Some Notes on Anti-Russian Propaganda and the Pogroms

In any war, including in a cold war, it is usual to dehumanise and even demonise the enemy by telling lies, known as ‘propaganda’, about him. In this country we saw it in the First World War, when invading Germans were falsely accused of butchering Belgian babies. There are elderly people who still believe this. In recent years, in the NATO bombing of Serbia, the double Western invasion and ruining of Iraq and takeover of its oil and gas, the bombing and ruining of Libya and takeover of its oil and gas, and in the support offered by Western governments and media for fanatical Sunni Islamic terrorists against the Syrian government (‘regime’), the leaders and armed forces of those countries have been accused of all sorts of atrocities.

These propaganda accusations include ‘ethnic cleansing’ (as opposed to protecting the Serbian people and their ancestral territory), possessing ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (as opposed to Western governments supplying and using them), ‘torture’ (as opposed to Western secret services carrying out torture on their territories), suppression of ‘freedom and democracy’ (when it is in fact Western countries that are tyrannical and anti-democratic), and using ‘chemical weapons’ (as invented by Western countries and used by Churchill against the Kurds in 1930s Iraq, by the US in 1970s Vietnam, and by NATO and the US in the form of uranium-enriched munitions causing ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ in Iraq and the same radioactive poisoning in Serbia).

Thus, in reality, it is more commonly Western countries that carry out or allow the atrocities. This most common, hypocritical and outrageous propaganda technique, used expertly by Nazi Germany, is always to accuse your enemies of doing the terrible things that you do yourself. In this context anti-Russian propaganda has taken various forms according to the period. For instance, hatred and jealousy of Russia in the nineteenth century tried to discredit it in as many ways as possible, even by going back into history to try and ‘barbarise’ ancient Kiev, a civilisation far in advance of Western societies of the time and which it protected from the Tartars. It also deemed as ‘barbaric’ Russian Tsars, who were in fact ten times less ‘barbaric’ than Western rulers of the same period. We have the example of Ivan the Threatening – called by Western propaganda ‘the Terrible’ – as compared to the truly terrible Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

In that nineteenth century, first Napoleon invaded Russia without provocation, and then France and Great Britain together invaded during the Crimean War, which they still justify. Some fifty years later Great Britain invaded Tibet and massacred Tibetans for the sake of control and warding off an imaginary Russian threat. At the same time, through a compliant jingoistic press, partly owned by arms manufacturers, it accused Russia of anti-Jewish pogroms and anti-revolutionary activities (see the propaganda even in Nesbitt’s children’s story ‘The Railway Children’) and in the Russo-Japanese War it financed and sided with Japan, provoking the Hull incident. Incidentally, this War broke out when the Japanese behaved just as treacherously as in World War II. (Port Arthur and Pearl Harbour almost rhyme).

In its hatred of Tsar Nicholas II, this anti-Russian propaganda even used to accuse him of being both weak and tyrannical at the same time! In 1916 British spies murdered Gregory Rasputin and then Buchanan, the British ambassador in Saint Petersburg, organised the Russian Revolution and the captivity of the Tsar. Lies about all this, still widely repeated and even believed!, were merely the result of ‘The Great Game’, a rivalry with Russia, imagined and fomented by British imperialism. This used systematic and highly-organised anti-Russian propaganda, because British imperialism (‘civilisation’) wanted total, or rather totalitarian, control of the globe, just as American imperialism (‘globalism’) does today.

Post-World War I anti-Russian propaganda asserted – and still asserts – that the reign of the Tsars (‘Tsarism’) was far worse than Communism, despite the Gulag and the obvious evidence that the reign of Tsars was a thousand times better. It even asserted that Russian losses in the First World War had been very high, ignoring outrageous Western losses (‘the generals were donkeys, the men were lions’), the fact that Russia had been relatively demilitarised and that the Russian Army had had to face alone far higher numbers of the enemy than the Allies on the Western Front.

In the 1930s American propaganda invented ‘Russian roulette’, which was and still is quite unknown in Russia. As for post-World War II anti-Russian propaganda, it wants us to forget that it was Western ‘civilisation’ that invented the genocide of the Jews and concentration camps. The latter were arguably invented by the US in the form of ‘Indian’ ‘reservations’, then used by the Spanish in Cuba, but much developed soon after by the British in their genocidal anti-Boer War and again used in the 1950s in British genocide in Kenya.

This propaganda that Russia persecuted the Jews also conveniently ignores the fact that the greatest recent Western genocide was not against the Jews, but against the Slavs, some 30 million of whom were slaughtered by Nazi Germany, over 25 million of them, mainly civilians, being from the Soviet Union. It also ignores the horror of hardened Red Army soldiers when they discovered anti-Jewish German atrocities in the Ukraine, for example at Baby Yar, and when they liberated most of the German slave camps, like that at Auschwitz.

Typically, such anti-Russian propaganda also invented the myth that virtually every Red Army soldier in 1944-45 was a rapist. This ignored the real figures and also the huge number of rapes previously carried out on the Eastern Front by German soldiers, the 10,000 rapes carried out in Britain (!) by US soldiers between 1942 and 1944 and the many rapes carried out by Allied soldiers when they invaded France and Germany (Dieppe and Stuttgart come to mind). It is typical therefore that such propaganda forgets that the greatest anti-Jewish pogroms of the early 20th century took place not on the territory of the Russian Empire, but in Berlin and Vienna.

What can we say about the pogroms that took place on the territory of Imperial Russia at that time? Firstly, why were there so many Jews living on the territory of the Russian Empire? Simply because the Jews had been viciously persecuted in Western Europe from the late eleventh century on, at that time by the ‘Crusaders’ who massacred all who were different from them. Finally, the Jews were thrown out of Western Europe during the Middle Ages and emigrated to the far more tolerant Eastern Europe. Thus, their large presence in Poland and Romanian-speaking Bessarabia, as well as in Russia and the Ukraine, was due to Western ‘pogroms’ – which became even more systematically and brutally apparent under the Nazis – another product of ‘Western civilisation’.

Incidentally, Jewish minorities, who survived in or returned to Western Europe, were still much disliked there, as can be seen from the 19th and early 20th century history of all Western European countries (Roman Catholic anti-semitism, the Dreyfus case in France, pre-World War II British anti-semitism and anti-semitic ‘jokes’ as in Noel Coward songs, pre-Nazi German and Austrian anti-semitism etc).

The Russian Empire inherited Jewish refugees when Poland was partitioned in the 18th century under the German Empress Catherine II (called ‘the Great’ despite her destruction of two thirds of Russian monasteries and immoral life). Under her Russia freed Polish-occupied western Belarus, western Ukraine, Lithuania and also occupied eastern Poland as a buffer against Prussian and Austro-Hungarian aggression, at the same time liberating Orthodox Bessarabia from the Ottomans. In all these places, the Jews lived in relative peace until the late 19th century.

Unfortunately, the money-lending activities of some of the wealthiest Jews and the subsequent chronic indebtedness of Slav and Romanian peasants often got them into trouble. (Their tendency to drink, encouraged by Jewish innkeepers, was similar to the enslaving alcoholism encouraged by Western traders, ‘Indian agents’, among Native Americans). Seeing their exploitation and oppression by certain Jews, by the early 20th century there was great local anger against Jews who were seen as ruthless exploiters. Mutual antagonism led to clashes between Jews, workers and peasants in these areas, so-called ‘pogroms’. 57% of the victims were Non-Jews. It is often forgotten that many of the pogroms were actually started by Jews, armed with revolvers. Between 1903 and 1907, ther were over 1600 deaths, mainly of Non-Jews, in these Non-Russian parts of the Empire.

The Imperial authorities did their best to stop these pogroms, but felt that unscrupulous Jewish money-lenders were the real cause of the problem, drawing hostility towards all Jews. The Russian Orthodox Church, for example with Bp (later Metr) Antony (Khrapovitsky) in largely Jewish Zhitomir, also did her best to stop the pogroms, but had little influence among the Non-Orthodox population.

Meanwhile, the relatively few Jews in Russia proper lived in relative peace and many prospered, although their career options were limited. The fact that it was basically Non-Russian and Non-Orthodox peasants who carried out the pogroms is naturally overlooked by ‘Great Game’ propaganda. Particularly unpleasant were the activities of Uniat populations, notorious for their nationalism – which is the main reason for the existence of Western-backed Uniatism. It is notable that later Nazi anti-semitism found fertile recruiting grounds for the SS precisely among western Ukrainian (by nationality Polish) Uniats and Baltic Catholics and Lutherans, whether in Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia.

Pogroms did take place in the Russian Empire, though on a much lesser level than in Berlin and Roman Catholic Vienna. Jews fleeing from pogroms all over Central and Eastern Europe took refuge above all in Great Britain and the USA. Today we are in a US-fomented post-Cold War Cold War, with, for example, the absurd, Western-orchestrated ‘Pussy Riot’ incident and the criticism of Russian laws against homosexual propaganda. However, as we have said above, all this propaganda, of every cold war period, does not want to admit that anti-Jewish persecutions were above all a Western problem. These persecutions spilled over into the Russian Empire and were disguised by propagandists (= liars) under a Russian name – ‘pogroms’.

A Convent Conversation

From ‘The Herald of R.O.M.E’.
(The Herald of the Russian Orthodox Metropolia in Europe, No 8, 2026)

On 7 August 2026 we visited Sts Peter and Paul Convent just outside Rome and interviewed Archimandrite Pavel (Kirillov), the spiritual father, and some of the nuns.

Interviewer: Fr Pavel, you are an archimandrite and the senior priest and confessor here. Can you tell us something about yourself and the Convent?

Fr Pavel: I am Russian, but as a young man I worked as a cook in restaurants for many years in Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland, before going back to study at seminary in Moscow. I became a hieromonk in Moscow in 2004 and, as I spoke Italian, I was sent straightaway to serve in Italy, where there was then a great shortage of Russian priests.

I am helped here by a young Italian priest Fr Ambroggio, who is married and lives near the Convent, and a Moldovan hieromonk, Fr Tarasy. Fr Tarasy serves a lot. Fr Ambroggio serves one week a month and the rest of the time looks after the main Italian-language parish in Rome as well as visiting many of the local families who come here for services. With the help of some laymen, he even set up a football team for the boys of the families who attend the Convent. The local boast is that we are the only convent in Italy with its own football team. And last year we even won our league!

I: What language do you use here?

FP: We use Italian as our main liturgical language, with Slavonic and Romanian as what I would call reserve languages. Most sisters speak at least one other language apart from Italian. At present we have 39 nuns of sixteen different nationalities, with twelve Moldovans and eight Italians. Moldovans have played a great role in Italy, helping to set an example and convert Italians. I think this is because the cultures and languages are so similar, but the Moldovans have Christ, whereas the Italians had lost Him.

I: Tell us something of the history of the Convent.

FP: Originally, there was a need for a Convent somewhere in Italy, but we did not know where to start and whom to dedicate it to. Once we had the buildings, the Abbess, Mother Paraskeva as she now is, had thought of dedicating the Convent to the Resurrection – Mother Paraskeva would dedicate everything to the Resurrection, if she could, since she says that Italians don’t know what the Resurrection is. That’s why there is always one Sister called Anastasia. In any case you can imagine what joyful Easter services we have here! However, when these buildings outside Rome came up for sale and we asked Metropolitan Nicholas in Paris about them, he decided that the dedication of the Convent should be to the great apostles and martyrs of Rome, Sts Peter and Paul. This year he came to our patronal feast together with Bishop Gregory, our diocesan bishop in Italy, and preached a sermon where he spoke of how very different Sts Peter and Paul are and yet how they complement each other. He said that this is what we have to do in our Convent. With so many nationalities, we have to complement one another. He told us that whenever we have an argument, we should look at the icon of Sts Peter and Paul embracing and pray to them to guide us.

I: What is the main problem for Italians in integrating the Orthodox Church?

FP: The same as for all people of a Western background. It is one thing to join the Orthodox Church and another to become Orthodox. And yet if you do not first become Orthodox, then you cannot remain Orthodox. That is why Metropolitan Nicholas and all the diocesan bishops of the Metropolia instruct their priests to prepare catechumens very carefully. The knowledge of facts that occurs in the head is of secondary importance. But Western culture puts knowledge first. What is in reality of primary importance is the understanding of facts. That is Orthodox culture. And since understanding is located in the heart, and not in the head, understanding therefore depends on the purity – or lack of purity – of the heart.

The greatest problem for Western people is to come to the understanding that Western culture must be subordinated to Orthodox culture. Culture is the world, not all culture can be absorbed into the Church. Whatever cannot be baptised into the Church, must leave – just as a catechumen leaves the Liturgy. If Western people do not do this, but idolise their Western culture instead and are offended when parts of that are rejected, they will never become Orthodox, for they are unworthy. The Gospel is what we always put first.

I: How do you maintain your own inner life?

FP: Every year I go to Optina in Russia for six weeks and there I am free to talk to my spiritual father. For me it’s very important to keep contacts with the Motherland.

I: I turn now to the Abbess of the Convent, Mother Paraskeva. Could you tell us something about yourself, Mother?

Mother Paraskeva: Like many in the convent, I am Moldovan, but I came to Italy in the early 2000s, seeking work, sending money home to help my family. I was already at that time a Churchgoer and was thinking of monastic life, but could not find the right place. It was only after several years of searching that I found a convent in Moldova in 2012. It was a huge relief to me. I felt as though I had come home. Then I was sent here as an obedience when this Convent opened in 2019. I had no idea that after only one year I would be made Abbess – if I had known, I don’t think I would have come! When Bp Gregory made me Abbess, instead of congratulating me, Fr Pavel said to me: ‘My condolences’. He was right!

I: What Italian people come to services at the Convent?

MP: We have a whole group of Italian men who were in the Italian Army, sent as peacekeepers in Kosovo for NATO. When they saw the injustices that were happening there and the anti-Serb persecutions, many of them became Orthodox, some of them even married Serbian women. They have remained faithful even though all the north of Kosovo long ago returned to Serbia. But apart from these families, we have families from Romania, Moldova, Russia and the Ukraine in particular. But Italian is our common language.

I: What does the Convent live off?

MP: We sew vestments, bake prosphora, make candles and, above all, make soap. Soap-making is our most financially profitable activity. Thanks to it we have been able to restore all the buildings in the complex that we have and we can now take another twenty nuns, if there are suitable candidates.

I: I will now turn to some of the nuns who are here with us. Sister Clotilde, what about you? Where are you from?

Sister Clotilde: I am French, a Parisian, where I was born in 1996. I joined the Russian Orthodox Church in Paris in 2015 after realising that atheism brought no answers and is even irrational – for nobody can prove that God does not exist. Since I studied Italian and Russian, an unusual combination, and I felt that my future was in a convent, I came here after I had finished my studies in 2019.

I: And you, Sister Odile?

Sister Odile: I am from Germany, but my mother was Italian. I come from just near Alsace, across the French border. So I would say that I am Alsatian, which is why I have a French name. I have been here for four years. My background is in history and I worked for eight years as a history teacher at a university in Germany.

I: How did you come to the Church?

Sister Odile: As a historian I had a great interest in Napoleon, who was the first to try and unite Germany. Through him I became interested in Tsar Alexander I, the mystical Tsar who defeated Napoleon. My other great interest was in the Crusades. My conversion came about when I started reading about the Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople in 1204, even though many ordinary people in the West opposed the Crusades. Then I read on the internet an Orthodox writer who said simply: 1204 = 1453 = 1812 = 1917. In other words, he was saying that the sack of Constantinople by the West led to its occupation by the Muslims in 1453 and that 1812, the occupation of Moscow by Napoleon and his 12 tribes, led to 1917, the sack of Moscow by the West through their Provisional and then Bolshevik agents. These historical connections and their injustices, 1204 = 1453 = 1812 = 1917, and their implications converted me. I ended up coming here four years ago, together with Sister Mauricia, who is Swiss and was also a history teacher.

I: Mother Thecla: I believe you are Russian?

Mother Thecla: Yes, there are four Russian nuns here. Myself, Sister Matrona from Moscow, Sister Lydia the choir director and Sister Marina, but she has gone on a pilgrimage to her patron in San Marino with the parish there. However, most of the Moldovan sisters speak good Russian and several others, like Sister Gabriela from Poland and Sister Maria from Austria, understand it. I was born in Ryazan but came to Italy in 2007. I became a spiritual daughter of Fr Pavel when he was parish priest in Turin and then followed him when he was appointed here.

I: Sister Lydia, how do you find the adaptation to Italian life?

Sister Lydia: That is something of the past for me. Today this is my place, my home. Sometimes I even find myself forgetting Russian words. I can only think of the Italian ones. I love singing in Italian. It is just as musical as Slavonic.

I: And you, Sister Agatha? You’re Italian, aren’t you?

Sister Agatha: I’d like to say not Italian, but Sicilian. We have another Sicilian sister here, Sister Pancratia from Taormina, as well as a Corsican sister, Sister Giulia, and we all feel the same, not really Italian. We’re pleased to be from the islands and to have this identity. But, of course, our real nationality is Orthodox.

I: How did you come to the Church?

Sister Agatha: I’m a cradle Orthodox, my parents converted. They were Catholics but were so disgusted by various compromises that they became Orthodox in Palermo. That’s where my brother is an Orthodox priest. However, we realised that we must have Orthodox origins. My father’s mother, Sicilian born and bred, spoke a dialect of Greek. Once all Sicily was Orthodox, it’s in our folklore. Catholicism was imposed on us, it’s superficial. So Orthodoxy is like a liberation for us, it is what is underneath us all, our buried identity.

I: And you, Sister Theodora? Are you Italian?

Sister Theodora: I’m Greek, but was born in Italy, actually in Venice, where my parents studied, met and then stayed on to work. So actually I speak better Italian than Greek. I feel at home here. So to be an Orthodox nun in Italy is the best of both worlds.

I: What about your, Sister Tatiana, Are you from Moldova too?

Sister Tatiana: Not at all. I am Italian, a pure Roman, like St Tatiana herself. Mother Paraskeva likes to give us the names of the saints who lived in the places where we lived before we came here. She says that the saints are our spiritual identity, so we must carry that identity in our names. So we have Sister Sofia, Sister Lorenza and Sister Alexia, who are all from Rome like me and Sister Januaria, who is from Naples. Then many of the Moldovan sisters, Sisters Anastasia, Sabina and Melania, also from Rome, Sister Agnes the Hungarian, from Rome too, Sister Paula who is Maltese, and other Moldovans, Sister Ambrosia from Milan, Sister Nicola from Bari and Sister Apollinaria from Ravenna.

I: And what about you, Mother Eulalia?

Mother Eulalia: I am Catalan from Barcelona, but I have been living in the Convent since the beginning. Because I spoke Italian, Mother Sebastiana sent me from the Convent in Madrid right at the beginning in 2019 to help. I look after novices and guests.

I: Mother Paraskeva, if I can return to you, what are your relations with local Roman Catholic convents like?

MP: We don’t really have any relations. That does not mean that they are bad, it’s just that there are so few Catholic convents left nowadays and most of the nuns in them are in their eighties. It’s like two parallel worlds, we just do not have much to talk about. Their life is totally different from ours, for us they are like retired social workers, devout laywomen who live in retirement homes. Our nuns are young. We only have three mothers, the other 36 are still sisters, riasophore nuns, and then there are seven novices at the moment.

On the other hand, we have a lot of contact, and not only by e-mail, with other Orthodox convents in the Metropolia, in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Austria, England, Germany, the two in France, the Netherlands and also the new convent in Copenhagen, where we have just sent our Danish sister, Sister Anna, and our Swedish sister, Sister Olga. We also have a lot of contact with other ROCOR convents in the USA and Australia, not to mention with two convents in Moldova and one in the Ukraine. Metr Nicholas is very keen for us to have these contracts. He says it is especially important for us in our Metropolia, so that our different countries are bound together by bonds of spiritual love. This is why we have a meeting of all the abbesses of the Metropolia once every two years, in a different convent each time. The abbots from the Metropolia monasteries do the same. Metr Nicholas says the Church is a family and we must keep together and see each other, like a family.

Last year we had our meeting in Paris, during which Vladyka’s namesday fell, on 17 July. Thanks to the meetings we realise how different our situations are. For example, here we are very multinational, but the Convent in Germany is nearly all Russians and Ukrainians. In Portugal, they have three Brazilians and two Angolans, in Spain they helped set up the Convent in Peru and train a lot of Peruvian and Bolivian nuns. In England the Convent was founded from the USA and they have two Australian nuns. One of the Convents in France is half-Romanian, whereas we only have one Romanian, Sister Paisia. The new Convent in Denmark has two Norwegian novices and one Icelandic novice. And so the differences are enormous.

Sometimes we also have visits from hieromonks and monastic fathers. For example, last December Fr Columba came to us from his hermitage on Iona in Scotland. He is a fascinating man, a real ascetic, but also well-read. He knows the Psalter by heart – but more than that, he understands it and can interpret it too. He has read the Fathers.

He spoke to us in English, but our English sister translated into Italian. He said that for our Metropolia of Europe to be successful, we must, ‘Take the Napoleon out of the French, the Prussian out of the German and the British out of the English’. We all laughed when he said that last part because he is Irish and so he would say that! But Sister Elizabeth, who was interpreting and is English, reminded us how in the life of her patron, the martyred Grand Duchess, her parents were very upset when the Prussians forced unification on her native Hesse. Sister Ursula, who is German from Cologne, agreed and said that the Prussianisation of Germany was its downfall. With Prussianisation German people went from music and opera and culture and dancing to warfare in less than two generations.

I: Mother, could you leave us with a parting word, something edifying?

MP: Well, I think I would end with Fr Columba’s words, which echo the words of the Gospel. In other words, in order to live an Orthodox life, especially nowadays, when the masses are atheists, we have to take out the old man out of our old identities and know that, whatever our native language and whatever our origin and background, our unity is in the New Man, in Christ. While we are in the world, we are all a little spiritual Prussians and spiritual Napoleons and spiritual British, but we all have to get rid of that and become true Orthodox Christians. Only so can we live in Christ, and not live in the world.

I: Thank you, Mother Paraskeva.

On the Reconversion of Europe

The peoples of Western Europe were betrayed by their elites and the elites of Western Europe were betrayed by their love of power and money.

Introduction: The Church of God in Western Europe

Why, when there is already a network of tens of thousands Roman Catholic churches all over Western Europe, is there a need for a smaller network of Orthodox churches covering the same territory? Roman Catholicism already has bishops, priests, sacraments and belief in saints. Why do Orthodox need their own structure? It is because the Roman Catholic structure is a post-Orthodox Christian structure of the second millennium and not one of the first millennium. This simple fact has many and complex ramifications, from the centralisation, clericalism, Inquisition and Jesuitry of the past to the scandals of Fascist Croatia and Kosovo, the Vatican Bank, the homosexualisation and pedophilia of the present.

Roman Catholic bishops and clergy, bachelors, often isolated and little known to the faithful, Roman Catholic ‘theology’ and ‘sacraments’, changed beyond recognition by dried out scholasticism, its ‘saints’, so often psychics or else inquisitors of a second millennium divorced from the Church, are not the same as those of the Orthodox. If it were otherwise, then the hopelessly old-fashioned ecumenical movement would have been successful, instead of being the failed, abstract project of elitist syncretists. Churched and even unChurched Orthodox of all nationalities who live in Western Europe simply do not feel at home in Roman Catholic churches. Why?

Free Grace, Acquired by Asceticism, not Moralising Law, Imposed by Guilt

To this question many would answer ‘because it does not feel right’, ‘there is something wrong in the atmosphere’, ‘it does not ‘smell’ Orthodox’. Certainly architecturally, it is uncommon to find a Catholic church that can be converted into an Orthodox church. They are often Gothic and colourless and feel empty, they are mournful, Crucifixion-, and not Resurrection-, focused, guilt-ridden and desacralised, not devoted to beauty; liturgies seem to be without spiritual food, not watering the spiritual desert. However, all these differences, obvious even to the least educated, ultimately go back to something profound, to the deformation of Orthodox teachings, the deformation of the heritage of the first millennium.

Firstly, outwardly, for Orthodox the Church means local authority and unity. It does not mean abstract authority and unity in a distant bureaucracy of eunuchs in the neo-pagan Renaissance Vatican Palace, built by lucre won from indulgences. The leader of a Local Orthodox Church, Archbishop, Metropolitan or Patriarch, is only the chief of a Synod – and it is the Synod that is the administrative guarantee of authority and unity. The chief of the Synod is not an imposer of dogmas who meddles in local affairs, sometimes by military force and bloodshed. It is the local diocesan bishop, one among many but still able even to canonise local saints, who is important above all, and the local married priest is simply one of us.

Secondly, inwardly, in the Church we live off the Holy Trinity, and therefore theology and sacramental life, as in the first millennium, are part of the continuous inspiration of the Holy Spirit, called the Tradition. Therefore, the immediacy and presence of the Spirit proceeding directly from the Father, is felt in the theology, practices and life of the Church. The Spirit is freely accessible to all, both in the sacraments of the Body of Christ, but also in personal and collective prayer, fasting and ascetic life, and revealed in the ‘coincidences’ that pattern Orthodox life, that is, in Providence, which witnesses to the fact that ‘the Spirit blows where it wishes’ – without moralising obligations and guilt.

Thirdly, the saints, like the Mother of God, are part of a living and continuing communion. There is no difference between the Apostles, the Fathers, the Martyrs, the Confessors of the first millennium and those of the second millennium. For there are new Apostles, new Fathers, new Martyrs and new Confessors, being canonised now or still alive today. And all of us belong to one continuous family, reigned over through the millennia by Christ, His Holy Mother, the Mother of the Church, the Mother of our whole Church family, and His multitude of saints, whose immediate presence and free grace are visible and tangible in the chain of miracles of daily Orthodox life, which is called Providence.

R.O.M.E.

As we have predicted many times over the last four decades, with Western Europe in a state of apostasy, the hysterical rejection of its spiritual roots, as witnessed to by its very place-names referring to its founding saints, responsibility for the future spiritual destiny of its faithful will fall to the Russian Church. This means to a Russian Orthodox Metropolia in Europe (R.O.M.E.), part of the larger Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR). No other Local Church can do this, for other Local Churches are either not politically free (the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Antioch), or else too small, too provincial, too mononational (the three Balkan Churches and the Church of Georgia).

Here it must be understood that ‘Russian Orthodox’ does not necessarily mean ethnically ‘Russian’. This fact may seem obvious to us inside the multinational Russian Orthodox Church, but to our astonishment, phyletist members, including clergy, of the Patriarchate of Antioch and of the OCA (see below) have often told the author that they do not understand the words ‘Russian Orthodox’. Let it be said clearly now: ‘Russian Orthodox’ already includes over sixty nationalities, it means multilingual and multinational, Russian Orthodox simply means the Orthodox Tradition, free and uncompromised by outside political meddling from Western or other Powers.

Of course, representatives and parishes or even dioceses of other Local Churches could take part in such a united Metropolia, if they wished, but on a voluntary and flexible basis, under the authority of the Russian Church, just as other Local Churches took part in the united ‘Russian’ (i.e. not necessarily ethnically Russian) Orthodox Church in North America until some ninety years ago. Such participation would depend on episcopal blessing and local consciousness. The territory to be covered by such a Metropolia means the whole of Western Europe, which can be divided into six parts, ethnic, historic, linguistic and geographical. These are:

Francia, the French-speaking Lands (France, Monaco, the southern part of Belgium (Wallonia) and Switzerland).
Germania, the German-speaking Lands (Germany, Austria, most of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Flanders (northern Belgium) and Luxembourg).
Italia, the Italian-speaking Lands (Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Ticino, San Marino).
Iberia (Spain, Portugal, the Azores, the Canaries, the Balearics and Andorra).
Britannia and Hibernia, The Isles (The British Isles and Ireland).
Scandinavia, The Nordic Lands, (Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark).

Infrastructure

Many years ago a former Roman Catholic asked me the following: What would happen in the theoretical situation that all or most Roman Catholic believers in a particular Western European nation rejected the errors imposed on them by their elites and proclaimed that they wished to return to freedom and Orthodoxy after a thousand years? Thinking of the infrastructure problems of such a change, my first and humorous answer was, ‘I think there would be panic’. However, in reality, as I told her, there are people who would not panic and who could take control, accepting such a movement of grace and foreseeing what is necessary. It is a question of foresight and organisation.

First of all, we would earn from the two major mistakes of the small Cold War North American group known as the ‘Orthodox Church in America’, the ‘OCA’, which daydreamed of setting up a united Metropolia in North America. These mistakes were, firstly, its nationalistic (phyletist) demand for complete independence, that is, ‘autocephaly’ – which automatically meant that it would never win the canonical recognition of most Orthodox; secondly, there was its imposition of schismatic and divisive renovationism, including the secular calendar, made by clericalist pseudo-intellectuals, some of them ungrounded converts, from on high. These are two things not to be repeated.

As regards the chronic shortage of Russian Orthodox bishops who speak local languages, and even more importantly, know local mentalities, it is clear that present experienced and educated Orthodoxy clergy would have to be appointed ‘rural deans’, that is, deans over regions. These deans would have to be responsible for the reception of local people. Probably, as with the millions received back into the Church in freed Belarus in the 1830, or Carpatho-Russia in the 1920s, Roman Catholics would be received by chrismation or even communion. From them married men could be trained and ordained; it would be best not to ordain ex-clergy because of their alienating indoctrination in Roman Catholic ‘seminaries’.

As regards infrastructure, it would be most important to have suitable premises, premises where cradle Orthodox would feel at home, perhaps allowing a few chairs for the weak and using at first printed icons and frescoes. Initially, premises might be modest, former huts, wooden buildings and shops, even small factories – as we noted above, there are few Roman Catholic churches that can be converted. Generally, the simpler the premises, the more easily they can be made Orthodox. Although iconostases might at first be home-made and vestments home-sewn, clearly the Russian liturgical factory of Sofrino, which at present employs 3,000, would have to expand to cope with the demand.

Conclusion: When?

Many have asked when such a Metropolia will be formed. The answer to this is that no-one knows, for it will happen in God’s own time. However, people must be ready for it and there are signs that this future is being prepared, however slowly. The foundation of a seminary in Paris, albeit still in its early days and with a teething problem, is a sign. The building of a Cathedral and spiritual centre in Paris, its design thankfully now being revised, will be another step forward. After this there will be the appointment of a Metropolitan, someone who speaks local languages and knows local mentalities and cultures, but is also utterly faithful to the Russian Orthodox Tradition, like our great patron St John of Shanghai.

There have already been setbacks on the path to the formation of the long-awaited Metropolia. In 2003 the refusal of the Rue Daru group to leave freemasonry behind it and to take part in the Metropolia proposed by the Patriarch was a loss to everyone, but above all to itself. That was a suicidal path for it. However, the reuniting of both parts of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2007 was a huge and indispensable step forward, for the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) is the basic building block of all Metropolias in the Western world. In 1986 we first put forward this vision of such a Metropolia with no hope of its realisation. Today, it is no longer a vision. Today the question is no longer if, but when.

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.

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.

We idolised money and then went bankrupt – the Church of Greece

Athens 17 July 2013

Metropolitan Amvrosios of the Church of Greece has stated that the fall of Greece began in 1986. His statement coincides with that of the Greek deputy M. Voridis who blamed Greece’s plight on the governments of Andreas Papandreou of 1981-89 and 1993-96. The full text of the statement is given on the Agionoros.ru site.

The Metropolitan reminded people of Papadreou’s words, ‘Give everything to Tzovolas’ (the Minister of Finance from 1986-89). ‘The Metropolitan went to comment: ‘Today we have reached the bottom of the abyss and the present slogan of our creditors is, ‘Greece’ we have taken everything from you!’.

‘Our only salvation is to return to repentance to God’s ways. We idolised money and then went bankrupt! Let us return to God’s ways and correct our lives. May the example of the prodigal son in the Gospel parable inspire us. The Lord who loves mankind awaits us with open arms! Amen!

‘Members Only’: The Church is not a Club

It is well-known that small parts of the Church can degenerate into sects and cults. This can happen when a church is small, set up in private chapels or domestic dwellings, and also when there is no local bishop (stavropegic churches) or where there is contact with only one bishop in a very small diocese. Here it is vital that clergy and people alike have a consciousness of the synodality and broad catholicity of the Church, of what goes on outside their little world, – a particular and shocking problem on a small island like Britain.

Sects can be defined as small groups which put forward a personal opinion or opinions as Church dogma. For example, you may the find the sect of those who only use olive oil in lamps, or only use beeswax in candles, or only have handpainted icons, or in which all men have long hair and beards and all women wear a uniform of long dresses, and which condemn all others who do otherwise. To the normal, outside the sect, all this seems strange, but those inside the cult are cut off from normality and imagine that the4y are normal. Such is fantasy.

Cults can be defined as small groups which put forward a personality in place of Christ, ‘Apollo’ or ‘Cephas’, see I Cor 1, 12. If the personality is strong, self-willed or particularly ambitious, the cult becomes even more well-defined and isolated. Soon intolerance of others is bred and the cult becomes sectarian, casting out and condemning others, often with curious customs or its own uniform. Cults were a particular danger during the Cold War period in the lives of Moscow Patriarchal parishes outside Russia due to their isolation, but not only here.

All sects and cults, ‘private churches’, eventually die out, though it can take time. They generally become increasingly decadent as time goes by – thus sects often become cultish and cults sectarian, especially if the cult founder has died. There is a particular danger in an island like Britain and among ex-Anglicans. Anglicanism can often resemble an insular, middle-class club, with no concept of concelebration and a profound, if often unconscious, racism. However, this bourgeois mentality can also be found among the Continental-based Rue Daru splinter group.

We have already said that it is vital that there be a consciousness of the catholicity of the Church. This has been a problem in an immigrant splinter group, the OCA, in North America. Isolated and with its canonicity not accepted by most Orthodox in North America, some parts of it have wandered far from the Orthodox Tradition. Consciouness of the catholicity of the Church is manifested not by passively being in communion (everyone in the canonical Orthodox Church is in communion with one another), but by actively concelebrating.

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.

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.