low, is because it is awaiting the political collapse of Kiev, which will precede its military collapse. (This was why Germany, Britain and France, as Japan had tried in 1904-5, first brought about Russian political collapse in 1917, since political collapse always precedes military collapse). When political Kiev collapses, its army will have nothing left to fight for. Then, Russia will take over most of the old Soviet Ukraine at little cost, allowing Poland, Romania, Hungary and perhaps Slovakia to take back the far western fragments of Stalin’s Ukraine which used to belong to them, as they wish. And then there will be regime change, not in Moscow, but, ironically, in peace-hating Washington, London, Berlin, Paris and wherever Kiev Fascism was supported.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Happens to Church Life When People Renounce the Living God?

Mercilessly exiling any bishop who displeased him and spreading Arianism, the Emperor Valens began persecuting in Cappadocia. His prefect Modestus went to St Basil and threatened to confiscate his property, to banish or beat him and even to kill him. St Basil staunchly rejected his blandishments to betray the Faith and his threats to punish him as a criminal, answering, ‘Death would be a kindness to me, for it will bring me all the sooner to God, for Whom I live and labour and to Whom I hasten’. The official was stunned by his answer. ‘No one has ever spoken with such boldness to me’, he said. The saint replied: ‘Perhaps that is because you have never spoken to a bishop before’.

Introduction: The Definition of the Church

The Church is the Risen Body of Christ, radiated by the Holy Spirit, that is, it is Divino-human. However, if a part of the Church is taken over by men, it loses its Divinity. Thus, it becomes a mere human organisation, a corporation, commercial, political or ethnic, or a sect and cult. And as it is no longer the Risen Body of Christ, it is at once subject to corruption, like a human body rotting and decaying in the grave. This means that its four theological defining signs are renounced. Those signs are, as we confess in the Creed, One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. They mean:

The Church is One in Faith, whatever the outward administrative divisions. Whenever any group of human-beings changes the Creed or substitutes human values for Oneness of Faith, they fall away from the Unity of the Church.

The Church is Holy, in other words, the Church alone produces saints. When part of the Church persecutes saints or stops producing them, it is no longer the Church, it has fallen away from the Church and is spiritually impaired.

The Church is Catholic. This much misunderstood word means that, whatever ritual, outward or administrative variations, the Church always confesses the same inward Faith in all places and at all times.

The Church is Apostolic. This means that the history of the Church goes back directly to the apostles who, obeying the Holy Spirit at the Council of Jerusalem in 33 AD, began to organise the Church on earth.

From Church to Corporation, Ideology, Sect and Cult 

It is very sad to see part of the Church, however small, abandon these four qualities and thus become a sect and cult. This is especially so when you have dedicated decades to fighting against sectarianism and helping to implant the signs of the Church firmly (as we had thought) into the part that had been threatened by evil.

We can see that a part of the Church has renounced this Churchliness, when it ceases to be One and divides into many sects, each differing in the confession of the Faith and warring in hatred against one another. There is only one solution in this situation and that is flee to the uncontaminated Church which is in communion with all. Communion with all Orthodox is the guarantee of Unity.

We can see that a part has renounced Churchliness, when it ceases to be Holy, that is, when it ceases to produce saints and persecutes those who pursue Holiness. For example, there is a former part of the Church that finally produced its only saint 60 years ago, first having suspended him and put him on trial. We speak of St John of Shanghai and Western Europe (+ 1966).

We can see that a part has renounced Churchliness, when it ceases to be Catholic, part of the Catholic whole, and cuts off communion with other members of the Church. This is because its members declare like the pharisees their exclusiveness and superiority, that only they obey the canons and possess the truth.

We can see that a part has renounced Churchliness, when it ceases to be Apostolic, abandoning the practices of the apostles and inventing novel teachings, which are against the Creed, for example, rebaptising deluded Orthodox.

Church Life Degenerates as Sectarianism Takes Over

Once Love, which is the only message of Christ, the Head of the Church, is replaced by some secular ideology, for example, a commercial, political or ethnic ideology, Church life degenerates into purely secular modes of life. Thus, only careerists are left among the clergy and they bear no spiritual fruit, as they are opportunists. They are ‘flexible’ and will swim with the tide in return for tinsel awards. These careerists are used to ‘do the dirty work’, such as covering up the scandals, which occur at the decline and fall of all human organisations. The careerists are totally obedient to the heads of the totalitarian sect, for the heads insist on total and slavish obedience to themselves, as they have no spiritual or moral authority. And when they justify what they did wrong, ‘I was only following orders’, say the careerists. But that is too late.

At this point Church life is taken over by love of money. Those who have money, whether laypeople or clergy, take control and impose their perversions. All who do not ‘pay up’ are abused, bullied, intimidated, humiliated and slandered by the clerical extortioner. Money must belong to him and his total control.

Next come attempts at property grabs. All those who have built or restored Church properties, sacrificing themselves and their own money and time selflessly and resisting what is in fact attempted theft, are abused, bullied, intimidated, humiliated and slandered by the clerical extortioner. Property must belong to him and his total control.

Finally come the sexual perversions, homosexuality and pedophilia. These cases are duly covered up by the amoral careerists. See:

https://pokrovtruth.substack.com/p/explosive-new-audio-further-implicates

At this point, Love is replaced by their hatred, which becomes pathological because it is the end. The former part of the Church is controlled by the pathologically sick and has become a sect and cult.

Conclusion

It may sound obvious or naïve, but it is always best to make sure that candidates for the priesthood and the episcopate are both psychologically normal and are actually Christians, before ordaining and consecrating them. Not Christians in words (that can be forged), but in deeds. ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’.

 

 

 

Russian Orthodox Church Disunity

The Orthodox Church is the bimillennial Confederation of Local Christian Churches, each largely covering one nationality, one language, one culture and one territory, Russian, Romanian, Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Arab, Albanian etc. Today there are sixteen Local Orthodox Churches in all and some have flocks in Western countries as a result of emigration, which has taken place either for economic or for political reasons. Over fifty years ago, in the 1970s in England, I was able to join the Orthodox Church through the émigré Russian Church, an emigration which had taken place after 1917 for political reasons.

Cut off from Russia and cut off from new emigres by Soviet atheism, the dying Church in the Russian emigration was really the only Local Orthodox Church which accepted or needed to accept Non-Russians. (Other Local Churches would generally not even accept those of another nationality. Since then, barriers to other nationalities have to some extent been broken, but that is another story). However, as a result of the political nature of its emigration, the émigré Russian Church was split into three warring parts, none of which was in communion. They were split by political beliefs, which is the only reason why Churches split.

The largest and most international émigré fraction was called the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), composed of anti-Communist emigres and centred in the USA. Then came a smaller part which we may call the Paris Emigration (PE), centred in France and composed of emigres who favoured a Western liberal political system for Russia. Finally, there came by far the smallest part, called the Moscow Patriarchate (MP), composed of emigres who, though members of the Church, out of patriotism turned a blind eye to Soviet atheism. What is the position now, 35 years after Soviet atheism?

The ideology of Soviet atheism was replaced by another ideology, Russian nationalism. Nevertheless, as a result of the fall of Soviet atheism, both ROCOR and PE came into communion with the MP and, briefly, with each other. This was based on sympathy for Russia, but not on full sympathy, as the Westernised descendants of both émigré groups today represent not Russian nationalism, but, respectively, US nationalism and Western liberalism. And for this ironic reason the very aggressive and ideological ROCOR group is no longer in communion with the PE. Thus, division continues, again because of politics.

Thus, even if ideologies have switched from what they were when the Soviet Union existed, they are still here. Having worked for fifty years to bring the three warring émigré groups together, the present lack of communion is tragic for me. Sadly, the younger generation of ROCOR is so Americanised, one might say, narcissistically and imperialistically Trumpian, that it does not accept any views other than its own. Such sectarian exclusivity betrays a vision of the Church which is opposed to the Church as Christian communion and sees it as an exclusive and intolerant sect which condemns and punishes all who disagree.

As regards the fall of the MP into nationalism, this was a logical development from the old Soviet nationalism of the period before the fall of the USSR, but in a new form. Soviet nationalism was paradoxical for Orthodox, as how could Christians be loyal to Soviet atheism? However, this Russian nationalism is also paradoxical. It makes of the Church an Army, a spirit of militarism, ritualism and clericalism, according to which everything is literally uniform, in which there is no place for personal spiritual inspiration and diversity. All isms quench the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth and Love, and nationalism is no different.

Thus, all three parts of the Russian Church illustrate divisiveness and exclusivity through the adoption of different political ideologies, tragically putting Caesar above Christ. Until all three parts of the Russian Church revert to full Orthodoxy, abandoning political or nationalist ideologies of any sort, there will be no general Orthodox unity. The sign of the reversion of the Russian Church to Orthodoxy will be in its recovery of Catholicity, that is, in its renewed and visible communion with the peoples of all other Local Churches. Once we see that, we shall see a renewed and valuable Russian contribution to Pan-Orthodox unity.

 

 

 

What We Left Behind: How Did a Persecuted Church Become a Persecuting Church?

History

In the course of the fourth century the Church which had been bitterly persecuted at the start of that century by Pagan Rome was adopted by the Roman Empire. And as the Roman Empire began persecuting dissidents, so individuals representing the Church, specifically bishops, allied themselves to the persecuting Roman State, which demanded obedience from all. Thus, a State Church was born and the once Persecuted Church became a Persecuting Church. To counter this enslavement and proclaim spiritual freedom, the monastic movement boomed, ’the desert became a city’, Egypt and Palestine filled with monks. The pious in the parishes followed them, not the persecuting bishops.

Such ‘State Church’ compromises have patterned the whole history of the Church, most notably in Western Europe, a former part of the empire of Pagan Rome. Here a new ideology, with its self-justifying filioque and Papist ideology, which came to be called ‘Roman Catholicism’, was based not on certain bishops of the Church allying themselves with the State, but on the Church actually becoming the State. In fact, it became a ‘Superstate’, like the modern EU, which imitates the medieval Papacy in every way. This saw the Roman Pope, the head of the new Roman Catholicism, leave the Church and in 1054 become independent from the Church and even condemn the Church as ‘schismatic’!

From that moment on, the Popes of Rome, heirs to and imitators of the pagan emperors, could lead armies, persecute and murder dissidents, bless invasions, order so-called ‘crusades’ and implement inquisitions against all who disagreed with their imperialist cult of absolute claims to power and wealth.  Inevitably, from the eleventh century on that spawned many Protest movements, which further discredited them and divided the totalitarian religion that they led. And so the Church that canonised the Martyrs and Confessors, despite the worldly-minded, became the Persecuting Church, instead of love, showing hatred, and then refusing to repent in self-justification. This went down in history.

An Example in the Present

In case some think that this is simply a polemic against Roman Catholicism, let us make the truth clear. Plenty of Orthodox have followed suit, becoming ‘Philopapists’. For example, in recent times, the New York Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) did the same. And so a Church that had canonised the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Lands in 1981, despite all the worldly-minded who criticised and mocked it, became in 2021 the Persecuting Church, instead of love, showing hatred and then refusing to repent in self-justification. This too went down in history. Like the Papacy, it preferred money and power to the Holy Spirit, to the Martyrs and Confessors.

But when did this decadence begin? This spirit was certainly absent in 1981 from the unworldly Metr Philaret, who at last canonised the New Martyrs and Confessors. The turning-point was perhaps in 2001, when his successor as leader of ROCOR, Metr Vitaly (Ustinov), by then very elderly and quite ill, was usurped. The Metropolitan who had opposed the CIA Grabbe faction was replaced by those sympathetic to that faction. Those who seized power replaced him with a series of pious, but very weak, metropolitans, and so continued to exercise power from behind their thrones. Their first act was to begin to fill the episcopate with their candidates in order to consolidate their power.

Therefore, in 2003, despite a threefold opposition from one Archbishop, they proposed one of that group’s episcopal candidates, a well-known homosexual (I had been shown his compromising photo as long ago as 1995). During the ceremony, one in the crowd, an acquaintance of mine, shouted out ‘anaxios’, ‘unworthy’, meaning that he opposed the consecration of that candidate. My acquaintance was taken aside by the wealthy brothers of the bishop and duly beaten up. And they call themselves Christians, and even call themselves ‘Orthodox’ Christians! The inevitable alcohol-fuelled scandals duly followed, ending up with the notorious property grab in Missouri. As had been foretold.

One of the techniques that has always been used by such groups is slander, that which was done in the Old Testament against St Job. It was in use already before the Revolution with regard to Tsar Nicholas, Tsarina Alexandra, their Family and all those who supported them. Murder started then. As the media have developed, we have seen it in the Greek Church with ‘the slandered saint’, St Nectarios of Aegina (+ 1920), in ROCOR with St John of Shanghai (+ 1966), who was suspended and faced ‘defrocking’ by the CIA faction in the American Synod, which he defeated, and in the Romanian Church with the great saint, St Arsenie of Prislop (1989), who was so hated by the atheists. Such is our destiny also.

Those ‘Philopapists’ are then always opposed to the saints and slander them. In the case of St John of Shanghai, they will claim that he did not give his shoes away to the poor because he had compassion on them, but because he did not like wearing shoes! They also claim that St John was very much a bureaucrat because he had studied law! They, of course, like wearing expensive leather shoes and love issuing decrees and ‘protocols’. In other words, they slander St John in order to justify their own Anti-Gospel behaviour. They always divert attention from whatever in the saints contradicts their perversions and accuse the saints of exactly their own weaknesses by psychological transfer.

The ROCOR ’gang’ behind the 2003 consecration then continued their activities in order to consolidate their power further. The main aim for themselves and their candidates was to amass as much wealth, property and power as possible, usurping any who opposed them and replace them with their candidates. This was exactly what they had done with the bishop who had vigorously opposed their 2003 candidate. In the decades following 2003, more homosexuals and further CIA/NATO candidates took over in various places, with the Mother-Church in Moscow naively looking on, but never opposing the pro-CIA American Synod, as if paralysed, stunned by the cowboy behaviour of the Americans.

Indeed, even when ROCOR shockingly opposed the Russian campaign against the CIA/NATO takeover of the Ukraine from February 2022 on, Moscow remained paralysed, as if hypnotised. Had it too been infiltrated by the CIA and the Hitlerite spirit of Vlasov? A still unanswered question. Here we must not confuse the dogmatic with the pastoral. For example, although one of their bishops was very greedy for money, we paid him what he wanted, even though he constantly insulted us, jealously demanding ever more, tried to steal our church buildings like a common criminal, and slandered us, saying that we had stolen money from him! We stayed, as this was a pastoral, not a dogmatic, issue.

The Pastoral and the Dogmatic

Indeed, we only left him after he had publicly gone into schism with the Church by breaking communion with Her and had then begun rebaptising Orthodox. These were dogmatic issues, as he had gone against the Creed: I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. This is an attack on the Church, for which we are prepared to die and we will win because our slanderers are not prepared to die for their greed and schism. Those who confuse the pastoral and the dogmatic would have left him before. For example, there are those who create a schism around the calendar. However, the true calendar is the one which your bishop blesses you to celebrate on. Disobedience is the only error here.

The old ROCOR never had any problem with the calendar. We had many Romanian and Bulgarian new calendar refugee parishes with us, when the atheists were in power in Romania and Bulgaria and were persecuting those Local Churches. When freedom came, those parishes quite naturally returned to their Mother-Churches. Similarly, hundreds of Russian parishes in Africa use the new calendar, as do their parishes in Vienna, Sofia and elsewhere. And today the Romanian Church has received several hundred refugee parishes which use the old calendar. Our situation is similar to that of St Paisy (Velichkovsky), who before us also had to take refuge in the Romanian Church from the Russian.

However, those who deny the dogmas of the Church and change the Creed, whether in words with the filioque, or else, all the while hypocritically retaining the words of the Creed, in deeds, put themselves outside communion with the Church. They become schismatic sects of pharisees, failing to understand that communion is the visible, external sacramental sign of the internal catholicity of the Church. To be in communion means to be part of the Church, inherently and organically connected with the whole Body of Christ, members of Him. This is not about administrative bureaucracy and protocols, but about the life in Christ through the Holy Spirit. This is real Orthodoxy, the Church of the Holy Spirit.