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The Crisis

Our bishops and clergy have to obey State authorities which forbid gatherings of people and impose ‘social distancing’. For the last four weeks, there have only been 8 churches open in the whole of the UK, all of them are Russian Orthodox: No Greek Orthodox, no Antiochian Orthodox, no Romanian Orthodox, no Anglicans, no Protestants, no Catholics.

Eight canonical churches for the whole country. We are besieged by Greeks, Romanians and others who are scandalised by what they see, rightly or wrongly, as their bishops’ apostasy in closing their churches down completely, not doing any services and refusing to give holy communion.

Our church in Colchester has been open for the last three weeks on Saturday mornings to give confession and communion to those who wish, individually or in family groups. The rest of the week, whenever there are no services behind closed doors, we travel to people’s homes and give confession and communion. We wash our hands, wear masks, use alcohol to clean the communion spoons and take all possible precautions.

Our parish covers 15,000 square kilometres now. It is exhausting.  I have visited and am visiting and will visit Essex, East London, Suffolk, Kent and Cambridgeshire. Fortunately Fr Ion helps me in Essex and Suffolk and Fr Spasimir takes care of Norfolk.

However, this is not the USSR where churches were closed down for 70 years, this is only a temporary measure, an interruption of normality to which we shall return. But is it a preparation or rehearsal for something more sinister in a possible future? If we are being pressed to see if we are hard or soft and will resist the spirit of this world or not, we can say that we are resisting.

From the very start, this virus has been very puzzling. Clearly, this was going to be a bad flu for those aged over 70, for the long-term ill, for diabetic, smokers, drinkers etc. Clearly, tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands at least would die of its consequences (no-one actually dies of it, but of its results). It might even be as bad as, or perhaps even worse than, swine flu (500,000 mainly elderly and long-term ill dead in nine months) in 2009-10.

But no-one ever closed down the economy because of the flu. So why this time? Why commit economic suicide by closing down? How have the manipulators (the media) been manipulated? Now the internet is awash with conspiracy theories as to why. Basically, each theory is even more ridiculous then the first.

Only one idea seems to make any sense, that this is for some a sort of rehearsal, planned or unplanned, for a possible future in which we will all be controlled, our every movement, our every action controlled. Maybe we are being given a preview of what will come, a possible future – unless we resist. Maybe we are being tested to see how weak – or strong – we are. Maybe we are being warned. Maybe we are seeing whether we still have salt in us or whether our salt has lost its savour. As this Holy Week begins, it is up to us to show what we are made of. All the Holy week services can be followed at:

Full Suite of Texts for Holy Week: Readers Services for Every Day of Passion Week, For Those Homebound During the Period of Covid-19 Pandemic Restrictions | Тексты для домашнего совершения на Страстной неделе

 

While the Wolves Are Running

‘The Box of Delights’, the 1935 children’s book written by the English Poet Laureate John Masefield, is subtitled ‘When the Wolves were Running’. The story concerns crooks who dress up as clergymen and try to stop the Christmas celebration of the thousandth anniversary of a mythical Tatchester Cathedral, founded in 935.

It is an apt parallel for what is happening today in Constantinople and the Ukraine. The latest news, that President Poroshenko, the Uniat?/Jew?/atheist?, who presided his own State ‘Church Council’ in Kiev, closed Kiev airport until the Phanariot Greeks, who had given a false legitimacy to his meeting, had signed Poroshenko’s papers.

Wolves in sheep’s clothing indeed. However, as Metr Hilarion of Volokalamsk, has noted: The two bishops who were uncanonically accepted into the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the 85 bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church represent percentagewise a far smaller number of traitors than the one disciple from the twelve who betrayed Christ.

 

 

Who Are We?

With a website, soon to be two decades old, called Orthodox England, we clearly believe that there is no England if it is not Orthodox England, i. e, an England returned to its historic roots (just as there is no Russia if it is not Orthodox Russia). So who are we for and who are we against?

We are:

Pro-English (and so pro-Irish, pro-Scottish and pro-Welsh) and so anti-British.

Pro-American and so anti-Washington.

Pro-Russian and so anti-Soviet.

Pro-European and so anti-EU.

Pro-German and so anti-Hitler.

Pro-French and so anti-Napoleon.

Pro-Greek and so anti-Hellenist.

Pro-Ukrainian and so anti Kiev junta.

Pro-Jewish and so anti-Zionist.

It is so simple. We are pro-humanity, because God made us all, and we are anti manmade ideological constructs.

Dr Goebbels Lives

The first signs that large parts of the Western world had fallen to the idolatry of Public Relations came perhaps in the 1980s with an ex-actor as US President and an ex-actor as CIA-friendly Pope. The gulf between image and reality became fixed. Since then the image-makers (Public Relations) have tried to taken over the political world altogether. In the UK this has resulted in a former PR consultant (and descendant of a slave-trader – though the PR consultants will not tell you that) actually becoming Prime Minister (elected by a ‘clear majority’ – 11 million votes out of an electorate of 46 million – though the PR consultants will not tell you that either).

Thus, the Prime Minister can state that a little minor window-dressing by Brussels means that the people of the UK can now ‘freely’ vote on whether we wish to stay in a ‘reformed’ EU or not. Similarly, when the Prime Minister arms one of his closest allies to the tune of £1.75 billion in just six months so that almost 10,000 Yemenis can die under a rain of British bombs dropped mainly by British aeroplanes, this is quite moral. The fact that in the last twelve months his Saudi Arabian friends have also beheaded more people than IS is also quite moral. The terrorism of others is not moral, but the terrorism of the British State is. (Ask any Catholic Irishman or Boer or Kikuyu or Maori or Aborigine descendant for confirmation – or otherwise).

The Western PR machine has truly been in overdrive in its self-declared Second Cold War against the Russian Federation. Thus, Litvinenko, the spy and traitor (and associated with multiple murders by several commentators), was killed not by his mafia connections, but for some reason by the Russian State (obviously too stupid to assassinate someone more discreetly, like the much more professional British SIS, who assassinate scores every year). The same, apparently, is true of the assassination of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who exposed the mafia, and of Boris Nemtsov, himself a mafia agent.

We are also supposed to believe that it was not NATO-trained snipers who assassinated over 80 people in Kiev in February 2014, that it was not Galician Fascists and American mercenaries who slaughtered thousands of Ukrainian civilians in the Donbass and burned dozens to death in the Trade Union House in Odessa. And that Russia did invade the Ukraine 53 times – as announced by the billionaire puppet arms-dealer Waltzman-Poroshenko, even when not a single Russian tank or member of the Russian Army could be found there? And that NATO’s aggression is not the greatest threat to European security?

And apparently the internationally-monitored referendum in the Crimea, in which the citizens democratically and overwhelmingly voted to return to their Russian homeland, was illegal. And apparently, it was not the Kiev puppet regime which crassly shot down a Boeing over Eastern Ukraine. And the fact that FIFA and the World Athletics Federation are corrupt is not the fault of wealthy Western media organizations, betting syndicates and oil-rich Arabs, but of Russians? And if Islamic State is rapidly losing in Syria, it is not because Russian bombardments of their positions have outnumbered Western ones by 100 times? And that the catastrophes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and the ensuing invasion of Europe by immigrants is not the fault of Western blundering and meddling?

Perhaps Public Relations should stick to fairy tales. At least children could believe those.

Church dignitary likens NATO to “Fourth Reich”

http://www.b92.net/eng/news/region.php?yyyy=2013&mm=07&dd=01&nav_id=86805
Source: Tanjug

PODGORICA — SPC Metropolitan of Montenegro Amfilohije has referred to the western military alliance NATO as “the Fourth Reich.”

The media in Podgorica are quoting him as saying that NATO represented “a continuation of fascism and a desire to rule the whole world.”

This dignitary of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) also appraised that it was good that the region was uniting “with Europe” – but noted that this should not happen “as part of NATO.”

“What is NATO’s reason of being? What is NATO, if not the Fourth Reich? What is it, if not a continuation of fascism and a desire to rule the whole world,” Amfilohije said, during a consecration ceremony for a renewed church near the town of Kolašin, northern Montenegro.

“We are going to Europe, but to contribute something, not only to beg around Europe. The first thing that Montenegro could do is to ask the NATO nations to disband the pact. That would be Montenegro’s contribution to Europe,” the media in Podgorica quoted the metropolitan as saying.

As for Kosovo and Metohija, he said the tyranny of Murad – the Ottoman Turkish leader killed during the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 – was “continuing” there:

“Now it is not Murad who is taking part in it, it is NATO, the EU, and the U.S., in other words, all those who continue with the tyrannies of the crusades, the Inquisition, Napoleon, and the Bolsheviks.”

“They defend human rights, and drop bombs on us, and call that a humanitarian bombing. Americans have built one of the largest military fortifications in the world in Kosovo, for humanitarian purposes. Our leaders need to think well. We should go to Europe, but to what kind? Europe such as it is – criminal, tyrannical, trampling on the poor – is that the Europe we need?,” Amfilohije asked.

Thoughts on ‘Western Rite’

(First published on this site under ‘Orthodox Life’ in 2009)

Introduction

All religions have rites. Rites are necessary because we are incarnate. The bodiless angels do not need rites, but we do. In other words, the outward structures of rites are necessary in order to hold the spiritual content of religion, just as our bodies are necessary in order to hold our immortal souls. It can be said that a rite is a glass; the content is the wine. It is clear which is more important.

But which rite or rites should we use to contain this wine? Clearly, they must be worthy. In the Orthodox Church we have four very ancient eucharistic rites: those of St John Chrysostom, St Basil the Great, St James of Jerusalem (the most ancient of all) and the Presanctified Rite attributed to St Gregory the Dialogist. They all go back to the first century, but were not really settled until the fourth century and a few changes were made to them even after this. But beyond these, we have the rites associated with the many other services of the liturgical cycles of the year. Eucharistic rites are only part of the rites that we use. However important, the Eucharist is only part of Church life.

The question of a Western rite in Orthodoxy goes back generations and has a whole history in Western Europe, in North America and elsewhere. This question of a ‘Western rite’ seems to come up at regular intervals, every ten years or so, and well-rehearsed arguments are presented in favour of it. For the sake of those new to the Church, it would also be helpful to speak of the arguments against. These are not often expressed, all the more so when the arguments come from experience and observation of reality. What are these arguments?

1. Why?

The first argument against a Western rite is ‘why?’ Why have a ‘Western’ rite? Rites do not save souls, it is the spiritual contents of rites that save souls. Thus, Orthodox rites do not save in themselves: the case of Uniatism, which imitates Orthodox rites, proves this. Moreover, if great attention is paid to rites, this leads to ritualism, a particular danger in High Church Anglicanism or Anglo-Catholicism. After Anglicanism had lost continuity with Roman Catholic liturgical rites, this movement tried to recreate them in the nineteenth century.

Inevitably, this resulted in ritualism, the study of dead rites and attempts to revive them through a sort of artificial respiration. Most people find any ritualism irrelevant to their daily lives and boring. They say: Why have another rite in Orthodoxy when we have perfectly good ones already? Why try to breathe life into what has been long dead? Why such interest in the glass, when it is only the wine that is interesting?

2. Chauvinism?

In answer to this last question, we come to a second argument. This is the argument that ‘Western ritualists’ are placing their local culture higher than Church culture. Thus, the concept of a Western rite simply prolongs the East-West myth, beloved of the condemned Anglican branch theory, which heretically declares that the Orthodox Church is merely an ‘Eastern’ Church (and its rites ‘Eastern’ rites and not universal rites) and that the ‘other half of the Church’ is ‘Western’. The fact is that all rites come to us from the ‘East’, that is, from the Temple in Jerusalem through the New Testament and the Lives of the Saints. In other words, our rites come from the Holy Spirit, in Whom there is neither East nor West.

The concept of a Western rite suggests heretically that the Universal Orthodox Church is incomplete. The Western rite places a local culture, specifically a Western one, one which a thousand years ago fell away from the Church, above the catholicity and universality of the Church. Do we then reject Christ because He too came from the Temple in Jerusalem, because He was ‘Eastern’, an Asian, and do we try to replace Him with a ‘Western’ or ‘European’ Christ? Is this talk of ‘Western rite’ simply not all Western chauvinism, racism, the usual Western feeling of ‘superiority’ to the rest of humanity? Siberian peoples, Chinese, Aleuts, Japanese, Kikuyus, Indonesians and Thais all use the rites of the Orthodox Church. What is so special about ‘Westerners’ that they need some special rite?

The Fullness of Living Rites

Thirdly, any rite is much more than what is to be found on paper. Thus, a text of the liturgy of St John Chrysostom gives no idea of the wealth and beauty of this rite in practice. It gives even less idea of the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly liturgical cycles. The paper text of a eucharistic liturgy gives no idea of the pattern of Orthodox Vespers or Matins, the Hours, of the Sanctoral (services to saints), of Holy Week, Easter, Christmas etc.

Furthermore, texts give no idea of the outward beauty of the church building, of singing, of vestments, of ritual actions and, above all, of the atmosphere of prayerfulness a worthy rite creates. Orthodox Christianity is a whole way of life, not a rite taken from a manuscript celebrated inside a church building for two hours a week. Orthodox Christianity has to be transmitted from generation to generation down the centuries by families and monasteries, it cannot be invented from manuscript studies of a dead ‘rite’.

Which Western Rite?

Fourthly, when the term ‘Western rite’ is used, of which Western rite is revival meant? The Roman rite? The Gallican? The Ambrosian? The Mozarabic? Or some later version based on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer? The problem is that the ancient rites only survive in an incomplete manuscript form. Can they ever be restored?

Surely, any restoration would only be partial, leaving a danger for fantasy and lack of authenticity, as was the case with the much disputed revived ‘Gallican’ rite used by the group known as ECOF (‘l’Eglise Orthodox Catholique de France’) in France. How can a rite be restored anyway? Surely a rite must be living, practised in continuity? Would any restored rite not be artificial, self-conscious, unnatural?

Who for? Fifthly, even if it were possible to restore a rite, whom would it be for? In the year 2009, most Western Europeans never set foot in any Church and 99% of practising Non-Orthodox have no historic rite at all. The Counter-Reformation Roman Catholic rite was all but abolished at the Second Vatican Council in favour of a Protestantised rite. Since the 1960s Anglicans have only very rarely used their Prayerbooks, which retain vestiges of the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic rite and have swapped it for happy-clappy, ‘make it up as you go’ rites. Even Gregorian chant is largely an invention of nineteenth century Benedictinism. (And do any rooted Orthodox actually feel at home with that?)

For me, as for 99.99% of Western Europeans, though for different reasons, the term ‘Western rite’ is meaningless. I have never known any other rites than those used by the Orthodox Church, since I have never been Anglican or Roman Catholic. If I were asked to celebrate a service according to the ‘Western rite’, first of all, even before considering if I wanted to and asking my bishop for a blessing to do so, I would have to find out what it is. I would have no idea as to its practical implementation. For Western Orthodox like us, we already have ‘Western’ rites. These are the universal rites of the Orthodox Church, used in Western European languages and also in services to the local Western saints. We need nothing more, for us the ‘Western rite’ is already here and in regular use.

Theory and Practice

However fine the concept of a restored ‘Western rite’ is in theory, it seems not to work in practice. Certainly, the example of ECOF, the so-called ‘French Orthodox Catholic Church’, founded under Mgr Jean (Kovalevsky) and once several hundred strong, sends shudders down the backs of canonical Orthodox who had experience of it. Surely the fact is that ‘Western rite’ simply does not work in practice?

Surely a Western rite would only ever attract a small minority of old-fashioned Roman Catholics or Anglicans? They would be unable to integrate organic Orthodoxy and be unable to transmit anything to the next generation or anyone else outside their closed ‘ritual’ group. These would inevitably be cut off from mainstream Orthodox and find their services ignored by them, as if they belonged to an uncanonical sect.

St Tikhon and St John

Nevertheless, there is a strong argument for ‘Western rite’. This is that a form of the Anglican rite was approved by the Holy Synod of the pre-Revolutionary Russian Church and sponsored by none other than Bishop (later Patriarch and St) Tikhon at the beginning of the last century. And fifty years ago, Bishop (later Archbishop and St) John of Shanghai helped former Roman Catholics into Orthodoxy through Fr Evgraf Kovalevsky, whom he then consecrated bishop, launching a missionary ‘French Orthodox Church’, allowing it a ‘Western rite’ and the new calendar for the fixed feasts.

However, the fact that this small group later left the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in order to go onto the Roman Catholic Easter, sailed through many jurisdictions, causing many scandals, degenerated into ECOF and all but died out at the end of the twentieth century, makes for sobering thoughts. Above all, it has to be admitted that a century ago, Anglicans still had a rite and a sense of Tradition. And fifty years ago, in 1950s France, so did Roman Catholics. Therefore, pastorally, we could see what was done then as justified, even heroic. But surely times have changed? Today Roman Catholics and Anglicans do not have serious, historic rites. Time and again I meet Roman Catholics who come to the Orthodox liturgy and say: ‘At least you have ‘a real mass’, what we have is insulting’. Is there then any actual need for or interest in reviving a ‘Western rite’, even if it were possible?

Conclusion

Whatever reservations most Orthodox have, it must be said that bishops can give their blessing for the formation and practice of a Western rite in the Orthodox Churches. This is if they consider it pastorally necessary, if, in other words, there are people who can be brought into genuine Orthodoxy through it.

It may be that with the dissolution of Anglicanism in particular, there is now a place for a ‘Western rite’ in Orthodoxy. Despite all manner of disadvantages and difficulties, a ‘Western rite’ could perhaps fill a temporary pastoral need for some specific small groups.

However, it is doubtful if this need extends beyond a handful of individuals. In any case, whether we are for or against, interested or bored by the question of, ‘Western rite’, it is not up to us. It is ultimately up to those who have pastoral oversight, our bishops, to encourage or discourage a ‘Western rite’, according to whether they find anyone who needs it or not.