Category Archives: Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia

The Roads Not Taken

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Four roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one least travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

With Apologies to Robert Frost

Introduction: Four Roads

Reflecting over the last twenty five years of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), we can in hindsight see clearly the four roads that the Church faced then and how the Church, in Her faithful bishops, clergy and people inspired by the Holy Spirit, came to reject three of the roads and take the fourth road, a road that time has proved to be profoundly right. Here we should not forget that it is only seven years ago, at the historic Fourth All-Diaspora Council in San Francisco in 2006 that the Church definitively chose this road under the saintly leadership of the Ever-Memorable Metropolitan Laurus. What were these three roads that the Church did not take and the road we did take?

1. The Sect

Sometimes to do nothing is actually right. However, when there is clear and radical change, for example the world-changing event of the collapse of the Soviet Union, to continue as before would have been absurd. To do nothing, not to react, the choice of passivity, would soon have become the choice of passivism and so the path of the sect and the nationalist ghetto. This became clear during the 1990s when Metropolitan Vitaly, already affected by Alzheimer’s, heavy medication and a sectarian and nationalistic entourage, accepted into the Church Outside Russia little groups inside Russia, and this to the horror of educated ROCOR clergy and laity. This act, which seemed quite uncanonical even then, proved to be disastrous in establishing tiny sectarian groups, sometimes led by rightly defrocked clergy.

Similarly, at that time an infamous and incredible decree was issued in the Metropolitan’s name, using, or rather abusing, his signature. This decree forbade the use of English, including in parishes where there was not a Russian in sight! That this was the path of the sect and the nationalist ghetto was clear to the vast majority then and the decree was quietly but universally ignored. Moreover, that this was the path of the sect and the nationalist ghetto has been further borne out even more by all those tiny and mostly elderly groups, already dying out, often consisting of ungrounded neophytes, quite uneducated individuals or else CIA operatives, with peculiar names and even more peculiar theology, which left the Church Outside Russia between 2001 and 2007.

2. Go Under Moscow

Given that ROCOR was clearly part of the whole Russian Orthodox Church, which clearly had grace and sacramental life, a few considered submitting to the authority of Moscow and actually abolishing ROCOR. This would have been a huge mistake for a number of reasons. Firstly, there was the fact that the Church had been founded by St Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow, who as a former Bishop of San Francisco, well understood the need for a politically independent Church outside Russia. Thus, self-abolition would have been contrary to the wishes of this saint. Secondly, many of the parishes under the Patriarchate of Moscow outside Russia were scandalous. Many of their clergy were uncanonical or else had been defrocked by ROCOR and then reinstated by Moscow (the OCA used to do the same).

Thus, several of their bishops, especially in Europe) had morally scandalous lives (Archbishop Basil Krivoshein stands out as an exception). Paris and London are well known and most know the almost burlesque story of the former priest of the Australian Diocese of ROCOR, defrocked on any number of accounts, not least of which was adultery, who was welcomed into the arms of Moscow and ended up as ‘Metropolitan of Vienna’ and a proven KGB agent! But thirdly, it would have been a terrible error to lose the unique, multinational Church Outside Russia with its pastoral experience and linguistic abilities, which is now proving itself in teaching Patriarchal churches how to live in a multicultural and globalised world, while retaining the best, pre-Revolutionary Orthodox traditions.

3. Go Native

A ‘third way’ or radical alternative would have been to divorce altogether from the Mother Church, to renounce the Russian Church, despite all our history and canonicity as an integral if politically separate part of the Church, and go native. Thus in Western Europe there would have been founded a ‘European Orthodox Church’, in the USA an ‘American Orthodox Church’ and in Australia an ‘Australian Orthodox Church’. The justification for such an out of character and quite uncanonical operation would have been that as the flock was losing Russian as a native language, it was time to use instead the native languages of the countries wherever the Church existed, flying in the face of real pastoral needs and realities, let alone the canons of the Church.

Apart from a few recent converts, most were not at all attracted by this concept, since it would have destroyed the multinational unity of the Church out of phyletism and would also have led to the sect and the nationalist ghetto. Unlike in the first road, this sect would have been liberal and the nationalism would have been European, American and Australian, but still it would have been a sect and a nationalist ghetto. After all, the OCA, Paris and convert parts of the Antiochian Diaspora had already taken this erroneous road and proved this point. Furthermore, a new Local Church can only be created through blood, tears and sweat, monasticism and martyrdom, not through the superficial inanities of modernism, which is but a passing fashion without a future in the real, post-modernist world.

Conclusion: The Fourth Road

In reality none of these three choices attracted more than a few. In reality, the way of the Church, the fourth road, prevailed. This was to recognise the repentance of the hierarchs of the Church inside Russia, so wonderfully expressed in their August 2000 Jubilee Council and then gradually implemented. This was after all what the faithful monastics, clergy and people of the Church inside Russia, the real judges of the situation, had recognised. Once this had been done, it would be possible to negotiate and reunite the two parts of the Church, becoming a universally canonically recognised autonomous Metropolia of the whole Church. Thus, we would have our future and continue our unique multicultural and multilingual mission worldwide, in faithfulness to the Russian Orthodox Tradition.

Thoughts on Difficulties Facing the Church outside Russia

Introduction

Of problem areas facing the Russian Orthodox Church inside Russia in regions outside Russia, there now remain perhaps four of the original five. The first problem was what to do with the three tiny communities in Australia, still irregularly under the jurisdiction of the Church inside Russia, which had to be canonically unified with the far larger Church Outside Russia (ROCOR). Here the solution was simple, to hand over one community that was happy to come to ROCOR and grant temporary stavropegia (peculiar status) to the other two until they and their problems have been absorbed. What then are the other three problem areas that remain?

1. Asia

Problem One is what to do about China, if the Chinese government does after all grant freedom for Non-Western Orthodoxy in China, as we all hope. Here the problem is even greater because it is clear that at the present time, whichever hierarch is responsible for China, he will also have to be responsible for the moment for a further extension to Russian Orthodox canonical territory – in North Korea, Indo-China (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), Thailand and India. In other words, we are saying that the Russia Church may soon face the question of whom it can appoint as Metropolitan of China and beyond. However, there is perhaps an excellent candidate in Moscow, at present an Archbishop.

2. North America

In North America, the situation is far more complex since this is an area of mixed jurisdiction in which other Local Churches are present. Thus, the first problem is the much disputed autocephaly granted during the politically highly difficult Cold War period to the so-called English-speaking and new calendarist OCA (Orthodox Church in America). Controversially, its territory includes former Russian America (now Alaska) as well as Canada. Moreover, according to the Tomos of autocephaly, the Church inside Russia no longer has any right to found new parishes in North America.

Therefore, it now falls to ROCOR (not party to the Tomos) to open such new parishes and cater for the huge pastoral needs of the many new Russian Orthodox immigrants to North America, as it does already to all, of whatever nationality, who remain faithful to the Russian Orthodox Faith. In this matter ROCOR will certainly therefore need financial help from Russia. The future for the small number of parishes in North America still irregularly under the jurisdiction of the Church inside Russia, is to pass to the appropriate – and only – canonical part of the Russian Church outside Russia – that is, to ROCOR. Except for those who do not wish to go to ROCOR (like the two communities in Australia) and those whom ROCOR refuses as uncanonical (and there are some – perhaps they will join the OCA), the vast majority of parishes at present under the Church inside Russia will in time do exactly this.

This should be particularly easy in Canada, although none of this solves the problem of the huge territory granted to the OCA, including even Alaska. The OCA now also has a huge number of bishops, including four Metropolitans, yet probably numbers fewer than 30,000 active parishioners. We can only pray that in time the Church inside Russia, which is historically responsible for this situation, will find a canonical solution to it. Perhaps this will take the form of a revised Tomos, which will be canonically acceptable to all the Local Orthodox Churches.

3. Western Europe

Here is the most complex problem of all. Western Europe is not dominated by ROCOR, as Australia is, or for that matter North America. Instead the Russian Church presence here is divided into two halves, that of the canonical ROCOR and that of numerous parishes still irregularly under the Church inside Russia, even though they are outside Russia. For historical reasons it is only the German-speaking and French-speaking areas of Western Europe where ROCOR has a real presence and even here limited. Clearly, according to the Russian Orthodox canonical accords of 2007, the parishes of the Church inside Russia will have to be transferred and absorbed into the Church outside Russia with time. But how?

One of the major problems here is the weak episcopal presence on both sides, especially on the part of the Patriarchate. It urgently needs younger bishops who speak the local languages in Italy, Iberia, Scandinavia, Austria-Hungary and perhaps Benelux. It needs younger bishops who are not only bilingual, but also bicultural, thus understanding local people; the disastrous Sourozh episode of the early 2000s, of which the distracted Patriarchate in Moscow had been repeatedly alerted would happen, proves this point of the lack of understanding of the episcopate of local situations. Otherwise, it will simply be a Church of the ghetto, as ROCOR often used to be. As for ROCOR, it urgently needs a bishop in Great Britain (perhaps he could also cover Benelux, thus solving the problems of all Russian Orthodox parishes in Benelux). In Great Britain there has been no resident bishop in good health for nearly fifty years. It is a miracle that anything is left of the diocese here at all. All new bishops, of whatever background, should be trained at least to ROCOR pastoral standards.

Apart from the problems of elderly bishops or bishops who cannot communicate with and do not understand parts of their flocks, there are other Cold War canonical compromises that remain in several parishes in Western Europe which are still under the Church inside Russia – not least among these are also financial problems. However, with time, all these problems can be overcome. The absorption of these parishes into ROCOR can be managed, providing that time is taken over it.

4. Latin America

The difficulty here is that of the Great Britain Diocese writ large – the absence for many years of resident episcopal supervision. Gallantly Bishop John of Caracas carries out his duties in his now small diocese; but the horse has bolted. Meanwhile the parishes under the Church inside Russia that exist in South America have been left without a bishop at all. Latin America desperately needs bilingual Russian Orthodox Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking clergy; a dozen of them, with adequate finance, would make a huge difference. However, that is only the start, millions of Maya in Guatemala and millions of Brazilians want Orthodoxy, but there is no infrastructure to take pastoral care of them. Nowhere are problems as great as in Latin America – South, Central and North (Mexico).

Conclusion

Since the fall of atheist rule in Russia, an enormous amount has been done to sort out the problems of the Russian Church both inside Russia and, in recent years, outside Russia. However, much still remains to be done. A brief outline of the problem areas has been given above. As long as all takes place peacefully and in freedom, in due course the worldwide situation of the whole Church outside Russia, at present with over 820 parishes, many monasteries and two seminaries, will continue to improve.

Archpriest Andrew Phillips
Moscow, 31 May 2013

Today China, Tomorrow…

The visit of His Holiness Patriarch Kyrill to China is over. He has travelled widely, celebrating notably in Beijing and in the Cathedrals in Harbin and Shanghai, remembering the work of the Russian and Chinese clergy and faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia there, notably of St John of Shanghai. Thus, the groundwork is being laid for the restoration of the national Chinese Church, dependent neither on the Catholic Vatican nor on Protestant America.

Professor Yury Kosov, Dean of the Faculty of International Relations of the North-Western Academy in Russia, commented today: ‘Not so long ago I was attending the defence of a doctoral thesis at the Faculty of International Relations in St Petersburg, entitled ‘Orthodox spiritual mission in the context of global processes of modernisation’. ‘Today we see that the Orthodox mission of the Russian Church is spreading the faith not only among Russian citizens, but worldwide. The Russian Church is active in furthering the spread of Orthodox values wherever it is possible…We must understand that in our world politics and spirituality are interconnected. If we do not defend national sovereignty…it is hard to keep spirituality in a country’.

The Russian Church also has a role to play in freeing bankrupt Cyprus and Greece and NATO-occupied Serbia. It is also active in Syria. Here it seems that the attempt to seize power by mainly foreign Islamist terrorists, financed by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and backed by Western Special Services in the Jordan and Turkey, and armed even with chemical weapons to commit their atrocities, is failing. What they achieved with Western backing and arms in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt is perhaps not going to succeed in Syria. What the Islamists achieved in Iraq, with 80% of the Christians now expelled, and what they are trying to achieve in Egypt with the expulsion and massacre of the Copts, may not work here. The Patriarchate of Antioch, its flock often in exile in the Lebanon and Europe, may be reformed under the Russian Church.

Whatever criticisms may be levelled at the Russian Church inside Russia and its unworthy representatives outside Russia for their compromises in the past, it has to be recognised that with its canonical territory of 26.2 million square kilometres, between one fifth and one sixth of the world’s land area, and with that population, 1.755 billion, exactly one quarter of the world’s population, the Russian Church as a global power must now be recognised. In the last forty years we in the Russian Orthodox Church have come a long way, even from only a few years ago, when we were still a persecuted minority, mocked, buffeted and spat upon by all and sundry, both locally and globally.

Questions and Answers from Recent Correspondence: April-May 2013

Q: What is the essential difference between the Western world and the Orthodox world

A: The Orthodox world chose to follow the Gospel. However, at the start of the second millennium the Western world finally chose to follow the pagan Roman Empire, from which it inherited its pride and aggressiveness. Thus, when the British set up their Empire, their symbol was Britannia – the Roman name for Britain. And the French and the Germans, let alone the Italians, also used the Roman Empire and its symbols and insignia as their models. Even today, the heir of Western Europe, the Far West, the USA, treats the world as its Roman Empire, sending out its legions to conquer it and exploit it.

Q: What does this mean for Western religion?

A: As for the religion of the West, it was long ago deformed by the filioque heresy, which expresses the concept that all the Spirit and authority of God lies with Western man. This is not Christianity, this is racist neo-paganism. As a result of this humanistic deformation of the filioque, the West has come to lack the sense of the sacred, of the presence of God in its midst. As a result of this, it has in turn come to lack the sense of the ascetic, the sense that we can raise ourselves up to God through inner cleansing, and therefore it also lacks the sense of compassionate love, the fruit of this ascetic struggle. And as a result, it makes continual war, having developed the most incredible and costly technology to destroy all humanity several times over and indeed our whole planet, thus achieving the ability to end the world.

Here is the difference with the Orthodox world. And there are few places in the Orthodox world where this sense of the sacred, the sense of the ascetic and the sense of compassionate love been better kept than among Russian Orthodox. This is exactly what the 20th century Russian Church Father, Metr Antony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev understood so well. Those Orthodox who have not been contaminated by the West still possess the sense of God and man, whereas the West made sinful man into a god; already by the Renaissance, man was declared to be a half-god. This is why today the strange idea of homosexual marriage was born in the West. This is a throwback to the religion of pagan Rome and Greece, where gods and goddesses cavorted with men and women alike.

Q: Western religion is divided into Catholic and Protestant branches. Is there any difference between them?

A: There is no essential difference between Catholic and Protestant; they simply represent different stages in the process of degeneration, in the process of the loss of the sense of the sacred, of the ascetic and of compassionate love. These three values were replaced by scholasticism (the cold, calculating reason replacing the warm heart), ritualism (the outward replacing the inward), and nationalism (hatred for others replacing love of the familiar). In Catholicism this loss of the sense of the sacred can be seen very clearly over the last fifty years. Today, in their services Catholic priests turn their back on God and face the people who sit down; they have mostly done away with the veneration of relics, with fasting and ascetic struggle. Aseticism has been replaced by its opposite – consumerism. And yet, remarkably, traces of the sense of the sacred and the sense of the ascetic and even of compassionate love, can be found in Islam, Hinduism and even Buddhism, which is not a religion, but a philosophy. In this respect, the contemporary Western world stands out as the one exception in the history of civilisation, which is a sure sign of its decadence and coming collapse.

Q: You said that Western religion is racist. In what way is this true?

A: Western religion at first concerned only the Western elite, only later in general Western man (not even Western woman). It certainly was not concerned with other races, whom it looked on as inferior. For example, many of the American humanists of the eighteenth century had slaves – just like the Roman humanists some 2,000 years before them. And the belief of the British Empire was: ‘God is an Englishman’. It is only in the last fifty years that Western humanism has decreed that women, Africans, Asians, the handicapped and now homosexuals, and people of all races, are also gods – only provided of course that they first adopt the deluded Western ideology.

Q: But there are plenty of Orthodox who can be as cruel and proud as such Western people and there are many Western people who are neither cruel nor proud. What do you say?

A: Oh, there are a great many nominal Orthodox, those who have been baptised in recent years, especially in the ex-Soviet Union, who have not yet been Churched. And there are plenty of lapsed Orthodox in Westernised countries like Greece and Cyprus and in Patriarchates like those of Constantinople and Antioch, who have been Westernised and lost their roots. For them all religions are the same; some of them are clergy! But I am not talking about those, but about real Orthodox. And as for Western people, thank God that by His grace there are many Western people who have not accepted this self-deifying Westernisation; they are the authentic West, the West that Satan tried to bury a thousand years ago, but which keeps coming back by the prayers of the Western saints who call out to the souls of those who have kept a little humility and modesty. I constantly meet such people. They give cause for optimism.

Ironically, even Western people who accept this Western mentality prove to us the truth of Orthodoxy. Take Darwin, for instance. What is he saying? He is saying that without God man is an animal. He is right. Fifty years after he died Hitler proved it. Take Freud, for instance. What is he saying? He is saying that without God, man is reduced to his base instincts. He is right. Fifty years after he died the Western world proved it. Take Dawkins, for instance. What is he saying? He is saying that without God, man faces despair. He is right. 2013 proves it.

The sense of the sacred, the sense of the ascetic and the sense of compassionate love are the essential features of Orthodox Christianity. These are the opposites of Darwin, who denied God’s presence in His Creation, of Freud, who denied the importance of ascetic struggle, and of Dawkins, who denies compassionate love, proclaiming only genetic self-interest – egoism. Dawkins is only a reflection of the pure selfishness of the age of consumerism.

Q: As you are pessimistic about the Western world in its present state, what role do you think that Orthodoxy can play there?

A: The only institution left in the Western world with a claim to spiritual authority is Roman Catholicism. However, its authority has been suicidally undermined by of some its own clergy, who have been established in compulsory celibacy despite common sense and the proclamations by a minority of Roman Catholic bishops and thinkers who still have some common sense. The problem here is one of pride. A change in course as regards compulsory priestly celibacy would be tantamount to Roman Catholicism admitting to what the Orthodox Church has known all along – that it has been wrong ever since its creation 1,000 years ago. There have been and there are places where Roman Catholicism resembles a pedophile club. In many places its credit is at the greatest low it has known for hundreds of years. Given its failure, the few left in the Western world with faith and spiritual memory, spiritual consciousness and a sense of responsibility have turned or will turn to the Orthodox Church.

Q: But in concrete terms, what does that mean for people who live in the Western world? The Orthodox Church is a communion of Local Churches; which one should they join?

A: Only seven of the fourteen universally recognised Local Churches exist in the Western world. These are: The Russian Church (the vast majority of whose representatives in the Western world belong to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia); the Patriarchate of Constantinople; the Patriarchate of Antioch; the Romanian Church; the Serbian Church; the Bulgarian Church; the Georgian Church. However, the choice is more limited than this because in reality only the first three accept Western people; the last four, apart from being very small in most places (there are local exceptions) are usually mononational. In other words, they are often inward-looking, turned towards serving only their own national groups, sometimes with openly nationalist agendas.

Q: So in order to enter the Orthodox Church, there is a choice of three Local Churches in general?

A: In general, yes. However, as I said, there are local exceptions. For instance, in Italy the largest Local Orthodox Church is the Romanian. In North America there is still what is in fact a Cold War fragment of the Russian Church, which is called the OCA (‘Orthodox Church in America’). Although not canonically recognised by all Orthodox, there are places, perhaps especially in Alaska and Canada, where it represents a spiritual presence. And even as regards the three Local Churches which provide a choice, they have parishes in some places, but not in others; some of those parishes, especially in the ageing Patriarchate of Constantinople, are just as mononational and inward-looking as those of the other four Local Churches, poaching the clergy and people of other Local Churches, especially of the Russian Church. This is political meddling – strongly and openly backed by Western countries, particularly today by the USA.

Therefore, in reality, most Western people simply join whichever Local Church is available locally, having no choice at all.

Q: Is this situation likely to improve?

A: If only I knew the answer to that question! Given that two of those three Local Churches, the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Antioch have, despite their noble history, to some extent become fringe Churches, small, impoverished, politically dependent, sometimes ready to twist the canons to survive, the obvious choice is the Russian Orthodox Church, which is 75% of the Orthodox Church in any case. However, in fairness, that does not always correspond to reality.

In principle, the Russian Church has kept the faith more integrally than the other two Local Churches, remaining faithful to Orthodox practices, such as only giving communion to Orthodox, using the Orthodox calendar throughout the year, celebrating the services in full, or standing in church. However, here too, there are considerable problems. The main problem is the 75 year gap in Russian Orthodox history after 1917, caused by the Western export of Marxism to Russia and the deliberate Western sabotage of the Orthodox system there. This caused chaos inside and outside the Russian Church, from which it is only gradually recovering. It faces huge demands and huge responsibilities.

Q: What are these demands and responsibilities?

A: Firstly, the Russian Orthodox Church has had to restore the Church life that was lost inside Russia both before and after 1917. This restoration began in the late 1980s, immediately after the saving canonisation of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, but this restoration is still ongoing with continued extensive Church building and instruction.

Secondly, it has had to unify itself with the Church Outside Russia (ROCOR). This took place in 2007, but the process is ongoing, with parishes in the Western world still to be prepared to be given over to ROCOR, the unprincipled errors of the Cold War being erased, as the Church inside Russia restores Orthodox practice and canonicity to its parishes outside Russia. Sometimes it has a heavy price to pay for its unprincipled ‘legacy’ of the past.

Thirdly, and this has hardly begun, it has to convert the Russian State back to Orthodoxy away from corruption, so that the Church can use the State’s strength internationally in order to unify the Orthodox world, restoring the practices that have been lost there since 1917, reversing the Americanisation of, for example, the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Here we can see the hopes and efforts of Russian Orthodoxy to deliver countries like the Ukraine, Georgia and Serbia from NATO aggression, to save Cyprus, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania from the tyranny of the EU trap and narrow nationalism, and today to rescue Syria from Western-backed Islamism which has been tearing that country apart in atrocities, in the hope that a restored Syria, like other countries, can integrate the new Eurasian Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.

Fourthly, and this has hardly begun, it has to restore the foreign policies of the Tsar’s Russia and send out missionaries to countries where it was active before 1917. In Asia, these include Thailand (100 years ago, Siam), India, for which Duleep Singh, the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, called on Russia to free from British imperialism, Hawaii, which invited Russia to become its protector, Alaska, which alas! Russia was forced into selling by the threat of Western Imperialism, China, Tibet and Korea. In the southern hemisphere, there is much to do in Africa and Latin America. And then there is the Western world itself, where Russia has begun building churches again, as before the Revolution, notably in Rome and Madrid, but tomorrow in Paris, Berlin and in hundreds of other cities and towns, oases in the spiritual desert that is contemporary Western Europe.

Q: Is this likely?

A; The first two processes have already begun, although more time is needed to complete them. As for the second two processes, they require political backing, finance, vision, an international consciousness, freedom, a sense of mission, above all, a sense of responsibility, of God’s destiny, and a sense of urgency. This is a high and noble calling.

Q: What do you think is necessary for the Russian Church in Western Europe now?

A: Apart from finance, we need suitable bishops of the younger generation, who have a natural command of Russian and of at least one Western language, and understand Western culture and Western people, so that they can unify. It is incredible that we have no such permanently present bishops in the British Isles and Ireland, in Benelux, in Scandinavia, in Italy and in Spain and Portugal.

Q: What needs to be avoided?

A: We need to avoid extremes. For example, there are those who are closed, whose only care is Russia and Russian, who have no time for Western people and mission to them, refusing to learn Western languages and understand local culture and history. They do not achieve anything; under them the Church stagnates. At the other extreme there are those who Westernise themselves and end up losing Orthodoxy through their idolisation of Western religion (Catholicism or Protestantism), even making ‘secret’ agreements or compromises with them. For example, the Patriarchate of Constantinople refuses to accept Catholics, because of its concordat with the Vatican, and refuses to accept Anglicans because of its ‘gentleman’s agreement’ with Canterbury; the Patriarchate of Antioch does the same in Italy; in England Metr Antony Bloom, strangely of the Russian Church inside Russia, an adviser to the Anglicans, refused to take a group of Anglicans, who were then forced to go out on a limb and join the Patriarchate of Antioch.

Sadly, in recent generations the Russian Church – and other Local Churches – in the Western world has been dominated by one extreme or the other.

A: But there have been exceptions, haven’t there?

Q: Yes, but St John of Shanghai far outshines any others.