Category Archives: Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia

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.

 

 

The Continuing ROCOR Schism and the new Canonical Russian Orthodox Bishop for Britain

In December 2020 the New York-based ROCOR (those initials used to stand for the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia) of the Moscow Patriarchate (MP) consciously engineered a schism by forbidding communion with its sister Western European Archdiocese of the Moscow Patriarchate, based in Paris. Thus, ROCOR cut itself off from communion with canonical Orthodoxy, from the catholicity of the Church.

ROCOR lost everything because of its crazy converts. This single act of folly resulted almost immediately in ROCOR in England losing well over half its Diocese, 5,000 people in six parishes, with twelve clergy. They included the senior priest of the Diocese, with 36 years of faithful service to the Russian Orthodox Tradition and the Russian Tsar, who had played a role in the crucial and long-awaited canonical reconciliation of ROCOR with Moscow in 2007.

Although the Moscow Patriarchate itself declared that ROCOR’s act was insanity, it did nothing to counter it and a senior Metropolitan in Moscow instructed all who had quit ROCOR to join another Local Orthodox Church. This was a suicidal act of support by the MP for the ROCOR schism and a stab in the back for its decades-long missionary work in Western Europe. Thus, in obedience, we all fled the new, uncanonical ROCOR and joined another Local Orthodox Church, of which many were only too happy to take us.

Since then, the new sectarian ROCOR (apparently now standing for the Russian Old Calendarist Church Outside Russia) has refused to repent. As a result, it has now lost another subdeacon (and future priest) in Northern Ireland, a priest in Canada and a priest in the USA. All were converts, who had recently come into the new American ROCOR. Without any sense of history, they had never known the old canonical ROCOR, which was an integral part of the Orthodox Church and Tradition.

All of this is a replay of ROCOR’s Boston schism of 1986, exactly as the late Fr Seraphim Rose had time and again warned would happen back in the 1970s. Then some sixty small parishes of rootless people left ROCOR for old calendarist sects, just as other smaller groups would later leave in 2000 and in 2007.  The Protestant-style 1986 schism was a clear consequence of sectarianism among ungrounded ROCOR clergy and converts. Those who took part in it had no knowledge of the Tradition and so fell away from the Church into old calendarism.

These schisms are what happens when you abandon communion and concelebration with the Canonical Local Orthodox Churches, that is, with the mainstream of the Church. Now the chickens are coming home to roost again, for when ROCOR bishops claim that no other Orthodox bishops apart from themselves are Orthodox, what can their uninformed converts conclude? Only that, if there is ‘One True Church’, it must be schismatic, not one which is in communion with others, even if only on paper, like ROCOR.

The viewpoint of the schismatics is the only logical one for their sectarian mentality, which makes even the calendar into a dogma of the Faith. When their ROCOR bishop – although on paper in communion with the rest of the Orthodox Church – publicly declares that the Greek Patriarch is possessed by demons and that he personally hates Romanians and half-hates Moldovans, what can you expect from his followers? His converts demand logical behaviour of him, that he abandon communion with all others formally, not just in words. Otherwise, they see him as a hypocrite, as they publicly say.

These schisms are the clear result of the new ROCOR’s rejection of the Orthodox Tradition, the Tradition confessed by St John of Shanghai and his successor as the ROCOR Archbishop of Western Europe, the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva. They quite naturally concelebrated with everyone. Here today is the result of the crazy convert policy of the very ignorant bishops of the new American ROCOR. With no love for others, they fall out of communion with all, like judgemental pharisees.

Little wonder that in despair at the behaviour of the new ROCOR, Moscow has now gone ahead and at last consecrated its first local bishop in Britain. Bishop Augustine MacBeth is for its Archdiocese of Western Europe (the former Rue Daru jurisdiction) of the MP. Given the ROCOR schism from Moscow’s Archdiocese of Western Europe and its refusal to accept and respect local people and local languages, relying on convert Americanisms with their theological and historical ignorance and google translate to communicate, Moscow had no choice but to consecrate a canonical Russian Orthodox bishop from the local population for the local population.

Of course, it is all too little and much too late, as the Orthodox left for another Local Church four years ago, as advised by the MP Metropolitan Antony (Sevryuk)! Then the Moscow Patriarchate refused to receive those who had quit the schismatic ROCOR even in the face of the sectarian and hate-filled actions of the new ROCOR episcopate.

Since then, the former members of ROCOR, zealous for canonical communion and the catholicity of the Church, forced to join another Local Church by the new ROCOR fanaticism and ignorance of the Tradition, have gone from strength to strength. Now we live in canonicity, in the mainstream of the Orthodox Church and concelebrate with all (though not with the schismatics), far from the tiny ghettoes of crazy convert bishops, their clergy and their incessant scandals.

On the Six Divisions in the Russian Orthodox Church in the Diaspora

In the twentieth century the Russian Orthodox Church outside the borders of Russia split into six groups, three splits took place for ethnic reasons and three splits took place for political reasons.

The Three Non-Russian Ethnic Divisions

Firstly, there was quite a large Carpatho-Rusyn group in the USA, founded by immigrants who had been forced into Uniatism. They had arrived in the US from 1880 on, not from the Russian Empire, but from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Once in freedom in the USA, most of them returned to Russian Orthodoxy (the strongly Uniatised did not and were called by the absurd term ‘Ruthenians’). The return was for two reasons. Firstly, an infamous Roman Catholic Archbishop in the USA, called John Ireland (1838-1918), refused to let the Carpatho-Rusyns have married clergy and, secondly, he tried to steal their churches from them. As a Roman Catholic bishop (just like ROCOR bishops today), he did not understand that Carpathian Orthodoxy is founded on churches built or paid for by the people for the people. In real and not clericalist Orthodoxy, the hierarchical principle is always balanced by the congregational principle.  Led by the future saint, Fr Alexis (Toth), most people returned to the Church. The People’s Orthodoxy always triumphs over greedy clericalist bishops, who have the State mentality and dreams of power and riches. The Carpatho-Rusyns came to form a group known as the Metropolia and then from 1971 on the OCA (Orthodox Church in America).

After 1945 there formed second and third groups, a small Belarussian group and a very large and also very nationalistic Ukrainian group, mainly in Northern America, but also to some extent in Western Europe and elsewhere. After the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1991, most of the Ukrainian group, hating Russians, ended up under Constantinople. The small and weak Belarusian group more or less died out.

The Three Russian Political Divisions

As for the ethnic Russians in the Diaspora, after 1917 they too split into three. Initially, until the 1990s and renewed emigration, the smallest group was the Moscow Patriarchate group. This was at the centre of Soviet patriotism, which after 1991 transferred to Russian Federation patriotism. Many in this group never dared contradict whoever was in power in Moscow, whether they intervened in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan or the Ukraine. A blind patriotic loyalty even to an atheist regime (!) prevailed among some in this Church. For them, the Russian Patriarch is an ethnarch, in the same way as the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople is an ethnarch. For example, when Orthodox in Latvia were recently obliged by the local government to stop commemorating the Russian Patriarch, many there stopped going to church. I was asked if people should continue to attend churches there. I answered: If churches there continue to commemorate Christ, then of course they should attend them. Clearly, for many, the commemoration of the Patriarch was much more important than the commemoration of Christ. This is a parallel to the Roman Catholic attitude to the Popes of Rome. For them too the Pope is the head of the Church. No Pope, no Church! And the same ‘phyletist’ disease is present among some in Constantinople, Moscow and elsewhere.

The second smallest group in the Diaspora after 1917 was the Paris-centred group. This was led by Westernised aristocrats and intellectuals, mainly from Saint Petersburg, who had betrayed the Tsar, organised the first ‘Revolution’ (palace coup) to overthrow him and showed loyalty to Western values such as liberalism, ecumenism etc. In general, they showed little interest in fasting, monasticism and piety. This is now an even smaller group, as it has largely died out.

The largest émigré group, called ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, also Russian Orthodox Church Abroad or in Exile), was always anti-Communist. However, since being anti-Communist is not the same as Orthodox Christianity (to the amazement of some of them!), this led them into deviations and perversions, such as Nazism, then the CIA, NATO, the Republican Party and American Imperialism. The erroneous idea was that anyone who was anti-Communist was their friend. That hatred blinded many of them to the fact that all those movements embodied hatred for Russia. And yet these people were supposedly pro-Russian! After multiple scandals in ROCOR over the last decade, involving narcissists, homosexual and pedophile clergy, this group has also become very small. Many have left it in disgust at its anti-Christian ethos and so it has in recent years become a rather irrelevant fringe group and a very great embarrassment to its Mother-Church in Moscow.

As for us, we continue to confess our loyalty to Christ and His Saints, the New Martyrs and the New Confessors, in faithfulness to St John of Shanghai and his successor the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva. In 1975, we were already venerating the still uncanonised (after some 50 years!) New Martyrs and Confessors. Moscow refused to canonise them, like the two other groups – refusals all from lack of spiritual freedom. Apart from some quite exceptional individuals such as St John of Shanghai, all three groups also refused to venerate the Saints of the first millennium West when it was still Orthodox.

After the long overdue reconciliations with Moscow and apparent unity of the three ethnic Russian groups between 2007 and 2018, in the 2020s, the situation worsened sharply, as nationalism, Russian, American or French, seized hold of the leadership of the three groups. Moreover, as a result of Soviet-style nationalist centralisation, the Russian Church began to suffer from further splits with Orthodox in Estonia, the Ukraine, Moldova and Latvia. These splits spread everywhere outside the borders of the Russian Federation, among all who felt they had been treated as second-class citizens by the Centre and its emissaries. This left the Russian Church drifting rudderless and heading for shipwreck, as we continually described at that time.

Although we ordinary clergy and people were left leaderless and abandoned by politicians instead of pastors, we shall never respond to lies with lies, to slanders with slanders, to hatred with hatred. But neither shall we remain silent in the face of lies, slander, hatred, schism and sect. We shall continue to defend our canonical communion with the mainstream, all the Local Churches of the Orthodox Faith, and defend the spiritual freedom of our clergy and parishioners to be in communion with the whole Conciliar Church, to guard our Catholicity, and to keep the memory of the Saints, who are the identity of our Church. And in our case they are the identity of our England, as also of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. And no foreign sectarian and schismatic interloper from the USA has impeded us from so doing.

 

Keeping to the Golden Mean: Avoiding both New Calendarism and Old Calendarism

Last week the Greek Patriarch once again compromised himself with the Pope of Rome, this time in Muslim Turkey. Many have been shocked by his ecumenism. It seems strange, since this Greek Patriarch has been doing such things for decades. And he is not the first Greek Patriarch to do such things. Many fail to understand that he has once again compromised only himself, not the Church. The Church is not some member of the clergy, a mere individual, whatever his title. Our salvation comes only through Divine Mercy following our repentance for our own sins, not through trying to save someone else. Only Christ saves.

Just because one of the Twelve was called Judas Iscariot, we do not reject the Eleven. Christ did not do so. Just because one of the apples in the basket is bad, we do not throw away all the others. To do so is puritanism, phariseeism, the heresy of the Donatists. As I remarked to a parishioner, at the Dread Last Judgement we shall have to answer for our own sins, not for the personal sins of someone else’s Patriarch. And even if he were our Patriarch, his personal sins would engage only himself, not us.

Here is the error of those who are scandalised by the deeds of such a Patriarch and join the old calendarists. Through not wishing to be in theoretical communion with such a Patriarch, they then put themselves out of actual communion with the whole Church! The old calendarists are not Orthodox, as they claim to be, since they are not in communion with the Orthodox Church, but only with a tiny sect, made up mostly of neophytes who are not rooted and grounded in the Faith.

Once again, the old calendarist group in question consists of members of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlTaXUfyL6U&ntb=1&msockid=c33b6ec0ce1e11f0b05ac565ade6baa5).

That small group which has been spawning and feeding multiple old calendarist groups ever since 1986. In 2007 the campaign, in which we played an active part, to reunite ROCOR, especially in the USA, with the Mother-Church in Moscow, so that it would never again entertain the temptation of falling away from the Orthodox mainstream, seemed to be successful. All went well for the first ten years after 2007 until about 2017. Then sectarian elements in the USA, basically Russian old calendarists, took over ROCOR.

Then ROCOR soon began to fall out of communion from the rest of the Church, most notably in December 2021 under pressure from a former old calendarist priest, from another part of the Russian Orthodox Church! To quote the Book of Proverbs and the Second Epistle of the Apostle Peter, the dog returned to its vomit. When this became known, six parishes, twelve clergy and some 5,000 people, well over half of the ROCOR Diocese in England, warned the governing body of ROCOR in New York. However, that body, the American Synod, backed the schism. Thus we left the newly schismatic ROCOR, so that we would be able to remain in communion with the mainstream, the Church of God.

The only confusing matter here is that the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow itself did not take any action against the uncanonical and schismatic actions of ROCOR. For ROCOR, by the Act of Canonical Communion signed by ROCOR in 2007 (I was present), was supposed to be in communion with the rest of the Orthodox Church. This was why in 2006 my friend, Fr Alexander Lebedev, had visited the tiny old calendarist groups in Greece, Bulgaria and Romania to make it clear to them that no part of ROCOR was any longer in communion with them (our Western European part of ROCOR had never been in communion with them anyway).

It has been suggested that the inconsistent policy of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow in this matter was connected with political affairs connected with the Ukraine. Once the military operations in the Ukraine have been concluded, we can only hope that Moscow will discipline ROCOR and bring it to obey the canons. However, much of ROCOR will refuse to do this and break away from the Church into full-blown old calendarist schism.