Category Archives: The Ukraine

The Persecution of the Church in the Ukraine

Metropolitan Longin (Zhar) is a Ukrainian bishop, who is renowned for his good works, looking after orphans, and for his courage. He is well-known to several of our parishioners in Colchester, who have made pilgrimages to him. Now he has been interviewed about the Zelensky persecutions in the Ukraine:

Sources:

https://cont.ws/@slavikapple/2468033

Источник: antena3.ro

The Antena 3 (Romania) TV channel has shown a long interview with Metropolitan Longin (Zhar), the abbot of the Ascension Banchensky Monastery of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the Chernivtsi region, about the atrocities of the Ukrainian special services.

“They are destroying us, but we just have to stand up for Christ and for the faith. The Ukrainian special services entered the Chernivtsi Metropolia at night with machine guns, they stood the clergy up against the wall, they broke the windows. They entered convents, knocked over nuns and stood on their heads with their heels,” said Vladyka Longin.

Earlier, the Romanian politician, the former MP Zhelu Vishan, publicly accused the President of Ukraine of poisoning Longinus. At the same time, he called Vladimir Zelensky “a stinker and a nonentity.”

In Romania, Bishop Longin is considered an ethnic Romanian, close to the Transcarpathian Diaspora of the Ukraine. He speaks Romanian and preaches in it. At the same time, the Metropolitan condemned the actions of Russia, speaking to the parishioners. In 2017, he refused to pray for the health of the Patriarch of Moscow, accusing him of ecumenism.

Another Romanian TV channel, Romania TV, showed a film about the Zelensky regime’s abuse of Romanians in Ukraine.

There is a story in the film about how a fanatic entered the Church of the Conception of Christ in Vinnitsa, overturned the crucifix and tore icons down from the walls. The criminal cut the throat of the parish priest, Anthony Kovtonyuk, with a razor and ran away, leaving him in a pool of blood.

The priest was taken to the intensive care unit in a critical condition. And a member of the Synod of the UOC Melety was deprived of Ukrainian citizenship by the decision of the President of Ukraine.

Thus, the public is being prepared for the fact that several Ukrainian dioceses may join the Romanian Orthodox Church due to persecution. Or maybe not only dioceses, but even regions. After all, television relates the persecution of Christians in those regions of Ukraine where ethnic Romanians live.

 

 

 

 

An Old New Year’s Q and A 2023

Q: Both Russians and Ukrainians are supposed to be Orthodox Christians and belong to exactly the same Church, so why is there this scandal of a war between them, with over 150,000 Ukrainian and over 15,000 Russian dead so far? All Orthodox, but killing each other? What is all this about?

A: First of all, if the dead and the living were actually Orthodox, I would agree with you, but that is not the case. First of all, many of the casualties on both sides are not even baptised. Secondly, on the Russian side, quite a few are Muslims and on the Ukrainian side thousands of the dead are Polish mercenaries and hundreds Canadian, American, British (well over 100 dead) and Croat mercenaries. Thirdly, about half of the Ukrainians are not Orthodox, but Catholics, Protestants or schismatics. And finally, most of the remaining ones, the Orthodox, are Orthodox in name only, that is, they are only baptised, not practising, just nominally Orthodox. This war reminds us of just how few real Orthodox there are. Yes, there are Orthodox, but how many are Christians? That is the key question.

Let us remember that in the First and Second World Wars, many Germans were Protestants, as were most of the British. They still slaughtered each other, just as Catholic Germans and Catholic Poles slaughtered one another in the Second War, or, long before, Catholic Englishmen and Catholic Frenchmen in the Hundred Years War.

And in 1912-1913 Serbs and Bulgarians were killing each other. Both were supposedly Orthodox. And in the Second World War, the Romanian government became Fascist and sided with Hitler, and so Romanian soldiers had to fight against Russians. However, the Russians were Communists. It was not so much a war between Romanian Orthodox and Russian Orthodox, as between a Fascist government and a Communist government. You have to remember that. So today, there is no war between the Ukraine and Russia. The war is between Washington and Moscow. The Ukrainians, like most Western Europeans, are just naïve pawns or proxies in the Great American Game to continue its world domination.

We live in the age of nominal Orthodoxy. The results are to be seen not just in the Ukraine and Russia, but all over Western Europe. There are large numbers of nominal Russian Orthodox of various nationalities, but very few churches for them. Thus, of the 140,000 Ukrainian refugees in the UK, there is only one community – of fewer than 40. Even supposing that half the Ukrainian refugees are not Orthodox anyway, fewer than 40 out of 70,000 is about 1 in 2,000 who go to church! The priest himself told me that he despairs. True, we have about 15 Ukrainians in Colchester, but we find ourselves obliged to teach them fundamentals like how to take a blessing. Some are not even baptised.

Many Orthodox in the Ukraine and Russia are only there for a career and money. There have been so many scandals – I have seen it in the many visits I have made to both countries over the last fifteen years. It is clear that several clergy are probably atheists.

Q: What is the main pastoral problem in the Orthodox Church in general?

A: I think it is the fact that there are hardly any parishes, in the sense of Christian communities. This is a problem all over the world, except in villages, but we can take two examples locally. Russians who attend the two Russian churches in London say one resembles a busy railway station, the other a gloomy and exclusive ghetto. As a result, there is a huge turnover of parishioners, with an almost entirely different group of parishioners every few years. Huge numbers have been through both churches over the last 30 years, but only once or twice in that time. They do not stay. The constant core is tiny.

As a result of this absence of community life, there are huge losses. Many Russians from the Baltics, as well as from the Ukraine, have left both those churches. One of the problems here is mixed marriages. English husbands do not want to attend churches where they cannot understand a word. Some Russians now even attend Anglican churches and tell me that at least they are treated like human-beings there and do not have to endure nasty comments from Russian nationalists and (sometimes) Non-Russian sectarian converts. It seems as though these churches can only keep and only want Russians from Russia or those who want to pretend to be Russian. They live in a ghetto, where the persecution of Russians from outside Russia, by Russians from inside Russia, seems to be allowed.

Q: In that case, the case of ghettos and nationalism, missionary work has become impossible. Who will take up the mission?

A: Missionary work in churches which behave like this is at an end. They are anti-pastoral. It is very sad. It is the total rejection of the work of St Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow, who gathered all Orthodox together in the USA at the start of the twentieth century. It is the total rejection of the great and holy legacy of St John of Shanghai and of the authentic old ROCOR outside Russia after the time of St Tikhon. It is the total rejection of the spirit of the New Martyrs and Confessors inside Russia.

Who will take up the mission, since both Russians and Greeks appear to have have cancelled and eliminated themselves for the moment? The Ukrainians? The Romanians? The Moldovans? All have nominal faithful in the millions in Western Europe. That makes them easily the majority of nominal Orthodox, both in the UK and in Western Europe. But do they have faith? And do they have the necessary leadership? All I know is that we shall continue to do missionary work in our own parishes. The rest will have to solve their own problems.

Q: How does the Orthodox Church cope with the assimilation of children born to immigrants in the Diaspora?

A: Sadly, it does not. I remember 30 years ago meeting a youngish man, whose grandparents had been White Russians and come to England in 1919. The youngish man, then in his thirties, had just been circumcised, i.e. become a Jew. He said he had been attracted by Jewish spirituality. Nothing new here, remember Fr/St Sophrony Sakharov, who already before the Revolution had left his upper middle-class family background and become a Hindu for the same reason. He had found no spiritual food in the nominal Russian Orthodoxy around him. He had to be converted by a semi-literate peasant, the future St Silvanus.

Virtually all the descendants of White Russians from after 1917 (and remember that only 10% of them were practising Orthodox) have been assimilated and lost to the Church everywhere. The only older ones you sometimes meet are descendants of the post-1945 immigration. All the rest are from the Soviet emigration, post-1991. This is the case in both the MP and the ROCOR churches in London. Both would have died out completely had the USSR not collapsed and new Russians moved here from all over the old USSR. But already many of their children, who speak to me in English, have lapsed. They have been assimilated and are lost to the Church.

Today in the UK exactly the same has happened to the descendants of Greek Cypriots who settled here in the 50s and 60s. Their parishes are dying out and the clergy are nearly all very old. There are now over twenty Greek Cypriot Anglican vicars. I met one about twenty years ago and asked why he had done this. His first answer was that he did not understand a word of Greek and then on top of that the Anglicans gave their vicars a free house and a good salary. He said: ‘Why not?’

Q: Why are Orthodox so different? Why don’t you have pews and organs like we do?

A: Your question reminds me of someone who came to visit us eighteen months ago and asked us why we don’t have any VIPs or rich people in our church! I answered him that we don’t have VIPs or rich people, but we do have Christ. Similarly, we don’t have pews and organs, we have the Tradition. Nor do we have converts, we have Orthodox.

Q: Why did Communism spread mainly in Orthodox countries?

A: As one Romanian said to me some 20 years ago: ‘Communism is Orthodox Christianity without Christ’. In the same way we can say that: Fascism is Catholicism without the Pope and Capitalism is Protestantism without morality.

Q: What is the difference between the sacramental theologies of Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants?

A: To be very brief and very general:

Protestantism has no sacramental theology because it has no sacraments. (Exceptionally, the sacrament of baptism, by water in the Name of the Holy Spirit, is the only one which can be conferred by a layman).

Catholicism believes that sacraments are conferred only by clergy who have the authority to do so from the Pope, as he alone holds the Holy Spirit. (Some ‘Papist’ Orthodox like to imitate this!). For them there is no Christ and therefore no Church and therefore Holy Spirit and therefore no sacraments without the Papacy.

Orthodoxy believes that any priest who confesses the Creed, established in the fourth century, and has been ordained by an Orthodox bishop who has canonical apostolic succession, that is, who is in communion with all the other bishops of His Local Orthodox Church, can transfer the grace of the Holy Spirit and so confer the sacraments. Hence the grave spiritual danger of being out of communion with other bishops of the same Local Church and even more the danger if he denies the sacraments of the other bishops of his own Local Church., let alone other Local Churches. That is called schism because it denies the catholicity of the Church and isolates from the Holy Spirit.

Q: What practical differences did leaving ROCOR make to your churches?

A: The first and immediate difference was that we could put out for public veneration the icon of St Sophrony, whom I knew very well. Before that we had been banned from putting it out for those who wished to venerate him. But, far more importantly, the difference is the fact that we can now concelebrate with other priests and other priests can concelebrate with us, notably Romanians, Antiochians and Greeks. Previously, that too had been banned by the sectarian and schismatic mentality in charge. As I have worked all my life for the catholicity of the Church and against the spirit of sects, cults and schism, that has been vitally rewarding to me.

Q: Why does homosexuality penetrate Church life?

A: This always happens in periods of decadence, whether in the first century or in the twenty-first century. There is nothing new in it. The Apostle Paul warns of it. Homosexuality and, perhaps even more often, bisexuality, become the norm among the clergy in periods of decadence. The problem always begins among the episcopate, as with the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the twentieth century (Archbishop Athenagoras, for example), as such bishops ordain their friends, homosexuals and bisexuals, to the clergy, and so form a self-protective mafia. In the USA this problem is enormous.

It is curious how these people call themselves ‘gay’, when in fact they are sad. It is rather like those who call themselves ‘woke’, which means (spiritually) asleep (if not actually dead), not ‘awake’ at all. What is also curious is that the open homosexuals are generally associated with syncretism, left-wing liberalism and modernism (Archbishop Athenagoras), and the repressed and angry homosexuals are generally associated with ultra-conservative right-wingery, phariseeism, misogyny, conspiracy theories and even Fascism. Both witness to a total lack of Love, jealousy and hatred.

Q: Do you feel bitter against the Russian Church for the way they treated you after your nearly 50 years of unpaid missionary service on its behalf?

A: Not in the slightest! What concerns me is what is popularly called ‘karma’, or ‘what goes round, comes round’. As Newton said in his third law: ‘To every action there is always an equal reaction’. All those individuals who persecuted us have died, fallen ill, lost their careers or otherwise been punished. And there is more to come for them. As the Apostle wrote nearly 2,000 years ago, ‘God is not mocked’ and ‘Our God is a consuming fire’. You just cannot get away with it. I have seen it so very often down the decades. Sadly, they will all be punished, or rather, punish themselves, and well before the Last Judgement. This is why we pray for them all. I tremble in their place. If you act without integrity, without a conscience, without principles, against the spiritual and moral law, only out of self-interest, you will suffer. It is inevitable. People like that always end up outside the Church.

Our mistreatment is a loss for the Russian Church, but not for Orthodox Christianity. However, the damage the Russian Church has done to itself is incalculable. Everybody now says: Look at Fr Andrew, he sacrificed his life and career and learned to speak almost perfect Russian and they, who spoke Russian very badly, if at all, mistreated him and all his in that way. Such people will say: ‘There’s no way I will ever have anything to do with the Russian Church, especially not with ROCOR, given the way they treated him’. It was all a spiritual death-wish. The point is that if people really want to commit suicide in the Russian Church, you cannot stop them. I know, I tried to stop them – and failed!

If others who call themselves Russian Orthodox, but who are not, lapse from Orthodoxy, we, on the other hand, do not and will not lapse. When the Russian Church is free again after this terrible political war in the Ukraine is over, we shall see. How is it ever going to rebuild itself? Only on the foundations of St Seraphim of Sarov, St John of Kronstadt, St John of Shanghai and the New Martyrs and Confessors, including the Imperial Martyrs, who are why I am part of the real Russian Church, the Universal Church. It will mean rejecting politics, careerism, love of money and luxury, big black cars and bling, that the Church is not a business. It will mean understanding that money is for doing good, not for filling churches with gold and marble and sewing vestments with gold thread. The tragedy is that some have repeated exactly the same mistakes as before the Revolution. You can join the prophets or join those who stone the prophets. It is your choice. I know where I stand.

In any case, we have always served and will always serve Christ and His Orthodox Church first and foremost, not some manmade branch of it and all its corruption. We believe in the ‘Orthodox Catholic Church’, not some political and nationalist outlier, however big it may be on paper. Quality, not quantity!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The World and the Church after 2022

Introduction: After the Military Campaign

The date of 24 February 2022 has already gone down in world history. We come to the end of a vital crossroads year and a revolution that happens only once every 500 years. With the end of Western Conquistador Civilisation, we try to peer over the horizon into 2023 and beyond. What will come after the Ukrainian war is over? Some who follow Western reporting of that conflict may be surprised by this statement. However, that reporting has been a strange mixture of delusional fantasies/wishful thinking and straightforward propaganda organised by the secret services, omitting truth, logic and reality. Journalists have been ordered to report such nonsense from on high (otherwise, they would have lost their careers and their income). Such reporting has essentially been destined to try and keep Western peoples under control in the hardships they are facing as a result of the suicidal decisions of their pro-US political elites. The US elite is making use of the meagre resources of its NATO vassals (so-called ‘allies’), using as its battlefield the Ukraine and as its cannon fodder Ukrainians and mercenaries. But Russian victory is inevitable, even if delayed because the US wants to make the Ukraine into its Second Vietnam.

The Western elite wants to fight ‘to the last Ukrainian’. (“We don’t care how many Ukrainians will die. How many women, children, civilians and military. We don’t care. Ukraine cannot take the peace decision. The peace decision can only be taken in Washington. But for now we want to continue this war, we will fight to the last Ukrainian.” Former US Senator Richard Blake). Therefore it is supplying all sorts of lethal arms for hundreds of thousands more of them to die and be wounded. Even if some in NATO dare to send more tens of thousands of their ‘willing’ to the slaughter in the Ukraine directly, and not in Ukrainian uniform, as with the tens of thousands of mainly Polish mercenaries at present, many of them already dead, that victory is still inevitable. Russia has been preparing for a full-scale Continental war ever since 2014. Even if next year the 200,000 strong Polish Army and reservists attack, armed to the teeth by the USA, Russia is ready. Although the prophecies of the saints and elders indicate May 2024 as the end of this ten-year long war (the US elite started it through their Ukrainian puppets in 2014), prophecies are always conditional on repentance and we should not try to determine exact details from them. Whatever happens, the next few years are going to see revolutionary transformations worldwide as a result of this war.

The New World Order

The most dramatic event after its defeat in the Ukraine will surely be the retreat of the USA, as it is expelled from Eurasia, a process which began in Vietnam and then continued in Iraq and Afghanistan. The nationalist Trump wanted to withdraw voluntarily, but he was not allowed to, therefore the humiliating US withdrawal will happen by force, as it did in Kabul. ‘Yanks, go home’, chants the whole world, including many in Western Europe, tired of US tyranny. In Eurasia the US now occupies only a few islands (Taiwan, Japan, Singapore), the tips of two peninsulas (Korea and Western Europe) and the seaboard edge Israel. It will have to leave all of these, except for the Non-Palestinian parts of Israel. Taiwan will naturally return to China, Japan will have to find its own way, reconciling itself to a reunited Korea and submitting itself to China economically. For Western Europe, see below.

Once home, the USA will have to lick its wounds and be deoligarchised by popular revolt. The dedollarisation of the world economy is already under way, with very serious consequences for the deindustrialised US economy. The American Empire will undergo deimperialisation, like the European Empires after 1945, and, if at all possible, have to find some sort of unity, identity and sovereignty in its highly polarised, highly indebted and highly fragilised situation. Outside the US, the world chants ‘Yanks, go home’, but inside the US, ordinary Americans chant: ‘Feds, go home’. It is the same thing. The swamp must be drained. The departure of the USA from Western Europe after its eighty-year long occupation will mean the end of the already much disarmed and futile NATO. The suicidal bankruptcy of the European countries will also lead to the end of NATO’s political and economic arm, the EU.

This will mean the reconfiguration of the tip of the European peninsula and its resovereignisation, a process which has already begun in Hungary. In the Western Balkans, Camp Bondsteel, the second largest US base in the world, will be abandoned, and Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Bosnia will rearrange themselves in the post-American world, the world of long-awaited justice. The future of Europe is not thousands of miles across the Atlantic, but eastwards, next door, in its natural sources of energy, food, fertiliser and manufactures. Europe as a separate Continent is after all a pure fiction, an artificial construct which was created from and cut off from the Eurasian landmass for purely political reasons. Europe is about to learn this, as it returns to its roots, which Russia alone has kept. A Russian-led Europe provides the prospect of a unity of sovereign but confederal Northern Eurasia ‘from sea to shining sea’, in fact, from Reykjavik to Tokyo. It is the future, in which the USA is utterly irrelevant. Its ‘lies-based order’ of genocidal chaos is over.

Inside Russia itself the transformation has already begun, with treacherous members of the ‘creative class’ gone to their spiritual home in Israel, with Pugachova and Zelensky, as well as across the borders to Georgia and Finland. This cleansing process and the ensuing Re-Russification of Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus will go far. After the deviations of 200 years of Imperial Russia – and there were very serious deviations then – otherwise Tsar Nicholas II would not have wanted to return to pre-Imperial Russia, to ‘Rus’ and there would never have been 1917 – 75 years of Marxist Sovietisation and 30 corrupt years of the Americanisation and so oligarchisation, the transformation has far to go. There will be a great and radical refreshing and cleansing of national identity after this unheard-of period of decadence and corruption, which ultimately stretches back over 300 years. All Russian institutions, including the still Sovietised Church, together with its small branches founded by post-1917 emigres, will be transformed. The uncompromised Russian Church, freed from the moneychangers, will arise from the embarrassing ruins of the past. The past is over. The arrival of the future in 2022 has made it all so irrelevant.

The New Christian Order

As regards the current versions of Western Christianity, Protestantism (1517-2017) is largely a spent force within the Western world, its 500-year best before date is up. Just as it was launched by printing technology, it has been ended by internet technology. Puritanism preached ‘Hate the sin and especially hate the sinner’, now its just as aggressive descendant, Wokeism, preaches, ‘Love the sinner and especially love the sin’. In other words, all is permitted. The once full churches of Protestantism close down in their hundreds every year in the Western world. It was what it was, a moralising and White Supremacist blip in history, both for good, as in keeping promises, honesty, integrity and moral uprightness, and for bad, as in the ruthless and unsustainable exploitation of human and natural resources, including slavery, the obsession with money and saving money, as well as boring and iconoclastic philistinism caused by narrow-minded bigotry, and the tragic, rigid, literalist, moralising, unnatural and pharisaical repression of human nature, causing crass hypocrisy and misogyny, to the point of the slaughter of women as ‘witches’.

As for Roman Catholicism, throwing out the baby with the bathwater, it was taken over by the CIA in the early sixties to be used as a political battering ram against the USSR. And it too is also largely a spent force (1054-2054?) in the Western world. Covered-up pedophilia and the misogyny of compulsorily unmarried and frustrated clerics, some of them perverts, now exposed, are killing it off. Little wonder that some say that the present Pope is the last one. However, if Catholicism can be freed of American and European political stooges and cleansed of its inherent millennial secularism, it at least can return to roots (Protestantism as a schismatic, splintering protest opinion movement has in itself no roots to return to). Liberated from Rome, the people now called ‘Catholics’ can reflourish in new forms, especially in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia, providing that Catholicism goes native, yet remains traditional, and the Global South’s clergy’s almost universal, but hypocritically concealed marriages can be recognised officially. This will mean Catholicism divesting itself of the secularist and corrupt Western Middle Ages and returning to the spirit of the pre-Roman Catholic Faith of first millennium Western Europe.

As regards the Non-Western, Orthodox Church, the 200 million in the at present fifteen local branches of the Orthodox Church, the Dewesternisation revolution will be just as radical. At present there is the 7%, the 14 million of the Greek Churches of Constantinople, Greece, Cyprus, Alexandria and Jerusalem. Once the US Establishment, which stands behind them all and meddles intensively in their affairs, has retreated, freedom will come to them at last. As for the Russian Church, the 70% or 140 million, just as for the 23% or 46 million of the other Non-Greek Churches, in Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Antioch, Macedonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Albania, the revolution will also necessarily be radical. They are all going to have to be freed from the Western disease of worldliness:

‘And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all those who sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, and said to them: It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves’.

The Future of the Russian Church outside the Western World

The whole Russian political campaign over the last twenty-two years to move towards a multipolar/polycentric world is now coming to fruition. The Big Four, Russian, China, India and Iran, are being joined by many countries from all Continents in the Global South in huge and powerful Non-Western organisations like BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), the SCO (Shanghai Co-operation Organisation) and the EEU (Eurasian Economic Union), to form a new G20 to replace the failed American vassal one. Now this multipolar/polycentric world, inherently anti-centralist, will be reflected in Church life. The old and failed centralisation of Constantinople and Moscow especially, which has always brought corruption in its wake, will eventually disappear in the global internet age of transparency and diversity, where people are seen for what they are. This is a warning to all tyrants and bullies. Your secrets are being found out. Your time is up.

Russian nationalists and old-fashioned centralisers believe that once Russia has taken over the Ukraine, the Church in the Ukraine will return to being part of the Russian Church. This is absurd. The Russian campaign has made most real Ukrainians into disaffected enemies of everything Russian. A military and political victory is only military and political. In the New Ukraine (or whatever it will be called), with a majority Orthodox population of between 10 and 20 million, inhabited by real Ukrainians, the people will simply refuse to attend Russian churches. There are already over thirty independent Ukrainian parishes under Metr Onufry in the Diaspora. The insistence on Soviet-style centralism that has caused the appalling mess in the Russian Orthodox Church in the Ukraine, as also in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and in the Western world, will have to be remedied. Just as new Autocephalous Churches were eventually founded (as late as the 1950 and 1970s) in Poland, Czechoslovakia and ‘America’ (as well as Autonomous Churches for the very small flocks in Japan and China), Autocephalous Churches will inevitably be founded as a result of the break-up of the Soviet Union. Thirty years have passed. It is high time.

The many dioceses of the Russian Church outside the Union State of the Russian Federation and Belarus have lost their multinationalism. That has finally been destroyed in the last ten months in the Ukraine. Exarchates like that already in Belarus will not be enough elsewhere, though no doubt new Exarchates will be founded in countries like Kazakhstan. The Church in Moldova, already 20% under the Romanian Patriarchate, may perhaps not even become an Exarchate, but rather an autonomous part of the Romanian Orthodox Church, using the old calendar and with its own customs, just as our own Moldovan/Russian/ Romanian group of parishes in England already does.

The Russian Church is set to become a Family of Autocephalous Churches, perhaps relatively close to the Mother-Church, like the Church of Poland, the Church of the Czechs and Slovaks and the OCA in America, but still fully independent of it. This is the best left-behind Moscow can hope for now. The process has already long been under way. Moscow will just have to recognise reality as a fait accompli. Reality will dawn. The grassroots have voted. You cannot force people to belong to an alien Church. Thus, there will be formed a new ‘Byzantine Commonwealth’, not just of the Russian, Polish and Czechoslovak Churches, but, we think, perhaps with as many as eight more new Local Churches. This could bring the total number of Local Churches, recognised by all, from fifteen to twenty-three. We suggest that new Autocephalous, not Autonomous, Churches, because the numbers are too great for that, will be founded in the Non-Western world in:

  1. The Ukraine. Nobody knows what will become of the former 25 provinces of the typically Soviet-centralised, because wholly Communist-invented, Ukraine. It seems likely that between 7 and 12 of them will return to Russia, as 5 already have by large democratic majorities, 3 may return to Poland, 1 to Romania and 1 to Hungary. (The latter could in turn become the foundation for a future Hungarian Orthodox Church). But whatever the New Ukraine will look like, it will have its own, Ukrainian-speaking, Autocephalous Church.
  2. The Baltics. Finland (that is, all the Orthodox in Finland who want to live on the Orthodox Paschalia, which is a definition of canonical Orthodoxy), Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania together have a large enough Orthodox population and enough bishops to form their own Autocephalous Church. A Church for these Four Nations will put paid to any petty, provincial nationalism.
  3. South-East Asia. The present Exarchate of South-East Asia will in time become at least one Autocephalous Church, though its territory may be defined differently from now.
  4. Africa. Whatever may be thought of the recent Russian initiative there, it is now too late for the Russian Church to give up its Exarchate of some 200 parishes and clergy in Africa – even if it wanted too. The colonial Greek Church of Alexandria has had little future for a long time. It had many missionary chances and dismissed most of them over the centuries. A nominal flock of perhaps one million out of a population of one billion Africans is not convincing as a missionary effort. The at present Russian Exarchate in Africa will relatively soon have native African bishops – candidates are already studying in Russia – and it will in time become an Autocephalous, and genuine, African Orthodox Church, albeit 1,700 years late.

The Future of the Russian Church inside the Western World

At present the CIA and its daughter-agencies manipulate much of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Western world, just as it does the Patriarchate of Constantinople. It interferes in Orthodoxy, just as it does in Catholicism, there using the Papacy as its stooge, here bishops. Divide and rule is the slogan and it has successfully done that, polarising into liberal Greeks and conservative Russians. Both groups are manipulated and infiltrated by exactly the same secularism, according to their inherent political weaknesses. It is time to solve the Diaspora problem at last. 100 years late. We suggest that new Autocephalous Churches will be founded in the Western world in:

  1. Northern America. Unlike the term ‘North America’, this geographical term means the USA and Canada, together with some northern islands like Bermuda. Here missionaries can build on the OCA, renaming it the NAOC (North American Orthodox Church). The OCA was vital and brave, yet flawed, because of the Cold War and because it despised parts of the Tradition. If co-operation between Greeks, Russians, Arabs, Serbs, Romanians, Bulgarians, Albanians and others can be achieved without imperialist condescension and political and nationalist meddling from Greeks and Russians in particular, there is real hope that a new Local Church can be founded.
  2. Latin America. Stretching over a vast territory from Argentina to Mexico and including the Caribbean, here there is a great need for a new Local Church, though much input must come from the Arab Orthodox world.
  3.  Oceania. Centred in Australia, here there is a great need for a new Local Church, though much input must come from the Greek Orthodox world.
  4. Western Europe. This has far more Orthodox than any other part of the Western world. Now 80% are Romanians/Moldovans (a quarter of Romania, over 4,000,000 Orthodox, and a third of Moldova, 1,400,000 Orthodox, live in Western Europe, especially in Spain, Italy, Germany and England. There are also over 1,000,000 Greeks, Russians, Serbs, Bulgarians, Arabs, Ukrainians and others. It is really scandalous that there is not already a Local Church – the WEOC. First Greeks and then Russians have lacked the courage and will to follow the canons. The hopes we once had in them have been dashed by their nationalist politics. The great responsibility for the future now appears to lie in the hands of by far the largest and by far the most recent immigrant group, the Romanians and Moldovans.

Conclusion: Build Up the Church of God or Die in Irrelevance

New Local Churches are going to appear outside the Western world. This, outside the Western world, may be a fairly straightforward matter for the Russian Church. Inside the Western world, it is a far more complex matter because of the present multi-jurisdictional situation. It does not depend on Russians. They lost their chance. The solution will demand diplomatic talent and co-operation, between Romanian, Greek, Russian, Arab, Serbian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Georgian Orthodox. All of them have diasporas. National dioceses and deaneries can be set up within a multinational structure not dominated by any one nationality, as to a large extent Northern America lived under the future St Tikhon of Moscow some 120 years ago. So much time has been wasted through political meddling and nationalist despotism and it is still being wasted now. Russians refused to learn from the mistakes of Greeks and Greeks refused to learn from the mistakes of Russians.

Any extremists who do not want to co-operate because they are flag-waving nationalists (that is, secularists) will be left to one side. Any ecumenist modernists who do not even want to celebrate Easter on the Orthodox calendar will also be left to one side. The same goes for right-wing sectarian groups like the new ROCOR (the old ROCOR was sadly killed off in infamy by love of the dollar and greed for power) and other old calendarist groups who do not want to belong to the Church of 200 million, but only to tiny exclusivist ghettos. They too will be left to one side. The exclusivists who refuse to co-operate with other Local Churches, in the pharisees’ imagination of their proud hearts thinking themselves superior to them, have lost their purpose, their raison d’etre. As sectarians, they have made themselves irrelevant, discrediting themselves with cultish and hypocritical practices and attempts at intimidation, threats and guru-style mind control. As for us, we simply ignore them and continue to build!

 

December 2018-December 2022: On Becoming a Local Church

After the Liturgy for the Feast of the Entrance into the Temple of the Mother of God on Sunday 4th December, Fr Andrew was interviewed informally about the present situation of the Orthodox Church. Below is the slightly edited interview.

 

Q: What would you say about the events in the Orthodox Churches over the last four years?

A: The present very tragic situation of the Local Orthodox Churches is such that I almost feel nostalgic for the first third of my Orthodox life, before 1989, during the Cold War. In those days there were two groups of Local Churches: those in front of the Berlin Wall and those behind the Berlin Wall. All was clear. You knew exactly why some spoke in one way (because they had a Communist gun in their backs) and why others spoke in another way (because they had an anti-Communist gun in their backs). The first were involuntary hostages, the second were voluntary hostages.

I did not think I would live to see the present chaos, which has accumulated as a result of the errors over the last thirty-three years. First of all, precisely in December 2018, exactly four years ago, the Church of Constantinople, backed by the USA, for purely political and financial reasons started a major schism with the Russian Church in the Ukraine (it had already started a minor one in Estonia, back, I think, in 1994). This 2018 event was the foundation of the OCU, or ‘Poroshenko’s Orthodox Church’ (PCU), as it is called in Ukrainian. Result? The Russian Church refused to concelebrate or have anything to do with the Church of Constantinople and all those who supported it, for example, the Church of Alexandria. In so doing, however, it locked itself into isolation.

Then, in 2019, the small New-York-based Diaspora part of the Russian Church began taking numerous clergy and churches from Constantinople. This caused even more division and controversy. Then, exactly two years ago, in December 2020, the same fraction started a schism with the other Diaspora part of the same Russian Church, which is based in Paris. So there developed a still unresolved schism inside the Russian Church itself! A Church in schism with itself. What have we come to? Then, a year later, in December 2021, the Russian Church formed a schism in Africa, taking nearly 200 clergy and parishes from the Patriarchate of Alexandria, nearly half of its total number of missions there.

As if that was not enough, on 24 February 2022 the Russian Federation invaded the Ukraine and most of the hierarchy of the Russian Church backed the action. From this highly divisive moment on, the once multinational Russian Church started splitting into different Churches, the Russian, the Ukrainian, the Latvian, and perhaps tomorrow the Estonian, the Moldovan and the Lithuanian (where the situation is already dire after the uncanonical defrockings of clergy for merely expressing a different political viewpoint from the Russian Patriarch).

As a result, the Russian Orthodox parishes in Western Europe are cruelly affected, for a majority of their clergy and people are not Russians from Russia, but Baltic Russians, Ukrainians, Moldovans etc. So people have left those parishes, many of which are now undermined. Therefore new parishes of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (not the tiny and uncanonical OCU) have been opened for the (so far) four million Ukrainian refugees in Western Europe. The situation is catastrophically divisive.

Oh, for the good old days of the Cold War! It was all so simple then.

The whole situation is in an out of control spiral. Where will it end? What has happened over the last four years – most of the events taking place every December – is that the century-old uncanonical chaos of the Diaspora, with its multiple jurisdictions, has been spread to Estonia, the Ukraine and Africa and may very well spread elsewhere. For example, it now looks as though Cyprus is going to be affected in the same way, with two jurisdictions developing there too.

This is all due to a problem of lack of authority in the Church, caused by those who are more interested in politics than in Christ. And here authority is very different from bullying authoritarianism. Authority comes from the Holy Spirit, whereas authoritarianism comes from a perverted human spirit.

Little wonder that the Vatican is looking on and saying: ‘What do you expect, look at the chaos of the Orthodox Churches, always at each others’ throats, because they do not have the Pope in control and guaranteeing unity’. Of course, that is nonsense. Anyone who knows anything about the schismatic situations within the Roman Catholic Church knows it to be nonsense. Nevertheless, there is a problem and that problem can only be solved by the highest organ of authority in the Church, a real Orthodox Council, free of politics. Sadly, at the present time the chances of that are probably as small as they were fifty years ago. We have not moved forwards at all. However, miracles do happen.

Q: What do you think will happen in the Ukraine?

A: The arms and army of Russia will win against the very weak and now even weaker NATO in the very risky war that the US began there in 2014. For there has never been a war between Russia and the Ukraine. The latter is just a location for the NATO battles. The war has always been purely between Russia and NATO. The Ukrainians and the huge number of mainly Polish mercenaries there have only been pawns and cannon fodder for the USA, just like the now increasingly arm-less NATO. The new cemetery for them in Poland has 1,200 dead so far.

However, the coming Russian victory in the face of the lack of real support for Kiev on the part of the now bankrupt West, does not solve the pastoral problem. You can conquer a country, but you cannot force its people to attend your churches. There will have to be an Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church, without mention of a Russian Patriarch. The only very unlikely chance of unity would be if there were to be a Ukrainian Patriarch of the whole Russian Church and the ‘Moscow’ title was dropped from it altogether. Then the once multinational Russian Church might be restored.

Q: But surely this is just another Cold War situation, with the Church divided as before into two, East and West?

A: Not at all. It is far more complex than that. There are now three groups of Local Orthodox Churches. There is the Russian Church all by itself in the first ‘group’ and the US-backed Constantinople/Alexandrian Churches in the second group. Those two groups are at daggers drawn. Then, there is the third group, the thirteen other Local Churches. The thirteen others are the only ones that are in communion with everyone, Greek and Russian alike, but still independent of both of them.

True, the Cypriot and Greek Churches may well be forced by political pressure from the local US ambassadors to join the Constantinople/Alexandria group. This would leave only eleven in the third group, independent of both Russian and American politics. However, it seems as if more new Local Churches will also be founded and increase the number of those eleven. Certainly, Autocephalous Ukrainian and Latvian Churches would join that group and any others that might come into existence, for example, perhaps in Moldova. Quite simply, nobody wants to be too close to the Russian or Constantinople Churches at the present time, but all want to remain distant from them and any schismatic actions.

Q: So there is great disunity in the Church?

A: Tragically, yes. For instance, if I think about the Russian-French parish where I used to serve in Meudon, a suburb of Paris, I can clearly see this disunity. In Meudon there used to be only one church, the one where I served. It united everyone locally. Now there are three small parishes in the same small suburb and none of them is in communion with each other! There is the one where I served, which sadly has become very closed, almost club-like and very much Russian only, excluding Non-Russians and even Russians who do not have a certain spirit. Secondly, there is a very modernist Greek parish, which mainly uses French, and finally there is an old calendarist Greek parish, which also mainly uses French. It is so sad to see this quite unnecessary disunity. This is not a local church, but three anti-local churches.

Q: How do you see your own situation in Colchester?

A: In Colchester we defended the church against the evil one. Let me explain.

I remember in 1976 the Belarussian priest in Cambridge, a dear friend, Fr John Piekarsky (Eternal Memory to him), telling us how in the late 60s all the people in his home village in Belarus near Dokshitsy, gathered together and stood around their village church which the atheists, instructed by the crazy Ukrainian Khrushchov, wanted to destroy. An armed militia faced them. The people made it clear that the soldiers would have to gun everyone of them down in order to close their church. The militia backed off and the church was saved.

We also have a Ukrainian parishioner, whose grandmother, Galina, also in the 60s, just lay down in front of the bulldozer which the atheists were going to use to destroy the village church. She made it clear they would have to murder her, the most respected person in the village, to close the church. The atheists backed off and the church still stands today.

Well, we did the same, using English Trust law as our defence. We too had to defend our church from those who wanted to take it away from us, demanded the keys (which we refused to hand over), persecuted and slandered us (only the weak in faith believed such nonsense), and then wanted to close it, just as the atheist nationalists of the OCU do in the Ukraine. We won with the support of many.

Now is the time to confess the faith, there is no need for martyrdom, that is not yet required. But we have to confess the faith against aggressive bullies, those with hatred and not love in their souls, whether Communist or Capitalist. They will have to kill us to steal our churches. We made that clear to them despite, and because of, their aggressiveness and they backed down and lost everything. That was visible to all.

Q: What sort of churches do you have in your group, which since last February has been inside the Romanian Church?

A: I suppose we are rather like Moldovan churches, not just in the sense that we all have Moldovans, but in the sense that we are Russian and Romanian. However, we are also more than that in Colchester, as we have 25 nationalities and our other churches, in Coventry, Little Abington just outside Cambridge, Wisbech, Bradford and Felixstowe, are all still multinational.

Q: Do you have any Greeks among your parishioners?

A: We have very few Greeks, only four in fact, for the simple reason that there are hardly any practising Greeks in any of those places.

Q: How would you characterise the Colchester parish?

A: As you know, our patron saint is in effect a Ukrainian from Poltava who lived all over the world and was multinational in his outlook, St John of Shanghai and Western Europe. He also accepted the Western rite, which at that time, over sixty years ago, was still a reality.

Now, all my life I have worked and prayed that we might be able to build a Local Church. Be careful what you pray for, because you might get it! Well, towards the end of my life, we have managed to avoid all ghettos, both ethnic and ideological, and have been given what we prayed for, a local church.

In the home countries of Orthodoxy, inevitably churches will be mononational. That is normal. In capital cities like London, Paris and Berlin, centres of immigration, you will also have embassy churches, that is, mononational churches. That is not the case here outside London. Here we have to go with the flow, to go with the majority. God sends you a flock of all nationalities, who knock at your door. You behave as the Good Samaritan, not like the priest who walked by on the other side. You have to accept them all, with all their diversity, but it is logical to be with the majority, providing that their hierarchy behaves canonically, and not schismatically.

Q: Isn’t it difficult to have different nationalities together?

A: It can be, but it does not need to be. Nationalists and racists do not come to us (but nationalists and racists tend not to be Christians and, if nominally Orthodox, do not set foot in church anyway), but those with a little tolerance do come. And they learn to accept each other, with the result that you end up with mixed marriages, mixed in the positive sense of inter-Orthodox. For instance, our second priest who is Romanian is married to a Latvian and that is only the tip of the iceberg. We have couples who are Scottish-Cypriot (yes, he did get married in his kilt), Estonian-Nigerian, Moldovan-Guinea-Bissau (that must be unique!), Romanian-Slovak, Ukrainian-South-African, Lithuanian-Serbian, as well as the really rather ordinary English-Russian.

Sad to say, I have seen very many Orthodox parishes all over Europe closing in my lifetime. Why? Because their flocks died out. The original immigrant-parents, the first generation, died and as their children were assimilated and gave up attending a church which to them was foreign, the parishes died out. We must not do the same here. We have hordes of children at our church, between 50 and 100 at every liturgy. I am told that this is more children than in any other church in this country. They are our future. We must not lose them to narrow, bigoted, right-wing ideologies, relating to the past or to the present, or lose them to attempts by exclusivists to grab our properties, as they are the properties which belong to all the local Orthodox of all nationalities, or to some ethnic narrowness, which refuses to preach Christ in the local language.

In the last three months we have chrismated two English people (former Protestants) and baptised another one (who had not previously been baptised) into the Church. May this continue. So, despite the great changes and the chaos caused by politics over the last four years, we continue. We continue despite them all and despite their opposition.

 

 

Is There any Future for the Russian Orthodox Church in the Western World?

Foreword: The Wages of Sin Are Death

In the old days, the hierarchy of the Persecuted Church inside the Soviet Union (called the Moscow Patriarchate) was held hostage by compromises with militant atheism, whereas the Persecuted Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) was the surviving free remnant of Russian Orthodoxy, largely clean of the stains of either form of atheism, both Communist and the perhaps even worse Capitalist atheism. Since 2007, when the two parts of the Russian Church linked together, their potential to transform themselves into one worldwide missionary Church has continually been pointed out. But also, again and again, people warned of the dangerous temptations of money and power, which could poison them both.

The last four years in particular have seen that poison spread very, very rapidly. And so, very sadly, their potential has not been realised and both have fallen to the temptations of Mammon. The heritage of St Seraphim of Sarov, St John of Kronstadt and St John of Shanghai have alike been falsely accused, put on trial once more and unjustly condemned. In reality, however, only those who have carried out these uncanonical acts have been condemned, or rather have condemned themselves. As a result of these grave sins, spiritual crimes, the faithful of the Church have been deprived of grace and are, literally, at war. And the blood spilt divides them cruelly. Once more the Russian Church has lost its freedom to the State, as before the Revolution, so after the Revolution, so also today.

The dead hand of the State is, as always, killing spiritual life, reducing all to a mere right-wing, State-controlled Protestant denomination with rituals. Bureaucratisation, centralisation and politicisation mean that many have once more put the State above Christ and harshly punish all who witness to Christ. Protocols above the Holy Spirit! When, long before the Revolution, St Seraphim was asked why Russia would fall, he answered that it was because Orthodox no longer kept the fasts, including Wednesdays and Fridays. For St John of Kronstadt, who prophesied the consequences of the imminent Revolution in detail, it was the refusal to prepare for and take communion, reinforced by the clericalist hypocrisy opposed to frequent communion, scandalously depriving the people of the Body and Blood of Christ.

For St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, the Ukrainian Saint who after the Revolution lived all over the world, hounded and put on trial in San Francisco by pharisaical Statist bishops, even though they had no State, and who so hastened his repose, it was the ethnically-based refusal of the racist ghetto to tell the Non-Orthodox world about Christ which was destroying Church life. Today’s disastrous and tragic war in the Ukraine illustrates the consequences. All are being chastised in the Russian Church for their sin of not loving one another. Here are the consequences of sin – lack of love and so war. Where in the Gospel does it say that we should destroy or close churches and kill each other? The wages of sin are indeed death, both spiritual and physical death.

Introduction: The Conflict in the Ukraine

After nine months of its present and second phase, the conflict in the Ukraine is about to enter a third and far more intense phase. So far it has largely been fought between Russian-backed Ukrainian militias with their Chechen and contracted allies and the Western-backed Kiev Army with their NATO training and immense amounts of arms and tens of thousands of Polish troops and mercenaries, dressed in Ukrainian uniforms. Over 100,000 have been killed and 400,000 injured, just on the Kiev/NATO side, and at least another 10,000 killed and 40,000 injured on the other side. Millions of young men have fled the Ukraine to avoid conscription and almost certain death or mutilation. Now the actual Russian Army is preparing to enter the fray with its winter campaign. There is going to be a real war.

The Ever-Smaller Russian Church in the West

As a result of the first phase, the Western elite’s choice between February 2014 and February 2022 to take over, arm and train the Kiev forces, nearly 14,000 Ukrainians were massacred in the Eastern Ukraine by Nazi elements from Kiev and the rest of the population were told to leave. As a result of the second phase since February 2022 and the ensuing sanctions, it is clear that in the future only very few Russian Orthodox from Russia will be allowed to settle in the Western world. In the Ukraine Ukrainians refuse to attend churches where the Russian Patriarch’s name is mentioned. Like them, very, very few of the, for the moment, 3.5 million newly-arrived Ukrainians in Western Europe, unlike the Orthodox among the 6 million Ukrainians who have been forced to flee to Russia since 2014, wish to attend Russian churches.

During the Cold War, when citizens of the USSR were also not allowed to settle in the West, Russian Orthodox clergy, like those in the tiny Moscow Patriarchal Sourozh Diocese in England, run by the late Metropolitan Antony Bloom, turned their attentions to missionary work, to bring Orthodoxy to the native people. They had to attract local people into the Diocese simply in order for their group to survive. This too is now not an option, for a free Church no longer exists. The old freedom has gone. Missionary work is being stopped and even hounded by harsh and compassionless ritualists and bureaucrats, who take pleasure in trying to steal and then close the most popular churches. Today, no Western people are attracted to the politicised, centralised and bureaucratised Russian Orthodox Church, which appears to persecute its own faithful openly and quite shamelessly, on the internet for the whole world to see. And even if people were attracted to such, would they be allowed to join it?

Russian Orthodox churches under the Russian Patriarch are now banned in much of the Ukraine and completely in Latvia, and perhaps soon in Lithuania and Estonia, where government interference in Church matters is becoming ever more aggressive. In the UK and the USA all Russian bishops from Russia are banned and they are now in exile. Their churches have no bishop. In the UK, USA and Canada you are not allowed to belong to the Russian Orthodox church if you work for the local ‘security services’. In addition, the Russian Patriarch is physically banned by personal sanction from the UK, as also from Lithuania and Canada. It is also very difficult to obtain insurance for Russian church buildings in the UK. And without insurance, you cannot legally operate.

Over fifty years ago, at the height of the Cold War, a way out for Russian Orthodox who were long settled in Northern America was found. This was in the ideological heart of the then Cold War. This took the form of autocephaly (full independence), given to them in the form of a new Local Church, the ‘OCA’ (Orthodox Church in America). Thus, they had their own Church, independent of any political or other connection with the Russian Church in Moscow, which was then held hostage by the Soviet regime. But today, with unheard-of Soviet-style centralisation, no such autocephaly is being given to Russian Orthodox in Western countries. The results are ever smaller churches, as there is no possibility of doing missionary work: the centralised, ethnic Russian authorities will not allow it. They do not want ‘foreigners’ in their Church. The Russian Church in the Western world is closing down, or rather, closing itself down and being closed down.

Once the Russian Orthodox Church was rightly seen as the Persecuted Church, the Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors. It was the bearer of the multinational ideal of Holy Rus. As such it attracted sympathy, prayer and members. The faithful wanted to stand together with the New Martyrs and Confessors. However, today, as a result of careerist power structures many see the Russian Orthodox Church as a single Persecuting ‘Church’.

Thus, many see it as the secular and political ideology of a ‘Church-Business’. Their ‘executives’, or ‘effective managers’, scandalously task their clergy with extracting as much money as possible from the faithful. Complaints are swept under the carpet and whistle-blowers absurdly and uncanonically punished. Naturally, principled clergy and faithful refuse to take part in this and have gone into exile. Loyal to the old Russian Church, its martyrs, saints and its spiritual values, they have left because of their principled refusal to accept the ideology of a money-making ‘Church-Business’, which is the moral low ground, where Caiaphas and Judas live.

Others left for a totally different reason – they were political disciples of the liberal Parisian Metr Antony Bloom, as in, for example, the Netherlands and Italy, where they have gone to Constantinople, and in Spain. (In the 1970s Metr Antony Bloom was himself demoted by the Moscow Patriarchate for his support of Solzhenitsyn, which led him to requesting admission into ROCOR. That was turned down by ROCOR, as he was considered to be a liberal, among other things).

In any case, the new structures, concerned with careerist power politics and money, the sin of Judas, no longer seem to represent the old Russian Orthodox Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors, which we knew and loved. Faithful clergy and people always belonged to it in the past, spiritually belong to it now, and spiritually will always belong to it in the future.

Three Paths

When you are cut off, because the central Church structure in another country has temporarily been taken captive by a Non-Orthodox ideology, whichever it may be, and there is no chance of independence or autocephaly from that Centre, you can take one of two secular paths:

You can go outwards to the secular left, taking the path of new calendarism, ecumenism, liberalism and modernism, assimilating into the secular world and disappearing into it. This is happening now. However, this wholly outward-looking path sooner or later leads to assimilation and disappearance into the woke sects of liberal pseudo-intellectuals. So they die out.

Or you can go inwards to the secular right, taking the path of old calendarism, extreme conservatism, ‘catacombism’ and ghettoism, cutting yourself off from all others and so becoming disembodied. However, this wholly inward-looking path sooner or later leads to Protestant-style right-wing sects of apocalyptic judgemental pharisees. So they die out.

We have personally lived through and seen both these above tragic paths and seen specifically various different parts of the Russian Church of the émigré past of two generations gradually disappear almost completely into both these black holes. Thus, we witnessed the agonising suicidal deaths of the groups that took those paths. Just as we did not go there then, we are hardly going to go there now. Suicide is not part of our mentality. We prefer life to death.

The Third Way

There is another path, a third way. If you wish to survive as a Church, you must follow this path. This is the path of the saints of all the Local Churches, ancient and modern, of the whole Church. This is the path of the Church which is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. These four words stand for the Four Pillars of the Church, the Martyrs, the Confessors, the real Monastics and the real Pastors:

The Church is One because of the Unity of her Martyrs. The Church is Holy because of the Holiness of her Confessors. The Church is Catholic because of the Catholicity of her real Monastics. The Church is Apostolic because of the Apostolicity of her real Pastors. These are the Four Pillars of the Church on Earth, as in Heaven. We follow them.

If you live in the Western world and you refuse either of the two secular paths and follow this third path, you will inevitably find yourself developing into part of a new Local Church. As the saints have no nationality, no passport, you will find yourself in a multinational parish and network of parishes, an international Deanery and even Diocese. You will find the children of immigrants turning to you, for they no longer identify as citizens of the countries which their parents emigrated from, but as local and speaking the local language. This is a foundation stone of a new Local Church. For we look forwards to local enrootment, not backwards to the past and dependence on the elsewhere. Local Churches define and embody the Dogma of the Incarnation and also the Teaching of the Holy Spirit, which means the spreading and enrootment of the Church to countries where once it was not.

And if you are not allowed to take the path of the saints, which is the only future for the Russian Orthodox Church in the Western world, what do you do? You leave it and take refuge in the jurisdiction of, and under the canonical protection of, another Local Church until new times. This is called Divine Providence, which is the salvation of the Holy Spirit and keeps the flame of hope alive.

Conclusion: A Future?

Is there any future for the Russian Orthodox Church in the Western world? Yes, there is, but only for the Russian Orthodox Church of the New Martyrs and New Confessors, the Church of the saints and the fools for Christ, the Church of the ignored Spirit-driven prophets and the persecuted elders, and their multinational ideal of Holy Rus and charismatic universal missionary work. This was witnessed to by the Three Saints of the Russian Emigration, St Jonah of Hankou, St Seraphim of Boguchar and St John of Shanghai. Thus, there is a future, but only for the authentic Russian Orthodox Church, the Church of the Saints of God, of the Martyrs, the Confessors, the real Monastics and the real Pastors. The Holy Spirit is greater than all the narrowness and nasty politics of mere men. Victory awaits the faithful for their patience.

 

 

 

 

The Time of the Fulfilment of the Prophecies Has Come

In a recent interview, shortly to be published elsewhere, Fr Andrew expressed his views on the situation in the Ukraine, which has brought the whole world and the whole of the Orthodox Church into crisis.

 

Q: What has brought about the crisis in the Ukraine, which has affected inter-Orthodox relations so badly and led to a huge and historic schism?

A: First of all, we must know that since the fall of the USSR in December 1991, the US elite (with all its underlings) has had as its main aims firstly the destruction of the Islamic world and secondly the destruction of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the cement of the Russian-speaking world and the numerical centre of Orthodoxy. The US elite failed in the first task, though it did create chaos and death throughout the Middle East and in North Africa. In the second task it is also failing, though again it has created chaos and death, threatening nuclear war. This is Satanism. Of this there is no doubt. Only Satan loves blood and death.

This became apparent to me when the former US ambassador to Kiev, John Herbst, infiltrated the Fourth Council of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in San Francisco in 2006. His then comment to a future schismatic Ukrainian bishop was that, given the ROCOR decision for unity with Moscow, they (meaning the US Establishment via the CIA) would now have to infiltrate all the Local Orthodox Churches and in particular the Russian Orthodox Church from inside. This is exactly what they did. Thus, they created the scandal of persecution of the faithful from inside the Church, using its corrupted agents inside the Church.

‘Hand over the keys to your church so we can close it’, is the US chant, whether through its agents in the West or through its agents in the Ukraine. There is exactly the same attempt at the intimidation of the pious and the manipulation of the naïve everywhere. So, the technique clearly has the same origin. In the Ukraine, any priest who loses his church also loses his job and possibly his home, once the keys to his church have been stolen from him. Here it is not so bad because most priests do not depend on the church for their income or home. However, the flock will still be scattered, the work of decades in building up the Church destroyed and the people scandalised by the persecution coming from on high. This is how people, ;the little ones’ of the Gospel, lose their faith. In our own case we were saved by the personal friendship between Patriarch Kyrill and Patriarch Daniel, so we were able to remain free and open, which the people recognise and so flock to us, despite the jealousy and slanders of others. The people refuse to be intimidated by the CIA. Unlike the dreaded secret police in the totalitarian Ukraine, the ‘authorities’ are reluctant to kidnap and torture here.

In the Ukraine, the CIA have so far managed to close 2,000 churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church out of 12,000, but thousands more will be closed in the coming months. Metr Onufry is a heroic confessor and may yet be martyred by the Americans through their proxies. We are with him 100%. We are not afraid of them! We have seen their sort before and seen them off before.

Q: When did the war in the Ukraine begin?

A: In 2014, the centenary of the First World War. As I have written many times before, this is a generational process: 1914, 1939 (the Second War), 1964 (the Moral Collapse, leading to 100 million abortions, mass family breakdown and open perversion without repentance), 1989 (the fall of the Berlin Wall, followed by the first invasion of Iraq and the Soviet collapse) and 2014. That was the first year of World War III, of which covid was only a phase that killed nearly seven million, a War which is due to last ten years in all. This is as long as World War I and World War II added together. Thus, we have seen a world crisis every twenty-five years.

Q: You have recently helped a Ukrainian refugee-priest to try and set up a new church in London. How did that go?

A: With the blessing of our own Metr Joseph and the senior hierarchy in Kiev, who know all about how we have been persecuted and how we were received into the Romanian Church (Metr Joseph is well-known and well-respected there and has met them), we received a priest from the Ukraine who stayed with us for three weeks. However, the British Establishment told our priest in no uncertain terms that as long as he is with Metr Onufry, he will not be tolerated in this country. He could in no way obtain premises or anything. The USA will not allow it. However, he was told that if he had been in the schismatic CIA/Dumenko church or in the Greek Catholic (Uniat) church, he would have at once received everything he had ever dreamed of.

Q: Why did he come to you in the Patriarchate of Romania and not address himself to the Russian Church?

A: The Kiev regime punishment for ‘collaboration’ (= concelebration with the Russian Church) is five years imprisonment.

Today the situation in Eastern Europe is worsening rapidly. In the Ukraine you can be imprisoned for possessing Russian books. In the Baltics it is the same. The Pjukhtitsy Convent in Estonia has been ordered to join the American pawn of Constantinople. Eternal shame on the Estonian government. In Latvia doctors can now legally refuse to treat Russians who cannot speak Latvian. People will die. Such is the racism allowed by the EU. I strongly suspect that Russia will this decade be tempted to take over desperately poor Moldova and then the dying Baltic States, in order to free their persecuted minorities there.

Q: What hope do you see for the Russian Church in this crisis?

A: My personal hope is Metr Hilarion (Alfeev) of Budapest. I know him personally. From a liberal diplomat he has developed and matured over the last several years through his sufferings, and is now a hero in chains. He has always openly opposed the war in the Ukraine. He clearly sees the difference between Church and State. He speaks several languages, quite good Greek, French and excellent English. He is for autocephaly for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Even if it will only be temporary, it will still be necessary for a time.

Once the south-western province of Zakarpatie, as Kiev calls it, has become part of Hungary, as it will do, there will be a need for an Autocephalous Hungarian Orthodox Church. This could be a possible position for Metr Hilarion. But he could do more. He could take over responsibility for the Sourozh Diocese and Moscow parishes in North America. In this country he could restore the fallen Russian Church here, which is now in a disastrous state. He could at last create that long-awaited united Russian Church out of the three warring Russian jurisdictions here, one of which is allowed to refuse to be in communion with one of the others! He could take over the now moribund Western European Exarchate of the Patriarchate of Moscow and revive it, working together with other jurisdictions. Or quite simply, he could become the next Patriarch of Moscow.

Q: Is this the end of the world? The Apocalypse?

A: We are in pre-Apocalyptic times. The War against the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia will, conditionally, end on 5 May 2024. Exactly eighteen months from now. These are not my words, but the words of the prophets and holy elders. If there is repentance (all prophecies are dependent on repentance) then there will be a great cleansing of the Church and the State. All the perverts and money-minded careerists will be turned out, like the money-changers from the Temple, for that is exactly what they are. He who endures to the end will be saved. Fear not, little flock. This whole period is a time of testing.

Q: You sound optimistic?

A: In the longer term, of course I am optimistic, but not in the short term. There is much suffering to go through in the coming months and year. This is why the Lord was merciful to Queen Elizabeth II and took her – so that she would not see these horrors.

The commander of the US Strategic Command in charge of the US nuclear triad, Admiral Charles Richard, has just said that ‘the Ukraine crisis is just warming up. The big one is coming, and it won’t be long before we get tested in a way we haven’t been tested in a long time’. The US is flying nuclear weapons into its base in Spain. According to the EU Foreign Minister, Borrell, the EU alone has spent 22 billion euros on Ukraine in 2022, not counting direct military aid from individual EU members. The Ukraine is going to need billions of dollars just to stay afloat in the next few months and probably more than $100 billion to stay afloat in 2023.

This is not to mention the potential flood of refugees from the Ukraine into Europe, sparking the powderkeg of existing internal discontent in these countries. For example, here Ukrainian refuges were sponsored for six months, when they began to come here last March. Now that that period is up, many are being turned out onto the streets, where they live as beggars and tramps. Local councils will not and cannot help them. They too are bankrupt.

Now is the time of the fulfilment of the prophecies. The saints long ago foretold that at the end there will be many churches and the golden cupolas will gleam, but you will not be able to enter them. This is exactly the situation in the Ukraine today, where the churches are locked and empty. As St Seraphim of Sarov prophesied, at the end there will be bishops even worse than those in the time of Emperor Theodosius the Younger (401-450). Here begins our long, long march to freedom. We are living through the end of that old Westocentric world and seeing the return to the original multicentric world. But as St Alexander Nevsky said: ‘God is not in force, but in truth’.

 

 

 

The Future of the Ukraine and the Church

What is going to happen in the Ukraine? Some say that the Russian winter campaign in the Ukraine that is due to start in November will result at the very least in the provinces of Nikolaev and Odessa being taken by Russia, as foretold by Elder Jonah of Odessa (+ 2012). That might bring this nightmare conflict to a swift end. It will mean that the remaining Ukraine will become a landlocked state.

Others refer to another prophecy of Elder Jonah of Odessa that there will be a ‘bloody Easter (= 2022?), a hungry Easter (2023?) and a victorious Easter (2024?). It means that the war will continue for another eighteen months yet. Others refer to the prophecy of St Seraphim of Sarov: ‘Towards that time the bishops will become so impious that in their impiety they will surpass the Greek bishops of the time of Theodosius the Younger (401-450), so that they will no longer believe in the main dogmas of the Christian Faith’.

We should recall that all prophecies are conditional, dependent on repentance – or lack of it.

Whatever happens in the war in the Ukraine, and there are many predictions, it is clear that the canonical Church in the Ukraine will have to become autocephalous. Russia can, and we believe will, win militarily, but that does not solve the pastoral problem. No mother, father, aunt, uncle, wife, sister, brother, children of a dead Ukrainian soldier will frequent a church where the Russian Patriarch is commemorated. Many in the Russian Church are in denial about this: we are not.

At the mere mention of the name Patriarch Kyrill in churches in the Ukraine or here, people walk out. Russian Orthodox churches, Moscow or ROCOR, all over Western Europe, as in the Ukraine itself, have lost a great many of their flock. If we had been under the Russian Church (by Divine Providence we got out exactly eight days before the Special Operation began), we would certainly have lost half of our parish. At present, under the Zelensky government, any Ukrainian priest who concelebrates with the Russia Church in Western Europe (either branch) faces five years of prison on his return for ‘collaborating with the enemy’.

In the Moscow Patriarchate in Lithuania four priests have been defrocked for not commemorating Patriarch Kyrill. And yet in the Western European Archdiocese of the Moscow Patriarchate, priests are free to commemorate the Russian Patriarch or not. Patriarch Kyrill is banned by sanction from visiting Canada, the UK, Lithuania and of course the Ukraine. He would not be welcome anywhere else in Europe outside the Russian Federation and Belarus. If he cannot visit his churches, then independence must be granted to them.

It has come to our knowledge that there are those in Russia who are praying that Metr Onufry of Kiev will become the next Patriarch of Russia. No doubt his first act will be to grant the Ukrainian Orthodox Church autocephaly. The same is surely inevitable in the Baltic States (today the Latvian Orthodox Church has officially asked Patriarch Kyrill to grant it autocephaly). We think that autocephaly, or at least autonomy, will have to be given to the Russian Orthodox churches in Moldova and also in Western Europe. As for the Moscow parishes in Northern America, they have no bishop and so no future at present. Here too a solution is required.

The situation is chaotic, Nothing, indeed, will be as it was before.

 

The Russian Orthodox Church and the Tragedy of Soviet Centralisation

Introduction: Soviet Centralisation in Kiev = The End of the Ukraine

I was recently asked a strange question: Do you think that the Ukraine has a right to exist? To which I answered: Obviously, yes! The Ukraine is for Ukrainians! And that is precisely the problem, the Ukraine is for Ukrainians, not for Non-Ukrainians. I believe in self-determination. What the Soviet-style Kiev government did not have the right to do is to ban and oppress the languages and cultures of others and even ‘ethnically cleanse’ the non-Ukrainian minorities. Sadly, that is what has been going on since 1945, starting in what Kiev still calls ‘Transcarpathia’, even though it is Kiev which is Transcarpathian. And in the last three decades that were supposedly ‘post-Soviet’ the centralising Soviet-style oppression has got worse everywhere.

Clearly, the independent Ukraine after 1991 either had to become a loose Confederation, as suggested by the leaders of Germany at the time, or else it had to change its unnatural borders, returning to its pre-1922 borders, returning land to Russia, Poland, Hungary and Romania. Instead, it rejected both options, rejecting democratic referenda, remaining a centralised Soviet State. So now it is being forced to return to its natural borders by the drama of military action and appalling bloodshed. Therein lies its horrible tragedy, all so avoidable, the tragedy of all those who have not thrown off the atheist Soviet heritage with its disregard, plain lack of love, for others. It is all so typically Soviet: close the churches and padlock their doors, so people cannot go to them. ‘Hate your neighbour’ is our slogan.

Soviet Centralisation in Moscow = Autocephaly in the Ukraine

In the Russian Church, unlike in other Local Churches, there is a tradition of praying for not just the diocesan bishop, but also for the Patriarch. If you are in the Russian Church, you should do this. However, over the decades, there have been inside and outside Russia, numbers of bishops and priests who have refused to do this. Thus, after the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917, the Church in the Polish part of the former Empire received autocephaly and the parishes in Finland left for Constantinople. This was also in order to avoid praying for a Patriarch who was under the orders of atheists.

Then, for over 80 years, bishops and priests in the émigré Church, ROCOR, refused to commemorate the head of the Russian Church because they considered that the Metropolitans and Patriarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate were slaves or hostages of the atheist Communists who were persecuting the Church, and therefore they were not Orthodox. Indeed, if they had commemorated the Russian Patriarch, the people would have walked out, so not to pray for him publicly was a pastoral necessity. And in the neophyte 1990s there were protesters inside Russia who also refused to commemorate their Patriarch. These non-commemorators justified themselves as they considered that the Patriarch was an ecumenist and so was not Orthodox.

Today, in the Ukraine clergy have stopped commemorating Patriarch Kyrill for the same reason as ROCOR, because they do not consider him to be Orthodox and therefore, at the mention of his name in churches, the people walk out or else they refuse to go to church anyway. Rightly or wrongly, they consider him to be the slave of the post-Soviet State, a politician and not a churchman. As a result, the canonical Ukrainian Church has had to declare itself ‘fully independent’. It had no choice. The decision was forced on it by the people. Far more importantly than this, however, is the fact that when the conflict in the Ukraine is over, and whatever the outcome, there will be an independent/Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church. It will not return to centralised, Soviet-style Moscow. Moscow is still in denial about this, but this will not change the reality. Indeed, arguably, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church should have been given Autocephaly decades ago.

Soviet Centralisation = Autocephaly Elsewhere

I have always been opposed to ‘Autocephalitis’, the idea that all problems can be solved by the granting of autocephaly to groups of Orthodox, however small, in any country in the world. Autocephaly can only be justified, when there are sufficient numbers of Orthodox with spiritual maturity in any particular location. However, after the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1991 and the formation of many new independent states, it should have been clear that new independent (Autonomous or Autocephalous) Churches would have to follow. Probably the time for partial independence (Autonomy) is over – it is already too late. Full independence, Autocephaly, is now on the cards for virtually the whole Russian Orthodox world outside the Russian Federation and the Russian Orthodox Exarchate in Belarus. Autocephaly means precisely that His Holiness Kyrill, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, will no longer be commemorated at services.

True, it is too early for Autocephaly in the new and small Russian Orthodox Exarchates in South-East Asia and Africa, but Autonomy will have to be envisaged for both within the next ten years and then Autocephaly. Elsewhere, it is full steam ahead. The Latvian Orthodox Church has already taken the chance of Autocephaly, with the excuse of pressure from the Latvian government. However, as it has only three bishops, perhaps, as we have suggested, a single Baltic Orthodox Church (grouping all Orthodox in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, together with all Orthodox in Finland who use the canonical date for Pascha). This would solve the problems and schismatic pressures in Lithuania and in Estonia, and provide at least six bishops. (For Autocephaly, four bishops are a minimum). How long before governments in other countries also impose Autocephaly on local Russian Orthodox? 20% of Moldovan parishes have already gone to the Romanian Church. Moldova is certainly large enough to become an Autocephalous Church, indeed it would become one of the larger Local Churches.

Apart from the Baltics and Moldova, there is also considerable dissidence among multinational Russian Orthodox in Western Europe, in the Russian Orthodox Exarchate in Western Europe of the MP (potentially eight or more bishops), the Western European Archdiocese of the MP (three bishops) and in Western European ROCOR (Autocephaly impossible with its four present bishops, but clergy and people are already voting with their feet), from which many have walked out. Autocephaly in Western Europe could be envisaged, providing it was done with the co-operation of the other Local Churches, and not done, schismatically, against them. Since parts of the New York-run ROCOR have gone into schism, with the Moscow Patriarchate itself! (the Western European Archdiocese) and with the treacherous backing of politicians in the Moscow Patriarchate in Moscow!, there is no hope of this happening on the part of ROCOR. The latter has walled itself off in a schismatic bout of ‘OneTrueChurchism’, which is very American and highly political. But others are free to pursue the path of a new Local Church of Western Europe and clearly some want to.

Soviet Centralisation = Crisis

Interestingly, when Japan started a war against Russia in 1904 with a treacherous and unprovoked attack against Russia (not Russia against Japan), the Russian Bishop of Tokyo told his parishes to pray for the Japanese Emperor, the authorities and the Japanese armed forces. He locked himself away for the duration of the war. It seems to me that he, a future saint, set an example and the same should apply now. In any case, the fact is that Ukrainians consider that they cannot pray publicly for Patriarch Kyrill and the people refuse to attend churches where his name is commemorated. They see him as a politician, not a churchman.

If England were under military attack from Russia, whatever the reason, I don’t see that anyone in this country would wish to hear public prayers for Patriarch Kyrill. Either the Russian Church here would declare itself Autocephalous (as happened with the canonical Church under Metr Onuphry in the Ukraine), or else the State would declare it Autocephalous (as happened in Latvia), or else everyone would join another Local Church. Indeed, many people were forced to take the latter course by the Moscow Patriarchate itself in this country even before the war, because of the schismatic actions of some in the Russian Church, whose political support Moscow needed, even though the actions Moscow was supporting were schismatic.

In other words, nearly one third of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Non-Russian part, is in crisis. Interestingly, this ‘independence movement’ inside the Russian Church has brought no benefit to the ‘Churches’ which the US-manipulated Patriarchate of Constantinople set up in Estonia a generation ago and in 2019 in the west of the Ukraine. Most of their church buildings, stolen by violent thugs from the canonical Church, stand empty and padlocked. People know they are fake and refuse to go there. It must be depressing to be inside the Russian Church in Western Europe today. All the more so, as most ‘Russians’ here do not come from Russia itself, but are Russian-speakers from the Baltics, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Belarus and, especially, from the Ukraine.

Conclusion: New Jerusalem and All Rus

In the light of the conflict in the Ukraine, what can be said about the concept of ‘Holy Rus’? This conflict is between the largest of the supposedly Orthodox peoples of ‘Holy Rus’. Clearly, the majority are not Orthodox and indeed have not been since 1917. Today the majority still acts in the old Soviet way, with its atheistic mentality. For a long time now it has been our suggestion that the Moscow Patriarchate, a name that reminds many of the old Soviet heritage of the Russian Orthodox Church, be renamed ‘The Patriarchate of New Jerusalem and All Rus’. Physically, it could quit Moscow and establish itself in the now renewed New Jerusalem Monastery by the River Istra (Jordan) nearby, and so justify that new name and new reality.

Whatever the present tragedy in the Ukraine, the Trinitarian ideal of ‘Holy Rus’ of Unity in Diversity, remains. As to whether it will be incarnated before the end of the world, we do not know, for we do not know when the world will end. It depends on mass repentance, which has been absent since 1917. Thank God, we have been released from the post-Soviet Church, in both its Russian Federation and its American political incarnations, and are able to go on in freedom to help build up the future multinational Local Church with the free Local Orthodox Churches. These are neither American, nor post-Soviet, neither CIA, nor FSB, and so, by the grace of God, can remain outside the geopolitical games of the Superpowers, as can we.