Between Greeks and Russians and Towards Christ: Towards an Inter-Orthodox Church Council

Foreword: Memories

In 1981 we were a young Orthodox couple living in a small town in Cambridgeshire, struggling financially with a baby daughter and expecting a second. We were so naïve that we actually thought that all Orthodox bishops were Christians. That’s how naïve we were. But let us go back long before that, to a day in 1917, when my future grandparents with a baby daughter and expecting a second were travelling down the Colne Valley Railway and then for several miles on foot. They were going from south-west Suffolk to north-east Essex, in search of work amid the crisis of the Great War. At the same time as these minor family matters, events a hundred million times greater and more tragic were happening internationally.

Introduction: The Past

In three fateful months at the end of 1916 and the beginning of 1917 the British elite through its ambassador Buchanan and his spies in Saint Petersburg orchestrated the overthrow of the Orthodox Tsar by atheist Russian aristocrats, generals, bankers, lawyers and journalists. Since then the Church, that is, the whole Confederation of the Orthodox Church, has descended into chaos, struggling under persecution from ‘East and West’, that is, from Communists and freemasons. Moreover, since the fall of Communism in 1991, this strife has not ceased and we are still dealing with the consequences of that twentieth-century struggle.

Indeed, instead of overcoming the old Cold War divisions, the divisions between the extremes of once Communist, now nationalist Moscow, and once masonic, now globalist Constantinople, have continued. These have paralysed the Church, thwarting all solutions to the clear canonical irregularities which we all suffer from, especially in the Diaspora. This situation has left all who are between the Russian and Greek extremes thwarted.

Perhaps, one day, there will be a Patriarch Tikhon II of Moscow and of All Russia (by then of All Russia, but no longer of All the Russias). Perhaps one day there will be a Patriarch Maximos VI of Constantinople (by then residing in Thessaloniki and not in Istanbul). Each could take up the unfinished tasks that were so tragically interrupted, one by British-orchestrated Russian aristocrats in 1917, the other (so very soon afterwards because without a Tsar they could do such things) by the masonically-orchestrated Patriarch Meletios (Metaxakis) in 1921 and later by the CIA-installed Patriarch Athenagoras (Spyrou) in 1948.

However, even before any such possible future, a new generation of Patriarchs has by the hand of God appeared and are forming a new Centre, outside the paralysing extremes of Russians and Greeks. Those extremes have caused the Church to stagnate in the distant past. In today’s global world, when Orthodox live all over the planet and use the internet, it is time to overcome these absurd anachronisms. There are over 50 Orthodox bishops in the USA and over 25 in Western Europe, but no Local Churches, and yet there are tiny Autocephalous Churches in Eastern Europe with only a handful of bishops.

What if the heads of the ten Non-Greek and Non-Russian Local Churches, Patriarch Daniel of Bucharest, Patriarch Daniel of Sofia, Patriarch Porphyry of Belgrade, Archbishop Anastasius of Albania, supported by the Patriarchs of Georgia, Antioch and Jerusalem and the Metropolitans of the Polish, Czechoslovak and Macedonian Churches, a majority of the whole Church, were to call an Inter-Orthodox Conference, perhaps at the National Cathedral in Bucharest? What could the agenda be for such an Inter-Orthodox Conference, which could, if blessed by the Holy Spirit, become a Church Council?

An Agenda of Autocephaly and Autonomy

Even if Russians and Greeks did not have new leadership and/or continued to block canonical resolutions to their problems, Constantinople, Moscow and Alexandria could be called on by the Non-Greeks and Non-Russians at such an Inter-Orthodox Conference to make peace as Christians. They could come to compromises and put forward concrete proposals. For example:

Constantinople could be called on to give up all of Moscow’s territory in the former USSR, including in the Ukraine and Estonia. But Moscow in turn could be called on to cancel and apologise for its uncanonical ‘defrockings’ and ‘suspensions’ of clergy who were obliged to join Constantinople and all those clergy could return to Moscow, if they wished. However, concessions to Moscow would depend on concessions it made to others (see below). As for the canonical dispute between Moscow and Alexandria regarding the territory of Africa, we suggest a compromise solution, which is explained below.

In return for this concession by Constantinople, it would receive several benefits. Firstly, the Church of Greece could be called on to reintegrate the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople, provided that the centre of this Patriarchate were transferred to Thessaloniki, near Mt Athos, which is already in the Constantinople jurisdiction (and not to the political capital of Athens).

This would end the political pressures on Constantinople of the Neo-Ottoman Sultanate, the Vatican and the CIA, after a disastrous period of such political pressures and centuries of bribes and corruption. The Greek Orthodox would at last have their own canonical Patriarch for Greece and for all Greek speakers in the Diaspora. To those who object to this, there is no reason why a title has to be geographically accurate. For example, for generations, the Patriarchate of Antioch (now a town in Turkiye) has been in Damascus. There would then be thirteen, universally recognised Local Churches. Other benefits could follow – see below.

Together, the first act of these thirteen Churches could be to confirm the autocephaly (full independence) of the (North) Macedonian Orthodox Church, but allowing the Greek Churches to call it by another name among themselves, if they preferred, for example, The Autocephalous Church of Ochrid. Canonical autocephaly was already granted it by the Serbian Orthodox Church, on whose canonical territory Macedonia is situated. This would make fourteen, universally recognised Local Churches.

Together, the first act of these fourteen Churches could be to confirm the creation of a united Autonomous Moldovan Orthodox Church, established jointly by the Russian and Romanian Churches. This would come under the jurisdiction of the Romanian Orthodox Church, with guarantees for all Russians and Russian customs on the autonomous (and politically independent) territory and for guaranteed pastoral care for the Moldovan Diaspora under the Romanian Orthodox Church. The Russian Church would also cancel all its political ‘defrockings’ of clergy, who were formerly under the Russian Church and who have joined the Romanian Church.

Together, in return, the second act of the fourteen Churches could be to confirm the two other Autonomous Orthodox Churches, the Japanese and Chinese, established by and under the pastoral care of Moscow. For the Patriarchate of Constantinople (now centred in Thessaloniki), there would be compensation in the form of Russian concessions to Constantinople on the territory of the former USSR, Northern America, Latin America, Western Europe and Oceania (see below).

From Fourteen to Eighteen and to Twenty-Four Local Churches

Together, the fourteen Local Churches could confirm the autocephaly of four new Local Churches, established by Moscow and Constantinople and confirmed by the other Local Churches. This would see the Church of Moscow becoming less populous, reducing it to a membership of about 100 million, half of the present total of the whole Orthodox Church. These four new Local Churches would be on the territory of the former Russian Empire/Soviet Union: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church; the Belarusian Orthodox Church; the Central Asian Orthodox Church (centred in Kazakhstan, but covering all five former Soviet ‘stans’); and the Baltic Orthodox Church, for all Orthodox in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland.

Together, these eighteen Local Churches could confirm the autocephaly of another six new Local Churches, to be established by all the Local Churches which have Diasporas. These would be multinational Churches, with several dioceses for each nationality, separate but together, models of unity in diversity. These new Churches would at last neutralise the vain, century-long battle for influence between Moscow and Constantinople in the Diasporas through the mediation of all the Local Churches concerned. These new Local Churches could be:

The Western European Orthodox Church, for all Orthodox residing in the at present twenty nations of Western Europe: Portugal, Spain, Andorra, Italy, San Marino, Malta, France, Monaco, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Ireland, United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden. Although a clear majority of Orthodox living here are Romanian, all would be represented freely and fairly in this new Church.

The Austro-Hungarian Orthodox Church, centred in Uzhhorod and with dioceses on the territory of Carpatho-Rus, but with two more dioceses, one centred in Budapest and the other in Vienna. Carpatho-Rus was formerly under Austro-Hungarian control, but later called Subcarpathian Rus under Czechoslovakia and then miscalled ‘Transcarpathia’ by Ukrainian chauvinists. These Orthodox were formerly persecuted by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then came under the canonical protection of Serbian Church before coming under the Russian Church. However, these people are neither Ukrainian, nor Russian, but Rusyn. Taking over Orthodox leadership of the territories of Hungary and Austria, Rusyns would guarantee that Orthodox of other nationalities, such as Serbs, Greeks and Russians, would be represented freely and fairly in the Church administration.

The Northern American Orthodox Church, replacing the OCA, whose autocephaly on a shared territory was never accepted by the vast majority, and including all Orthodox residing in largely English-speaking Northern America, that is, in the USA, Canada, Greenland and associated islands. This move could be agreeable to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, since Greeks make up the largest ethnic group in Northern America. Although a clear majority of Orthodox living here are Greek, all would be represented freely and fairly in this new Church. As the first Orthodox here were Alaskans, it would be fitting if an Alaskan could be found and appointed Metropolitan.

The Latin American Orthodox Church, for all Orthodox residing in the Latin-speaking countries of South and Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. The Patriarchate of Antioch, which has many faithful here, could play an important role in appointing a Metropolitan.

The Oceanian Orthodox Church, covering all Orthodox residing in the Continent of Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific Ocean. Although a clear majority of Orthodox living here are Greek, all would be represented freely and fairly in this new Church, but perhaps a suitable Greek Metropolitan could be found to lead this Church.

The African Orthodox Church, to be established by the Patriarchates of Alexandria and Moscow, though possibly leaving Egypt within the jurisdiction of Alexandria. All political ‘defrockings’ made by Alexandria are to be cancelled. This compromise between the two Patriarchates would free African Orthodox from both Greek and Russian national, almost colonial, politics and give them autocephaly and appoint an African Metropolitan.

Conclusion: The Affirmation of the Church

Although administrative and not at all dogmatic in nature, the above propositions, if made and if accepted by Moscow and Constantinople in humility, which is the only way to overcome national pride, would establish twenty-four Local Orthodox Churches. This would reconfirm the nature of the Church of the Seven Universal Councils – that the Church is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. This means that:

The Unity of the Church would be affirmed by an Inter-Orthodox Conference/Council, bringing full communion and agreement between all the Local Churches. Perhaps this could lead to an agreement to fix a Yearly Paschal Conference of the Heads of the twenty-four Local Churches. Such a Conference could be held under the rotating chairmanship of different Local Churches.

The Holiness of the Church would be affirmed by the common canonisation of saints of many nationalities at such an Inter-Orthodox Conference/Council. These saints might include Romanian, Russian, Serbian and Greek New Martyrs, for example, or the common celebration of still little-known local saints, models of piety for our times, such as St Olga of Alaska, introducing them into the mainstream.

The Catholicity of the Church would be affirmed by the Conciliarity of such a Conference/Council, which works against divisive nationalism, which is the enemy of our Catholicity. Perhaps this could lead to an agreement to fix a Five-Yearly Conference of five bishops from each Local Church, of 120 bishops in all. Such a Conference could be held under the rotating chairmanship of different Local Churches.

The Apostolicity of the Church would be affirmed by the missionary nature of the establishment of ten new Local Churches in territories where there have not been any Local Churches before. These are the vast Continents of Africa, Northern America, Latin America, Oceania and the half-continent of Western Europe, with their teeming billions. This would leave the existing Local Churches to establish in due course new missions and then Local Churches in the rest of Asia outside China and Japan, though there too much missionary work has still to be done, for example, in South and South-East Asia.

May God’s Will be done!

 

On the Present Divisions in the Russian Orthodox Church on Account of the Ukraine

Foreword

We have never had the slightest doubt that the Russian Federation, one of the World’s four Superpowers and the fourth largest economy in the world, would emerge militarily victorious in the conflict in the Ukraine. It is common sense, its military-industrial base is far greater than that of the Collective West and its military technology is far ahead of the Western, which is stuck at least one generation behind in the 1990s, as shown by its burning backward tanks in Russia and the Ukraine. On top of that, it is supported by the whole Non-Western world, including China, India, Africa and Latin America, all who have been and are victims of Western colonialism and exploitation – nearly 90% of the planet. The West has isolated itself through its crimes. The Western defeat in the Ukraine, which is rapidly on its way, is Divine chastisement for its hubris and all its crimes over the centuries, not least its recent genocides in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and the Ukraine.

However, this common sense does not mean that we rejoice in any of this profound tragedy or Russia winning the war. Will Russia win the peace? At least a million men are dead or maimed in the Ukraine. All are victims of international politics, above all the victims are the poor Ukrainians, whom the racist Americans and the Western European elite want to see killed ‘until the last Ukrainian’. Now they want to murder even those Ukrainians between the ages of 18 and 25. However, as we have said from the outset, another great loser will be the once multinational Russian Orthodox Church, which has lost its Ukrainian flock and others by descending into Russian nationalist politics and cutting itself off from communion with the corrupt hierarchy of the Church of Constantinople. All seem to have forgotten that we are pastors, not politicians and we have no interest in power and money. Their punishment is coming. As the proverb says: Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Introduction: The Conflict in the Ukraine

The very tragic conflict in the Ukraine has especially since 2022 caused divisions in the Russian Church outside the Ukraine. (I do not speak of the divisions that it has caused inside the Ukraine – they are all too obvious).

For: Patriots?

On the one hand, there are the Conservatives (for want of a better word), who fully support the armed conflict, which has already created over a million victims, killed and wounded. Many of these, on both sides, are formally baptised, in the same Russian Orthodox Church. Nevertheless, the views of the Conservatives, shared, it seems, by all the bishops and most of the priests inside Russia, though not by all of them in Western Europe and the USA, are that this is an operation to defend the Russian Federation and Russians in the east and south of the Ukraine from American-led NATO and Neo-Nazi Ukrainian aggression from the Kiev puppet government. Therefore, Russian actions are justified. Indeed, they claim that Russian actions are simply defending threefold Orthodox East Slavdom, Holy Rus (the Russian Federation, the Ukraine and Belarus), from Western evils like atheism and transgenderism, like that of the 1916 murderer and traitor Yusupov.

Those who support the Conservatives proclaim that the latter are sincere Christians and good pastors, who are just defending Russia against its God-less Western enemies. Those against the Conservatives consider them to be cruel, heartless, anti-Christian, divisive and politically-motivated. How can they, especially as clergy, be in favour of destruction, war and death? What about: ‘Thou shalt not kill’? They consider that the supporters of the Russian forces are mercenary and murderous hirelings of an aggressive Russian government, and that they will do whatever the Russian State wants, that they have no Christian conscience. Their argument is supported by the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church is, or rather, used to be, the Church of all Russian Orthodox and all canonical Ukrainian Orthodox, that it used to be multinational. Therefore, to support one national side against another is to divide the flock of the Church, introducing a civil war into the Church. Is that Christian?

Against: Traitors?

On the other hand, there are the Liberals (for want of a better word), who are opposed to the conflict and demand the withdrawal of Russian forces from the Ukraine. These include the clergy of the former Russian parish in Amsterdam and in Madrid (all of them linked to the late liberal Metr Antony (Bloom)), and a well-known archpriest and protodeacon from Moscow, now in exile in Western Europe. They, and several others, have all been ‘defrocked’ by the Moscow Patriarchate for disagreeing with the ‘Party line’ (See Note 1) and so joined the Patriarchate of Constantinople – Moscow’s US-financed rival. But they had nowhere else to go. Others, bishops of the Russian-American Synod in New York have also called on Russia to withdraw its troops. The anti-Russian attitudes of such bishops, who are American citizens, are not surprising. In the past, they had at least one CIA-agent bishop and until 1991 subsidies from the CIA. Why should they not accept subsidies again?

Those who are against the conflict are said to be sincere Christians and good pastors. Those who support the conflict consider those against to be political traitors. In effect, those against the conflict are supporting Russia’s enemies, the Western Powers, led by the USA. They tell those who are against the conflict to visit the Avenue of the Angels monument in Donetsk, where 400 children murdered by Ukrainian/US shells between 2014 and 2022 are buried, together with nearly 14,000 adult civilian victims. Also, they point out that most of the ‘Russian’ troops fighting in the Ukraine are Ukrainians anyway – Russian-speaking inhabitants of the eastern and southern Ukraine, who are fighting for their right to speak their native language and attend their Orthodox Church, which is sorely persecuted by Kiev. Since they are Ukrainians, how can they withdraw from their own country? Here is the essence of the tragedy – this is the worst sort of war – a civil war.

The Third Way

Those who are for the conflict seem to support Russian nationalism and militarism, those who are against the conflict seem to support US globalism and secularism. It is clear that neither of these extremes can be supported. We support the Third Way. This says that the Church should not take sides in a conflict between secular States, the Russian Federation and the USA, both of which have, for example, very high rates of abortion and divorce, suffer from weak family life and have very low levels of Church attendance. We should act as pastors, not politicians, as Christians, not as secularists. Our secular passport may say Russian or Ukrainian, but our spiritual passport says Orthodox Christian. This is our heavenly nationality, over all that is earthly. We should pray not for ‘victory’, but for ‘peace’. It seems to us that the Russian Orthodox hierarchy in Moscow should grant the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church full independence.

If independence, or autocephaly, is what the canonical Ukrainian Church needs in order to stop persecution, even if only temporarily, let it have it. The Church does not put power above peace and money above love. Sadly, we must admit that the conflict in the Ukraine has highlighted that many, on both sides, have done the opposite, playing politics. For them there is only power and money, not peace and love. The example of St Nicholas of Japan (+ 1912) should be followed. During the Japano-Russian War of 1904-05, as the Russian bishop of Japan and founder of the Japanese Orthodox Church, he lived as a recluse in prayer, telling his Japanese flock to pray for the Japanese authorities, as the Apostle Paul instructs us. And then he fell silent for the duration. Why do the Church authorities in Moscow not do the same today? We also have the example of St Silvanus the Athonite (+ 1938), who during the First World War simply prayed that the least evil side win.

Conclusion: Towards Healing

Here are the examples that we may follow, praying that the present grave divisions inside the Russian Church and those between it and other Local Orthodox Churches may be overcome.

Note:

  1. ‘Defrocking’ for political reasons is utterly uncanonical and is ignored by all sixteen Local Orthodox Churches, including the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Church of Constantinople and the Russian Church. Thus, one part of the Russian Church freely receives ‘defrocked’ clerics from the Church of Constantinople, as well as, in the past, many from the Patriarchate of Moscow. Constantinople received hundreds of ‘defrocked’ Ukrainian clerics in the 1990s and has received others more recently. The Romanian Church has received over 200 ‘defrocked’ clerics in Moldova and in England from the Russian Church, who had been ‘defrocked’ because they had been persecuted by their bishops. As one Russian Moscow bishop told me about another bishop who had carried out such actions: ‘Send for the psychiatric ambulance to pick him up’! What always happens after such ‘defrockings’ is always ‘refrockings’, when meaningless pieces of paper, written against the Holy Spirit, often still in their unopened envelopes, are simply cancelled.

The End of the Second Western Empire and the Road from Damascus: The Just Shall Live by His Faith and the Prophecies of Habbakuk

The First Western Empire lasted just over 500 years, from 27 BC in Rome to 476 AD in Rome (there was no year zero). Its successor, the Second Western Empire, lasted twice as long, 1,000 years, from 1014 with the proclamation of the filioque in Rome to 2014 with, in effect, the proclamation of the filioque in Kiev. This Second and Last Empire was much weakened by tribal rivalries between the nine phases of the Western Empire in Europe. These were between the ‘Holy Roman’, Northern Italian (Venice, Genoa, Florence), Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, British, German and Soviet phases. Their rival jostling for leadership of the Empire led to two suicidal European (World) Wars and to the final and tenth phase of the Western Empire, its American phase.

The First Western Empire fell and now the Second is falling. The parallels are obvious. The First Empire fell to ‘barbarians’, but who were less barbarian than Rome. The First Western Empire fell because the Romans who lived on its periphery sided with the converted ‘barbarians’, realising that Rome was the barbarian. Today the Second Western Empire is falling to Non-Westerners, not least of whom are the Russians, who today are converted, more European than the Europeans. The Non-Westerners, ‘the Rest’, form the Sovereign World, whose struggle for multipolarity is the struggle for justice and prosperity. The Western Empire can only respond by convincing countries to commit suicide, as in the Ukraine, Georgia and all of the EU, starting with Nordstream Germany.

The upshot of the First European War was the British-operated regime change in the Russian empire at the end of 1916, which backfired disastrously into the Soviet quagmire. The result of the Second European War was American intervention (it had already taken place in the First European War, as soon as the British had overthrown their Russian rivals) and American leadership of the Western Empire from 1945 on. Now the Americans always promoted gangsters and terrorists to head their imperial client-states. Thus, after reaching an apogee at the turn of the millennium, they declined rapidly. This always happens, as the method used contains the seeds of its own destruction (1). ‘Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind’. So now all is backfiring into the Syrian quagmire of beheadings.

The artificial, post-Ottoman countries of West Asia, designed by the divide and rule British (and French) after the First World War and held together by brutal dictators (only such could hold artificial countries together), are crumbling. Iraq, Libya and Syria. Who is next? The Jordan? Lebanon? Egypt? Syria is a trap for the Western Empire. It was only a pawn between the West and the Rest. Far more important pieces on the Western side of the chessboard can now be taken by the Rest. The Western Empire is today like a cornered, wounded and snarling beast. Cornered because it has painted itself into a corner; wounded because it has lost all its wars, from Korea to the Ukraine; snarling because it has humiliated itself in defeats and because liberation from the West for all Afro-Eurasia is here.

Thus, the Second Western Empire started collapsing immediately after reaching its apogee, the criminal ascent to which contained the seeds of its own destruction. This destruction is the result of unscrupulous imperial overreach, just like that in the First Western Empire 1600 years before. This most recent stage in the collapse began with the fall of the Soviet phase of the Empire at the end of 1991, exactly three generations after the end of the Russian Imperial phase in 1916. That Soviet phase was only the short-lived, dissident last European phase of the Western Empire, patterned by successive phases. Everything is now in motion, the outposts of the Western Empire are falling one by one. We are now on the Road from Damascus – the Road towards Jerusalem.

Despite its dissidence which came from its Western Marxist ideology, the Soviet phase of the Western Empire still shared in the same basic immoral materialistic ideology as all the others. This explains why the fall of the Soviet empire was not the end of a process, as some deluded people like Fukuyama thought, but the beginning of a process, that of the final phase and fall of the Western Empire. The fall of the Soviet empire merely presaged the fall of the American empire a generation later. (Both the Soviet Union and America were former European colonies which overtook the eight heartland phases of the Western Empire). Now we are at ‘the end of history’, that is, at the end of Western history, the result of the imperial overreach in the regime change operation in Kiev in 2014.

And so world history is beginning again after its millennial Western Imperial interruption. Each country of the world, big or small, is now reclaiming and returning to its roots, restoring its sovereignty, identity, nationhood and traditions. The future is not Imperial, but Multipolar, which means it is composed of the co-operation of many centres and of the collaboration of the Nations. From Russia to China, from India to Iran, from Africa to Latin America, from Vietnam to Polynesia, we no longer see the attempt by one Nation to subjugate others to its imperial supremacy and domination, so forming an Empire, instead we see anti-imperial Sovereignties. We have come to the time of the prophecies of Habbakuk (Avvakum), beginning in Chapter 1, Verse 5:

Chapter 1, 2 O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save!

3 Why dost thou show me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance? for spoiling and violence are before me: and there are that raise up strife and contention.

4 Therefore the law is slacked, and judgement never goes forth: for the wicked compasses about the righteous; therefore wrong judgment proceeds.

5 Behold among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously: for I will work a work in your days, which you will not believe, though it be told to you.

6 For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwelling places that are not theirs.

7 They are terrible and dreadful: their judgment and their dignity shall proceed of themselves.

8 Their horses also are swifter than the leopards, and are fiercer than the evening wolves: and their horsemen shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall come from far; they shall fly as the eagle that hastens to eat.

9 They shall come all for violence: their faces shall sup up as the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity as the sand.

10 And they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn unto them: they shall deride every stronghold; for they shall heap dust, and take it.

12 Art thou not from everlasting, O LORD my God, mine Holy One? We shall not die. O LORD, thou hast ordained them for judgment; and, O mighty God, thou hast established them for correction.

Chapter 2, 2 And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he that reads it may run.

3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.

4 Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.

8 Because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee; because of men’s blood, and for the violence of the land, of the city, and of all that dwell therein.

10 Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many people, and hast sinned against thy soul.

12 Woe to him that builds a town with blood, and establishes a city by iniquity!

14 For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

17 For the violence of Lebanon shall cover thee, and the spoil of beasts, which made them afraid, because of men’s blood, and for the violence of the land, of the city, and of all that dwell therein.

Chapter 3, 2 O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy.

4 And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his power.

5 Before him went the pestilence, and burning coals went forth at his feet.

6 He stood, and measured the earth: he beheld, and drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow: his ways are everlasting.

12 Thou didst march through the land in indignation, thou didst thresh the heathen in anger.

13 Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, even for salvation with thine anointed; thou woundedst the head out of the house of the wicked, by discovering the foundation unto the neck.

15 Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great waters.

16 When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble: when he comes up unto the people, he will invade them with his troops.

 

Note:

  1. This ‘bully, sanction and bomb’ policy is the case even of an American bishop sent abroad to assemble all the worst elements in his tiny church, fanatics and careerists, in order to seize power, ‘bullying, sanctioning and bombing’ and so expelling all the honest when challenged. This is exactly the same American technique containing exactly the same seeds of destruction.

Breaking through the Glass Ceiling of the Empires: Why Autocephalies are Now Inevitable

The most intensely centralised, that is, imperialistic, Christian establishment that ever existed was – and is – Papal Rome. Opposition to it began immediately after it had been institutionalised by its schism in the eleventh century (See The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe 950-1250 by R.I. Moore). There followed violent Papally-sponsored military genocides – the so-called ‘crusades’ – massacres, inquisitions, invasions and hatreds all over Europe. In the sixteenth century the previously outwardly imperialist edifice of Rome came tumbling down in appalling wars and violence against those who protested against it, who were aptly called Protestants.

The second imitation of this centralised establishment came in the ‘Second Rome’, which meant Greek Orthodox in Constantinople. Through their imperialist centralisation, they had encouraged the splits from the Church of the Copts, Syrians and Armenians. Its centralised control intensified in the second millennium, in Russia and then the Balkans, notably in Bulgaria, and continues today in its attempts at centralisation in Czechoslovakia, Macedonia and, above all, in the Ukraine, with wild threats to take away independence from all others. Its imperialistic actions have now created a foolish and unnecessary schism with those far bigger than themselves, those who claim to be the ‘Third Rome’.

This ‘Third Rome’ is Moscow, Russia, where Imperialist centralisation created the ‘Old Ritualist’ schism in the seventeenth century and continues, though they were obliged in the last century to concede autocephaly (independence) to the Orthodox Churches in Poland, Czechoslovakia and a group in North America. Now, as a result of its almost control freak insistence on centralisation, it is going to be obliged to decentralise more seriously, firstly to the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Carpatho-Russia (with Austria-Hungary), the Baltics, Central Asia, and then to Western Europe, North America, Latin America and Oceania, although here this will be in collaboration with other Local Orthodox Churches.

Thus, this process of decentralisation or autocephalisation was made inevitable by the imperialist centralisation of each centre, which all claimed to be a ‘Rome’. None of them, strangely enough, claimed to be a ‘Second Jerusalem’, which is the centre of the Christian Faith, whereas Rome was always the enemy of the Faith. The fact is that the treatment by all three Romes of others of a different ethnicity as second-class citizens (or third-class citizens in many cases) has inevitably led to the desire for independence. The First Rome created the desire for independence among the Germanic peoples, the Second Rome among Non-Greeks, and the Third Rome among Non-Russians. There are no surprises here.

Church life has for 2,000 years been characterised by centralising forces and decentralising forces. Thus, the first Orthodox Christians lived scattered, decentralised, living in what was in fact autocephaly, in Ephesus, Corinth, Colossae, Galatia, Philippi, Thessaloniki, Rome etc. Then in the fourth century came the imperial period and there emerged the centralising forces of the five Patriarchates, the ‘Pentarchy’ of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. In the last two centuries, the last four very depopulated centres have been falling apart. In the last 150 years, we have with the fall of empires seen the number of Autocephalous Churches double, going from eight to sixteen.

These new Churches are in Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, America, Albania and Macedonia. With the geographical spread of the Orthodox Church, the foundation of even more Local Churches is going to become inevitable. As a result of the centralising forces, the decentralising forces have taken over. People feel oppressed by the centralisation of the old centres, which still cling on to power. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is Newton’s Third Law. Romanising/Papalising centralisation has lost. We no longer live in the Imperial period, initiated by Constantine. Since 1917 we have been living in the post-Constantinian period. The glass ceiling is breaking.

For centralisation, the limiting of control to small cliques, entails corruption. These cliques are formed by love of money and power. In the case of the First Rome, this was corruption and domination by pedophiles and other perverts (any visitor to the Vatican can see the pedophilia from the frescoes), and financial corruption. In the case of the Second and Third Romes, firstly backstabbing homosexuality leads to blackmail, and secondly the love of luxury leads to bribery. All this creates a glass ceiling which ensures that spirituality, pastorship and competence are excluded and are replaced by bureaucracy, careerism and narcissism. And rule without the Holy Spirit is no rule at all.

Orthodox England

How did we come to the name of our website and blog, to ‘Orthodox England’?

We are Orthodox, because we are ‘rightly’ Christian, which is all that the adjective ‘Orthodox’ means, and not something exotic or esoteric. In other words, we veer neither to the left, nor to the right, we are neither modernist and liberal, nor sectarian and schismatic, neither new calendarist, nor old calendarist. At all times, all deviations, all that is ‘wrongly’ Christian, can be avoided by adhering to the living inspiration of the Holy Spirit and so to the roots of Orthodoxy, to the words and deeds of Christ in the Gospels and the Apostles in the Epistles, to the lives of the Saints and the Fathers. All this is summarised in the simple fact that Orthodoxy is Christianity, no more and no less.

We are England, because that is where we were born and live by God’s Will, and we do not belong to any political construct, neither to the UK, nor to the EU, neither to the present US, nor to the post-USSR, neither to the white star, nor to the red star, but to the Cross of Christ. At all times, all deviations can be avoided by adhering to the living inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the roots of England. All this is summarised in the words and deeds of the saints of England for over 450 years until 1066 and the words and deeds of its best representatives for the 1,000 years since. We look to the time when we shall have restored our own Local Church, part of a wider Anglo-Celtic Local Church of Four Nations.

And the way to this is through a recovered Western European Orthodox Church.

The Curse of the Ukraine and Western Desperation

If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.

Sun Tzu

If you elect a clown, you get a circus.

President Biden, or rather, the narcissists who pull the strings of that senile and corrupt old man have just six weeks left until the next President. How can the series of disastrous US defeats and chaos they have created worldwide in recent years be remedied in that time? Or else how can they transfer the blame for the defeats and chaos they have created on the incoming President?

The Western Empire went from Rome to Venice, from Genoa to Portugal, from Spain to the Netherlands, from France to Britain and then to the USA. Like the Western Roman Empire long ago, the Western Empire is now crumbling all along its peripheries, in Israel, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the UK, the EU, Canada and the Ukraine. The USA itself is divided and being shaken from inside, with two attempts already on the life of the future President.

The collapse of the now bankrupt Globalist project is here. The ‘rules-based’ international disorder created to try and ensure US, and not local, control of the countries of the world has become out of control worldwide chaos. Panic in the West has now set in before the face of one humiliating rout after another for it.

In the Ukraine, the ‘narrative’ (= the pack of lies) has changed from ‘the Ukraine is winning’ (when it was obviously losing) to ‘the Ukraine is in a stalemate’ (when it was obviously losing), to ‘we need EU and UK intervention in the Ukraine’. But this is only in order to get the USA involved, because the European elite knows that the Obama-Biden puppet regime in Kiev has lost, that its own European forces will be killed and very quickly, and that it is three years too late for any meaningful peace talks. The essence of the West’s plan was to destroy the Ukraine and to cripple Russia. Although it is succeeding in the former, it has utterly failed in the latter.

The curse of the Ukraine is rippling outwards from the Ukraine worldwide, like a stone thrown into the centre of the Kiev pond. And so one piece of bad news comes after another for the US elite, intent on world domination, whether directly, or indirectly, through its Ukrainian or other proxies, and always using the same CIA playbook, so well-rehearsed over generations, in Latin America, Asia and southern Europe:

Russia has defeated the huge, NATO-trained and NATO-equipped army in the Ukraine, which means it has defeated the whole of NATO.

In Moldova only massive electoral fraud gave victory to the EU/US candidate by the narrowest of margins. The West has proved to Moldovans that, whatever its words and theories, it does not practise democracy. Why then should Moldova join the EU?

In Romania the anti-EU candidate, the son of a priest, came first in the elections, the US ambassador’s EU candidate came third. So the Americans had the election cancelled exactly one hour after a plane from Florida landed in Bucharest. As the anti-EU candidate was promised 70% of the vote according to polls and only US/EU puppets have the right to win, he was cancelled. Revolt is in the air in Romania, as Romanians now know that they are not allowed to have the government that they want by the US/EU.

In now bankrupt Germany the very unpopular government collapsed after the US destroyed its cheap energy supplies from Russia, destroying its industrial base and prosperity, and remaining German money and arms were sent to the Ukraine. Like all the other EU bureaucrats, Chancellor Scholz has just been to Kiev with his silver suitcase to pick up his dollar pay-off for his pension, so now the elections which he will lose will take place in February.

In France the government has also collapsed. France is ‘ungovernable’, according to its arrogant President, though that only means that he is incompetent to govern it. The EU candidate for President, the Macron, a Napoleon without an Empire, lost the elections this year. He gained only 20% of support and his anti-democratic government has now collapsed. At the same time, the former French colonies in Africa has thrown France out, preferring non-colonial China and Russia. Macron’s policy in the Ukraine is one of ‘strategic ambiguity’, which is a very French way of saying that he has no idea what to do. Some predict the collapse of the ‘Fifth Republic’ regime, founded in 1958. Others say that the hated dictator Macron will have to be removed by force from his Palace in Paris. ‘Guillotine’, they shout.

In the bankrupt UK, which has no more money for its small and feeble armed forces, Starmer, the Biden candidate, and his Establishment regime, elected by only 20% of the electorate, are among the most unpopular ever. Many think that Starmer will only last for a few more months.

In the south of the Lebanon the Israeli Army was routed and had to agree a ceasefire and retreat with heavy losses of men and equipment, having failed to take even a single village. And in Gaza, because of the Israeli genocide, both Israel and its American sponsor, are isolated and discredited.

In Georgia the pro-EU government headed by a Frenchwoman, sponsored by the French secret service, lost the elections and has to leave. Anti-democratic, US-organised street demonstrations, as in Kiev in 2014, have failed.

In corrupt Syria the Qatari-financed, US-UK-Israeli-Turkish-sponsored and trained HTS Islamist fanatics, advised by Ukrainian terrorists, are victorious. Only the Mediterranean west coast of Syria remains. The family of Assad has already taken refuge in Russia and Assad has disappeared. This is the first anti-BRICS war of the US and in Syria, where the conflict had been ‘frozen’. But frozen conflicts always thaw out and continue. The US, still stealing Syrian oil and cereals, is desperately trying to take over Syria, and then the Lebanon as a strategic base. This is all to protect Israel, using as its ally the terrorist HTS, the descendant of the CIA-organised ISIS and Al-Qaida, so as to build the projected pipeline from Qatar to Europe. The Sunni Ottoman Erdogan wants to control the north of Syria, the Israelis the south-west. Will China intervene from the Euphrates, where the remnants of the Syrian Army have taken refuge in Iraq, as the prophecies say? Destabilised Syria will probably descend into chaos, like a second Libya, creating chaos all around it. The US seems to have the Midas touch in reverse.

In colonial South Korea, which is run from the US base outside Seoul, the US-sponsored military coup by the unpopular and corrupt President against the Parliament has failed. The US organised the coup in order to force South Korea, the only source of US arms, as all other sources have been severely depleted, to send its arms to Kiev. The South Korean Parliament and people do not want to, as they know that their President is a Biden stooge, who has never acted in South Korean interests. The government there is in chaos

The world is being transformed. To those who despair, remember that the world is ruled not by men, but by Christ.

The Civilising Mission of the Orthodox Church in the Western World

I would long ago have gone mad in the face of human injustice, if I had not known that Christ will have the last word in history.

St Paisios the Athonite

Decadence has always existed. It is a result of the Fall. However, it is one thing for decadence to exist, quite another for decadence to be institutionalised. Some people like to imagine that the decadence of the West was institutionalised only recently, in, say, 1997, or the 1960s. Others, more radically, suggest that it was at the Enlightenment, the Reformation, the Renaissance or even in 1274 and with the invention of Nominalism. In fact, the rot set in well before that. The rot began before with Charlemagne, but ‘set in’, or rather, was institutionalised in the eleventh century and the date of 1054, in the middle of the century, symbolises the institutionalisation of the rot.

The West is civilised? The Papally-sponsored massacres of hundreds of thousands in Spain, Italy and, then in 1066, in England? The massacres of the Jews in the Rhineland on the way to the genocidal Crusades in the Holy Land, the sacking of the Christian capital in 1204, the genocide of the Cathars in France, and then that by the Teutonic Knights? The Inquisition? The Black Death? The Conquistadors? The witch-hunts? The ‘Wars of Religion’? The genocide in the New World, South and North America?

The colonialisation of India? The ‘opium wars’ with China? The genocide of the Tasmanians and the Maori? The European scramble for Africa? That of Leopold in the Congo? Two suicidal European Wars, become World Wars? The Germans in Namibia? The British in Kenya? The French in Algeria? The Western invasions of and genocides in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and the Ukraine? And all these tens or hundreds of millions of dead Non-Europeans are enshrined in 1,000 years of ‘heroic’ pro-Western ‘narratives’? Western Civilisation?

We have had a thousand years of Western Anti-Civilisation. But who can recivilise the Western world and return it to the first millennium? Or is it finally going to destroy itself? Clearly, extremists will not help save it, neither those who accept and want to ape the West in everything, nor those who reject and want to denigrate everything in the West. It is all more subtle than that. Thus, religions like Islam and Hinduism will not work in the West, for they are too closely connected with the alien Arab and Indian worlds. As for the Buddhist or Confucian philosophies, they are only for intellectuals.

What remains and can attract and answer the West’s spiritual needs, bringing it back to the Age of the Saints, the time before decadence became institutionalised? We can answer the question negatively:

What remains and can attract and answer those needs CANNOT be something corrupted, sexually depraved, financially depraved or depraved by jealousy for us.

What remains and can attract and answer those needs CANNOT be something sectarian that condemns other Christians as Non-Christians.

What remains and can attract and answer those needs CANNOT be something that belongs exclusively to another race and condemns all other races.

I have been telling the world for fifty years what can attract and answer the spiritual needs of Western people who have such needs. However, I have all this time been persecuted by the extremists, by the corrupt and depraved in the Russian Church inside Russia, by the sectarian in the Russian Church outside Russia, and by the racist everywhere, not least in Constantinople.

He who has ears, let him hear.

 

 

 

On Metr Antony (Bloom) and Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov)

Q: You are one of the few people who knew well both Metr Antony (Bloom) and Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov). What do you think of them and their disputes?

A: I am not sure that I am one of the few, but I did know them both well.

The future Metr Antony was born on the same day as my grandfather, though twenty years after him. He was a typical Franco-Russian intellectual. He was very gifted, very open, to the point of liberalism, and very sincere. His father, Boris, was an Imperial diplomat who was interested in the occult and had the gift of hypnotism. His mother was the sister of the ‘mystical’, but very unOrthodox Russian composer Scriabin.

Andrei Bloom (as he then was) came to the faith in his teens and lived it in his own way. He did not study at seminary. He was completely unmercenary and lived very modestly. His interests were intellectual and in people and was very popular, especially among women. He was widely read in Western literature, but not so much in the Church Fathers or the literature of piety and the Lives of the Saints. He was really quite emotional and you can hear this in his sermons. His approach to the Faith was emotional, even sentimental, and cultural. That approach is very important to some.

Fr Sophrony was eighteen years older than Metr Antony and came from a well-off Russian family in Moscow, emigrated to France after the Revolution and was a huge intellectual, philosopher and artist who had belonged in his youth to the Art Nouveau Movement. He came to England in 1959, when a large property was given him by the Church of England in an ecumenical spirit. At that time he was still living in France, where for some 14 years he had been under the Patriarchate of Moscow after he had been expelled from Mt Athos. He had lived there for twenty years and was expelled by the Greek authorities for political reasons, together with two other Russian monks.

In 1965 he left the jurisdiction of Metr Antony of Moscow after twenty years and returned to the jurisdiction of Greek Constantinople. This happened after he had fallen out with Metr Antony, who wanted to close his monastery and ordain his priests, so he could expand his tiny diocese. Fr Sophrony (as we always called him – never starets) is now a local saint, canonised by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and venerated in the monastery, or convent, which he founded just outside a village in the east of Essex.

So we can see that Metr Antony had an emotional approach to the Faith and is very attractive to the emotional and even sentimental, especially to women, and brought tens of thousands of Russians and others to Orthodoxy. On the other hand, Fr Sophrony had an intellectual and philosophical approach to the Faith and he is attractive to highly educated people of many nationalities, many of whom have doctorates, like his monks.

Thus, they were very different people. But both played a positive role. The point is that everyone is different and there is no reason to reject or condemn either of them, as some do. Having said that, neither was my ‘cup of tea’ personally. But so what? There is room in the Church for many different sorts of people and many sorts of people are needed. Let us not be narrow! Tastes vary.

We can see this in the views of other Orthodox. For example, the then Fr Vitaly (Ustinov), later Metropolitan of ROCOR, called, I think in 1948, the then Fr Antony (Bloom) ‘a priest of Satan’, simply because he belonged to the Patriarchate of Moscow, which had been revived by Stalin. However, we know that Metr Vitaly ended his life outside the Church in a sect. Metr Antony (Bloom) did not.

Another critic, and of both the ‘Western’ Metr Antony and of the ‘delusional’ Fr Sophrony (according to Professor Osipov), is the Russian academic, Professor A. I. Osipov. His lectures are interesting for beginners in Orthodox life and he was very popular, especially in the 1990s when 100 million Russians were baptised, virtually without instruction. Once more, he is just another personality, with his own approach, a third approach, that of the academic.

All three approaches are interesting, but I don’t see why they should be mutually exclusive. However, once more he is not my personal cup of tea. But he is the cup of tea of many others. People are different! Accept that everyone is different and stop falling into that trap of sectarian narrowness and condemnation that some Russians can be inclined to, with their cries of ‘That’s uncanonical’, ‘you’re a schismatic’, ‘that’s heretical’ etc. None of that is Christian. Moreover, it is this Russian intolerance that has caused the schism between Russians and Greeks today, all the purely political divisions in the Russian emigration (meaning that today ROCOR is out of communion with the Western European Archdiocese of the Russian Church), and all the divisions inside Russia from the seventeenth century until today, Sad.

On Delusions: Western, Ukrainian, Russian and Clerical

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom…and the stars shall fall from heaven…

Matt. 24

Introduction

The appalling conflict in the Ukraine marks a turning-point in world history. The choice offered by it is between transnational Globalism, which could lead to the eventual enthronement of Antichrist, or else National Sovereignty, which may be healthier, but brings many of its own violent dangers and nationalist temptations. The battleground and victim of this struggle is the tragic Ukraine, a country composed of different peoples, thrown together in the same geographical space by the tyrants of the twentieth century, and whose views and beliefs contradict one another, and who are now killing one another.

As one commentator has put it: ‘They are all Orthodox, but none are Christians’. When will it all end? We have finally discovered the true form of the prophecy of Elder Iona of Odessa (+ 2012) (the first part is often omitted) who said the following: ‘There will be a cold Easter, a hungry Easter, a bloody Easter and a victorious Easter’. It seems he was referring to 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Many misinterpret the last part of the prophecy, misunderstanding that a victorious Easter means a ‘Russian victory’. It does not. It means peace, for the only victory is peace, when Ukrainian and Russian alike will repent and help one another.

The Western Delusion

Meanwhile, senior bishops of the Russian Moscow Patriarchate are criticised by Western politicians and journalists and their Russian liberal servants, some of them traitors or who are CIA-paid, for spreading the nationalist, ‘Russian world’ ideology. This promotes the unity of the Russian-speaking world, regardless of where it may be, inside or outside the Russian Federation. However, in truth, this is no more nationalist than the ideology of Hellenism, which has been spread for generations by the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople. And yet none of the liberals denounces the Greek nationalists or calls them ‘heretics’ – as the Greeks and the liberals call the Russians! Strange, because they are exact equivalents with exactly the same exclusivist, racist and nationalist ramifications.

This ‘Russian world’ ideology means the nationalisation of the formerly multinational Moscow Patriarchate, excluding Non-Russians, just like Hellenism, which excludes Non-Greeks. This clearly means that Russia has no interest in invading Non-Russian countries, like Moldova, the Baltics, or the western, that is, truly Ukrainian, part of the Ukraine. Russia today is nationalist, not imperialist. This totally contradicts the absurd Western ‘narrative’ that ‘Russia wants to invade’ the rest of Non-Russian Europe further west, re-establishing the failed Soviet Empire. Never has any Russian official said such a thing, indeed quite the opposite – nobody wants to repeat the clear failure of the Soviet Union, ‘only someone without a brain wants it back’, as President Putin has said.

This Western narrative of Russian imperialism contradicts the other Western propaganda myth that ‘the Russians have no more fuel, shells, tanks, missiles, artillery, soldiers etc’, ‘the people do not want to fight’, and ‘Putin is dying of a serious illness’ and more recently that, ‘North Korean troops are fighting in Russia because so many Russians have died in ‘human waves of cannon fodder’’. We have heard all this propaganda, most of it dating back to World War II, for nearly three years, without the slightest proof of any of it, indeed everything points to exactly the opposite. It has to be one, the Russians are going to take over the whole of Europe, or the other, the Russians are exhausted, defeated and have nothing left. In fact, it is of course neither. Both are clearly lies.

The Ukrainian Delusion

The great Western delusion is centred on the Ukraine. The old Ukraine was the artificial creation of three Soviet tyrants, Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchov, between 1922 and 1954, set up so that it could be controlled all the more easily by those tyrants. Before that, the nineteenth-century Austrian-invented ‘Ukraine’, or Malorossija, to give it its real historic name, existed, but only in what is now the north-west of the present Ukraine, centred around and to the west of Kiev. As we have been saying for years, the future of the Soviet Ukraine would be to divide it into three parts. A Russian part, a Ukrainian part and another part, which could, conditionally, be given back to three neighbouring countries – Poland, Hungary and Romania. Only the details of such partitions are not clear.

For example, the Russian part could consist of at least six provinces or administrative areas (two in the Crimea). These have largely already been taken back by Russian forces, but there could be another four or even seven provinces in the east and south of the old Soviet Ukraine which might wish to go back to Russia. The Ukrainian part could include between eighteen and a half and eleven and a half provinces and areas out of the original twenty-seven. This part would be centred around Kiev, the north and west of the old Soviet Ukraine. Two and a half western provinces could return to Poland (Lviv, Ivanofrankivsk and the southern part of Ternopil – the northern part, called Kremenets, with the Pochaev Lavra, would rejoin Volyn/Rivne, where it was in 1939).

One province (Zakarpat’e, or properly Subcarpathian Rus) would go back to Hungary and one (Chernovtsy, or properly North Bukovina). would go back to Romania. The return of the areas to Poland would be conditional on their deNATOisation. As regards the Hungarian area, the Russian Church could then establish a Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church for it, its territory including all Austro-Hungary. This would right the historic injustice of their Austro-Hungarian persecution. As regards the Romanian area, the conditionality could depend on Moldovan deNATOisation and on Transdnistria, Gagauzia and any other border areas of Moldova wishing by referendum to pass to Russian control being allowed to do so. The Russian world would thus respect the Romanian world.

The Russian Delusion

The conflict in the Ukraine has highlighted the underlying division between the clerico-administrative layer and the leftist-intellectual layer of the Russian Orthodox Church as a whole. This division is in fact between the pro-Catholic Conservative and the pro-Protestant Liberal layers in the Church. The first, the Conservatives, rule in Moscow, where politicians have replaced pastors and managers have replaced monks. The Conservative administrators are composed of such mini-oligarchs, who promote a militarised – and militant – Church, and propose admirals and generals as saints. They forget that before the Revolution people spoke of the worst bishops as ‘good administrators’ and then there was a Revolution. Now they speak of ‘effective managers’ (see Note 1 below).

So now there is a war in the Ukraine – the clear result of ‘effective management’. Nothing has changed. However, if there is to be no Revolution this time, there must first be a great cleansing of the Church, by the grace of God, through the coming Tsar. Now the ‘princes of the Church’ are proposing a ’Church’ which looks like a cross between folklore and an army – superstitious magic ritualism for women and Stalinist militaristic nationalism for men. That would be a Church which could only attract the brainless. We saw the ‘princes’ at the time of the ‘covid’ plot. The episcopate in Russia, closely followed by that outside Russia closed churches! It is something that even the Communists did not achieve so well. This was the persecution of the people of the Faith by bishops of little faith.

Then came the conflict in the Ukraine. The Liberals of Public Orthodoxy, including the sincere but very naïve Sergei Chapnin, Fr Alexei Uminsky, Fr Andrei Kordochkin are one thing. But many anti-Russian Liberals are, directly or indirectly CIA-funded, indirectly allied to the USA and sometimes to its vassals in Constantinople. Many anti-patriots think they are against the war, for they do not realise that they are for the war, but for the war of the Western elite against the Russian Federation. Both the Conservatives and the Liberals propose a Religion, but not Faith, a State manipulation, whether of the Russian State or of the American State, not the life in the Holy Spirit. Neither the pro-Catholic Conservatives, nor the pro-Protestant Liberals are of the masses of the Church.

The Clerical Delusion

The Liberals with their dissident congregationalism and anti-clericalism are clearly Protestant in spirit, but the Conservatives are clearly Roman Catholic in spirit, ‘Philopapist’, as can be seen in their misogyny (2) and homosexuality. Their clericalisation of the Church, obvious from website pictures seemingly showing more clergy than people at some services, is typical of the Vatican. This goes back at least to the later Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov), who died in the arms of the Pope in Rome in 1978. This Philopapism with its sexual perversions is a disease that has spread among some in the Russian episcopate, both inside and outside Russia. As lifelong admirers of the power and money of Papism, which is full of sexual perverts, such bishops want to live as State bureaucrats.

Western critics of the Russian Orthodox Church imagine that it is a kind of Erastian Church, like the Church of England, where all the bishops are nominated by a Prime Minister, who may be a Hindu, or a Jew, or more often an atheist. This is nonsense. The Russian Church is not a State Church. It is free. Sadly, the truth is even worse than Anglicanism, for the free have given up their freedom. The need to kowtow to the State does not come from the State, it comes from such bishops themselves. In this way the senior Russian episcopate is exactly like that of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The faithful in both Churches, including in the New York Synod, which parrots the love of power and money of its masters in Moscow (Note 1 below), have been let down – all voluntarily (3).

Thus, we see why the great saints of the Russian Orthodox Church were persecuted and lived far from the centres – with the exception of fools for Christ. St Paisius was forced to flee to Moldavia. Others lived in Sarov, Optina, Glinsk etc. In the twentieth century Elder Nikolai (Guryanov) lived on a remote island on the Pskov Lake. As for St John of Shanghai, he lived far away from Russia, ‘in the provinces’. The problem is the great abyss fixed between most of the episcopate and monastic life, and yet the episcopate is supposed to be composed of monks. The lack of monasticism is why today the Russian Church has embraced both the Vatican and Russian nationalism and is no longer multinational, but mononational. And that is how it has lost the Ukrainians.

Conclusion

When did all this recent decadence of Conservatives and Liberals begin in the Russian Church, formerly the Church of the New Martyrs and New Confessors? Without doubt, it all began in the 1990s, when the Church became a business, selling tobacco and alcohol – make money from anything. Then in about 2010, having obtained money, they made the huge mistake of turning from money to politics for more power. The new money-changers in the Temple ignored the Gospel again: ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s’. And so came chastisement, in the form of covid and then of the Ukraine.

One of our parishioners considers that any candidate for the episcopate should first have to spend two weeks with two small children. Alternatively, perhaps every bishop should be forced to spend two weeks every three months cleaning the toilets or working in the kitchen garden of a real, down-to-earth monastery. Or else bishops must delegate far more to senior priests in deaneries, who decide who will be ordained and will call in the by then defeudalised bishop (they are for now feudal lords) when needed. Or else have a married episcopate – though that radical change would need the decision of a Universal Council.

Notes:

1.

The Four-Stage Moscow Business Plan for the ‘Effective Manager’ – copied to the letter by Russian bishops outside Russia.

a) An older bishop chooses a candidate for the episcopate, sometimes this may be a boyfriend (there are many examples of this, whom we could name), but in any case a candidate who is usually just as narcissistic or as sociopathic as himself. Then the older bishop obtains approval for his consecration. (At this point money often changes hands; 35 years ago Constantinople was charging was $20,000 a time – who knows how much Moscow charges now).

b) The new bishop enters his diocese, acquires a nice property and a nice car, if possible a cook and a chauffeur, and then gets rid of all those who were there before him, sometimes by retiring them, however young they may be. It does not matter even if they have been faithful for fifty years or more, if their large families are examples of Orthodoxy, if they have been good pastors, if they are popular (all the more reason), if they have written books, given international conferences – they must be destroyed through fictitious ‘suspensions’ and ‘defrockings’ (defrockings for no canonical reason are spiritual murder), for they know more than the young upstart bishop and are more popular than him. The young careerist will brook no rivals. The Church must be destroyed by him, as by all those who in their delusion do not even know that they are working for satan, but imagine that they are supporting the Church.

c) A young new priest, who owes his ordination to the new bishop (often literally, he owes him money for his ordination), is sent to a place without a church and told to build one, or to a place with a ruined church and told to restore it. For this privilege he has to pay a heavy annual tax to his bishop. If he does not do this, he will be bullied, intimidated and publicly humiliated with anger and cruelty. This puts pressure on him to extort money from his parishioners, charging for sacraments and anything else, and also puts pressure on the family of the priest. We know cases where such financial pressure has led to divorce. It is not uncommon. This same technique, like the rest of the Business Plan, is commonly used in all parts of the Russian Church, both inside and outside Russia, including in the USA and Western Europe. We have seen it.

d) Even if the young priest manages to do this and establishes a parish composed of loyal and enthusiastic people, he is then thrown out of the new church and replaced with a favourite of the bishop who can pay more for that privilege. This ruins the parish, but who cares? Money rules and real estate counts.

All four stages are marked by a total lack of Christian Faith and Love, accompanied by vice, exploitation, betrayal, bullying and cloning – clones being priests similar to the bishop and to his greed. Sometimes this similarity is even physical – in style of dress, shape of beard etc.

  1. There is perhaps no sadder example of the hatred of women and even vulgarity than that of the now fallen Fr Andrei Tkachjov, who at the start was respected and used to say helpful things. Pray for him in his temptation.
  2. Thus, the Pope of Rome has now suggested a concelebration with the Greek Patriarch in Turkey in summer 2025 to mark the 1700th anniversary of the First Universal Council in 325. We would suggest that any meeting, let alone concelebration, should first be made conditional on the Pope restoring the Nicene Creed in Roman Catholicism and renouncing once and for all the filioque heresy. Then we shall know if the Greek Patriarch is Orthodox or not.

 

Questions and Answers October-November 2024

Q: What would the attitude of Metropolitan Antony of Sourozh have been to the war in the Ukraine?

A: It will soon be 44 years since he tonsured me reader, in January 1981.

Although he was not a monk, Metr Antony was a pastor and not a politician, and he would have prayed for peace and helped Orthodox Ukrainians and Russians equally. He would certainly have taken in and protected any priests from Moscow who had refused to pray for victory, like his disciple Fr Andrey Korodchkin, and instead prayed for peace. He would have abhorred militaristic attitudes in the Church and, while having no illusions about the pernicious role of the US and the Kiev regime in starting the war, he would have fully supported Metr Onufry of Kiev.

He must be spinning in his grave at what is going on in today’s almost Stalinist, nationalist administration of the Patriarchate in Moscow. Do not forget how Metr Antony supported Solzhenitsyn in the 1970s. To be honest, he would have contemplated leaving such a Moscow Patriarchate and perhaps taken refuge in another Patriarchate, certainly not Constantinople, but possibly Bucharest.

Q: How do you tolerate a bishop who is filled with hatred and jealousy for you?

A: Our personal experience is that you must tolerate it, knowing that their hatred and jealousy for Orthodox will always sooner or later lead to their schism and then heresy. Such was the case with the clerics Arius (a priest) and Nestorius (an archbishop), who started with hatred and jealousy and then fell into schism and heresy through their personal vice. Vice always leads to schism and then heresy. Once it has, not only you can leave him, but you must leave him. It is your spiritual duty.

On the other hand virtue leads to Orthodoxy. This is a spiritual and moral fact. Their hatred comes from the fact that you are more popular than they are because you have compassion for the people. Their jealousy comes from the fact you have a normal family life, whereas they are homosexuals or perverts and so cannot have a normal family life.

Q: How do you deal with a sociopath?

A: Sociopaths prey on the compassionate and pastoral, any whom they consider ‘vulnerable’, trying to make them their victims, trying to make them feel guilty and enslave them, thinking that they are weak and naive. Sociopaths are control freaks who try to exploit and manipulate, losing their temper very easily in order to do so. Outwardly they can be charming, but they are in fact narcissistic monsters, who bully and punish without any empathy or sense of guilt. However, they try and make others feel guilty, even to the point where some of their non-believing victims may commit suicide.

They are helped in this by the fact that sociopaths are delusional liars, they do not even realise that they are lying. There is only one way to defeat them and that is to flee from them. Always have a Plan B ready, a sideways move. They will always be astonished by this because they think that their power is absolute and they cannot possibly lose. This is why when they do lose, they lash out like a cornered animal, slandering and maligning, and they may start drinking. Then they will portray themselves as victims! We moved sideways to escape their snobbery and we have absolutely no regrets. If we may quote a world leader, talking about the USA:

‘They clearly did not expect such insubordination. They simply got used to acting according to a template, to grab whatever they pleased, by blackmail, bribery, intimidation, and convinced themselves that these methods would work forever, as if they had been fossilised in the past’.

Q: What are the results of being on the left-hand side of Church life and on the right-hand side? (By this I mean the liberal, modernist side and the traditionalist, pharisee side?).

A: The left leads to arid, dried-out intellectualism – or rather pseudo-intellectualism. The right leads to perverted narcissism.

Q: How do you deal with jealous Establishment types who repeat slanders about you?

A: Ignore them as there is no truth in their words, as the Psalmist says. They slander themselves, eaten up by their jealousy of their own hearts. I tremble for them. They will suffer for repeating open lies. As St Paisios the Athonite said: ‘I would long ago have gone mad because of the injustices of this world, if I had not known that the last word in human history will belong to Christ our Lord’.

Q: Who is part of the English Establishment, how big is it and how do you recognise it?

A: First of all, it is not the English Establishment, it is the Establishment which is in England, just as a virus enters a body as a parasite, it does not come from here. If you prefer, it is the British Establishment.

The word ‘British’ was first used by the Romans, then by the Normans (who moved the capital back from English Winchester to Roman and Norman London) and then was revived by the Tudors and all those who followed. In other words, the connotations of the word ‘British’ are purely imperial.

However, the Establishment is not a race, but a mentality, the ‘British’ mentality. It is called ‘the Establishment’ because it was established by the parasitic Norman elite after 1066. The British Establishment is the British Deep State, the part that remains constant whatever the government, whatever the ruling dynasty, whatever the century.

It concerns firstly the elite of British society, less than 1% of the population, as the money and power are with them. However, at least another 20% or so of the population have been dragged along into the Establishment by their money, their powerful media, intimidation, inertia and especially snobbery – they want to be associated with the ruling class, as it makes them feel important. This is the origin of the word ‘snob’, which has gone into many other languages, as other cultures do not have this reality.

You can easily recognise the Establishment because it is pro-Zionist (‘Western people are the chosen people’), and therefore pro-US, pro-EU, pro-NATO, pro-British (and anti-English), pro-Israel, pro-Kiev regime and, today, pro-Woke. As globalists, they always put non-national and anti-patriotic interests first, to the detriment of their own electorates. They are also contaminated by various sexual perversions, which is why they are pro-Woke.

Such is the case of the recent globalist and woke Archbishop of Canterbury who covered up child abuse. The Church of England is riddled with sex abusers and always has been, like Roman Catholic clergy also, but like the whole British Establishment – the BBC for example. This is why they are woke – it is all in self-justification: ‘our perversions are normal’ is what they are saying. This is why we should be very careful before receiving any Anglican vicars as laypeople into the Orthodox Church. There have been too many mistakes already.

Q: In the Creed we say that we believe in ‘One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church’, Isn’t this very confusing? Surely people will understand Roman Catholic?

A: This is a very old debate. Some suggest an alternative translation, like the Slavonic, such as ‘Conciliar’. Another possibility is to change the pronunciation to the Greek and pronounce the word ‘Cathólic’, with the stress on the middle syllable. Clearly, a solution needs to be found.

Q: Do you in the Orthodox Church pray for the dead?

A: In the Orthodox Church we do not believe in death and so do not have any dead. All are living, whether on this side of the veil or on the other side. And we pray for all the living, whatever side they are on.

Q: What do you think of tithing?

A: Tithing smacks of Protestantism, the Old Testament and Phariseeism. It must never be made obligatory. All giving to the church should be voluntary, never some obligatory ‘membership fee’. Remember that the widow’s mite received praise from Christ. Years ago I remember seeing a board in the entrance to a church in the Ukraine, detailing the names of people and how much each gave each month. See where that got them.

Q: Why do Orthodox rarely have names like Abel, Sarah, Zachary, Joel, Joshua, Aaron, Jared, Ruth, Deborah, Isaac etc?

A: There is nothing wrong with such names, it is just that they are rare in Orthodox societies. Why? Because these are Old Testament names and are often borne by people in societies of a former Protestant culture. Orthodox, like Roman Catholics, do not much read the Old Testament, apart from the Psalter, which the devout know well, so these names are rarely used, except in monasticism, where the Old Testament is read. Put simply, for Orthodox the New Testament is far, far more important than the Old Testament.

We have to understand that the Protestant world has always been close to Judaism, it even uses the Jewish text of the Old Testament instead of the Christian text. In English history even the revolution of the Puritan Cromwell was financed by Jewish bankers, so that they could move from Amsterdam, where they had moved from Venice and Northern Italy, to the safer haven of London. Later, in about 1916, they moved from London to the safer haven of USA, where aerial bombardment was not then possible.

Q: What is the Orthodox attitude to nature and the environment?

A: Nature was originally created by God. However, what we see around us is fallen nature. In this, lions tear apart antelopes, cats tear apart mice, spiders kill flies. So let us not be sentimental. The present environmentalism is nature-worship, as is visible in tree-hugging. The desire for clean nature is good in itself, but what we have to is a secularist form of puritanism, the search for the pure. Originally moralistic and anti-sexual (Protestant Puritanism invented witches and their hunting and murder), today’s Puritanism is all about pure nature. None of this is spiritual. Spiritual purity gives both sexual self-control and respect for the environment. Environmentalism, like Puritanism, gives neither because they are both anti-spiritual and merely moralistic.

Q: How many Romanians live in the UK?

A: Romanian speakers are by far the largest practising Orthodox group in Western Europe and in the UK, several times more than practising Orthodox Greeks, let alone the relatively small numbers of practising Orthodox Russians and others. According to past official statistics, the number rose from 83,168 in the 2011 United Kingdom census to 557,554 in the 2021 United Kingdom census. Between 2011 and 2021 Romanian went from being the seventeenth foreign language in Great Britain to the second, just after Polish.

This is over three years ago. The number is greater now and in any case Romanian, but English-born, children are not included in it and the number does not include Moldovans, who could easily number 50,000, perhaps more. Fairly reliable estimates, such as that of Dama Laura, the Romanian ambassador whom we know well in our church and count as a friend, put the actual number of Romanian-speaking immigrants and their English-born children at over 1.1 million. This is why the UK now has a Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese with its own Archbishop.

Q: After nearly fifty years in the Russian Church, how does it feel to be in the Romanian Church? Do you have any regrets?

A: The only thing that counts is to be in a free branch of the Orthodox Church, away from bullying and narcissistic sociopaths, with their hate-filled schism, guru-led sect, vicious jealousy, and that we have canonically left them (according to Canon XV of the First and Second Council of 861) and prosper more than ever. It has felt good to be back in the mainstream, just as it felt in 2007, when we helped bring ROCOR back into the mainstream for a decade – for even then American ROCOR had been threatening to leave the Church.

What is sad and I regret it, is how some hierarchs in the Russian Church quit the mainstream, just as those in the Patriarchate of Constantinople before it, persecuting clergy because they are patriots to their own country, in my case, to England (not to Britain, which is an alien, Norman construct). The worst thing is that in Moscow they have not learned from their mistakes.

For this persecution is an exact repeat of that in the 1920s when some senior clerics in Moscow persecuted all Russian Orthodox outside the USSR because they refused to give allegiance to the Soviet Communist Party and the Soviet Union. Now it has been happening again, with all the usual threats, aggressiveness and ‘defrockings’, whether in the Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania and Western Europe.  Non-Russians are generally not welcome in the Russian Church today. Never tell me that history does not repeat itself!

Being in the mainstream and with the majority both in England and in Western Europe, that is, from inside the Romanian Church, is very important because it is the mainstream and also the majority, who can therefore commit the most to the future Local Church. Romanians generally attend church; Russians, like Greece, far less.

Q: Why have we seen in the last generation the appearance and phenomenal growth of gender confusion and the trans-movement?

A: I think there are four reasons, though which is the most important of the last three, I would hesitate to say. Firstly, there are the rare genetic accidents. Just as there are genetic accidents which mean that some children are born blind or one-armed or with dysfunctional organs, so some are born with some hormonal insufficiency. Secondly, there is bad parenting, which the divorce epidemic since the 1960s has only encouraged. The fact is that some mothers have always had sons and brought them up as daughters (the Oscar Wilde syndrome) and fathers who have moulded their daughters into sons. Thirdly, there is vice. This is not only widespread, but, terrifyingly, actually fashionable.

Finally, there is chemical pollution by pesticides, food additives and hormones, which has entered the food chain and affected children’s hormones. This seems to have caused in part not only the epidemic of autism, but also the LGBTQ epidemic. Chemical pollutants, surely cause the appearance of ‘gay frogs’, ‘gay swans’ and ‘gay bulls’.