Category Archives: The West

Modernism, Post-Modernism and Post-Postmodernism

Modernism is a very old-fashioned concept, dating back to the nineteenth century. The concept passed through artists like Matisse, Gauguin and then Picasso and a whole school of thinkers. However, its culminating point – and also death – came only some fifty years ago in the 1960s, which itself culminated in the youth revolutions of 1968. ‘Modern’ meant anti-Victorian, the rejection of any kind of ‘old’ value, of anything ‘old-fashioned’, regardless of whether it was worthwhile or not. Typical of this culmination of Modernism were the Second Vatican Council, liberalism, feminism, divorce, drug-taking, alcoholism, pornography, abortion, and the collapse of marriage and stable family life. Most of its revolutionary and rebellious advocates have died from a way of life that was full of vice.

A decade later, after the culmination of Modernism, the rejection of any sort of tradition, good or bad, inevitably came the culmination of ‘Post-Modernism’, that is, cynicism, scepticism, disbelief and nihilistic ‘deconstruction’. Although Post-Modernism is also an old concept, its culminating-point could only come after the 1960s in the cynical destructiveness of the period between the 1970s and 1990s. Typical of Post-Modernism are the lack of belief in anything constructive, spiritual emptiness, depression, nothingness, ‘anything goes’, the mocking of heartfelt belief, irony, throwaway products, shallowness, cheapness, passing fads and fashions and superficiality. Most of its faithless and often bitter, disbelieving advocates are now ageing or else are already dead.

The question is, if Post-Modernism comes after Modernism, what comes after Post-Modernism? This is a question that intellectuals have debated for well over a decade and about which they still have not come to any conclusion. This is because of the faithless and spiritually empty nature of Post-Modernism. After a vacuum, anything is possible. And consensus on what makes an epoch cannot be achieved while that epoch is still in its early stages. On the one hand, it is possibly to continue to wallow in the negativism of Post-Modernism and make a cult or delusional consciousness out of it. On the other hand, it is equally possible to reject something as primitive and negative as Post-Modernism with something positive and constructive.

‘Something positive and constructive’. These are words which have little meaning in Western society, which alone has generated both Modernism and Post-Modernism. Interestingly, it may therefore be that the Western world will have to stop being ethnocentric and look outside its self-absorbed culture to find the qualities to regenerate itself. The fact is that ‘something positive and constructive’ can only be built on Faith, which is the very baby that was thrown out together with the bathwater in the Western Modernist 60s and Post-Modernist 70s and after. ‘Post-Postmodernism’ is an awkward name. ‘Metamodernism’ and ‘Trans-Modernism’ have been suggested. They too seem very awkward. Perhaps a single syllable, ‘Faith’, is what is really needed by this disbelieving Western world.

Praying for the Resurrection of Europe

Already in the nineteenth century prophetic Russian writers and thinkers like Khomyakov and Dostoyevsky described Europe as a cemetery, its gardens well-kept, its lawns manicured, its trees pruned, its cleaned tombs and monuments of great artistic beauty, but still a cemetery, where lie the dead of past history. A cemetery, in Latin languages, cimetière, cimitero, cementerio, (from the Greek for ‘to sleep’), in German Friedhof, in Dutch Begraafplaats, in Swedish Kyrkogard, is, literally, a place of sleep, rest and burial, a churchyard. This is the place where are buried dear ancestors, friends and family, whom we visit and pray for. For the only life in a cemetery is that which we bring there.

A cemetery is the image which conveyed the fact that European culture was already in the nineteenth century dying out because it was rejecting the roots of its culture, and cultural roots are always spiritual. In other words, by rejecting the founding spirituality of its civilisation, Orthodox Christianity, whether actively by fighting against it or passively by not resisting its loss, Europe reduces itself to a land of historic monuments and museums, remarkable, outstanding, but not living. Europe, the historically admirable, far Western corner of Eurasia, is to be visited by becameraed tourists and even pilgrims for its past, but it is incapable of generating new culture in the present and future for lack of spiritual roots.

As the decades have passed, we have found the above prophetic image growing ever truer. The culture of death and the death of culture, whether through wars and concentration camps, whether through abortion and euthanasia, have taken over a secularised but also increasingly Islamised, thus polarised Europe, which is intent on its spiritual and so physical suicide. Our Orthodox churches in Europe are ever more like oases amid the contemporary Western culture of death. They are like cemetery chapels, where, as we pray for the resurrection of Europe’s Orthodox past, we bring the only spiritual life. Today, Europe seems no longer to have any self-belief, any fire in its soul – only ashes where once a fire so keenly burned.

Europe had from the outset the choice between Christ and death. At first Europe chose Christ and many centuries ago before the Great Misfortune, the best of Europe in its hermits prayed to Christ, whether from their lonely rock fastnesses in the wild North Atlantic, from Mediterranean islands or Alpen pastures, or from many other lonely places in Europe. But then Europe replaced the Risen One with a single mortal man, a new Ceasar (‘we have no king but Caesar’, they said), and then replaced Him with all mortal men, thus choosing death over life. Thus, the God of Europe was killed and put to sleep in the great European cemetery. Without God, Europe no longer believes in itself and so is intent on self-abolition

After Europe had killed God, it created a vacuum of faith. And where there is a vacuum, the demons rush in, and so, having pronounced its God dead, Europe then began to kill His creation, man, in the tens of millions. But we do not despair, for one day the hermits will return to the North Atlantic, to the Hebrides, to the whole Kingdom of the Isles, and all over Europe, and they will pray again to Christ for resurrection, just as the hermits of Russia in their forest monasteries and caves pray for resurrection. But this will happen only when the Orthodox Christian Empire is restored. For the restoration of the Christian Emperor in Russia will be the restoration of the Christian Empire, even to the uttermost ends of Europe.

On Saving the Peoples of the West from their Elites

Time and again in recent weeks, we have heard it said, ‘Thank God for President Putin’, often adding, ‘though I never thought I’d say this’. They refer to two issues: the new Russian child protection law that forbids the spreading of homosexual propaganda among minors and the Russian stand on Syria. On these issues suicidal Western elites, who also stand behind mass abortion, deludedly proclaim that they represent ‘the international community’, have earned the hostility of Western peoples and the real international community. Today, the one voice that is standing up to these suicidal elites – political and media – is coming from Russia. That voice is standing up for Christian values, which are being persecuted by Islamist fanatics in Syria and by secularist fanatics in the Western world.

It is to be noted that both the above positions taken by Russia are immensely popular both inside and, it seems, outside, Russia. Once again it proves how democratic Russia is, in that its official policies reflect the will of its people, and how undemocratic Western countries are, in that the policies of its bullying elites do not reflect the wills of their peoples. Thus, as regards attacks against war-torn Syria, it appears that about 90% of American people are against, the figures only slightly lower in the most pro-American European countries, France and Britain. As regards the rest of bankrupt Western Europe, in Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland etc, support for attacks on Syria is invisible. Indeed, twelve NATO countries have already declared that they will have nothing to do with such aggression and murder.

Similarly, the peoples of many countries in the Western world would support the introduction of child protection laws just as in Russia. (This does not include over thirty countries in Africa and Asia which actually have anti-homosexual laws). Such a gap between elites and peoples can only exist because Western elites, supported by huge PR spending and voted into power only by minorities of the electorate, are cut off from the peoples whom they supposedly represent. In reality, huge numbers boycott Western ‘democratic’ elections (which in any case only offer a choice between two individuals), for lack of any convincing candidate to vote for. The gap between elites and peoples must be the result of the Western cultural Marxism, called political correctness, which the elites profess.

In reality, the Soviet-style, decivilising Western elites, their heads turned by political power and banksters’ gold, have lost contact with the roots of Western civilisation, Christianity. The latter still commands at least the cultural respect of whole sections of Western societies. This is why that part of the Western world, which is still faithful to the roots of its civilisation, has become reliant on Russia to speak on its behalf. This is the only country which, having fallen into the delusion of Western political Marxism, rejected it. Having done this and so also seen off Western cultural Marxism, it has returned to its own Christian roots. Today once-atheist Russia is calling on the once-Christian Western world to return to its roots, with the dire warning of what will follow if the Western elites do not heed it.

The Chance of Redemption for Western Europeans

One thousand years of error and injustice will be made right. There will be a new Tsar in Russia and a new repentant culture in Europe, as it rediscovers its forgotten soul which it had busied itself burying for a thousand years beneath the ingenious but unnecessary.

Foreword: Faith on Earth

In 1914, nigh on one hundred years ago, Western Europe destroyed itself and all those whom it dragged into its great suicidal war. This was the fruit of the evils which its elites had wrought among their exploited peasantry, working classes and colonies. Little wonder that the country which suffered most in the Great War was Belgium, whose king had wrought so much evil in Central Africa, where perhaps 10,000,000 had perished. However, Great Britain everywhere, especially in the Indian subcontinent and in South Africa, France in Northern Africa and Indo-China, Austro-Hungary (Hitler, Stalin, Trotsky and Freud all lived in Vienna at the same time) in Central and Eastern Europe and Germany wherever it could, were all guilty. The catastrophe of 1914 had been heralded by the rebirth of European paganism, in Music by Stravinsky in the pagan dissonances of his Firebird and The Rite of Spring, in Art by the Futurists, as well as in Theatre by Strindberg, in Sculpture and Literature.

Indeed, it was ultimately in Alexander Blok’s poem ‘The Twelve’, in which the author saw Antichrist, pretending to be Christ, leading the Russian Revolution, that Europe could have seen its fate for non-repentance. Although the Great War would have left a great scar, the flower of much of its youth dead, it could have been reversed. Russia tried to reverse it, taking the brunt of the attacks in the East. However, it stopped being reversible in 1918 with the permanent installation in the Russian Empire, encouraged by the Western Powers, of a Western-inspired materialist regime and the martyrdom of the Russian Royal Family. The War could have ended in 1917, with Russian troops peacefully triumphant in Berlin and Vienna led by Tsar Nicholas II, as they had been by Tsar Alexander I in Paris in 1814, freeing Central and Eastern Europe from tyranny and restoring Poland and Finland. Instead of this, the War dragged on for another eighteen months and countless more young men died.

And as a result of this apostasy, today we ask the question: When the Saviour returns, will He find faith on earth? Fifty years ago, we thought this impossible – then there was still faith. Today this is not so, for over the last fifty years yet another chapter of the Book of Revelation has been enacted. At the present time we see the gradual development of a global surveillance society, controlled by what is becoming a world mafia-state, the fruit of the intolerance of the new Puritanism. On various false pretexts, freedom in the post-Protestant West is fast vanishing. With miniature cameras, drones, Google Glass, debit cards without which food cannot be bought, that world is fast heading for spiritual endarkenment. And yet over the last fifty years the Russian Church has offered spiritual enlightenment to the souls of this post-Protestant world, especially in the USA and the UK. At first slowly and cautiously and then more openly, Her witness to salvation in the Church of God has become ever more apparent.

Enlightening the Endarkened Post-Protestant World

Although this post-Protestant world is on the very fringes of Church consciousness, of authentic Christianity, the Russian Orthodox Church inside Russia, then still captive to Communism, did witness here, showing great patience. Thinking that in its spiritual weakness the post-Protestant world, especially ex-Protestants, would find it difficult to adopt the Orthodox calendar, She allowed it by generosity, that is, by economy, the secular calendar; thinking that because of its Western political prejudices and lack of understanding the post-Protestant world might not be able to venerate the Tsar and the other Royal Martyrs, by generous economy She did not insist on this; thinking that in its narrowness, the post-Protestant world might suffer from phyletist nationalism, She translated the Orthodox services wholly into its languages. Over the last fifty years what was once inaccessible has become accessible – there are no more excuses.

It must be said that success has been limited, especially among those who had been practising Protestants, less among those who were blank sheets, starting from nothing. Even among those who have accepted the invitation, there are those who refuse to enter the Arena, and do not become integrated Orthodox, even after fifty years. Also, some ex-Protestants, having joined the Church, then abandoned Her to go off and found their own sectarian ‘churches’, chapels, ‘sketes’ or even deaneries, whether to the left extreme or to the right extreme. Both in the post-Protestant cultures of North America and the United Kingdom, the Church inside Russia suffered many setbacks in its missions, until quite recently politically unable to heed the local experience of the Church Outside Russia. Using less economy, the latter has sometimes had more success (though with disappointments also), because of its local understanding of the ex-Protestant culture.

Here, there are those who have agreed to enter the Arena even after only a few months and so become grounded Orthodox. There is even one Archbishop of the Church Outside Russia who is from such a background, not to mention many other clergy and laity. Why have the spiritually sensitive been able to do this, whereas others have brought first moral scandal and then Protestant-style schism, as in England, or else first moral and financial scandal and then Protestant-style modernism, as in North America? The reason is to be found in psychological motivation. Those who join the Church from a self-serving need, even pathology, do not bear fruit and leave for self-made sects and cults, according to their ‘old man’, their old Protestant culture. However, those who enter the Church because they wish to save their souls and so serve others, do bear fruit. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’. Therefore, ‘Wretched are the impure in heart for they shall not see God’.

Enlightening the Endarkened Post-Roman Catholic World

Today, having reached the limits of what is possible in enlightening the post-Protestant world, the now reunited Russian Orthodox Church is turning to the far vaster post-Roman Catholic world. This world had long been closed to the Church because of its illusion that it is itself the Church, so cultivated by its purposeful deformation of the call to the West to repent made by the Mother of God to Portuguese children at Fatima in 1917. However, its recent wave of moral and financial scandals has revealed the corruption that has existed inside it for centuries and brought at least some to humility. Now the Russian Orthodox Church must battle for the souls of this post-Roman Catholic world. Fifty years ago that world began to fall into the desacralisation and infantilism of secularist Protestantisation and yet, traditionally it had conserved from Orthodoxy the sense of the Mother of God, the communion of the saints and the sacramental sense. There is cause for hope somewhere here.

Unfortunately, Roman Catholicism in the Western world has almost wholly lost its way. According to the design of evil forces, which had long planned its ultimate downfall, and the horror and scandal of its rejected faithful, since the Second Vatican Council two generations ago it has adopted the desacralised sentimentalism of secularist Protestantisation. Whether in North America, the UK, France, the Netherlands or in the Germanic and Scandinavian world, Protestantised Roman Catholicism is in a state of almost total apostasy, its liturgical heritage dumbed down, infantilised and all but destroyed. Western Europe has largely kept only the relics of the Faith. Quite literally, the relics. Western Europe resembles a huge treasure chest of relics, to which modernist Roman Catholicism has thrown away the key. However, a new key is being rehammered and reforged on the anvil of Tradition by the smiths of Orthodoxy. This is the key to the best of the West, the literal relics of its former piety.

Fortunately, there is hope of redemption among the simple faithful, often Orthodox in all but name, in Black Africa, in Latin America, in remoter parts of Southern Europe, in Eastern Europe, in Poland, Slovakia and Hungary and elsewhere, where piety and the veneration of icons have survived and not all are very aged. Here interest in Orthodoxy comes from the faithful of the mainstream, not from extremes, whether of left or right. It is this mainstream that has been rejected by its clerical elite. Thus, pro-Protestant modernists in Poland who seek self-destruction, have no interest in authentic Orthodoxy, at best only in a fake and sanitised Orthodoxy; nor do Roman Catholics in the extreme west of the Ukraine who have joined the Lefevrist group, unable to accept the Second Vatican Council’s Protestant-style, clericalist modernism. However, their extreme right-wing politics, Russophobic and pro-Hitler, prevents them like the rest of the Lefevrist movement from joining the Orthodox Church.

Today it is little wonder that various refugees from the spiritual desert of the Western world, whether post-Protestant or post-Roman Catholic, from the American whistle-blower Edward Snowden to the French actor Gerard Depardieu, look, consciously or unconsciously, to Russia for hope. Since the glorification of the New Martyrs and Confessors in 1981, confirmed in 2000, the Church has been renewed, a process which continues as more New Martyrs are canonised. Only a few weeks ago in Paris thousands of demonstrators at mass rallies against ‘homosexual marriage’ and the adoption of children by same-sex couples, chanted ‘Russia, save us’, knowing that such perversions are forbidden here. For fifty years and more the Russian Church has tried to redeem the post-Protestant world, suffering with limited success. It is now our turn to try to redeem the post-Roman Catholic world, a more serious proposition, revealing to it, to its astonishment, its long forgotten roots in Orthodoxy.

Afterword: Redemption by Suffering

In 1917 the West was warned of the evil it was exporting to Russia by the Revelation of the Mother of God in Fatima. ‘Until you stop spreading the evil that you are spreading to Russia and consecrate yourself to Orthodoxy, the Holy Father (the Patriarch) will suffer and all will go worse’. It refused to listen and deformed the message of the Mother of God into self-justification. Then, in 1919, as prophesied, it guaranteed a Second Great War by afflicting the German and Austrian peoples, and not their elites, with an unjust peace. Thus, Russian troops would be triumphant in Berlin and Vienna – but only in 1945 and after the most barbaric of wars, with its camps and genocides, the greatest of which was that of 30 million Slavs, imposed by racist Germany. And even after all this Western Europe still refused to repent and so has gone on with its abortion holocaust beginning in 1964, and in 1989 its destruction of an unfree Eastern Europe, which it had itself created in 1917 and 1945.

However, God gives many opportunities for repentance, up unto seventy times seven. Every generation has its chance. The chances were refused in August 1914, in September 1939, in October 1964 and in November 1989. In December 2014 there is coming yet another chance. Four horrible scars will be left, but there is still time. Since 1914 the old Protestant culture has fallen, its decadence becoming apparent after two generations in the 1960s. Since 1964 the old Roman Catholic culture has fallen, its decadence becoming apparent after two generations today. Once blinded by arrogant hubris, its delusion of self-belief, the old Protestant culture has over the last fifty years disintegrated. It is now the turn of the old Roman Catholic culture. If it understands its error of hubris, it will have the chance to listen to the real message of Fatima, the call to the West to repent of its pride and its poisonous materialist ideology and accept the restoration of Church Orthodoxy in its integrity.

It is by no means certain that this will happen. The post-Protestant world is still offered Orthodoxy, but few accept it. It may be the same with the post-Roman Catholic world. It may be that no restoration of Orthodoxy in the Western world, however partial, will be possible until there is the example of full restoration in Russia. It may be that until the House of Romanov, through the son of a Romanov mother, is restored, even until another War, the fallen Western world will not be ready to listen, understanding at last that its own propaganda about Russia before the Revolution was merely lies. It may be that the Merciful Mother of God must yet appear again, as She did in her Myrrh-Giving Iviron Icon in the 1980s, again witnessing to the New Martyrs and Confessors and confirming her words of Fatima. Only then will the Western world start to repent of the materialist ideology which it has spread and return to the clean Gospel of Christ and His Holy Church in the purity of Orthodoxy.

Defending the True West

The free voice of the Orthodox Church can be heard in a number of places today.

The Present Situation of the Orthodox Church in ‘Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition’, July 1989

Introduction

Unlike some, we have over the last forty years of writing always defended the True or Old West and its culture, while always telling the truth about the False or New West. According to this balanced Orthodox view of the world, the True West is that which was and is in communion with, and was and is an integral part of, the Church of God, the whole Orthodox world. The True West is 10,000 glorified saints, listed on this website. They include apostles and martyrs, of Rome, of Lyon, of Agaunum, of Merida and many other holy places, and Church Fathers, St Irenaeus of Lyon, St Hilary of Poitiers, St Ambrose of Milan, St Vincent of Lerins, St John Cassian, and a multitude of confessors and monastics who brought the Light of Christ to the spiritual deserts of the pagan Latin and Germanic world and marked them for all ages with their names.

The True West and the False West

The True West lasted for more or less the first millennium, before the powerbrokers who ruled over this Western corner of Europe, then containing a small minority of the total Christian population, cut it off from communion with the Church. This was in order to launch themselves into their great Western nationalist project consisting of false ideologies, Catholic-ism, Protestant-ism and now Secular-ism. We have had no illusions about the inherently secular nature of this False and New West, that of the secular second millennium and secularist third millennium.

Of course, there are those who do not belong to Christian culture, who attack the West out of insecurity, undiscerningly demonising it. They put their own culture and ethnicity above the Western, failing to discern between the True West and the False West. Islam is in particular guilty of this, but so sometimes is Hinduism, the former especially expressing even violence and fanaticism. Occasionally even some Greek Orthodox take part in this, not only old calendarists and sectarians, but also, for example the philosopher Yannaras. Possibly out of cultural shock and an inferiority complex, these are inclined to condemn even the True West.

All these groups fail to understand the many Western people who themselves have understood quite clearly the failures of the secular West of the second millennium, all the more so in its contemporary secularist form of the third millennium. Having seen the foreign groups which attack the West in a demonising and undiscerning way, it is therefore of interest to see who ignores the True West, or even attacks it, and so defends the False West. There are three groups involved in this operation, but by no means all of their members are actually Western people, for self-interest is involved here. Which then are these three groups?

1. The Self-Established

The first group which defends the False West is composed of those who have voluntarily allied themselves and so compromised themselves with Western Establishments. We can take as an example Anglicans (or ex-Anglicans who still think as Anglicans). They belong to a State-Church, a ruling, erastian ideology. When the State follows a secularist ideology, so do they. As one cynic put it a decade or so ago, ‘In 1900 the Church of England was for fox-hunting and against buggery, in 2000 it is against fox-hunting and for buggery’. Or to take other examples, today the Church of England is for female clergy and homosexual unions and 40% of its clergy, so it is said, do not even believe in the Holy Trinity.

Why is all this? Because the State decrees so and therefore the Church of England swims with the State’s tide. This is why it is ecumenical, for ecumenist syncretism is part of the politically correct ideology of the present State. It is true that there are small and heroic groups of actual believers in the Church of England. However, generally these end up leaving it for variants of the older Western ideology, becoming Methodists at one extreme or Roman Catholics at the other. On the other hand, the self-established are not interested in the authentic Church, refusing even to adopt Her calendar.

2. The Self-Interested

The second group, linked to the first, of those who defend the False West is composed of those who are financed or propped up by Western Establishments on condition that they ape the Western way. Thus, we can think of individuals over the last nearly hundred years in the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Antioch, the ‘Greek Church’, so beloved of conformist Anglicans. A sure sign of their Western Establishment backing is the fact that they are willing to adopt the Western calendar and support ecumenism. Large sums of money are associated with these changes which they attempt to foist on their peoples.

The politically unprincipled will always change for the sake of lucre and power. In only the last few years, months and days we have seen individuals fall in the Churches of the Serbs, of the Czechs and Slovaks and of the Bulgarians, for exactly the same reasons. Political and financial backing attract the spineless ‘diplomat’. ‘Follow the money’. A sure way of identifying who these ‘diplomats’ are, is to question their attitude towards the Council of Florence and St Mark of Ephesus. You will not find an icon of this great and courageous saint among them.

3. The Self-Deluded

The third group, often linked to the first or the second, are the naïve. Sometimes they are outside the Church, sometimes just inside, but on the convert fringes. They are often newly converted, or in any case they have never been grounded in the realities of the Faith. Their lack of awareness and their lack of knowledge of the facts of history mean that they are still connected with the heterodox world. Unable or unwilling to integrate, they suffer from self-delusion. This is not necessarily because they have never lived outside the Western world, it is rather because they have never lived outside the Western Establishment world.

They do not yet understand the difference between Orthodoxy and heterodoxy. They demand censorship of the Orthodox Truth (a good case is the late French Uniat philosopher Olivier Clement who even demanded in ‘Le Monde’ that Patriarch Pavle of Serbia not canonise the new Serbian Saints so as not to offend the Vatican, whose agents had massacred them!). The self-deluded have not yet integrated Orthodox culture, the Orthodox civilizational ethos, they have not had time. They too are very prone to ecumenism. They do not want zeal, only diplomacy. They should ask for the prayers of St Gregory Palamas to enlighten them.

Conclusion

Our task is to return the history of the West to its proper course and order. This means observing the proper balance between the True West and the False West and avoiding extremes. Unfortunately, we have seen time and again how those who do not defend the True West defend the False West. If we do not have a realistic view of the Heterodox West, then we will have a false view of the Orthodox West and vice versa. And a false view of present reality is also a false view of the future that awaits us, with its sorrows and its joys. Let us recall that the Enemy is parasitic; it only uses the West as a base and hates the West as it hates all of humanity, all of God’s Creation. The Lover of Mankind, however, loves all and his grace shines on the righteous and the unrighteous alike; the only question is whether all see it.

Why did Western Europe Invade Russia Four Times in 130 Years and why does it Carry Out an Information Cold War against it Today?

Introduction: The Aggressive West

‘Peace-loving’ Western Europe invaded Russia four times in five generations, in 1812, 1854, 1914 and 1941. The three main Western nations, France, Great Britain and Germany were all involved in these invasions, together with many smaller Western nations. Thus, twelve nations were involved in the 1812 invasion of Napoleon I, who ‘filled Europe with graves’; in 1854, France led by Napoleon II, Great Britain and Sardinia invaded together with the Ottomans; in 1914 the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire as well as the new Prussianised Germany invaded; and in 1941 representatives of a large number of European countries led by the Nazi Fascists. What made the West so aggressive? We cannot help but trace back its aggressiveness to its origins as a unique and distinctive phenomenon, born together with the filioque ideology under the upstart ‘Emperor’ Charlemagne in 800.

The leaders of this new Western Europe and its newly devised Old Testament version of Christianity, called ‘the filioque’, could not bear to see the original form of Christianity, Orthodoxy, as a rival to it; therefore, as Satan had done to the Father, it had to be rebelled against, slandered, if possible compromised, and if this were not possible, destroyed altogether as in the ‘Crusade’ of 1204. Today, modern, post-Christian Western secularism, the result of the ever-degenerating filioque ideology, hates Orthodoxy for being authentic Christianity in exactly the same way as its Catholic/Protestant predecessors hated it. Nothing has changed. And yet, Russia saved its aggressors twice. Thus, in 1914, Russian military sacrifices saved Paris, operating the ‘Miracle on the Marne’ by diverting German divisions to the Eastern Front, and in 1941 Moscow saved London. How?

How Moscow Saved London and was Rewarded with the Cold War

1941 was the critical turning point year of World War II for Great Britain. Isolated and bankrupt, it was cornered, dependent on food and supplies coming across the U-boat-infested Atlantic Ocean from North America. Starved into submission, it would eventually have been forced to negotiate with Nazi Germany. At this point, alone and facing Hitler’s might, it was saved. How? After all, by 2 December 1941 German forces had advanced to within a few miles of Moscow and could see the towers of the Kremlin.

However, the Wehrmacht was not equipped for winter warfare. Frostbite and disease caused more casualties than combat, and dead and wounded had already reached 155,000 in three weeks. The bitter cold also caused severe problems for guns and equipment and weather conditions grounded the Luftwaffe. Newly built-up Soviet units near Moscow now numbered over 500,000, and on 5 December, they launched a massive counterattack which pushed the Germans back over 200 miles. It was the beginning of the end.

The invasion of the USSR cost the German Army over 210,000 killed and missing and 620,000 wounded in 1941 alone. A third of these became casualties after 1 October and there were an unknown number of Axis casualties such as Hungarians, Romanians and Waffen SS troops, as well as co-belligerent Finns. This failure resulted in the salvation of Great Britain and ultimately in the end of the Third Reich. However, after this fourth failed invasion of Russia came the Cold War, which still continues today in its anti-Putin propaganda – nearly seventy years of aggression without ceasing.

This Cold War gives a completely distorted view of Russian history, whether it concerns the blood-soaked invasion of the Teutonic Knights (which the West sees as good), Ivan IV (whom jt sees as bad, miscalling him ‘the Terrible’, though he was a hero compared to the far bloodthirstier English Henry VIII who ruled at the same time), the Polish invasion of 1612, Peter I (whom it miscalls ‘the Great’), Paul I (who is seen as bad and was in fact murdered in a plot organised by the British ambassador), Catherine II (this bloodthirsty foreigner it calls ‘the Great’) and more recent figures such as Rasputin ( a devout, married peasant, murdered by British spies with the help of an Oxford-trained Russian transvestite).

Above all, this distorted view includes the much denigrated figure of the heroic Tsar Nicholas II and the twisted story of his death. During the reign of Nicholas II the Chinese Eastern Railway and the South Manchuria Railway were built, plans were laid for the electrification of the whole country, an oil pipeline from Baku to the Persian Gulf was planned, and the White Sea-Baltic Canal was designed. Major industrial zones in the Urals and the Far East were planned and the Baikal-Amur Railroad trunk-line was proposed. The Bolsheviks implemented these great plans afterwards and passed them off as their own ideas. Western sources blindly repeat these same Bolshevik myths. Why?

The Murder of the Imperial Family

The report of the Russian investigator N. A. Sokolov, the book by the English journalist Robert Wilton ‘The Last Days of the Romanovs’, the book by the heroic Russian General M. K. Diterichs ‘The Murder of the Imperial Family and Members of the House of Romanov in the Urals’, and the books by the contemporary modern Russian historian Piotr Multatuli all tell us that the deaths of Tsar Nicholas II and his family and faithful servants were ritual murders. Indeed, in 1905 year a group in Brooklyn in New York had already condemned Nicholas II to death.

Shortly before 17 July a mysterious man with a jet-black beard arrived in Ekaterinburg. This man was seen by many. And shortly before 17 July the Commandant of the House of Special Purpose (the Ipatiev House) Yankel Yurovsky completely changed the guard of this house. In the early hours of 17 July 1918 the Imperial Family was sent to the basement of the Ipatiev house. A squad of murderers arrived – their leader was the mysterious man. The murderers stabbed the family with bayonets and a special ritual knife. The aim of the murderers was to let the blood of their victims.

On the wall of the basement a kabbalistic inscription was left: ‘Here by the order of dark forces a Tsar was brought as a sacrificial offering. All nations are informed of this’. Also on the wall a fragment of a poem by Heinrich Heine was left: ‘Belsatzar ward in selbiger Nacht / Von seinen Knechten umgebracht. (Belsatzar (Belshazzar) was on this selfsame night killed by his servants). The original reads ‘Belsazar’ but here it is ‘Belsatzar’, which refers to ‘bely tsar’ (‘the white tsar’) –an epithet for the Tsar among the Russian people. After the murder, the bodies of the family were loaded onto vehicles and taken to a mineshaft called Ganina Yama.

Here the heads of Tsar Nicholas, the Tsarina Alexandra and the Tsarevich Alexey were ritually cut off and put into jars preserved in alcohol. The three jars were put into suitcases and taken to Moscow where they were shown to the Soviet authorities. What happened to them afterwards is unknown. After cutting off the heads, the bodies of the family were dismembered and then covered in sulphuric acid and burned. As there was not enough sulphuric acid, cars were sent to Ekaterinburg for new batches. Red Army soldiers stood on guard by the fire and would not let anybody near.

The fire burned for two days, after which the remains of the family were reduced to powder. This is why there are no remains of the Imperial Family. In the 1930s there was more mass repression in the Soviet Union, including in the Ipatiev House and on the site of the fire near Ganina Yama, where people were shot. Remains found there are the remains of Soviet citizens shot then. Thus, the remains which were buried in Petropavlovsk Fortress in Saint Petersburg in 2000 are not the remains of the Imperial Family. Soviet archives which are even now secret must be opened in order to find out about what happened to the heads.

Apart from this mystery of the three heads, vanished materials of the Russian investigator N.A. Sokolov must be found and still secret French, British and American archives must also be opened – they contain materials on the murder of the Imperial Family. We should also recall that, like others, Piotr Multatuli, the renowned Russian historian and author of five books on Tsar Nicholas II, writes that that no abdication ever took place. In reality, the Tsar did not abdicate. As the esteemed Russian elder, Fr Nikolay Guryanov, said: ‘There is not a sin of abdication on him’.

In reality, in February 1917 year a group of conspirator-generals, organised by the British ambassador Buchanan, went to the Tsar who was being held prisoner in his train, and demanded that he abdicate. But as an Orthodox Christian and the Lord’s Anointed, the Tsar refused. Then an ‘abdication’ was typed out and a signature was falsified. On 15 March 1917 it was announced that the Tsar had abdicated in favour of his brother the Grand Duke Mikhail Aleksandrovich. The latter believed it and on the next day, 16 March 1917, he abdicated in favour of the Constituent Assembly.

Conclusion: Know Your History

Nicholas II was a moral politician and he weighed his policies using the morality of the Gospel as his benchmark. He wanted his subordinates to exercise the same judgement in their care for the destiny of their Motherland. He cherished all the people of the enormous Russian Empire – the best proof of this is that the Russian population grew by 50 million people under his rule. The Tsar was faithful to Orthodoxy, while Orthodox self-consciousness was absent in the uprooted Russian governing élite, which toyed with various substitutes, such as mixtures of Western freemasonry, socialism, mysticism, occultism, esotericism and Eastern religions such as Hinduism. Therefore the discrediting of the Tsar’s name discredits the name of Russia and legalises and justifies the amoral, Western-created, Bolshevik lawlessness that engulfed Russia in the 20th century.

Thus, the discrediting of Nicholas II is part of the self-justifying propaganda war waged against Russia by the ruling factions of the West against the people, both of the West and of Russia. Tsar Nicholas II must be discredited because it was the Western elites themselves that deposed him and ordered his murder. That is why the West, with the assistance of some Soviet story-tellers, circulates tons of slanderous pulp-fiction (e.g. the works of E. Radzinsky), pretending to be new ‘biographies’. Public opinion is still full of deceitful myths about Tsar Nicholas and certain elements inside Russia consciously support these myths. They do not want their people to know the truth about their history. As we know, it is impossible to manipulate a nation that knows its history – and these words need to be taken even more to heart in the West than in Russia.

Questions and Answers from Recent Correspondence: April-May 2013

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

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

Q: What does this mean for Western religion?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q: Is this situation likely to improve?

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

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

Q: What are these demands and responsibilities?

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

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

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

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

Q: Is this likely?

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

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

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

Q: What needs to be avoided?

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

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

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

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

A Recent Interview

1) Please could you introduce yourself and how you became an Orthodox priest?

I was born and grew up in a modest family in a small town in the north of Essex, my father was local, though my very anglicised mother was of Russian origin. They had met during the War. I passed my 11 +, went to the local grammar school and then studied Russian, the language my mother had lost, at University. Next I went to work in Greece for a year, after which in 1979 I decided to study at what was then the only Russian Orthodox seminary in Western Europe, called St Serge, in Paris. In 1981 I was made reader in the Russian Orthodox Church. Four years after this I was ordained subdeacon and deacon and, seven years later, priest. I lived and worked in France between 1983 and 1997. I am married and have six adult children.

2) What is the vision behind Orthodox England?

I first began writing in the 70s, but my work was not published until the early 90s. Orthodox England began as such only in 1997 as a journal and, from the new millennium on, it developed into a website. After ten years, in 2007, the journal went fully online. Our vision is to call back English people and others living here, to their spiritual roots in original Christianity. In other words, our vision is to restore something of what was, so that we can survive by keeping our spiritual integrity today.

3) Why do you see Orthodoxy as the true faith of the British Isles and England and not either Roman Catholicism or Protestantism

Rather than ‘true faith’ I would say original faith.

Protestantism, in its many forms is obviously an invention of the sixteenth century, developed as a moralising reaction to Catholic deformations. Roman Catholicism, however, was itself only an invention of the eleventh century. It was developed as a geopolitical project by the Western elite out of the original first millennium Christianity in Western Europe as an ideology to justify its attempt to conquer the world.

First millennium Christianity in Western Europe was very different from both Protestantism and Catholicism. Any historian can tell you that. The main difference was a different Creed, which meant a different set of values and way of life, so that the Christianity of the first millennium here was in communion with the Church in the homelands of Christianity, in Jerusalem, the Middle East, Asia Minor, the Roman Capital in Constantinople and so on. The native people in Jerusalem and all these places belonged, and still belong, to the Orthodox Church. Therefore, the Christianity of the first millennium West can also fairly be called Orthodox. Thus, today’s Catholicism and Protestantism are fragments and vestiges of this original Orthodoxy, which fell out of communion with it through introducing its new Creed.

4) Could you explain what the Orthodox understanding of Church-State relations is and how it mainly differs from the Papal or Protestant view?

The Papal view of Church-State relations is called ‘papocaesarism’, the idea that the Pope should control the world. The Protestant view is called ‘caesaropapism’, the idea that the ruler (or parliament) decides on the faith – examples are Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, or the fact that whoever the current Prime Minister is – and he may be an atheist – appoints all bishops of the Church of England.

The Orthodox view is based on the Incarnation; as God became man, so man is called to become God-like. Therefore Orthodoxy calls for balance between Church and State, known as ‘symphony’, the idea that the secular ruler is dominant in affairs of State, the Church in spiritual matters that concern the salvation of the soul. However, spiritual matters do not mean some sort of inward navel-gazing, disassociated from social action. In fact, spiritual matters inevitably profoundly affect political, social and economic matters, the two spheres overlap and interpenetrate one another, hopefully in a positive way. We believe that as God is incarnate in the world, so the Church is incarnate in the world and must be active in transfiguring it.

5) Could you explain as to what you feel is of central significance as to the Western Churches’ historic adoption of the filioque and how this has affected Western Christendom both theologically and culturally?

The filioque is the local alteration to the Christian Creed, rejecting the consensual Creed and Faith of the Universal Councils. This alteration officially took place in Rome in 1014, one thousand years ago next year. (Unofficially, it had begun as a slow process over two centuries before, but only in certain provincial areas and then not with the later significance and in Rome the popes had then categorically rejected any alteration to the Creed). In other words, the Christian Faith was changed in the West at the outset of the second millennium and led to its isolation from the roots of the Church and mainstream Christianity.

The filioque, a Latin phrase that means ‘and from the Son’, secularises our whole understanding of the Christian God, the Holy Trinity. In combination with the claims of the Pope of Rome, also developed and enforced soon after 1014, the filioque says that the source of the authority and spirituality of the Church, the presence of Christ in the world, is no longer spiritually freely available through the Church. In other words, authority and spirituality are no longer dependent on the Holy Spirit, they are held captive, dependent on a human being. With the filioque, authority and spirituality depend on whoever makes himself recognised as the representative or ‘vicar’ of Christ on earth. According to these innovations of the 11th century, in Western Europe this representative was deemed to be the Bishop of Rome. Thus, all authority and spirituality was put into his hands.

The much later Protestant reaction to this was to make everyone into a pope; this was the innovation that led to modern individualism and secular humanism, man-worship. None of this would have come about, if it had not been for the introduction of the filioque, which had already been defined by the late 11th century by Anselm of Canterbury as the single distinctive motto of the arrogant and imperialistic ideology of Western Europe, which opposed it to all other cultures. Already in the eleventh century this ideology lay directly behind both the colonisation of England, known as ‘the Norman Conquest’, and the later colonial movements of plunderers known as ‘The Crusades’.

6) What are your views on the “Pussy Riot” incident in Russia?

Let me put that incident into its historical context – otherwise it will be meaningless.

We know for a fact that the 1917 Revolution in Russia was organised and implemented by the Western Powers in order to destroy Russia, its rival, one which, in their own words, would have become more powerful than any Western country by 1950. Therefore, British and the Americans sent Trotsky and the Germans sent Lenin to carry out the Revolution in Russia. We also now know that the order to assassinate the Tsar and his family actually came directly from New York – just as the Tsar himself had predicted it would, some ten years before. The Soviet Union was a purely Western foundation, founded on the Western ideology of Marxism.

However, in creating the Soviet Union, the West made a strategic mistake, a rod for its own back, because of course the Soviet Union became very powerful, the second ‘Superpower’. This was not as the West had intended, for the Nazis were supposed to destroy the Soviet Union. The West had not counted on historic patriotism and sense of national identity, a movement far deeper than the superficial Soviet Union. Therefore, when the Soviet Union fell, over twenty years ago now, the West’s greatest fear was that a free and independent Russia would be born, that, having thrown off its shell, the tortoise underneath it would turn out to be a hare. Hence the ‘Wild East’ chaos which the West encouraged in the former Soviet Union in the 1990s with its ‘divide and rule’ policies and privatisation. This was nothing more than institutionalised theft from the people.

The problem for the West came in the year 2000 when Russia finally recognised that it had to recover from this ‘Wild East’ Capitalism, the Mafia State, and set out on the very, very long path of recovery under President Putin. Therefore, the West had to destroy Putin. In some respects, he is an easy target because he rules over a post-Soviet country, still full of that corruption and mafia mentality introduced there in the 1990s. Therefore, it is easy to attack Putin’s Russia (although it is doubtful if the amount of corruption there is any greater in reality than in the EU or the USA) and Putin has been lamentably slow and weak in tackling corruption.

Thus, what really upsets the Western elite is the fear that Russia may yet free itself from this corruption and the former Russian Empire largely reconstituted in a Eurasian Confederation. The only focus of Russian unity, the multinational Russian Orthodox Church, is also the only force which can overcome post-Soviet amorality. Both Zbigniew Brzezinski and Madeleine Albright have made it clear that they are utterly opposed to the restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church and want to dismember Russia – much as Hitler planned to do. So Western so-called ‘NGO’s and Evangelical ‘missionaries’ have done their best to undermine the authority of the Church, even publishing attacks on the Church in the ‘Economist’ and the ‘Harvard Business Review’!

It is in this context that we understand the obviously set up ‘Pussy Riot’ incident, based around a non-existent female punk band. It seems that the financial backer of this pathetic little plot was Boris Berezovsky, who sent these women money through his friend Alexander Goldfarb. His reason for doing this was the refusal by the Patriarch just a few weeks before to back Berezovsky’s political campaign to become President. His letter was well publicised by the media.

So it was all about petty revenge, using these foolish young women (one of whom clearly needs psychiatric help) as stooges. In other words, the whole thing was a very obvious and unsubtle political manipulation by Russophobes. And it failed, because people could see what it was, a put-up job. And now Berezovsky, a thief of the Wild East 1990s, a Robin Hood in reverse, who stole from the people and gave to the rich, who was associated with and perhaps funded the terrorists who massacred the children of Beslan and funded the murder of the spy Litvinenko, has apparently committed suicide. I fight against the thought of Judas coming to mind, but it does…..

7) What are your views on “Nationalism” and should this be better contrasted with instead “Patriotism” from an Orthodox perspective?

Nationalism is hatred of others out of ignorance and deluded pride, usually in what is worst in one’s own country, of the sort: ‘We are better than others’. ‘We are the best in the world’. We can see this in the xenophobia of racist movements, like the National Front, the British National Party and the so-called ‘English Defence League’. When I see their slogans and hateful ideology, I can find nothing in them with which I can identify; their strident nationalism, arrogance and ignorance are among the worst aspects of this country – not the best. Christianity can never approve of hatred.

On the other hand, patriotism is love of what is best in our country and culture. In a globalised world there is no place for nationalism, but there is place for both patriotism and what I call ‘inter-patriotism’, the love of what is best in all countries. In fact, if you do not love your own country, if you are not patriotic, how can you possibly love other countries and their cultures?

8) Do you look for a restoration of the Orthodox Tsar in the future and is Orthodoxy intrinsically monarchist ultimately in its political leanings?

The Orthodox Churches live and have lived in all countries and under all sorts of regimes: Pagan, Communist, post-Soviet, Fascist, Capitalist, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim etc. However, history shows that the Church is able to influence society for the best when there is an Orthodox monarch.

Here we must emphasise that the Orthodox use of the word ‘monarch’ means something quite different from the Western usage. In the West it means a right-wing figure, who is extremely powerful and rich and uses that power and wealth to exploit for egotistical purposes, a kind of permanent Tony Blair or any other self-deluded narcissistic megalomaniac. Conversely, in Orthodox language, a monarch means a popular monarch, whose power and wealth exist only for the people’s benefit. His sovereignty is the reflection of the people’s sovereignty. Christian monarchy is where the people are the guarantor of the monarchy and vice versa. That is quite different from the absolutist and despotic monarchies with which Western history is littered. In 1917 Russia fell because of thoroughly corrupt and self-serving aristocrats, oligarchs as we would call them today, who connived with foreign powers, overthrew the monarchy and betrayed the monarch-loving peasants and workers, whom they ruthlessly exploited.

Prophecies, which are always conditional, clearly state that, if the whole Russian nation repents, a suitable candidate will appear to be Tsar again, just as in 1613 after the Polish invasion. All Russian Orthodox, and all conscious Non-Russian Orthodox, look forward to this possible restoration, because it will change the whole future of the world for the better, rebalancing it and turning it away from its present, suicidal course.

9) Please could you explain the Orthodox concept of “Romanity”?

‘Romanity’ originally meant that part of the Roman Empire that had become Christian. When the Emperor Constantine realised that Rome was integrally pagan, he transferred the capital of Romanity (= the Christian Roman Empire or Christendom) to New Rome (much later called Constantinople). After the barbarian Catholic schismatics sacked the capital of this Roman Empire and Christendom in 1204, it became very weak and finally fell to Islam in 1453. From then the capital of Romanity was transferred to Moscow, the new ‘Centre’. Today Romanity simply means all Orthodox Christendom, Orthodox civilisation, the ‘Orthosphere’. However, it is true that there are considerable fragments of this in countries outside it, including in the Western world.

9) Is there an alternative Orthodox vision of a Christian England within a Confederate Europe that can be advocated instead of the current EU super state project?

We are for Europe, we are not anti-European (that would be self-destructive – the British Isles and Ireland are obviously geographically European), but we are anti-EU. The EU denotes a corrupt and tyrannical political, commercial and banking elite which serves only itself. We believe in a European Confederation of Sovereign Nations, not in a Babylonian Superstate, a Fourth Reich of the United States of Berlin, which is what is on offer today. (Anyone who has seen pictures of what is happening in Greece and Cyprus, where German bureaucrats are meddling in national banks and national ministries at this moment, can see this quite clearly).
We believe that a Free Confederation of Europe, balancing unity and diversity, would at one and the same time eliminate the old tribal nationalism of Europe, as seen in the two great European Wars (so-called ‘World Wars’) and also eliminate the Babylon internationalism of the EU Superstate, which is a mere US colonial superstructure. The United States of Europe is made in the image of its colonial master, the United States of America, a corrupt institution which came to power on the 600,000 dead bodies of Americans who died in the American Civil War.

Theologically, Confederation is a Trinitarian concept, in the image of the Holy Trinity, unity in diversity. This is quite different from the centralism of the EU, which is merely the modern equivalent of the old papal centralism of the Middle Ages. In other words, the only essential geographical difference between the Middle Ages and today is that Rome has moved to Brussels.

10) Do you see Islam as being a significant threat to the UK or Europe in the future?

No, not in itself. Islam is only a threat if Europe and the UK continue on their suicidal path of renouncing and annihilating their Christian roots. As it is said, ‘nature abhors a vacuum’. In other words, since Christianity as the foundation of Western culture is being renounced by Western society, why should Islam not take over? There is a free market in religion now. If the West wishes to inflict Islam on itself, that is not the fault of Islam, only of the West. That would be the West punishing itself in freely-chosen self-destruction. It is not easy to stop a suicide.

11) Please could you clarify what you see as being theologically suspect in the “Paris School”?

The ‘Paris School’ of philosophy (there was no theology or Orthodoxy in it) was a marginal movement affecting a few dozen intellectuals and their naive followers. It started in Paris in the 1920s. After the Russian Church had been taken captive in 1917, these uprooted fringe intellectuals, former Marxists, a former Hindu, a hypnotist, occultists, theosophists, freemasons, and others, often not of an Orthodox background, left the Russian Church. Without Church discipline or the living Tradition, they decided to attempt to merge Orthodox theology with Protestant-based secularism in a sectarian and cultish way, the apex of which they called ‘Sophianism’. This was a syncretistic pseudo-intellectual mish-mash, rejected by the vast majority, which is destined to die out completely in the coming years, now that the Russian Church is being restored.

12) What is your understanding of “Sophia” in Orthodox theology and mysticism? Also what do you think of the many Marian apparitions that have happened in the West particularly since Fatima which referred to the conversion of Russia etc as many of the “messages” behind these alleged visitations of the Theotokos appear to completely theologically contradict Orthodox doctrine and practice?

You speak in your question of ‘Sophia in Orthodox theology and mysticism’. I have to translate and demythologise such exotic and coded language. Firstly, ‘Orthodox’ for us whom the outside world calls ‘Orthodox’ means ‘Christian’; the word ‘mysticism’ has no meaning, for all authentic theology is ‘mystical’, inasmuch as it all comes from God i.e, it is not rationalistic; as regards Sophia, this is simply the Greek word for ‘Wisdom’, that is, the Person of Christ. So what your question means is simply my understanding of ‘Christ in Christian theology’.

In reply: In Christian Rome (much later called Constantinople), the main Cathedral was and is dedicated to ‘The Holy Wisdom’ (in Greek ‘Aghia Sofia’), that is to the Saviour. In other words, it is ‘Christchurch’. In the Gospels the Saviour is called the Wisdom (‘Sophia’) and Word of God. So in answer to your question, the Christian theology of the Wisdom and Word of God, is that He is the Son of God Who became Incarnate, was crucified and rose from the dead, and there is no Wisdom or Word outside Him. This means that the highest form of Wisdom and Literature reside in Christ the Saviour, Who Alone overcame death. All other forms of wisdom and literature are, however valuable, still deathly, mortal, not of the Resurrection.

There have been several ‘Marian’ apparitions since Fatima. Each one must be treated differently. Medjugorje, for example, is a fake – according to Roman Catholic authorities. It is possible that others have been fake too. However, I believe that both Fatima and Lourdes were real. Sadly, the messages involved were ruthlessly and deliberately deformed and manipulated by the Vatican machine.

For five years I was the rector of the Russian Orthodox parish in Lisbon and collected information about the Fatima revelation, which happened precisely in 1917 and concerned Russia. For me the message is quite simple: the Mother of God was warning the Western world that if it did not stop plotting against Russia and did not repent, stepping back from the brink, it would destroy itself. And of course this is exactly what has happened and is happening now. I remember how President Putin warned Blair, I think it was in 2006, against encouraging atheism. The advice was ignored. The West ignores the Russian experience of Soviet materialism, so well described by Solzhenitsyn, at its peril.

13) What do you think of the late but influential Fr Seraphim Rose’s teaching as regards the “Toll Houses”?

I never thought that the late Fr Seraphim Rose, an Orthodox monk in California, was influential. This is news to me.

Fr Seraphim spoke in one of his books of the imagery of ‘toll houses’, which is used to illustrate symbolically what happens to the soul after death. Sadly, some people have misinterpreted and deformed his words and tried, very crudely and primitively, to make his words material, despiritualised. It is as if the Last Judgement was being presented as a law court with bewigged barristers and a judge. This is such a grossly materialistic, Kafkaesque deformation that it is unworthy of attention. I would say the same of the deformation of the Orthodox understanding of the image of the toll houses. Fr Seraphim was not responsible for this. He was merely trying to explain to the uninitiated. Perhaps, his fault, if any, was only in trying to ‘cast pearl before swine’.

14) Do you see any future for the Anglican Church? In your book “Orthodoxy and the English Tradition” you quote the Catholic historian Christopher Dawson from his book “Religion and the Rise of Culture” when he says “The West is different from other civilisations because its religious idea has not been the worship of timeless and changeless perfection but a spirit that seeks to incorporate itself within history. Other civilisations realised their synthesis between life and religion and maintained their sacred order but in the West the changing of the world became an integral part of its cultural ideal.” Would you say this is the spirit behind Anglicanism as it seems completely beholden to and compromised with modernity?

The Anglican Church was an invention of the power-grabbing and land-grabbing tyrant and serial wife-killer Henry VIII and then of Elizabeth I in the sixteenth century. Henry is said to have massacred tens of thousands, using atrocious tortures; Elizabeth, not a lot better, wrote the doctrines of Anglicanism. Anglicanism was invented as a nationalist compromise, necessary only to the State, Protestant in doctrine, though with some Catholic externals, notably stealing all the Catholic churches of the country, though ruining them with whitewash and sledgehammers. The idea was to unite everyone, Protestant-minded and Catholic-minded, in a single State-sponsored institution.

From the beginning, there was dissidence, even though some of the extreme Protestants were exiled to colonies in North America and Catholics were slaughtered, fined and exiled. The Anglican Church continually followed the State and its fashions, as an integral part of the Establishment, without spiritual independence, following whatever decision the State decreed, creating its ‘vicar of Bray’ scenario.

Never has there been a clearer example of nationalism, erastian caesaropapism, a so-called Church created by a State for a State. It is the same today; the State says ‘gay marriage’ and, lo and behold, many Anglican bishops and clergy say the same. Whatever the State commands, it follows. Someone said some years ago that the only difference between the Church of England Establishment today and 100 years ago is that then it was for fox-hunting and against buggery, but today it is against fox-hunting and for buggery.

Of course, it can be said that the Orthodox Churches have also been manipulated by States, with individual bishops vetted and even appointed in Russia by Tsars and Soviet Commissars, in Greece by sultans and Greek ministers and in Constantinople by the US Secretary of State. However, although all that is scandalous, it was also resisted by the vast majority, hundreds of thousands of martyrs and confessors, and also the Faith itself was not attacked and not altered. These unworthy bishops were appointed from the scrapings of the barrel that remained after mass persecution. But the Anglican Faith was altered – dictated by the State from the very outset.

What is the point of Anglicanism today, when the State is not only secular but openly and unashamedly anti-Christian? In this country it is a tiny group in any case. I would be surprised if the Anglican Church will continue to exist in another generation. A secular ‘Church’ is a contradiction in terms and has no more reason to exist. Its huge wealth will be grabbed by the greedy and bankrupt State. As a tiny minority, cut off from the broader currents of Christianity, Anglicanism is now breaking down into its unOrthodox component parts: the mass will lapse altogether into secularism; the practising will go to Protestantism; a small minority will go to Catholicism. This process has already been happening for centuries, but it is about to speed up.

15) What are your views on the Israel-Palestine question that so preoccupies current evangelical eschatological discourse?

It is an ironic fact that it was the persecution of the Jews in and by Western European culture that led to the foundation of Israel. However, the invention of Israel, an American colonial project, its Middle East base, just as the UK is its North Atlantic base, was a catastrophic event. It meant that the native inhabitants of Palestine were forced out of their own homeland. Many of their descendants are still living in refugee camps today, 65 years later. The existence of Israel has guaranteed permanent terrorist war in the Middle East and murderous attacks on the USA like 9/11 and on all Western countries that support this project, not to mention the purely terrorist (‘shock and awe’) invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. As long as Israel exists in its present form, there will never be peace.

Prophecies say that the end of the world will take place in Jerusalem, near Armageddon. In other words, the foundation of Israel in 1948 is of apocalyptic significance; it guarantees that the end of the world moves nearer. If we wanted to postpone that end, the best way would be to deconstruct Israel in its present form, though obviously with safeguards for the ordinary Jewish people, who are dupes in the affair.

16) What are your current projects and where can one find out more about Orthodox England please?

Currently, we are laying the foundations to extend the Russian Orthodox mission from Colchester to other centres in the East of England. We have a list of target towns to set up. Our target groups are Orthodox already in this country, but not practising for lack of local churches, as well as the vast masses of English people who do not practise any religion and probably never have done. (The tiny minority who already practise a religion, for example in the Church of England, should, we believe, stay there; we have never in any way tried to recruit them). To find out more, see: www.orthodoxengland.org.uk.

The Ten Commandments and the DeChristianisation of the Western World

About 1300 years before the birth of Christ – nobody now knows exactly when – Moses received from God the Ten Commandments, or Decalogue, which provided a radical new basis for all human civilisation, life and morality. These Commandments were fulfilled and supplemented, but in no way rejected, by Christ in the Beatitudes. The Ten Commandments are expressed in the following simple form:

1. Thou shalt have no other Gods but me.
2. Thou shalt not make for thyself any idol, nor bow down to it or worship it.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
4. Thou shalt remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5. Honour thy father and thy mother.
6. Thou shalt not murder.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods.

During the first millennium after the birth of Christ, Western Europe was gradually Christianised, steadily submitting to the Ten Commandments in their natural order, from first to tenth. The Commandments were brought to it by the Church from Jerusalem, centred in Her Capital of New Rome (later called Constantinople), its double-headed eagle uniting east and west, Asia and Europe.

However, Western paganism, formed by a complex mixture of pagan Romanism and pagan Germanism, began to take over Western Europe. This process took place in an ever accelerating way, so that in the ten centuries of the second millennium after the birth of Christ, Western Europe rejected each of these Commandments in reverse order, in this way reversing its Christianisation.

This process took place in reverse order because the last Commandment to have been implemented had had the least time to become rooted in Western European society. Therefore, it was challenged and overturned more easily than the earlier Commandments which were better rooted. Thus, throughout the ten centuries of this second millennium, each Commandment was rejected in turn.

In the eleventh century, the covetous Crusades in the Iberian Peninsula, in Sicily, England and then the Middle East and the Holy Land, marked the systematic and institutional beginning of imperialist greed and colonisation, with Western Europe covetously ravaging and pillaging its neighbours.

In the twelfth century, filioquists bore false witness, asserting that the Church had omitted the filioque from the Creed!

In the thirteenth century, in 1204 the Christian Capital of New Rome was looted, its shrines, relics and artefacts stolen as were many other Christian towns and cities.

In the fourteenth century, the ‘Church’ of Western Europe committed adultery with State values, its vestigial Christianity being made subject to a State-like authority, so becoming a ‘Church-State’.

In the fifteenth century, Western Europe began its murder of the peoples of the New World in unspeakable genocides, thus bringing them ‘Western civilisation’, ‘freedom and democracy’.

In the sixteenth century, Western Europe dishonoured its father and mother by rejecting many of the remaining vestiges of the Orthodox Faith by falling into Protestantism.

In the seventeenth century the Western world dishonoured holiness through its iconoclasm.

In the eighteenth century, the Western Enlightenment took God’s name in vain, rejecting the Revelation of God the Holy Trinity, preaching man-hating deism and then atheism in violent wars and revolutions.

In the nineteenth century, the ethnocentric Western world made an idol of itself, idolising its newly acquired knowledge of the fallen world (‘science’) in a cruel industrial revolution, idolising its all-limiting rationalism in a multitude of theories that despised God and exploited man.

In the twentieth century, the Western world rejected God and instead made gods of everything, inventing every ism, so beginning its suicide in World Wars and giving itself the ability to destroy every living thing on the Earth many times over.

If, one by one, the Ten Commandments were rejected in the Western world, century by century during the second millennium, what then can be said of the twenty-first century, of the third millennium?

Only this – that the Western world is living on borrowed time.

The End of a Civilisation: The Beginning of a Civilisation

After a thousand years, Europe is ending. And where the old European culture is not ending, it has already ended. This is because Europe has stopped believing in its ethno-religious ideology which drove it to worldly ‘greatness’, to conquer the world, in crusades, in exploration, in exploitation, in wars, in empire-building, in invention, in colonisation. That ideology killed itself during and in the aftermath of two great European Wars, which Europe spread to its colonies worldwide and called World Wars.

Europe’s ‘Scramble for Africa’ in the two generations before 1914 ‘worked’ because it used machine guns against spears and bows and arrows. But in Europe’s ‘Scramble for Europe’ in 1914, machine guns faced machine guns and so Europe slaughtered the flower of its own youth. It took America to end that slaughter. Ignoring its opportunity for repentance, Europe was not content with one slaughter, and so a generation later it began another slaughter, which was ended by an American invasion and occupation.

Today’s Europe no longer believes in Something. Therefore it believes in Anything. It has sold its cultural birth-right to others, whom it invites to live in its midst. Its native birthrates are in permanent decline and the statistics would be declining even further if many European men were not marrying Eastern European and Asian women, who unlike many Westerners did not forget their instincts in the 1960s, in order to have children, and if many Muslims and Africans did not live and have large families in Europe.

The seeds of Europe’s destruction were contained in its very ideology, which asserted that the European human-being is god. As a result, today Europe is itself being colonised – because others have simply imitated its ideology and asserted themselves and not Europeans, as gods, only more efficiently, more rationally, more logically. Already an American colony, is Europe now to become an Asian colony, as America, itself an imitation of Europe, in turn declines in bankruptcy? Where does Europe go from here?

For fifty years Europe has imitated America, spoken like America, built like America, dressed like America, eaten like America, drunk like America, listened to America and watched American television. For fifty years Europe has lived on borrowed time. But now time has run out and so we speak of the end of its civilisation. But he who says that a civilisation is ending also says that now there is space for a new civilisation to begin. But which civilisation can this be? Surely not the old European paganism?

Europe cannot go forwards to find a new civilisation. Therefore, it has to go backwards, not as far back as to its old paganism, but to that time when its now failed ideology of the fallen human spirit did not exist, that is, to a thousand and more years ago. That age still exists, for Europe is still haunted by that civilisation of its saints, which ended a thousand years ago. And it is this saint-haunted Europe, inspired by the Holy Spirit, which contains the key to the survival of Europe – because that Europe is its spiritual essence, its very soul.