Category Archives: Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia

The Great Cleansing of the Russian Church Begins At Last

According to the official website of the Moscow Diocese, by decision of the Diocesan Court of Moscow, the very well-known Abbot Peter (Eremeev), former rector of the Russian Orthodox University and Abbot of Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery, was defrocked. The brief message stated: “The Moscow Diocesan Court of the Russian Orthodox Church, sitting on 02/08/2024 in the case of the banned cleric of the Moscow Diocese, Hegumen Peter (Eremeev), after summoning him three times to meetings of the church court, to which he did not appear, decided: “Recognise that, on the basis of the rule of the 25th Holy Apostles, Abbot Peter (Eremeev) is subject to canonical reprimand in the form of demotion from the priesthood.” The decision will come into force after approval by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus’.”

The message further states: “This decision is published in order to give the banned Abbot Peter (Eremeev) the opportunity to familiarise himself with it within the time period established by Article 54, paragraph 2 of the Regulations on the Church Court.” This is an important remark so that there would be no talk later that the former Abbot, who, apparently, simply “fell silent”, was not informed, etc.

This news was republished by some telegram channels without any comments – apparently, they did not know how to react. And this is indirect proof of the sensational nature of the news. However, some people responded. Thus, the telegram channel “Bishop Lucifer” adds that Abbot Peter (Eremeev) “having robbed the church, went abroad.” According to our information, he fled to Bulgaria from prosecution by Russian justice.

A little earlier, the same channel recalled that from 2011 to 2021, Abbot Peter (Eremeev) was the rector of the Russian Orthodox University, and from 2013 to 2021, the Abbot of Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery. However, in October 2021, by patriarchal decree, he was first released from the post of rector of the RPU, and at the end of December of the same year, by decision of the Holy Synod, he was also released from the post of Abbot of Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery.

Let us add that at that time – apparently to sweeten the pill – the Synod nevertheless expressed gratitude to Father Peter for his labours as the abbot of the monastery, and the Patriarch left him as rector of two famous Moscow churches – the Church of the Great Martyr Dmitry of Thessalonica in Dmitrovskoye, located on the prestigious Rublyovka , and the Church of the Resurrection of the Word at the Vagankovskoye cemetery.

However, less than two years later, in November 2023, he was first released from the rectorship in the Church of the Great Martyr Dmitry of Thessaloniki, and at the end of last year he was deprived of the rectorship in the Church of the Resurrection of the Word at the Vagankovskoye Cemetery and was banned from serving. And so, on 8 February, the church court of the Moscow diocese decides to depose him. However, we should not forget that this decision will come into force only after its approval by the Patriarch.

Quite a popular channel “Religion and Politics. Alexander Voznesensky” reacted to the incident with reference to the same channel “Bishop Lucifer” as follows: “At the same time, the channel has repeatedly hinted that Eremeev is allegedly a member of the “gay oyster” club. I heard a similar opinion on this issue from my interlocutor in the Patriarchate.”

So, for now it is reported that Abbot Peter is accused, firstly, of robbing the church. And it should be noted that the Church of the Great Martyr Dmitry of Thessalonica in Dmitrovskoye was not closed during Soviet times. It was famous for having many ancient icons that were of great value. And since the temple and its property belong to the state (according to established practice, the Church owns it on an indefinite and free lease), it seems that we are talking about the theft of not church property, but state property.

Secondly, we are talking about the fact that Eremeev was involved in the so-called “gay lobby” in the Church. Scandals in this regard have long been associated with his name. In 2005, Patriarch Alexy unexpectedly sent him – at that time a doctor of theology, executive secretary of the Educational Committee of the Russian Orthodox Church, vice-rector of the Moscow Theological Academy – to Khabarovsk, as vice-rector of the newly created seminary. In the Wikipedia article, which apparently was later edited by Abbot Peter, this is called a mission to get the new seminary off the ground. This, of course, is ridiculous – if this were so, then Fr Peter would be sent to Khabarovsk as rector. Then they whispered on the sidelines that the scandal with his harassment of a seminary student was to blame. But Eremeev was unlucky; the student’s fiancée turned out to be the daughter of a high-ranking Airborne Forces officer, who, having learned about the outrage, sent strong guys to the abbot for a ‘preventative’ conversation.

In 2010, the educated abbot was returned to Moscow, skilfully putting into the ears of the clergy the idea that the reason for his exile to Khabarovsk was his ‘progressive’ views on the need for state accreditation of religious educational institutions. Allegedly, these views were not shared by the inert circle of Patriarch Alexy and sent the advanced abbot away from Moscow.

Eremeev received high positions – he became the rector of the RPU, the abbot of Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery, the rector of the Moscow churches mentioned above, and acquired connections among officials and businessmen. However, after some time, publications appeared online about his involvement in the creation of a sodomite den in Moscow. Moreover, these publications very transparently hinted that this was all a leak from the intelligence services. Be that as it may, in the fall of 2021, for no apparent reason, Abbot Peter was relieved of his post as rector of the RPU and abbot of Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery. There were rumours that a folder about his adventures was placed on the Patriarch’s table.In fact, what happened is an example of the moral cleansing of the Church.

Abbreviated from:

https://ruskline.ru/news_rl/2024/02/12/goluboe_lobbi_v_rpc_poneslo_tyazheluyu_poteryu

Editorial comment: We were wondering who will be next, when we heard that on 13 February Bishop Ignaty (Punin) has been relieved of his responsibility for the Diocese of Minusinsk. It seems that he too will be sent to a monastery for repentance like the other two homosexual Bishops Ignaty, or maybe even defrocked. Sources suggest that an order may have at last gone out from the Kremlin to cleanse the Church of these compromising figures, who are seriously destroying the unity and witness of the Russian Church. Other well-known, or rather notorious, homosexual bishops, about whom we too have known very well for decades, both inside and outside Russia, including in the Western world, must be quaking.

https://pravoslavie.ru/158675.html

 

 

The Future of Orthodox Christianity in Western Europe

Introduction: Orthodox Church Immigration to Western Europe

Since 1917 there have been three large-scale waves of immigration of Orthodox Christians from Eastern Europe to Western Europe. These have been: the Russian-speaking, mainly since 1917, though in four sociologically very different generations, the Greek-speaking, mainly since 1950, and the Romanian-speaking, mainly since 2000. This latest immigration is composed of well over four million Romanians with a million and a half Moldovans, probably six million people in all. Nearly half of these now live in Italy, Spain and Portugal, since Romanian is very similar to those languages. This recent immigration dwarves all previous Orthodox immigrations to Western Europe, not just the Russian and Greek, but also the much smaller ones, like the Serbian, the Ukrainian, the Belarussian, the Macedonian, the Bulgarian, the Antiochian (Arab) and the Georgian.

The Greek-speaking (Greek and Cypriot) immigration has remained very closed to others and remains stuck in its ethnic identity, but its leaders also have very strong pro-US politics. Both these factors alienate nearly everyone else from it. It does not in general and cannot in reality attract many native Europeans to its religious practice. As regards the Romanian and Moldovan immigration, it is still too early to say whether it will attract others to it in any number, though there are some promising signs of openings to others, as a result of its youthfulness, its ten bishops, including a French one, and some Non-Romanian clergy and people. The Romanians are helped here by their Latin language and by being very open and welcoming, but the infrastructure remains weak.

The Russian Immigration

What of the oldest, most political and most complex immigration, the Russian-speaking? In four waves, this consisted of anti-Bolsheviks from pre-1917 Russia, anti-Stalinists from pre-1945 Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, those from the small, largely ethnically Jewish, dissident intellectual immigration of the 1970s and 1980s, and those from the post-USSR but still Soviet immigration, especially from the Baltic States, Kazakhstan and Moldova. These waves of immigration are sadly divided into three different and quite disjointed ‘jurisdictions’ with separate episcopates, one of which (ROCOR) since January 2021 has officially decided to be in schism with and not concelebrate with one of the others (WEA). (See below).

  1. The MP

Firstly, there is the largest jurisdiction, that of the Mother-Church, the Moscow-based Moscow Patriarchate (MP), which is 99% of the whole Russian Church, mostly in the ex-Soviet Union, but also has eight bishops in Western Europe. This is organised under a Paris-based Exarchate and its people come from all over the ex-Soviet Union, especially from Moldova and the Baltic States, but also from the Ukraine, though in the last two years many Ukrainians have left it to help found yet another group of over eighty quite separate new Ukrainian Orthodox communities, mainly composed of Ukrainian refugees (most of whom appear not to be baptised Orthodox – the Orthodox have stayed in the Ukraine or in Eastern Europe). This MP Exarchate has been patterned by a number of Exarchs and bishops, who have embarrassingly compromised themselves in some way or other and so have met with failure.

One of the great current problems here is the dramatic events now going on in Moscow against the background of the war in the Ukraine. Here, ‘traitors’ are being tried by Church courts. These include the once senior Metropolitan Leonid (Gorbachov), the former Exarch in Africa, who is under suspicion of various misdeeds (1). If treachery to the Russian State is the real charge, then there must also be bishops in the very divided New York-based Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) (see below) who must also be trembling. Astonishingly, several of the latter have from the outset publicly called for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Ukraine and openly supported anti-Russian US policies and persecuted pro-Russians. If there is one thing that Russians cannot support, it is treachery.

  1. b) The WEA

Secondly, there is by far the smallest group, the Paris-based Western European Archdiocese (WEA) with only three bishops, whose aristocratic founders from Saint Petersburg created it in the 1920s. This elitist intellectual group is now very small outside Paris. It has either not been able, or perhaps not wanted, to take off and expand outside the intellectual group. At the present time, most believe that its often elderly leaders will die out within the next generation. Essentially it has only three church properties of its own and these are all in Paris. The death or removal of two individuals would hasten the takeover of those properties by the much larger MP and its inevitable absorption of the small remains of this group.

  1. ROCOR

Thirdly, there is the New York-based ROCOR, which was formed over 100 years ago, in 1919 and has its own Synod, now of only thirteen active bishops. In Western Europe it has four bishops. By 2001 its first generation had essentially died out. Thus, in order to survive it had to reinvent itself. A few very elderly individuals, including its own Metropolitan, were expelled in what was essentially a coup d’etat. Having taken over, the new Synod, which had accepted large numbers of new immigrants from the ex-USSR, was then forced to reconcile itself with Moscow. However, it was also recruiting converts, especially in the USA. Unfortunately, it purposely recruited some very strange and right-wing extremist converts, many of whom it made priests and even bishops, putting them into oppositions of power. These now form a very powerful group and are harshly persecuting those who are Russian-speaking, pro-Russian and anti-schism.

Apart from about 150 communities, many of them very small, mainly in the USA, and about 30 communities in Australia, the other main centre of ROCOR is its 70 or so communities in Germany, where it has many historic and beautiful churches and a large flock, with both clergy and laity nearly all from the ex-USSR, especially from Kazakhstan. As well as these churches, it also has a few historic churches in Switzerland, two historic churches (recently taken from the WEA) in northern Italy and one in Brussels. Elsewhere it has virtually nothing, apart from some very small and often unstable communities, making some 300 communities in all and at least 50,000 people. It is clear that the MP is waiting to take over the historic churches in Western Europe from the declining ROCOR and add them to its Exarchate of Western Europe. The death or removal of two very divisive and very aggressive, US-trained individuals in Western Europe, who have very strong anti-Russian political backgrounds and connections, would hasten this process.

At the present time the New York Synod is very divided, not least about its heretical programme of rebaptising other Orthodox, in defiance of the teachings and practices of the Russian Church and of the whole of the Orthodox Church. Although there are three Russian bishops against a break with the MP (they have already broken with the WEA part of the MP), there are three bishops for, and the other seven are fence-sitting. We expect further events.

Conclusion: The Future

Most countries in Eastern Europe already have their own independent Local Orthodox Churches. It seems quite likely that the small Orthodox population (3% ?) from among the eleven million people of the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and from Nordic Finland, whose language is related to Estonian, will form their own Local Baltic Orthodox Church. All these Eastern European countries have strong historic Russian connections and a current Russian presence and historic churches. Similarly, Eastern European Hungary, to which Carpatho-Russian Transcarpathia and its 600 Orthodox parishes may soon return, may also obtain its own Local Orthodox Church. This is just like the Church of Czechia and Slovakia, the main part of whose traditional flock also consists of Carpatho-Russians.

This would leave a geographical West of Europe, with an eastern border stretching from Norway down to Sweden, Germany, Austria and Italy, enclosing the at present twenty-one countries of Western Europe, with its population of 400 million and area of 3.5 million square kilometres. This has a population of some 10 million nominal Orthodox, about 40 bishops and perhaps 2,000 communities. If they banded together into eight multinational dioceses and worked towards forming their own Local Orthodox Church, they would then form the fourth largest Local Orthodox Church, after the Russian, Romanian and Greek.

These eight dioceses could cover the territories of: Italia (Italy, Malta and San Marino); Iberia (Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar); Germania (Germany and Austria); Gallia (France, Wallonia (Southern Belgium), Luxembourg and Monaco); The Isles (the British Isles of England, Scotland, Wales etc, as well as the island of Ireland); Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland); the Netherlands (the Netherlands plus Flanders (Northern Belgium)); Helvetia (Switzerland and Liechtenstein). The main task here would be to maintain Orthodox and their descendants in the Faith, protecting them from the surrounding ocean of ever more aggressive Western secularist atheism. However, it would also be for these dioceses to conduct missionary work among the native peoples of their territories, though in this profoundly atheist (ex-Catholic and ex-Protestant) region, the results of that work would be modest, for sadly few want real Orthodox Christianity, often preferring at best a virtual version of podcasts, internet nonsense and negativity.

Note:

  1. The retired Metropolitan Leonid (Gorbachev) of the ROC said the upcoming trial against him will be a betrayal of the Church and Fatherland” and “all who participate in this lawlessness are traitors”.

    Former African Exarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Leonid called the upcoming hearing on his case in the Supreme All-Church Court “a betrayal of the Church and the Fatherland” and said that “all those who participate in this lawlessness are traitors”. He wrote about this on his Telegram channel.

    According to him, with the upcoming trial, “we have passed the line of realisation of good and evil”.

    “Now everything is possible if you have uncontrolled power in your hands,” the retired bishop said, without specifying whom he meant.

    The hierarch is convinced that his work in the African Exarchate was “the first breakthrough since 988,” and Gorbachev appreciates its results very highly.

    The hierarch also noted that his trial benefits the Vatican and is “giving up one’s own people”, and that all those involved in it are “traitors”.

    The metropolitan threatened to “provide details afterwards,” adding that he “did not want this”.

 

 

 

Is this the End of ROCOR?

Despite the very strong opposition of the CIA, in 2007 the New York-based émigré Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) at last entered into canonical communion with the Mother-Church, 99% of the Russian Orthodox Church (‘MP’), which is based in Moscow. At the end of the last century ROCOR had been strongly tempted by a politicised, ghetto-style, sectarian and isolationist position. It had been out of communion with the MP for over 80 years for political reasons, as Communist-enslaved Moscow had not been politically free until the 1990s. However, after this period the ROCOR position no longer made any sense.

Indeed, there were those of us who for years since the 1990s had battled for the establishment of this canonical communion in our struggle to reclaim ROCOR from sectarianism. Finally, we were present at our victory over the ROCOR temptation of sectarianism in Moscow in 2007, rewarded at last. Clearly, from 2007 on, ROCOR was called on to merge with other Orthodox in the Diaspora, contributing the liturgical and ascetic heritage of the old ROCOR to others, especially, but not only, to Non-Russian Orthodox who often lacked it. The later Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware), who like the rest of us loved the old ROCOR of St John of Shanghai, whom he had met, was just one of those to call on it to do so.

However, to our enormous sadness, ROCOR refused these invitations and overtures. Instead of contributing to a solid basis for the establishment of new Local Churches in Western Europe, Northern America and Oceania, the new ROCOR gradually allied itself with extreme right-wing, ex-Protestant neophytes. These were isolationist sectarians with very, very little idea of the real Russian Orthodox Tradition and the Russian language, history and culture, let alone the general Orthodox Tradition. Such individuals were called ‘crazy converts’ by ordinary parishioners, Russian and Non-Russian alike. Moreover, to our profound shock, racist hatred was openly expressed by this new ROCOR for Non-Russian Orthodox, and by at least one new American ROCOR bishop. He also publicly declared that’ the Patriarch of Constantinople is possessed’. We were all horrified.

With the increasingly serious dementia and physical ailments of the then ROCOR First Hierarch, Metropolitan Hilarion (Kapral), ROCOR gradually began to drift away from the Church, to whose communion it had returned in 2007. Certain extremist individuals, seeking revenge for our victory over sectarianism in 2007, and perhaps regretting the cutting off of generous CIA subsidies to ROCOR, usurped the Metropolitan’s position. They began using his electronic signature on very harsh documents which favoured their extremist positions.

Thus, a whole series of utterly anti-canonical actions took place, quite noticeably from 2016 on. These included the ousting of well-respected traditional ROCOR priests, even one of its old archbishops, all those linked with pre-Revolutionary Russia. Then there was also the Fr Alexander Belya affair. In this affair, a Ukrainian hieromonk, selected to be a bishop by ROCOR, was abruptly accused of extraordinary and still unproven crimes and then ousted and ‘defrocked’ by American ROCOR bishops, even though he, like many others, had already taken refuge in a canonical Orthodox jurisdiction.

What was the reason for this? We cannot be certain, but we can imagine the opposition to and jealousy of a seminary-trained, fluent Russian and Ukrainian-speaking episcopal candidate in ROCOR on the part of non-fluent speakers among certain members of the episcopate and candidates for the episcopate. As clergy of the old, traditional ROCOR were ejected, there had followed the consecration of extreme right-wing convert bishops and the ordination of extreme right-wing convert priests, all of Protestant backgrounds. They were now taking over, pushing those of the Tradition out according to plan.

The new ones wanted to replace grounded Orthodox like Fr Alexander Belya and senior clergy of the old ROCOR, who had nothing to do with sectarianism. The main interest of the new American ROCOR clergy appears to be in attracting extremist right-wing Protestants to their supposedly Russian Orthodox ROCOR jurisdiction. They certainly despised ordinary Russians, who were told (in front of me) to learn English! As supposed members of the Orthodox Church, these converts would quote out of context and misunderstood canons instead of quoting out of context and misunderstood chapter and verse. The dark and depressing spirit of the Puritan pharisees and of Calvinist New England witch-hunters remained the same.

As a result of such intrigues, in England there began the scandal of a very young and very inexperienced ROCOR convert bishop, received into the Church from Lutheranism by chrismation (!), who had only been in ROCOR for a few years (!). Under the influence of a newly-received old calendarist priest, he dictatorially (no discussion, let alone disagreement, would be allowed) even forbade his clergy to concelebrate with an ex-Catholic priest of the MP and his people to take communion in the MP Russian Orthodox jurisdiction of this priest. This priest had been received into the MP in the normal Russian Orthodox way by confession and concelebration. This young convert bishop created a schism, but, amazingly, he was actually backed up by other convert bishops!  Clearly, the disease was already ingrained.

After up to 50 years of faithfulness to the old ROCOR, over a dozen clergy and thousands of people left the new ROCOR because of this convert bishop’s schism. They wanted to be in communion with their families and friends. Thus, the convert bishop’s schism from the MP led to the loss of well over half his diocese, the vital and living part, which did not serve in tiny ghetto-groups of converts in small rented chapels, backrooms and garden sheds. Although warned well in advance of exactly how many clergy, real parishes and people he was going to lose, he, backed by the American Synod, still went ahead with this insanity, to the distress of the MP, which looked on in disbelief and whose Patriarch told him not to do it. Some in the MP called for a ‘psychiatric ambulance’. Instead of obeying his own Patriarch, the young convert bishop proceeded to ‘suspend’ and then defrock’ clergy of another jurisdiction!

Although the MP were sympathetic to the ex-ROCOR group, who were only supporting traditional Russian Orthodox theology and practice, the MP could not take in the group who had petitioned the MP to do this. This was because the MP was frightened of upsetting political relations with the increasingly deviant and aggressive ROCOR, which was blackmailing the MP: ‘If you do this, we shall not attend your Council of Bishops and we shall go into schism with you all’. This fear of blackmail will not last. For the moment distracted by the Ukraine, from which affair Moscow will clearly emerge triumphant, as has always been obvious, though Moscow’s attitude in the Ukraine have repeatedly been condemned by the anti-Russian American ROCOR (!), as also by the CIA (a coincidence?!), sooner or later the MP will call ROCOR’s bluff. Enough is enough!

Now the convert bishop has, contradicting himself, concelebrated with an Antiochian bishop, who has just defrocked one of his priests, who had objected to the standard Antiochian (and Orthodox) practice of receiving converts by chrismation, and not rebaptism. This priest, who openly calls his bishop and all Antiochian bishops ‘heretics’ (!), had also objected to the long-standing local Antiochian practice of giving communion to nominally Miaphysite Syrians, Copts, Ethiopians and Eritreans. The defrocked Antiochian priest has received the sympathy of many ROCOR converts in the USA. After all, as they logically point out, in the USA ROCOR there even has one bishop who openly, and he claims with an official blessing, rebaptises unrebaptised converts who have already been members of the Orthodox Church for many years! (He calls this by the unknown and heretical term ‘corrective baptism’).

The Antiochian bishop in question, Metr Silouan (Oner), has specifically declared that he will defrock any priests who carry out such ‘corrective baptisms’. He has also said that any jurisdiction that does this has ‘schismatic tendencies’ and these people are ‘extremists’. As well we know. But you have to suffer, be persecuted and slandered for proclaiming the Church Truth. Logically, ROCOR will have to fall out of communion with yet another Local Church, the Antiochian, painting themselves ever more into their sectarian corner. Or else it must renounce the practices of its own bishops in England and in the USA.

Clearly, once the distraction of the Ukraine is over, the MP will have to intervene and bring order. As just one example, Fr Alexander Belya and his large group of parishes, mainly ex-ROCOR, could be made bishop for the MP parishes in North America, if Moscow were to take him in from the Greek Church, where he and most of the others were forced to take refuge from ROCOR Protestant sectarianism and, presumably, from clerical jealousy. It looks as though we are seeing the death rattle of ROCOR, which has been riding roughshod over the canons and obedience to the Mother-Church.

ROCOR will have to make up its mind whether it accepts the Orthodox Tradition of the Mother-Church, or if it wants to be just another weird American old calendarist sect, a ROCOR, Russian Old Calendarists Outside Russia, made up of crazy converts from Protestantism and of children of immigrants who long ago lost their roots. Moscow will no longer tolerate the persecution of Orthodox inside ROCOR. A split inside ROCOR, between the increasingly fewer actual Russian Orthodox and the new sectarians now looks inevitable.

It is all so tiresome. Again and again the same indiscipline and ignorance on the part of ROCOR. Just when you think it is back in the saving fold of the Church, its American wing again rejects canonical Orthodoxy. This is all a repeat of baptism controversies like that of Palmer in the 19th century and more recently those in ROCOR in the 1970s and 1980s. We have seen it all before. Is ROCOR condemned to repeat the same extremist, old calendarist-type errors in every generation? If so, it is time that it was brought to heel by Moscow, which alone can instruct it to stop persecuting Orthodox. If it refuses, then Moscow will be forced to step in to protect the persecuted, saving them from the schisms, anti-canonical acts and anti-Christian persecutions of ROCOR.

When I was last in California, in 2006, as a speaker at the Fourth ROCOR Council, I expressed surprise at the bizarre things I saw in San Francisco. A priest from the East Coast explained to me with a smile: ‘When God made America, he tilted it slightly, so that all the oddballs ran down to California’. In England, Russians, Romanians, Greeks, French, Germans and those of other nations behave themselves and are polite. They are welcome here. It is only certain Americans who come here, swaggering around like Mormons, Scientologists and members of other US sects and cults, trying to change the way you speak!, as though they owned the place, and are spectacularly rude and insult the local people. They do not behave as gentlemen. You are not welcome here and you should go home. American ROCOR: You have become a laughing-stock throughout Europe. Your time is up, the farce is over, take the psychiatric ambulance and go. It is time for mismanaged ROCOR to hand over to the MP, who are competent. It is what we have been saying for years.

 

What Went Wrong With ROCOR?

In 1974 I asked the then Fr Kallistos (Ware) what the situation in ROCOR was. He told me that he had met the future St John of Shanghai (+ 1966) in the 1950s and had seriously thought about transferring to ROCOR in the 1960s. However, the well-respected priest at the ROCOR Cathedral in London, Fr George Sheremetiev (+ 1971), who had been the confessor of the Tsar’s sister, Xenia Aleksandrovna (+ 20 April 1960), had dissuaded him.

Fr George had told him that the new censoriousness coming from the then CIA-financed ROCOR in the USA was poisoning ROCOR in England and he had better not join it. As an elderly priest, he would stay, for him the old ROCOR was still alive, but it was not a jurisdiction for the young. Consequently, Fr Kallistos remained a priest of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, though also remained priest and confessor at the ROCOR Convent in London until 1976, when the poison from the USA reached a new crescendo. In any case, Fr Kallistos’ witness dissuaded me from joining ROCOR in 1974.

Leaving England for Paris in 1979, there I encountered the old ROCOR, still uncontaminated by the US ROCOR, unlike in England. The ROCOR Western European Diocese, living in the spirit of its former Archbishop, St John of Shanghai, had as its ruling hierarch St John’s successor, Archbishop Antony of Geneva. The Dean for France was Archpriest Alexander Trubnikov, who was priest at the parish of the Resurrection in Meudon in the Paris suburbs. He had a great influence on me, an inspiration, and I knew his matushka and children very well.

Fr Alexander had been born in 1908 in Tsarskoe Selo, where the Tsar and his Family and servants lived, into the noble family of a hereditary Russian imperial officer. During World War I, his father was posted as a military attaché to France. After graduating from a French high school, the future Fr. Alexander had to take on various jobs to make ends meet. At the same time he completed military classes organised by White Russian émigrés in France.

The majority of White Russians went indiscriminately to any Russian church. St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, his vicar Bishop Nathaniel of Brussels, Archbishop Anthony of Geneva and all of us considered that both those in the Paris Jurisdiction, then under the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and ROCOR were our common flock in France and Benelux and ignored the minority of freemasons in the Paris Jurisdiction. Thus, we freely concelebrated with it. Fr Alexander was the rector of the Parish of the Resurrection in Meudon from 1954 until 1984, where he inspired several young men to become priests and rebuilt the Meudon chapel, courageously mortgaging his own home to do so. Besides his role as rector, Fr. Alexander served as chaplain to the Russian scouting organisation, the Vitiazi, which educated children from all jurisdictions.

Fr Alexander was also actively involved in inter-Orthodox and inter-Christian relations for many years, publishing books and a newsletter in French that shared news of the Orthodox world. This publishing activity brought Fr. Alexander to participate in the Second Vatican Council in Rome, where he met the then Pope. He wrote books, published his newsletter and attended the Vatican Council, hoping to represent the point of view of the free Russian Orthodox Church to all who would listen, not least to the Roman Catholics who were, and still are, undergoing a crisis, as they threw out the baby, but kept the bathwater. A priest and a diplomat, Fr Alexander reposed 35 years ago in November 1988. Eternal Memory!

After the repose of Archbishop Antony of Geneva five years later, in 1993, the last barrier fell. Thus, the censoriousness began to appear in the Western European Diocese from the USA, but now via Germany. All the clergy at the funeral were profoundly shocked when we found ourselves forbidden from celebrating. Thus, the new order of categorical phariseeism and judgementalism was already remarked at Archbishop Antony’s funeral. We patiently withstood it to defeat it in 2007, at last bringing ROCOR into canonical communion with Moscow. However, a decade later the censoriousness returned and took revenge; communion with Moscow had for them just been a delaying tactic to give their schismatic spirit outward legitimacy.

The new order of the new pharisees was founded on cupidity, jealousy, narcissistic egoism and the love of power of those who manipulate and use others as instruments for their own benefit, before discarding them. Those of the new order corrupted and destroyed everything they touched. Therefore, we did not allow them to touch, out of respect for St John of Shanghai, Archbishop Antony of Geneva, Fr George Sheremetiev, Fr Alexander Trubnikov and all those of the old and traditional ROCOR. You could accept their sectarian and schismatic censoriousness or else resist it. It all depended on whether you were a careerist or someone of principle and integrity. One day it will all be over. Our victory is inevitable because those who occupy the spiritual and moral high ground always win, even though patience will be required in waiting for Moscow to reject the Americanised and schismatic CIA-shaped ROCOR sect.

American ROCOR took over fifty years to spread its tentacles and take over completely. Once the American proxy war in the Ukraine is over, the unprincipled American ROCOR, which has lost so much by sitting on the fence in that conflict, will divide into two camps. On the one hand, there will be the pro-Russian non-schismatics and, on the other hand, the anti-Russian schismatics, the right-wing crazies and persecutors, penetrated by the CIA, heirs to the pro-Hitler Russians of the 1930s and 1940s. This will be the end of ROCOR, as the healthy part will be absorbed into the Moscow Patriarchate or into other Local Churches who obey the canons.

When it is all over, all of us together, from all the Local Churches, will at last be able to build the new Local Church of Western Europe in a US-free Europe, a Sovereign and Confederal Europe, co-operating with all the Local Churches, including a decentralised Moscow, and stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Only then will Europeans be able to recover their lost Motherland of the Church and their lost fatherlands of their own freed countries. At last, with a mother and a father, they will be able to become true brothers and sisters, fleeing the towering pride that created sectarianism and schism, which is what went wrong with ROCOR.

Reflections on the New Offer to Join the Moscow Patriarchate

On Saturday 11 November 2023 we were asked by a bishop of the Moscow Patriarchate if our group of six parishes and 5,000 parishioners would like to transfer from the Patriarchate of Romania to the Moscow Patriarchate. He has told us that this can be arranged, apparently following new instructions from the now besieged Moscow, backtracking from the past. Here is our answer, reprinted and updated from 20 February 2022:

 

Even if I look at the situation as an outsider, just objectively, it will seem absurd, unthinkable and outrageous. There is a very small ROCOR diocese covering a sizeable part of Europe. Its bishop created a schism, causing a lot of damage and pain to many faithful and clergy, including to some widely-known priests. And its American Synod is paralysed due to Metr. Hilarion’s illness (dementia and cancer). And there is the Moscow Patriarchate, the main centre, which can take steps and heal the schism any time, and punish its instigator, any time it wishes. But, instead, it coldly and calmly observes the situation, pretending to ignore it, and in effect taking the perpetrator’s side, without protecting the suffering faithful and clergy. How does it look after that? As if the main centre is afraid of the instigator. Even if you look at this as a pure outsider, its behaviour appears absurd and far from Christian.

From a Correspondent in Moscow, February 2022

 

Many untruths, slander, vilification and much misinformation have been posted about us on the internet over the last thirty months. It is the same vilification as led to the unjust suspension of the great St John of Shanghai in his time, sixty years ago. These postings have clearly been centrally organised. Other lies, or simply misunderstandings, will follow.

This whole affair has been a story of bullying and then betrayal. Throughout the several months of this affair, a certain young, inexperienced and non-seminary trained neophyte bishop, formerly a tutor in a Roman Catholic college in the City of Oxford, has consistently portrayed our departure from the Russian Church as a ‘personal rebellion’. He did this in order to portray himself in a good light and to minimise the gravity of the situation, in which he has lost over half his diocese in the British Isles.

On 23 August 2021 16 clergy left ROCOR in the British Isles in all. True, three of them were Western rite and they are not involved in our group, now that we have been forced into leaving the Russian Church. The annual throughput of our six parishes (excluding the Western rite ones) is about 5,000 Orthodox.

This was never a ‘personal rebellion’, but the collective decision to reject the ROCOR schism from the MP Archdiocese of Western Europe on the issue of rebaptism, which began over a year ago in Cardiff and has now spread throughout both ROCOR dioceses in Western Europe.

ROCOR’s excessive reactions were caused by what really lies behind his attitude: the determination to seize our properties and extract more money from us by bullying over the last four years. We resisted this, but never dreamed of leaving his jurisdiction for reasons of disputes about property ownership, or his bullying, negativity and spectacular rudeness. We consider that you can only canonically leave a jurisdiction in cases of episcopal heresy, episcopal schism or episcopal attempts to force people into acts of gross immorality.

That very young and untrained bishop managed to offend everyone in our multinational group.

He offended our Russian core by writing the most untruthful and unChristian personal attacks against the popular Fr Andrew Phillips on the internet over the last thirty months. As one of our parishioners said: ‘Everyone who knows Fr Andrew and the other 25 members of his family knows all that to be lies. He is a well-known figure internationally, tireless worker for Russian Church unity over the decades, writer, hagiographer, European cultural historian, author of the Services to All the Saints of the Isles (of the North Atlantic) and to All the Saints of the Western\ Lands, and the greatest Russophile you can find in England, who has been faithful to the Russian Church despite continual persecution for nearly fifty years. Unlike his bishop, he speaks and writes fluent Russian and he does not tell Russians to ‘learn English’, so they can speak to him. If the Russian Church rejects him, it will have no friends left in Western Europe. What an appalling way to treat people who have sacrificed their whole lives for the Russian Church’.

The young neophyte bishop then offended the Romanians, telling them to their face that he did not like them and then offended  the Moldovans that he only half-liked them and then forbade them from kneeling on Sundays, something that Orthodox in Moldova have been doing for centuries.

He offended the Greeks by telling them publicly that they must not venerate the icon of St Sophrony, whom Fr Andrew knew well and who was also forced to leave the Moscow Patriarchate because of persecution, and that their Greek Patriarch is ‘possessed’.

He offended the French, with whom he communicates by Google translator, by excommunicating members of their family and friends of 50 years standing who live in France and have always belonged to the Western European Archdiocese of the Moscow Patriarchate. For decades Fr Andrew had battled for this Archdiocese to rejoin the Russian Church and he with others had been successful in this.

He offended the English in an act of swaggering American imperialism and crass cultural insensitivity by insisting that they speak American English, instead of their own native English, which they had been using in the Orthodox context for long before he had been born.

He insisted that we left ROCOR without letters of canonical leave. At any point he could have written those letters in a matter of 15 minutes. Although these letters were politely requested on several occasions by Metr Jean and then by Metr Joseph, he refused to write them. However, in reality no letters of canonical leave were ever necessary, since clergy do not need letters of canonical leave in order to quit a bishop who is in schism (Canon XV of the First and Second Council held under St Photius the Great).

After Metr Jean of the Moscow Patriarchal Archdiocese of Western Europe was forced, stabbed in the back by a certain MP Metropolitan (even younger than nearly all our children), to abandon us on 10 February 2022, with the words ‘I could not care less about them’, We discussed what to do. Tired of the utter divisiveness and sectarianism of the Russian Church, whose bishops are out of communion even with each other, we as a group considered offers from various Local Churches to join them.

We decided for the following reasons to join the Romanian Orthodox Church:

The Romanian Church is in communion with everyone. They are not involved in the Russian-Greek dispute, which began in the Ukraine and has already spread to Africa and elsewhere, isolating the Russian Church.

Over 60% of all Orthodox in England are Moldovans or Romanians. They have an Autonomous Synod of seven Bishops for Western and Southern Europe, nearly 700 parishes, a large number of parishes and two monasteries. No Local Church will ever be formed in the British Isles and Ireland without this majority.

Among our 13 clergy are two Moldovan priests, one Romanian priest, one Moldovan deacon, one Moldovan reader and one Romanian reader. Thus, nearly half our clergy are Romanian-speaking.

The majority of our people are Moldovans or Romanians. As we have so many Moldovans, Ukrainians and Russians, we remain on the old calendar and all our liturgical customs, with the full blessing of Metr Joseph. Nothing changes. Effectively we are a Diaspora part of the Metropolia of Bessarabia, which is under the Patriarchate of Romania.

There are 30,000 Moldovans in Essex and East London who have been pastorally neglected. We have a pastoral duty towards them.

All our six parishes and twelve clergy were received into the Patriarchate of Romania in just four hours on 16 February 2022, with the help of the leading Professor of Canon Law of the Patriarchate of Romania.

We believe that the four very aggressive clerical personalities in the Russian Church who are entirely responsible for the divisions and who have either created or else supported sectarian division inside it will in time be removed.

Then will have to begin the work of re-establishing canonical, and not political, principles of action. The present situation leaves the Russian Church in Western Europe in a state of three jurisdictions, divided and feeling betrayed. It has created great scandal among the people who can only see warring, aggressive and bullying bishops. This is all because of the lack of conciliarity between the three Russian jurisdictions. They ask: ‘Are those bishops even Christians?’

This whole intra-Russian situation reflects the wider and scandalous divisions between the Local Orthodox Churches, which can only be overcome through a return to canonical, and not political, practices, to be re-established by a Council of the whole Orthodox Church.

20 February 2022

This very cruel rejection and betrayal by the Russian Church of its greatest Non-Russian friends in the United Kingdom, ourselves, after nearly fifty years of faithfulness, has led to a spiral of departures from it caused by further astounding acts of Russian nationalism, resulting in November 2023 in its now disastrous situation in the Ukraine, Latvia and Moldova. In the last case, senior priests are now pleading with their Metropolitan to lead the remains of his Church and follow the 30% who have already left it into the Patriarchate of Romania (See the article below, Metropolitan Vladimir….). This is exactly what we did first, over twenty months ago on 16 February 2022, fleeing schism, sectarianism, cultishness, phariseeism, censoriousness, bigotry, greed, sheer lack of love and lack of pastoral care. We fled a very young, inexperienced neophyte bishop who knew very little about the realities of Orthodoxy, only bookish theories, and did not understand even the language of his Russian clergy and people. As by far the senior and most experienced priest in his diocese and financially and morally independent, I had the responsibility and duty of leading the exodus across the Red Sea of his old calendarist schism. What began then has now developed into the heresy (I do not use that word lightly) of the rebaptism of Orthodox who wish to join ROCOR. As the proverb says: ‘Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind’.

City of Colchester

13 November 2023

 

Metropolitan Vladimir convenes a meeting with all the deacons, after receiving the letter from the priests from Botanica

On Thursday, at the Metropolia of Chisinau and All Moldavia, a meeting is to be held with all the archpriests and abbots of monasteries subordinate to Metropolitan Vladimir, at which the proposal of some priests regarding the in corpore accession of this Church structure to the Patriarchate will most likely be discussed in Romanian.

According to the priest Pavel Borsevschi, the Metropolitan convened the meeting, after receiving today the letter from the clerics of the Botanica Deanery of Chisinau, which urges him to switch to the Romanian Orthodox Church.

A single priest from the II Deanery of the Archdiocese of Chisinau spoke out against the accession of the Metropolia of Moldova to the Romanian Patriarchate. The Dean of Botanica, priest Pavel Borșevschi, said this for Jurnal.md. We mention that 30 churches from the Botanica Deanery, but also from the villages of Sângera, Revaca, Băcioi, Străsiteni and Brăila are part of the II Deanery of the Archdiocese of Chisinau.

“The letter is signed by most of the priests in the diocese. We do not propose to join the Metropolia of Bessarabia, but we demand that the entire Metropolia, as a canonical structure, led by Metropolitan Vladimir, renounce the Russian Church and Patriarch Kyrill and come under the jurisdiction of the Romanian Patriarchate. We cannot be in a church where the Patriarch blesses his priests to pray for the victory of the Russian army over Ukraine, which is our suffering sister. We have just had a war in Transnistria, with the blessing of Patriarch Alexiy II. In such cases, when we say “victory”, we are talking about humiliation. It is something that cannot be explained from a Christian point of view.

When he received the letter, the Metropolitan did not tell us either yes or no, but decided to summon all the deacons and abbots of the monasteries on Thursday to discuss this issue. I don’t think he has any reason to disagree with us, based on his letter to Patriarch Kyrill and considering that this opinion is not only ours, the priests’, but also that of the religious community, which we shepherd” . priest Pavel Borševschi reported.

We remind you that, on September 5 Metropolitan Vladimir addressed a letter to Patriarch Kyrill, in which he informs him that he cannot do anything to stop the rise of the Metropolia of Bessarabia in the Republic of Moldova and that the Russian Church is perceived in society as an outpost of the Kremlin and a supporter of the Russian intervention in Ukraine. The letter also states that “the people of Moldova have Latin roots and it is perfectly normal to aspire to remain in this civilizational space, after centuries of artificial division”.

In Memoriam: The Russian Emigration Church

Those of us who became part of the Russian Emigration Church half-way through its life, back in the 1970s, have been betrayed by the direction of the post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church. We knew quite well such figures as Metr Antony Bloom (I was tonsured reader by him in January 1981), Archbishop Basil Krivoshein, Archbishop George Tarasov, Archbishop Antony of Geneva, Archbishop Seraphim of Brussels. Whatever their ‘jurisdiction’, their spirit was the same – that of piety, that of non-possession, that of pastoral care, that of faithfulness to St Sergius of Radonezh, St Seraphim of Sarov, St John of Kronstadt, to the New Martyrs and Confessors. And their spirit was a missionary spirit, a multinational spirit, not a narrow nationalist spirit. Today all those bishops are spinning in their graves, as they see the spirit of materialist possession, nationalism and narcissism that has taken over the Russian Church administration and even filters down among priests. Of them there are two sorts: those who are hireling priests for career and ‘awards’ and those, like us, who cannot be supressed, because we are priests by destiny.

The Russian Orthodox administration, called the Moscow Patriarchate, will inevitably now lose all its churches outside Russia. We were the first to leave. The strangest thing is that the Patriarchate’s strongest ally outside Russia is ROCOR. What was in its first three generations the most spiritually independent, and could still be so, has now become the most loyal servant of compromise with the world. With its history, it should have been the first to ask the serious questions. It refuses and so the task has been left to us.

How sad that a few years after the Russian Church administration had been freed of atheist persecution, it began to behave towards its faithful children not as a mother, but as a stepmother, and began to persecute us. As a result of its political compromises and nationalism, the Moscow Patriarchate has lost all authority and influence with us in the Emigration and in general outside the Russian Federation. It can no longer be the Patriarchate of Orthodox in the Emigration in Western Europe, in the Ukraine, in the Baltic States, in Central Asia, in Moldova, in Belarus. As a result, it will lose all the once Russian Orthodox Churches, Metropolias and Dioceses outside the Russian Federation. The following article confirms exactly what we began to observe since 2016, forcing us in 2022 to leave the Russian Orthodox Church after nearly fifty years of loyalty to it. It had been disloyal to us and had abandoned us. We were left with no other choice. We thank God that we were well-known to many bishops who were happy to help us and ignore the uncanonical and absurd sanctions later taken against us after we had left.

 

Another 13 parishes leave the Metropolia of Moldova and move to the Metropolia of Bessarabia. Another 50 will follow in the coming weeks

Next week, 13 churches from different districts will officially pass to the Metropolia of Bessarabia, sources close to these parishes told Radio Free Europe. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, more than 60 priests from the Republic of Moldova have moved from the Metropolia of Moldova to that of Bessarabia.

Two weeks ago six priests were excommunicated by the Synod of the Orthodox Church of Moldova (canonically subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate), because they Had joined the Metropolis of Bessarabia (part of the Romanian Patriarchate), in a few days another 13 parishes will leave the Metropolia of Moldova. Next week, these churches are to receive the re-registration documents from the Public Services Agency.

One of the parishes that has already changed its metropolitan in documents is the church of the Holy Archangels Mihail and Gavril from Malcoci village, Ialoveni district. Its parish priest, priest Andrei Oistric, was until recently Dean of the Faculty of Pastoral Theology at the Academy of Orthodox Theology, part of the Metropolia of Moldova.

“I studied in Suceava and Bucharest and I was always closer to the Metropolia of Bessarabia. I have dedicated more than half of my life to theological education: for 13 years I was a teacher, spiritual priest and deputy director at the “Regina Maria” girls’ high school theological seminary and for another 12 years I worked at the Academy of Theology, of which 10 years I was Dean. My feelings for Romanian Orthodoxy were not a secret. All my colleagues and students knew this,” priest Andrei Oistric told Radio Free Europe.

How does the transition from one Metropolia to another take place?

The parish priest from Malcoci says that he wanted to move to the Metropolia of Bessarabia 15 years ago, when he came to the village, but the people in the community were not ready. “Since the war started, I have had more and more requests from the parishioners: “Father, look at how the war is supported, it is not good like that!”. I was also affected by this war, and so was my family. I have relatives on both sides. I showed this desire at the end of February-beginning of March, and in August the parish of Malcoci village officially passed from the Metropolia of Moldova to that of Bessarabia”, explained the priest.

The transition from one Metropolia to another is done through a legal procedure. Parishes are re-registered with the Public Services Agency. “At our place, in the village of Malcoci, a meeting was held with the parishioners and minutes were drawn up. I submitted it to the Metropolia of Bessarabia, the Ministry of Justice and the Public Services Agency. The agency gave us a new tax code, the right to have a stamp, so all the legal rights”, states the parish priest from Malcoci.

“The Russian Church was not like a mother to us, but like a stepmother”

In practical terms, however, nothing changes in the parish, not even the calendar. The priest says that he will still keep all the holidays on the old calendar. Even before officially leaving the Metropolia of Moldova, he left the Academy of Theology. His resignation was approved at the same Synod on October 25 and he was replaced by Hieromonk Macarie Crudu.

“I retired from the academy. I tried to be as fair as possible in everything. Let someone come with new forces, with new ideas. Like it or not, our roots are Latin, we don’t have Slavic roots. The Russian Church was not like a mother to us, but like a stepmother. Nevertheless, it would have been nice to say now: «Return to your natural mother, we allow you». We want to remain on friendly terms with the Russian Church, as it has been throughout the centuries”, adds the parish priest from Malcoci.

This week, the founder and vice-rector of the Academy of Theology, Viacheslav Cazacu, also declared that he had left the Metropolia of Moldova and joined the Metropolia of Bessarabia. More such announcements are expected in the coming weeks.

“The parishes that want to join the Metropolia of Bessarabia are of an impressive number, but let’s see how they take the steps. About 50 have already applied. I cannot give you the names, because that was the deal, so as not to cause confusion. Certain parishes are now in the transition process, at the documentation stage,” said the representative of the Metropolia of Bessarabia, priest Ion Marian, to Radio Free Europe.

Two weeks ago, the Metropolia of Moldova defrocked six priests who had transferred to the Metropolia of Bessarabia. On the other hand, the Metropolia of Bessarabia considers that the decision to defrock the six priests is not valid, because it has no justification “from a theological and canonical perspective”. In a press release, the Metropolia of Bessarabia urged all clerics and monks who “feel constrained by the Russian dioceses to have the courage to get out of this slavery and return to the tradition and communion of the Romanian Orthodox Church”.

In a letter sent to Russian Patriarch Kyrill in September, Metropolitan Vladimir of Moldova complained that the Metropolia of Moldova is losing ground to the Republic of Moldova due to the war in the Ukraine and that more and more priests are moving to the Metropolia of Bessarabia.

The two Orthodox churches operating on the territory of the Republic of Moldova – subordinated to the Patriarchate of Moscow and the Romanian Patriarchate, respectively – have disputed their canonical status since 2002, when the Metropolia of Bessarabia was registered, following a decision of the European Court of Human Rights.

 

 

2. Practical Consequences of No Local Church: The Pastoral Situation in England

As one Serbian priest in France put it to me 30 years ago, living in Western culture for Orthodox Christians is like entering an acid bath. In other words, you face spiritual death through assimilation, unless you keep your identity – that is, the Orthodox Faith. And that is virtually impossible to do unless you have a normal parish church with services at least twice a week and which is accessible. Here I will speak of England because I have known the situation here for fifty years, seen them all come and go, and here is where I know today’s situation best. Here most churches are either dying out or have already died out.

1) ROCOR

ROCOR in England had completely died out after three generations (1917-1992). The faith had not been passed on at all. Typically, children, grandchildren and, even more, great-grandchildren abandoned Orthodoxy, the process sped up with intermarriage (with such tiny numbers, there was literally ‘no-one to marry’ inside the Church). With basically only one permanent church to go to in west London and living outside London, people lost a Church, which appeared to give them no pastoral care outside London. Some of the first generation, like the late Professor Nikolai Andreyev in Cambridge, themselves actually had their children baptised in the Church of England from the outset: ‘We are in England now’, he said.

Others changed their surnames to English surnames, Volkoff to Wolcough, Kalinsky to Kay, for instance. Some strove to eliminate any sign of an English accent in their speech. The old ROCOR priest in Bradford refused to baptise any Russian children and sent them to the Church of England for ‘christening’. He told his parishioners: ‘There’s no point. They won’t replace me, so the church will close down after me’. Of course, he was actually right. He died and that was it. His church disappeared many years ago. Most children said that Orthodoxy was only for old people: ‘It’s nothing to do with me, I’m English’ and ‘I don’t understand what it’s all about’. Two years ago, already tiny ROCOR lost by far its biggest parish, six other parishes and over half its clergy, half its jurisdiction, because of its now schismatic foreign nature and its arrogant refusal to listen to the local people. People and clergy voted with their feet and left.

ROCOR only continues to exist today because it ‘restocked’ over the last thirty years from the ex-Soviet Union (though Ukrainians have now left that aggressively Russian institution) and from a few American-style crazy converts with their sectarian views. I know only six of the old generation, whose Russian grandparents immigrated here. Three are atheists, one is Church of England, and one became a Jew by being circumcised when in his twenties. Only one, now in her eighties, remains Orthodox (though her children and grandchildren are all Church of England). However, she does not go to church, even though she lives only 30 minutes away from London, because of the sectarian nature of the new ROCOR regime.

Constantinople

The Patriarchate of Constantinople used to have by far the largest jurisdiction in England. It expanded greatly between the 1950s and 1970s through the mass immigration of Cypriots. At one time it had six bishops. Its new Archbishop has told me that he now has 100 priests who are very elderly, but only three candidates to replace them. Churches that were attended by 500-1,000 forty years ago now get congregations of 20-30 elderly. Many smaller seaside town parishes will probably close. Whenever children appear in them, you know that they are Romanians. There are also embarrassing rifts between Cypriots, Greeks and Cretans. The worst case by far was in Brighton, but it is not easy elsewhere, with Greeks looking down on Cypriots as provincials who cannot even speak Greek properly. There are large numbers of Anglican vicars of Greek descent, whose parents had immigrated here. I have come across over twenty of them (and one who is Russian). Why? Because they never understood a word of Greek services. On top of that, considering themselves to be English, they could get a well-paid job and a free house in the Church of England. Nothing like that in the Orthodox Church!

The Greeks have a reputation for the flag waving of extreme nationalism. It is probably unfair. Russians can be extremely racist. And others. However, I have to say that all the worst experiences I have come across over the last fifty years have been with Greeks, but perhaps simply because they were so numerous. I have met several English people who visited Greek churches and were told literally: ‘Go away’. (Also in far less polite language). One Greek priest told one Englishman: ‘Join the Church of England, you are English, you can’t join us, wrong nationality’. (The man in question later joined the Russian Church and became a priest there). Another case: ‘You can’t come here, you’re not dark enough’. It is a sad fact that most Greek churches (but in fairness, not only Greek ones) are merely ethnic clubs.

As a prison chaplain, I regularly see middle-aged Cypriots in prison. They are the children and grandchildren of the original immigrants. They do not speak a word of Greek and have not the least idea of Orthodoxy. One of them told me that when his grandmother had told him that he was ‘Orthodox’, he had thought that he was a Jew. The only bright spots are the convent/monastery in Tolleshunt Knights in Essex, now with 25 Romanian nuns, and at last building a larger church, and Bp Rafael, the new Greek bishop (and the only Orthodox bishop) in Scotland. Tolleshunt Knights has welcomed all nationalities. Bp Rafael has done the same, welcoming all nationalities and calendars and is in effect the Bishop of Scotland. Only he has the authority and openness. (A pity for us that he is not in England!). In both cases, there is real hope. Why? Because both put Christ first and not their nationality.

The Others

Leaving aside the post-1945 Belarussians, Latvians and Poles who all died out, also the tiny numbers of very inward-looking but still churched Georgians and Bulgarians, and the Paris Russians (ROCOR virtually killed them off with aid from the Moscow Patriarchate), we come to the Serbs, the Patriarchal Russians, the Antiochians, the Ukrainians and the Romanians. The Serbs have faced the same problems as the others and the wave of post-1945 immigrants died out; one of the last of them I buried in a Suffolk village a few years ago. He had not been to church since the 1950s. Few kept the Faith. Some changed their surnames, one Serbian priest I knew dressed like an Anglican minister also baptised like an Anglican minister, by splashing water on foreheads of babies, telling me that: ‘We are not in the Balkans now’.

The Patriarchal Russians, once Bloomites, have also largely died out, but have restocked from the ex-Soviet Union. Today their Church sometimes gives the impression (which may or may not be the case) of being an aggressively nationalistic ghetto, an extension of the Embassy, with all the faults that can be found in churches in post-Soviet Russia, all about money and ritualism. However, possibly things will improve after the conflict in the Ukraine ends. The Antiochians appear to be a group for dissatisfied Anglicans and elderly ex-vicars, who do not know how to celebrate the services, but perhaps if they get enough laypeople of other nationalities, something may come of it. Some of the converts are rather extreme Evangelicals, who have little idea of Orthodoxy. That is worrying, however, some of its clergy behave as real pastors. The Ukrainians are very divided into pre-2022 Ukrainians (under Constantinople, extremely nationalistic, elderly, dying out) and the refugees since the tragedy of 2022. The latter are very small in number for now (most of the refugees were atheists, schismatics or else Uniats) and live under the disputed jurisdiction of Kiev.

Finally, we come to the masses of Romanians (and Moldovans). Nearly all have come here recently and in huge numbers, over 400,000, perhaps 500,000 or even more, forming the vast majority of Orthodox in this country. However, although there are very big parishes, with hundreds coming every Sunday, there are still fewer than 40 priests, still no resident bishop and a small monastery under construction near Luton. This is a jurisdiction that is being formed, but with a chronic lack of infrastructure because all is new. However, it is very young and dynamic. One Romanian priest I know does nearly 1,000 baptisms a year, usually about 20 at a time, every week. This is the youth. Speaking a Latin language and with a surprisingly open mentality, Romanian parishes are generally by far the most welcoming and the most open to English. Hope is here, providing that we learn from the mistakes of the Greeks and Russians who went before us. The three-generation rule seems to be implacable: if you manage to transmit the Faith to the third generation, a new Local Church can be born. If not, you will die out.

 

 

The History of the Schism of the New ROCOR from the Church

Introduction

The schism of the new ROCOR from the Orthodox Church has its origin in the mentality of certain US ROCOR converts, of woman-hating ‘incels’ and ‘orthobros’. This mentality first raised its head in US ROCOR under the influence of the neo-puritanical, Bostonite old calendarists as long ago as the 1960s. In other words, the ‘orthobros’ mentality today is ultimately the fruit of Gregory Grabbe’s old calendarist ‘We are the True Church’ fanaticism. (Boston’s twenty-year long reign ended in 1986 in unanswered charges by ROCOR of homosexuality and the extreme right-wing Gregory Grabbe, who had been secretary of the New York Synod for several decades, ended in 1995 in old age outside the Church, still calling himself ‘Bishop Gregory Grabbe’, having consecrated the pedophile Bishop Valentin (Rusantsov) in Suzdal in Russia, who was later imprisoned, and banning ROCOR members from attending his own funeral).

Let me say now that there is no personal animosity at all to those family-deprived ‘orthobros’ who are suffering, often from the temptations of sexual deviancy, and need Christ. They are deeply unhappy and lonely, not to say, disturbed individuals. However, the ideology that many of them have developed, once they have been given power over the Church and Orthodox families, is filled with hatred. Our Faith is not an ideology, for it is filled with Love. Hatred, especially towards normal families in the Church, is the unfailing warning sign of the sect. That is why they are so dangerous. That is why they must be prayed for. We still hope for the salvation of all, turning the other cheek. We publicise this simply because it is our duty to defend Church truth against sectarianism and its inevitable consequence which is, as we have seen with our own eyes, schism. And schism from the Church means precisely separation from Love, that is, schism is the path to hatred

The ROCOR schism that began in December 2020 in Cardiff, Wales. It was initiated by a very new ROCOR priest who had belonged to an old calendarist sect for some twenty years beforehand and who had previously been refused admission to the Church. His reception as a priest (without ordination) had therefore been very controversial. He objected to an even newer former Roman Catholic priest in the same city, who had been accepted into the Russian Orthodox Church in the usual way (see below).

Amazingly, instead of rebuking the former old calendarist priest for his ignorance and non-acceptance of Orthodox Tradition and ordering him to concelebrate with his brother-priest of the same jurisdiction, the local ROCOR bishop (himself a convert from Lutheranism who had been received by chrismation into the OCA some twenty years before) backed him and then his ROCOR colleagues backed the whole old calendarist mentality and schism. It was all part of the new ROCOR policy of expelling older, experienced, traditional ROCOR priests and laypeople and replacing them with crazy converts. Birds of a feather flock together….

Thus began an international schism and scandal. Some of course say that this Welsh incident was just a long-awaited trigger and any pretext would have done for those who were already possessed by a sectarian mentality and wanted revenge for the unity of 2007. Too proud to repent for the initial error of backing an old calendarist, ROCOR then launched itself into a vicious spiral of sectarianism and schism. This took it very, very far from the Church, the Tradition and the Love of Christ, Who wills all to salvation.

A Little History

In London the well-respected and unmercenary Fr George Sheremetiev (+ 1971), the spiritual father of the Tsar-Martyr’s sister, the late Xenia Alexandrovna, warned of this mentality in the 1960s. He persuaded the future and now late Metr Kallistos (Ware) to join the Greek Church, and not ROCOR, in order to avoid that new pharisaical censoriousness, as the then Fr Kallistos himself related to me in 1974. Also from London, the late scholar Fr Ambrose Pogodin, who went to the USA, later joined the OCA for exactly the same reason. Western European ROCOR always had a different mentality. This is Old Europe, next to the roots of the Faith, where we keep the Tradition and the canons.

The rebaptism of Non-Orthodox was never accepted by Western European ROCOR, which was faithful to the mainstream Russian Orthodox spiritual tradition of Metr Antony Khrapovitsky. He had consecrated St John of Shanghai and Western Europe (he spent 13 years here, the same period as in China). Naturally, St John did not rebaptise Non-Orthodox, apart from in two known exceptional cases. St John was succeeded by the ever-memorable Archbp Antony of Geneva, who ordained me and many others and who said that the reception of Non-Orthodox by baptism is simply ‘not necessary’. This was always our policy. And in the case of Roman Catholics, reception by confession and communion was always our policy also.

Non-rebaptism had also naturally been the practice of US ROCOR until the 1960s, as ROCOR then had, like the Moscow Patriarchate, kept faith with the pre-Revolutionary Russian Tradition. Look for example at how super-correct ‘Orthodox’ rebaptisers persecuted Fr Seraphim Rose, another disciple of St John of Shanghai. The latter was suspended and put on trial by the political US ROCOR bishops, which stress basically led to his early death three years later.

In 2007, led by the ever-memorable Carpatho-Russian Metr Lavr, we at last thought we had rid ROCOR of this schismatic and sectarian mentality by entering into canonical communion with Moscow. I was there as a speaker at the Fourth ROCOR Council in San Francisco in 2006, in Moscow in 2007 and again in 2012 for the fifth anniversary. Before 2007 those ROCOR bishops responsible had already abandoned their uncanonical old calendarist connections in the Balkans, which had been promoted by a tiny number of ROCOR bishops in the 1990s and rejected and ignored by everyone else. These included the link with the sect of the late Metropolitan Vlasie in Romania, who had preached purity, but before he died had fallen with a nun.

The New Sectarianism

However, in 2017 the mini-Synod took its revenge for the unity of 2007 and seized power after our beloved Metr Hilarion (Eternal Memory!) fell ill. Among other things, they wanted to ‘bring Western European ROCOR into line’ with the US, ‘to drain the swamp’, as they claimed. In fact they did exactly the opposite and brought the US swamp here, destroying the old ROCOR. Their first move was in 2018 when they ‘retired’ the local ROCOR Archbishop of Geneva and the pillars of the parish who had been there for generations, causing huge scandal there, and replacing him with a young and highly inexperienced American convert. The latter had been received into the OCA from Lutheranism by chrismation some 18 years before.

It was the start of a Stalinist purge and micromanagement. Then they insisted that we, who were Russian Orthodox before they were even born, speak American and use novel US liturgical customs! They are typical of the US converts who want to be ‘more Orthodox than the Orthodox’. Their whole reasoning is obsessed with Protestant-style ‘salvation’ and ‘baptism’, with the conservative Lutheran ‘promise’ of hellfire for any who disagree with them. What wonderful Christians!

All here are profoundly shocked by what has happened. Most pretend to ignore it, as ROCOR is so tiny. However, the Greeks here write of the scandal-ridden ROCOR: ‘Once a sect, always a sect’, they say. The MP Sourozh Diocese told us two years ago that American ROCOR needs a ‘psychiatric ambulance’ (It sounds better with a Russian accent). They actually laughed at the antics of these pretend Russian Orthodox and their Disneyfication of the Faith. To get an understanding, see the Polish psychiatrist Dr Andrew Lobaczewski in his book Political Ponerology, where he speaks of a pathological type known as “Schizoidia” or “schizoidal psychopathy“.

ROCOR ignored the advice of Patriarch Kyrill to simply write us letters of leave, as we had politely requested from the start, as we were willing to accept all their humiliations and had done so, but we were not willing to enter into a schism, as we had clearly explained four months before we left. Therefore, seeing the reckless stubbornness of ROCOR, Moscow arranged with their friend, Patriarch Daniel of Romania, for us to be taken into the Romanian Church (Patriarch Daniel’s main canonical adviser and professor of canon law is the brother-in-law of our Romanian priest), until the war in the Ukraine is over. The process of our reception took just four hours.

Moscow had arranged all beforehand. Only after the conflict in the Ukraine will Moscow at last have the opportunity to deal with the ROCOR schism. This means dealing with the crazy and uncanonical elements who seized power from Metr Hilarion and then created a schism with the MP’s Archdiocese of Western Europe, where we have had close family and friends for over 50 years.

If Moscow then offered us and all our churches to join Sourozh, as we had originally wanted in May 2021, I am not sure what we would do. The Romanians have been fantastic to us, real Christians, letting us remain Russian Orthodox, visiting us, concelebrating regularly and making us a real part of the Romanian Metropolia. Of course, we had always been good to them. They are paying us back. Why ever should we want to ask the Romanian Church for letters of leave? They do not try and destroy us and close our churches and they are not jealous, in love with money, are not spectacularly rude and do not bully and threaten. In a word, Romanian Orthodox are Christians.

Our minimum requirement would be for the schismatics to be removed, though frankly they should at least be suspended for creating a schism, which even ‘the blood of the martyrs cannot overcome’ and persecuting those who obey the canons. Then all 16 of us clergy who left ROCOR and did not return would have to receive some sort of compensation. This would be a bit like the slandered Fr Alexander (Belya) and all those with him (we have seen the papers where he was clearly elected by a majority of the Synod), the angelic Fr Christopher Stade, Abbot Tikhon (Gayfudinov), Metr Hilarion’s former private secretary, and Fr Edouard Chervinsky, priest at the Synod building. They all left in disgust at the new clique, which usurped power from the dementia-suffering Metr Hilarion. Their behaviour has been not just uncanonical, but shamelessly unChristian.

The New Rebaptism Book and the Reception of Non-Orthodox

The new American book on rebaptism was written in the convert style by an insecure convert priest in Greece, who had already been rejected by the US Assembly of Orthodox Bishops. I say insecure because none of this is an issue for secure Orthodox, in Greece, Russia, Romania, or anywhere else. It is, however, a perennial theme amongst those from a Protestant background, but who have not yet fully converted. Fr Peter Heers, if he is the author, has no known bishop (he is then on paper a Protestant), until he can prove otherwise. There is nothing new in this book, it repeats the vast debates around this subject to be found in Orthodox literature in the 70s and 80s (St Vladimir’s Quarterly, Eastern Churches Review, Sobornost, Orthodox Word etc, as well as in other languages for example in Le Messager of the Western European Diocese of ROCOR).

This new book appears to recount various practices from history, taking quotes of saints and elders out of context (as Protestants are wont to do) is certainly not sound traditional pastoral practice, but is inclined to the booklore of pharisees. The fact that at certain times and in certain places the reception of Roman Catholics by baptism has been practised is a well-known fact. It has always happened whenever Roman Catholicism was aggressive towards Orthodoxy and seems to have begun, unsurprisingly, with the sack of New Rome in 1204. However, it has not been the practice whenever Roman Catholics have treated Orthodox well and even respected us, in other words, whenever they have behaved like Christians towards us.

The demand for reception by baptism renounces the living Tradition, the Tradition of the Saints, of all the Local Churches, of the Moscow Patriarchate, of the pre-Revolutionary Church (the Tsaritsa St Alexandra was received by St John of Kronstadt by chrismation). Personally, I will always follow the practice of non-schismatic Orthodox bishops in this. Those who do not accept this practice risk putting themselves outside the Church, especially when they refuse to concelebrate with whole jurisdictions because they have received a priest from Roman Catholicism by confession and communion. What was good enough for St Seraphim of Sarov. St John of Kronstadt, the martyred Tsarina Alexandra and for 100% of non-schismatic, canonical Orthodox bishops today is certainly good enough for me.

Any who demand the rebaptism of someone who has already for years been in the Orthodox Church and taking communion also renounce the Creed: ‘I believe in One Baptism….’.

See youtube for how the Moscow Patriarchate today, as ever, receives Roman Catholic priests into the Church:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHjinL1OAGo

Outside of this book, which I have not had time to read, I would say the following about the whole invented issue of ‘corrective rebaptism’ – a totally unPatristic term, namely:

If you do not accept the above practice of the ROC, that Roman Catholic clergy are accepted into the Russian Church by confession and concelebration and you cut off communion with those who do accept this, then you are simply not Russian Orthodox, indeed you are simply not members of the Orthodox Church. You belong to a sect. You are schismatic. To cut off communion with others because of their traditional practices in this matter is a schism. That is the sin. And that is what has happened.

Of course, we all practise threefold baptism by immersion in the Name of the Holy Trinity (I do this at least twice a week on average), but watch the above video with one who had already been baptised in the Name of the Holy Trinity being received in the usual way into the Russian Church today. What we do not do is fall into schism and say that others are not Orthodox because they have been received in the way shown in the youtube video above, and not according to the strict teaching. That is anti-canonical – see Canon XV of the First and Second Council under St Photius the Great.

The Orthodox teaching on Non-Orthodox ‘sacraments’ is crystal clear and I will repeat it here for newcomers to the Church, who know nothing of the extensive literature about it written in the 19th and 20th centuries, for the umpteenth time:

There are no sacraments outside the Orthodox Church. However, there are sacramental forms or rites, which actually have the same names as ours and are outwardly very similar to Orthodox emergency baptisms. The spiritual presence that is missing in those forms or rites is obtained when a Non-Orthodox comes into the presence of the Church, the source of the Holy Spirit. The ritual form is then filled with the missing grace.

The problem with any novel doctrine of rebaptism is that:

Its claims about the need to rebaptise Non-Orthodox are old-fashioned, done to death over the last 150 years. This issue was debated to death by Palmer and Khomyakov in the 19th century and thousands of pages were again written about it in the 1970s, especially after the uncanonical, indeed blasphemous, 1976 Guildford ROCOR rebaptisms by Grabbeites of those who had been Orthodox for some years. (This is still done by old calendarists, linked to the Guildford group in England). It came up yet again in the 1986 Boston schism and the Fontrier schism in Paris. Both ex-ROCOR groups went to the old calendarists. As Archbishop Antony of Geneva of ROCOR said to all of us at the time: ‘You receive by economy (chrismation). However, if someone insists on being baptised into the Church, you can do so, though it is not necessary’. When in the 1990s one Polish ROCOR nun at the Lesna Convent, Sister Varvara, learned of the new American ROCOR practice of obligatorily receiving Roman Catholics by baptism, she was horrified. As were we all – and still are.

In 1979 the now local saint, St Sophrony the Athonite, explained to us (and to me) the Orthodox teaching that there is no need to rebaptise. This followed the rebaptism of a Catholic priest by Abbot Aemilianos in 1978. Fr Sophrony had sent the Catholic priest, Fr Placide, to Athos to be received, but was horrified and very upset when Fr Aemilianos, behind his back, received Fr Placide by baptism. It did cause a quite unnecessary scandal at the time.  Whatever was missing in the heterodox sacramental form is made up for, and activated by, contact with the grace inherent in, and which radiates from, the Church of God – the Orthodox Church.

The rest is the Protestant-style fundamentalist literalism and ritualism of converts with their psychological fragility and insecurity. In other words, none of the rebaptism hysteria is to do with theology, only psychology and often an unhealthy psychology, even pathology (see above). Young men who come to our parishes for the first time, as they do, having spent hundreds of hours on the internet and are therefore ‘experts’, and at once demand that they be rebaptised, that they must dress in black, grow long beards and hair and change their names from ‘John’ and be called Moses or Seraphim, Silouan or Vladimir do not need a priest. They need a psychiatrist. Either they accept us Orthodox as we are, or else they go elsewhere. We do not have any in our parishes.

This is what Patriarch Alexei II meant some twenty-five years ago, when he spoke of the insecurity of certain small groups of introverted Russian emigrants, who lived in narrow, self-protecting and parochial ghettoes, frightened because ‘others are not like us’, ‘the others are not real Russians like us’ etc.

These claims about the need for rebaptism reject all the ROCOR bishops and priests of the past, those who taught us the Tradition. They were not upstart converts from a US Protestant background, but came from a millennium of Orthodox Tradition.

Rebaptism is obligatory claims mean that all the saints of the Old Testament and many post-New Testament martyrs of the calendar baptised in their blood, and not by triple immersion in water, are not even Orthodox, let alone saints.

Rebaptism is obligatory claims mean that the hundreds of thousands of Uniats received into the Russian Church in Belarus, the Ukraine and Carpatho-Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries by confession and communion (the third rite) never joined the Orthodox Church!

Rebaptism is obligatory claims mean that hundreds of Orthodox priests, received by chrismation as laypeople, are not priests and their sacraments are not valid!

These claims mean that some 100 million Russian Orthodox (some 35,000 of them now priests, at least one hundred are now bishops) are not baptised! Until 10-15 years ago most baptisees there had to stand kneeling forward with two hands in a bowl of water and had water poured over their heads. Quite simply, there were hardly any baptistries.

These claims deny the validity of baptisms by numbers of Serbian and Greek Diaspora (and not only in the Diaspora and not only Serbian and Greek) priests, who baptise by pouring water over the head.

These claims deny the validity of Orthodox emergency baptisms of babies and adults, done in hospital conditions.

The fact is that if you only practise akrivia (the strict teaching), you will wander as far from the truth as those who only practise ikonomia (dispensation). Pastors use both according to need. Intellectuals and theoreticians fall for one or the other, lapsing to the right side or to the left side. Pastors are practical and, by definition, pastoral.

Conclusion

Once the war that the US began in 2014 in the Ukraine is over, because this is of course a war between Moscow and Washington, for whose military-industrial complex 500,000 Ukrainian soldiers have already died, these matters will be sorted out. The events in the Ukraine and those ensuing in the Baltics, Moldova and Western Europe have distracted Moscow from the events here.

Eventually, the sectarians will refuse to repent and will no doubt found yet another wealthy (through internet influencing and podcasts) American sect, ROCOR – Russian Old Calendarists Outside Russia. However, Orthodoxy does not exist in podcasts and on the internet, it exists only in buildings, services and sacraments, in our incarnate Christian way of life. But sects do not want to know about that.

Those Orthodox who still remain in ROCOR, and these include some of their bitterly divided bishops – I am told by one source that the division is indeed bitter – will become part of the MP, or whatever it will come to be called after the conflict in the Ukraine is over. This is the future. Moscow will pick up the sane pieces, once the insane pieces have expelled themselves into their sects in a repeat of the 1986 Boston schism and the multiple schism between 2001 and 2007.  I have not the slightest doubt about it and have not doubted it since 2007. The post-2007 crisis of identity of ROCOR, with all its absurdities and now schism from the Moscow Patriarchate, would have been overcome by ROCOR in Europe, Latin America and Australia merging with the MP, or in North America with its local American branch, the OCA. It will happen anyway.

Then ROCOR would simply have merged with the MP and so become its missionary arm outside Russia. Providentially, it would then have helped the MP from sinking into disastrous Russian nationalism and Soviet-style centralism and injustices, like defrocking priests with differing political opinions about the Ukraine. And at the same time, through its engagement with the masses, and not with ghettos, ROCOR would have helped the imploding Western world to refind Christ.

Sadly, the new ROCOR, renouncing the old and traditional ROCOR with its pre-Revolutionary heritage, took the other sectarian, way. It sovietised itself and at the same time turned to the right-wing ghetto instead of to the mainstream. In the end, however, the forces of moderation and sanity will prevail. Light always wins against darkness in the end.

 

 

 

The Murk Lifts as the Saints Come in Victory

Four years ago now we were informed by a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) that Fr Alexander Belya had been selected as a bishop by a majority of the old ROCOR Synod in New York. All had legitimately been signed off and sent to the Moscow for the final approval. Indeed, Metropolitan Hilarion (Kapral) had earlier personally spoken to us about Fr Alexander with great enthusiasm. However, the objections of a minority in the Synod were so strong that they launched what was in effect a coup d’etat, taking advantage of the late Metropolitan Hilarion’s dementia and cancer, creating a new ROCOR and beginning a campaign to discredit Fr Alexander’s candidacy. All manner of accusations were made, for which no proof has ever been offered.

Accusing someone of forgery and then spending two and a half years in the highest courts in the USA trying to avoid having to respond to evidence to the contrary does seem very strange. In any case, after losing its very expensive court cases against Fr Alexander Belya and awaiting the new one for defamation, the new ROCOR has lost yet another battle.  It can no longer resist the consecration of Fr Alexander Belya, already signed off by the old ROCOR under Metr Hilarion (Kapral). However, given the purging of the old canonical ROCOR by the dominant new ROCOR, the consecration will go ahead under the very unpopular and highly controversial Archbishop Elpidiphoros of the Church of Constantinople in North America. He has now called the bluff of very naïve, objecting bishops of other jurisdictions in Northern America and will proceed with the long-awaited consecration.

It is a great pity that few can trust Archbishop Elpidiphoros personally, but no doubt there was no other choice for Fr Alexander in the highly politicised American context. And so the vital forces of the Russian Church in Northern America are going under the Church of Constantinople, as the elderly who know the Tradition die out. We can only imagine the dissatisfaction with ROCOR in Moscow. A candidate for the episcopate and yet another set of good clergy and prosperous parishes lost by ROCOR and this time forced, however reluctantly, to join the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Moscow’s great rival. (Where part of the OCA also wants to go). The living elements of the old ROCOR, are fleeing its new marginality, in Northern America quite logically joining the largest jurisdiction there (the Patriarchate of Constantinople) and in Western Europe quite logically joining the largest jurisdiction there (the Patriarchate of Romania). In both cases all keep the old calendar and all other Russian liturgical customs.

All had been possible, but, according to some, on account of jealousy (Fr Alexander speaks and writes fluent Russian and Ukrainian, unlike those who oppose him), slander and sham ‘defrockings’, those who oppose him have lost nearly everything. First there came notoriety for receiving clergy without letters of release from canonical (= non-schismatic) Local Churches. (Letters of release are necessary to check on the moral conduct of clergy, not if the only objections to the clergy leaving are because they refuse schism, because of political disagreements or if they concern coveting of parishioners’ property on the part of those who do not wish them to leave.

The refusal to issue letters of release for purely political purposes or to try and obtain property illegally is not canonical. And there is no such thing as an oath of obedience to a schismatic bishop!). One Russian priest in London called ROCOR’s uncanonical suspensions ‘null and void’. And as another Russian priest said: ‘If there is no canonical crime, then it means that canon law is simply used as a mechanism of political repression’. (https://uk.yahoo.com/news/russian-orthodox-priests-face-persecution-062625884.html).

Thus, the clergy who left Constantinople for ROCOR were suspended by the Church of Constantinople. This is normal practice, as you do not ‘defrock’ clergy, if they are acting in integrity according to their conscience. Unless, that is, you are some sort of punitive, gaslighting, right-wing sect. Why did so many leave the new ROCOR elsewhere? The ROCOR schism from the Moscow Patriarchal Russian Orthodox Church (to which ROCOR supposedly belongs!) in Western Europe took its toll. This was because the Moscow group in Western Europe receives Catholic clergy in the same way as the rest of the Moscow Patriarchate and the pre-Revolutionary Russian Church, that is, not by rebaptism, like Greek Old Calendarists. This suicidal act of Russian old calendarism on the part of ROCOR cost it sixteen clergy and half of its Diocese in Great Britain. All refused to obey neophyte schismatics – see Canon XV of the First and Second Council. Now ROCOR in Great Britain will never be anything more than an irrelevant, tiny, closed marginal sect.

Then there was the use of electronic signatures, used in utterly vain attempts to bully, gaslight and intimidate. With these acts many have indeed discredited and isolated themselves from canonical Orthodoxy. How long will Moscow tolerate these losses and scandals? At a time like this, the already very isolated Moscow needs allies, not scandals. It has already suffered scandals in the tragic situations in Kiev, Riga, Amsterdam, Madrid, Vilnius and those that are rapidly developing elsewhere. There will come a point when Moscow, with its many parishes which use the new calendar, simply will not accept the threats made to it by the old calendarist American Synod. These threats involve boycotting the workings of the Moscow Patriarchate and are made by the New York Synod because it believes that it has Moscow over a barrel and can get away with anything. It is a dangerous game, because one day after the Ukraine is over Moscow will call its bluff and pull the plugs.

All this is a result of the ROCOR identity crisis. This began after its formal unity with Moscow in 2007, when it at last found universally recognised canonical status, for which we had battled for so long. However, instead of choosing to use this God-given opportunity to contribute to the positive and mainstream construction of new Local Churches in the Diaspora and show political independence from the secular Russian State, it chose negative and censorious self-isolation in an extreme right-wing ghetto and political co-operation with the secular Russian State. So it lost its Ukrainians – and many other normal families, purged by the alt right, long-bearded crazy converts it is introducing. It means that the only Russian Orthodox input into the inevitable new Local Churches in Northern America and Western Europe will come from the free Russian Orthodox, who belong to other Local Churches. Fringe groups with their extremism such as ROCOR will have no involvement. Just like all old calendarist groups, they have nothing to contribute.

Unless, that is, the few remaining Orthodox in ROCOR can at the last moment take back control of the Church from those who usurped power from the saintly, but very weak Metropolitan Hilarion (+ 2022) during the years of his dementia and cancer. This now seems very unlikely, unless the largely convert mini-Synod which took full control of ROCOR through its internal coup can be ousted. At present the new ROCOR is carrying out a purge of all its senior clergy of the St John tradition, all those who belonged to the old ROCOR and are being replaced by ‘Orthobros’ and incels.  Distracted by its loss of the Ukraine, Latvia etc and its desperate search for support in the Diaspora for the Russian State’s political and military battle against the USA in the Ukraine, the Moscow Patriarchate authorities have let things slide in the Diaspora. So badly indeed that the return of ROCOR to canonicity now seems virtually impossible. And that severely compromises Moscow’s own non-ROCOR existence outside Russia only more.

Interestingly, the news of Fr Alexander’s coming consecration was reported by the notoriously biased, American-run but Moscow-based, website ‘orthochristian.com’. This site is well-known for being backed by and publishing the works of very conservative ex-Evangelicals in Northern America. Some have even said that that website has been infiltrated by murky CIA/NATO assets, who started establishing themselves in ROCOR, Vlasovite and Russian-language publishing and broadcasting circles in the Diaspora in the 1960s. In any case that website never prints articles and comments that are critical of the practices of the MP and ROCOR or show up their hypocrisy and disrespect for human rights. It is surely being protected by someone important in the hierarchy in Russia, who knows the emigres well. According to some, he may himself, perhaps by naivety, have been turned and been involved in those murky dealings.

This is possible. After all, we should recall that the US Establishment is now divided between the conservative nationalist patriots of the CIA and the woke cosmopolitan neocons of the Washington State Department. And this situation is strangely very similar to that in the Soviet Union just before its dissolution in 1991. Then that was divided between pro-American liberal Euro-Atlanticists, who overnight transformed themselves from Communists into Capitalist oligarchs, and the patriots/nationalists, centred in the Soviet equivalent to the CIA, which was then called the KGB. And one of the latter was the present Russian nationalist President Putin, at that time a lowly KGB operative in provincial East Germany.

We should not forget that the former US President George Bush Senior (his son was not bright enough) was head of the CIA before himself being elected. Does a parallel between today’s patriotic CIA and the then patriotic KGB exist? Does the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991 indicate the coming collapse of the American Empire? We remember how in the 1970s and then the 1980s, the right-wing Washington ROCOR, of which some were CIA assets (once an asset, always an asset, as the late Fr Mikhail Artsimovich commented to me in 1992), was warmly welcomed into the Reagan White House and the coffers of the CIA generously opened to it. Now it is payback time, return on investment. We gave you then, now you will obey us. You cannot escape the murk, once you have joined it, you are signed up for life. You have sold your soul.

What is clear is that the new ROCOR is collapsing. It is not for families. We have often asked ourselves what the righteous people, priests and bishops of the old ROCOR, so many of whom we knew well, would have done. What would the ever-memorable St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, Fr Seraphim (Rose), Archbishop Antony of Geneva (who never defrocked anyone) and Metr Laurus (Shkurla) have done, given the present convert sectarianisation? Their Church has now been taken over by the descendants of those who suspended and put St John on trial in 1964, who persecuted Fr Seraphim in the 1970s and Archbishop Antony in the 1980s and 1990s and ourselves since 2007.

Surely, if they had still been alive in the years following 2007 and saw they risked losing control of the New York Synod to the murky mini-Synod, which had already begun forming as long ago as 2001 after the Metr Vitaly fiasco, they would have closed down the separate Synod in New York. Then, seeing the convert immaturity and uncanonical actions, Moscow would have taken ROCOR under its direct control. Moscow then would surely have proceeded towards the regionalisation and Metropolitanisation of ROCOR, as so many of us and the Patriarch Kyrill of the time had so much wanted, as he told us quite clearly in the Danilov Monastery in Moscow in May 2012.

This would have helped towards founding the coming foundation of the four Diaspora Local Churches, in Western Europe, Northern America, Latin America and Oceania. In this way the New York Synod could never have been diverted from its Christian path by insecure ‘One True Church’ converts and the other psychologically troubled with their murky connections. It is probably too late for this, for the Persecuted Church has become the Persecuting Church and the way back seems impossible. It is too late for any ‘Make ROCOR Great Again’. This is what happens when the spiritual is supplanted by the political and the financial. In history such people were ruled by a Sanhedrin and they were called pharisees.

However, we should not doubt in Divine Providence. The saints came to rescue us from the ROCOR schism and even now they are gathering together with St John of Shanghai. We shall see great changes in the near future, as the Holy Spirit takes over from evil men, their hearts full of hatred. Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!