When Will the Russian Orthodox Church Emerge from its Spiritual Ruins?

1992-2022

After the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the Russian Orthodox Church began to emerge from the physical ruins of 75 years of atheism. Tens of thousands of surviving churches lay half-destroyed, only a few monasteries survived, its senior clergy were accustomed to being minded by the KGB, its other clergy, often very poorly educated, were tiny in number, its potentially huge flock was unbaptised and uncatechised, prey to the ignorance of unbelievable superstition and magic ritualism. The situation was catastrophic.

However, physically and miraculously, the Church did gradually re-emerge, though still only half the size of what it had been in 1917. Tens of thousands of half-ruined churches were renovated after their return from a bankrupt State, others were built from scratch, nearly a thousand monasteries were opened, new clergy were taught the basics in dozens of reopened seminaries, a 100 million and more were baptised, though mainly without instruction, billions of church books were published and factories began issuing a billion icons and huge quantities of church furnishings and millions of sets of vestments.

However, a disease also appeared. As the money of oligarchs fed restoration, their disease fed into the Church. Bishops made for themselves luxurious palaces and began living like oligarchs themselves. Instead of monastic bishops, there appeared large numbers of young homosexuals in cassocks, called ‘bishops’, who hardly knew what a monastery looked like. Popularly people spoke of ‘priests in Mercedes’. Sadly it was true, as mere careerists became priests, often in return for ‘gifts’ of money to bishops. Very expensive black Western cars appeared in monasteries. Moreover, even more alarmingly, this same disease spread abroad all too quickly and infected clergy in the Russian Church outside Russia who copied very precisely the vices inside Russia.

The list of resulting clerical scandals and injustices with properties and money is too long to list. But it was clear that virtually overnight atheists had been made bishops and priests and they continued to live as atheists. Bishops, heterosexual or homosexual, who spent money on depravity and drugs, priests who beat their wives or cheated on them, other priests who had self-sacrificingly restored properties with their families and a handful of faithful saw them stolen by their bishops and themselves suspended or defrocked for ‘disobedience’, that is for having a conscience and denouncing criminal injustice.

This was not the Church that we had fought for during the era of Soviet persecution. The Persecuted Church, which we had sacrificed our lives for as confessors, had become a Persecuting Church. We had no place in it. We shook the dust from our feet and left it in disgust.

2022 – 

Then in February 2022 came the war in the Ukraine. This led to a wave of Russian nationalism, which meant that the vast majority of parishes outside the Russian Federation and Belarus left the Russian Orthodox Church altogether – about a third of the parishes in all. The Russian Orthodox Church had moved from being a broad, multinational Church to a narrow, nationalist Church. Why should Non-Russians belong to it? Especially affected were all the churches in the Ukraine, in the Baltics, especially in Latvia and Lithuania, in Moldova and elsewhere, from England to the Netherlands, from France to Spain. Many left the Russian Church, with large numbers leaving the nationalist Russian Church Outside Russia in Germany for the Ukrainian Church.

Politics had taken over and those who had always sought the spiritual were abandoned and persecuted. Divisions took place. However, the sad thing was not the divisions, but the corruption of the clergy, especially of the episcopate, which had made the divisions inevitable. The war in the Ukraine made a great and long overdue cleansing of the Church inevitable. The Russian Church, just like the Church of Constantinople before it, had to rid itself of those who had put politics and nationalism above Christ, and rid itself of atheists, careerists, mini-oligarchs, thieves, ecumenists, homosexuals, secret service agents and minders in cassocks, all whose only interest was money and not the salvation of souls.

I have always supported the Church and always will, putting it above the State, any State. Christ comes above politics. However, many members of the senior hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church are living in the oligarchic, money-money-money 1990s. And the State has a multinational vision, not the new nationalist Church. I have a very good friend in the Russian Ministry of the Economy who is deeply involved as a senior figure in building BRICS and who is close to President Putin. He has told me that for the Russian government the ‘Church’, that is its senior hierarchy, stuffed with the financially corrupt, homosexuals and FSB-minded, is a laughing-stock among them.

Once the conflict in the Ukraine is over, the Russian government will have to turn its attention to rebuilding the Church as a multinational and non-corrupt entity. The injustices will have to be reversed and many bishops defrocked. I have told my friend that it may be too late to reverse the damage done by the corrupt. I hope I am wrong. The fact is that the Russian Orthodox Church must now emerge from its spiritual ruins, just as thirty years ago it had to emerge from its physical ruins. Divine chastisement is a terrible thing, for God is not mocked.

As regards the situation in the Diaspora, we left the Russian Church after fifty years, and I left after nearly forty years service as an unpaid cleric. There has not been a day when we did not feel relief and gladness at our decision. The crazy right-wing converts and others whom we left thought they were special, better than others, like pharisees: such was their hubris. Now those embittered persecutors are in court on criminal charges. It is payback time for them. We, however, are not on trial, because we refused to compromise the Faith, for we do not belong to the Persecuting Church and never will. But they did and do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Seventh Bishop for our Metropolia

Our three million-strong Autonomous Metropolia of Western and Southern Europe of the Patriarchate of Romania now has seven bishops with the addition of the newly-consecrated Bishop Nectarie of Brittany (western France). The eight bishops who will meet in their local Synod are: Metr Joseph of Western and Southern Europe, Bishop Mark of France, Bishop Nectarie of Brittany, Bishop Silouan of Italy, Bishop Athanasie (Italy), Bishop Timothy of Spain and Portugal and Bishop Theophil (Spain).

The Church of Romania also has a second one-million strong European Metropolia, of Central and Northern Europe, consisting of three bishops: Metropolitan Seraphim of Central and Northern Europe, Bishop Sofian of Germany and Bishop Macarie of Sweden. We knew Metr Seraphim quite well when he was a young priest in Paris in the 1980s and he came to our home in Paris several times.

Talk now is of the need for an eighth bishop, a Bishop of the British Isles and Ireland, to join our Metropolia. A candidate will be considered at the autumn Synod in Bucharest. This question is going to become increasingly important, as more and more Moldovan clergy and people in their parishes all over Europe transfer to the Patriarchate of Romania.

 

ROCOR shaken by yet another scandal of exactly the same sort, this time in the USA

Here is a letter that we could have written ourselves, word for word, It is the same playbook, elaborated by the same centralised secret document, the same intimidation, the same jealous persecution of the married clergy especially, the same aggression, the same bullying, the same threats, the same attempts to seize the properties of the faithful, the same basic ignorance of the Gospel of Christ, of the Liturgy, of Church history, of the Tradition, of ROCOR tradition, of pastoral sense, of the canons, the same arrogance – ‘I know everything and I am always right’, the same motives, the same Soviet mentality which demands obedience, not to the Gospel, but to the would-be oligarchs who seek property and income, the same imperialism, the same GI swagger that forbids you to speak your native language, the same racism, the same individuals, the same refusal to listen, communicate and consult those who are experienced, the same sectarian and cultish mentality, the same half-baked newcomers to the Church who never studied at seminary, who never knew the old ROCOR, or anything of the wider and deeper Orthodox Tradition.

We have seen it all before, all this voluntary Sovietisation which makes even those inside Russia blush, for it is all more Soviet than Soviet. It is clear that it has been orchestrated from on high, this is not a coincidence. The old and loved ROCOR of St John of Shanghai, Bishop Sava of Edmonton, Archbishop Antony of Geneva, Archbishop Seraphim of Brussels, Metr Lavr and the tragically ill Metr Hilarion, this latter usurped by coup d’etat, all of eternal memory, no longer exists. Those bishops were authentic Archpastors who were indifferent to money, they were not isolationist ideologues interested only in money and property. The new ROCOR, ruled by the well-known multi-millionaire family, is intent on chasing out all the educated priests and people, faithful to the old ROCOR, those of us who lived Church life before they were born, us who have a conscience and pastoral sense, until there is nothing left. They say: Bow down to Mammon. But we prefer Christ to Mammon, so we have no place there. As the y say in the US: ‘Money talks’, Thus, in England two years ago, 16 clerics and thousands of people left schismatic ROCOR for canonicity . None of us returned – a return to schism is unthinkable.

Who is paying them to commit spiritual suicide in this way? Redbank, House Springs, Geneva, Miami with its absurd accusations (there was never any forgery of documents by Fr Alexander Belya), Colchester and now Fr Tikhon, to name but the main cases, the tip of the iceberg. Thank God, in the USA all the conscientious will probably have to go to the Greek Archdiocese (since the OCA refuses to wake up from its weakness and so misses the opportunity to unite all Russian Orthodox in North America). In Western Europe we shall probably all go to the Patriarchate of Romania and its Moldovan sections (since the Paris Archdiocese, with which ROCOR created a schism nearly three years ago, was forbidden by Moscow to take us in February 2022 and they were too weak to stand up to Moscow because of internal traitors).

This is the ignominious end of ROCOR, replaced by the new Soviet ROCOR of the pretend oligarchs. Did they really think they could get away with this? Did they really think that we were so naive that we did not know what was going on? Did they really think we could not defend ourselves? Did they really think they could destroy the real Russian Church? Did they really think we wanted to belong to the Persecuting Church and not the Persecuted Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors? Did they really think they could destroy our life’s work? Did they really think that they could conceal from the world that they had entirely discredited themselves? If so, then what hubris on their part!

 

The Hermitage of The Holy Protection, 333 Weymouth Rd, Buena NJ 083I0

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

As the days of Holy Paschal joy are with us, we see that the Lord, as always shows us His love, and leads us out of the darkness of ignorance into the light of prudence. The anniversary of the blessed death of our First Hierarch Metropolitan Hilarion is also approaching, let us spend this day in prayer and quiet joy for Vladyka.

My name is Abbot Tikhon (Gayfudinov). For 10 years I was the personal assistant of the late First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, Metropolitan Hilarion (Kapral). And for the last 8 years and up to the present, I have been entrusted as Abbot of The Hermitage of the Holy Protection (the Skete) in Buena, (in the village of New Kuban) in southern New Jersey. Since Passion Week there has been a wave of hatred directed against us, unfounded threats, lies, and accusations have rained down upon us. I consider it my duty to clarify the situation that has developed at The Hermitage of The Holy Protection.

The original Sviato Pokrovski church in New Kuban was left abandoned and in disrepair for more than 20 years. There are pictures of the Church and the cemetery, which shows the terrible condition in 2015, when the ever-memorable Vladyka Metropolitan Hilarion (Kapral) transferred the neglected property to the Hermitage of the Holy Protection. Metropolitan Hilarlon appointed me, a sinner, to be Rector. At that time, Vladyka blessed that the property of the Hermitage of the Holy Protection would be administered by trustees: Vladyka himself, and I, as the Rector.

By 2015, The Church in New Kuban, was in a deplorable state. The cross on the main dome had rotted and fell off, the roof was leaking, there was even a hole in the floor inside the church from rainwater damage over the years. From the outside, the plaster on the walls of the church had fallen off, the windows in the refectory were chipped and sealed with adhesive tape. There were no basic church utensils, liturgical vestments or books. Everything was abandoned, the cemetery was overgrown with bushes and trees. There was no proper care for the ownerless graves. Most importantly, there were no accurate records maintained for the graves of the deceased. I wondered how in the USA, without atheistic persecution of the Church, in our time, could an Orthodox temple be left in such desecration.

Over the course of 7 years by the prayers of our First Hierarch, Metropolitan Hilarion the life of the small Hermitage flourished. The number of parishioners increased. The church property, cemetery, and the church house were returned into functioning order.

The liturgical life was established. Colossal work was performed to return the holy place into its proper honorable state. In order to save money, I performed most of the labor myself. Initially, I lived in the church basement. Eventually, I turned the basement into a usable refectory; installed a bathroom for parishioner use with a new industrial septic system; but back in 2015 there were mountains of construction debris lying around; the wind was blowing through the broken windows and there was terrible dampness and mold everywhere. All the years I worked for free.

In 2019, Metropolitan Hilarion blessed the Fund for Assistance (FFA) to carry out a fundraising campaign for the needs of the Hermitage of the Holy Protection. Vladyka Hilarion appealed to donors through a film about the Skete for financial assistance. Vladyka requested that the donations be sent through the Fund for Assistance and many caring Christians responded to Metropolitan Hilarion’s request and signed up for monthly automatic transfers of funds or made one-time donations to the Hermitage. I deeply thank all the donors who generously gave to the Skete.

After the death of our beloved Archpastor Vladyka Hilarion in May 2022, the Fund for Assistance unexpectedly stopped sending funds from our donors to the Skete, but the automatic transfers from the donors’ accounts did NOT stop. When I asked Metropolitan Nicholas why donations through FFA ceased coming to the Skete, he replied that: “Metropolitan Hilarion has died, and now the Synod has more important projects to finance.” Over the ensuing months, the Treasurer of the Hermitage, as well as, our lawyer, sent letters to the administration of the FFA, to Metropolitan Nicholas, and other Bishops of the Synod of ROCOR with a request to audit the FFA and find out why the directed funds to the Hermitage of the Holy Protection were not being forwarded to the Skete? There was no reply from anyone.

In December 2022, I was invited to meet with Priest George Temidis, Diocesan Secretary and Archpriest David Straut. I was asked to sign the deed of the Hermitage to the Eastern American Diocese (EAD) as per the request of Met. Nicholas. I inquired if this was optional, or an order, but my question was left unanswered. I explained that I cannot speak on behalf of all of the Hermitage trustees, but that I would raise this issue at our annual meeting.

On December 28th, the Board of Trustees of the Hermitage met for their annual meeting. I raised the issue of Metropolitan Nicholas’s demand for us to transfer all Skete property to EAD. We decided that everything should remain the same, as blessed by Metropolitan Hilarion. Our decision was based due to our respect for the will of Metropolitan Hilarion, who founded and blessed the Hermitage. The Skete remains exactly as Met. Hilarion organized it to this day. It is the practice of many parishes and monasteries, which are canonically part of ROCOR, to own church property via incorporation outside of the diocese. These parishes and monasteries are responsible for covering maintenance, all repairs, utilities, heating, air conditioning, insurances, etc.

On March 21 of this year, at the meeting of clergy in the Holy Trinity Monastery of Jordanville, I was invited to meet with Metropolitan Nicholas, his vicar Bishop Luke, the Secretary of the Diocese, Priest George Temidis, as well as Archpriest David Straut, and Archpriest Serge Lukianov. The atmosphere was heavy. The topic of discussion was that I had to sign over the deed of the Hermitage to the Eastern American Diocese. If the property of the Hermitage of the Holy Protection is not transferred to EAD, that I will be banned from serving; I will not be able to perform my liturgical and pastoral activities.

Metropolitan Nicholas said that there would be no compromises on this issue. Bishop Luke insisted that I was neither a monk, nor a priest, that I did not have the proper humility and obedience to fulfill the will of the new First Hierarch. The Secretary of the Diocese said that in his opinion, I should have been banned by now. Arch priest Serge Lukianov demanded that I provide a precise and unambiguous answer: whether I will transfer the property of the Hermitage to the EAD or not. Arch priest David Straut was silent.

I tried to explain that I am not solely responsible for making this decision, as there is a Board of Trustees. Amongst other things, we needed to consider the blessing of our dear Metropolitan Hilarion, who had created the Hermitage and appointed the trustees. Metropolitan Hilarion, himself became the founder and trustee of the Hermitage together with me. Metropolitan Hilarion gave his blessing in 2015 to transfer the abandoned parish to the Hermitage of the Holy Protection. Is it possible to question Metropolitan Hilarion’s adequacy and foresight? They didn’t want to listen to me; they just wanted to take away the property, and threatened me to be banned from serving for no other reason. I was put against the wall and was left with no choice. I bowed to the ground to the new First Hierarch of ROCOR, and after spending a long time at the grave of dear Vladyka Hilarion in tears and prayers, I left Jordanville.

On March 23rd of this year, the Board of Trustees of the Hermitage of the Holy Protection discussed the evolving situation. The Hermitage’s future was at stake. EAD wanted to take the property away from the lawful Rector and eliminate the board of trustees, and ban the Abbot from serving.

Therefore, the Hermitage Board of Trustees, having assessed the situation, made the only decision possible to turn to the Chairman of the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America, His Eminence, Archbishop Elpidophoros, Head of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. We asked to be received under the omophorion of His Eminence, Archbishop Elpidophoros.

Archbishop Elpidophoros showed us not only his Archpastoral wisdom, but also his fatherly love. He learned about our situation and accepted the Skete under the jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, as evidenced by the decree of His Eminence and the Holy Antimension issued to us for Divine service.

The Greek Orthodox Church was founded by the Apostle Andrew, the First-Called and has kept the canons of Holy Orthodoxy pure for many centuries. In July 1993 Patriarch Alexey II of Moscow said this about the Patriarchate of Constantinople: “In Constantinople, as the Russian people called the “City of King” with love from ancient times, the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Princess Olga received the grace of baptism; her grandson, the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir sent there his ambassadors, looking for the right faith. There are no words that could express the feelings of gratitude experienced by the Russian believing people to the Holy Church of Constantinople, which brought the saving Orthodox faith to Russia, which determined all spheres of life of Holy Russia”.

Since ancient times, the Patriarch of Constantinople has been the highest authority in the Orthodox world, where disputes, or interpretations regarding the canons of the Holy Church, or its administrative questions were resolved. The spiritual authority of the Patriarchate of Constantinople is still recognized by Orthodox churches throughout the world. Therefore, the Skete, in order to protect itself from uncanonical actions on the part of the new leadership of the Eastern American Diocese, had no other choice but to seek protection from Archbishop Elpidophoros. Dear brothers and sisters! I was and remain a faithful child of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. We remain a Russian Orthodox Hermitage, under the jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese. We preserve our liturgical traditions and our habitual way of life. Access to the Hermitage of the Holy Protection and its cemetery is still OPEN for everyone.

We honor and value the memory of the blessed venerable First Hierarch of ROCOR Metropolitan Hilarion. We pray for him and believe that he is with us, and will not leave his Hermitage in a difficult moment. We will not allow the Hermitage of the Holy Protection to be closed, we will not betray the works and prayers of Vladyka Metropolitan Hilarion, and with God’s Help, as planned, we will mount the sculpture of the blessed, reposed First Hierarch Metropolitan Hilarion at the Skete.

 

I remain faithful, with deep love and respect to the Russian Church Abroad. I know what great people stood at its origins, shaped its cultural and moral uniqueness, and what a colossal spiritual inheritance that the Russian Orthodox Church has left for all of us. I hope this legacy will not be forgotten. May God be merciful to all of us at the Great Judgement. The Paschal joy and the words of our Savior console us: “Blessed are you when they reproach you and persecute you and slander you unjustly in every possible way for Me. Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven; so, they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11)

Christ is Risen! With love in Christ,

Abbot Tikhon, Rector of The Hermitage

An Answer from the Patriarchate of Romania to the Moscow Patriarchate.

We continue our commentary with a document of 6 July on the situation of the Church in the Republic of Moldavia (Moldova). We note that this article quotes exactly Canon XV of the First and Second Council, under which we were received into the Patriarchate of Romania by the canonical authorities, when we were fleeing persecution in February 2022, and which we quoted in our commentary yesterday, and adds that: ‘The fact that the structure of Russian Church occupation in the Republic of Moldova is based on abuse of power and coercion, not on free choice or conviction, is demonstrated by the mechanism of sanctions or threats of disciplinary sanctions against priests who choose to escape from Moscow jurisdiction and ask for admission under the protection of the Romanian Orthodox Church, through the Metropolia of Bessarabia; and also; ‘The Metropolia of Bessarabia is a Church of peace and unity and has endured persecution and slander from the Russian structure for decades, but we cannot remain indifferent when simple believers or priests are attacked and intimidated’. It now seems inevitable that, exactly as we have been predicting for over a year now with our pleas for autocephaly, the tragic nationalism of the Patriarchate of Moscow has not only lost the territories of the Ukraine and Latvia, but also soon Moldova (with all its parishes in the Diaspora) and also Kazakhstan. (See: https://parlonsorthodoxie.wordpress.com/2023/07/07/les-dirigeants-orthodoxes-du-kazakhstan-disent-maintenant-que-lautocephalie-pour-leur-eglise-nationale-est-inevitable/).

 

ON THE LACK OF CANONICITY OF THE STRUCTURE OF THE RUSSIAN CHURCH OCCUPATION IN THE AREA BETWEEN THE DNIESTR AND THE PRUT

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We note with sadness that the Metropolia of Chisinau, the structure for ecclesiastical occupation of the Moscow Patriarchate, continues to misinform public opinion, falsifying the truth, distorting reality and presenting truncated or tendentious aspects of Church history or canons. This situation denotes imperial reflexes, fear of the loss of power and influence in society, opacity to the truth, inadequacy before the social processes of de-Sovietisation and the inability to engage in constructive dialogue in the interest of Orthodoxy.

Considering the declarations in the statement ‘The opinion of the Orthodox Church of Moldova regarding the press release issued by the Metropolia of Bessarabia’, the Metropolia of Bessarabia wishes to make the following clarifications:

Until 1812, the area between the Dniester and the Prut was shepherded by the Metropolia of Moldova based in Suceava and then in Iași, and for a period, the territories placed under Turkish military administration (the kingdoms of Reni/Tomarova, Chilia, Ismail, Cetatea Albă/ Akkerman, Tighina/Bender and Hotin), were under the jurisdiction of the Metropolia of Proilavia based in Brăila, both canonically subordinated to the Ecumenical Patriarchate;

On May 16, 1812, the Tsarist Empire annexed the eastern part of the Romanian Principality of Moldavia, located in the area between the Rivers Dniester and Prut;

In August 1813, the Tsar of Russia Alexander I, without consulting the hierarchs, clergy and believers, decided to establish, by imperial decree (ukaz), that our national territory be annexed by Russia, forming a diocese called Chisinau and Hotin. For this structure of ecclesiastical occupation, Tsar Alexander I designated a hierarch placed under ban and anathema by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople, as requested by the Metropolitan Synod of Iași headed by the Metropolitan of Moldova Veniamin Costachi;

The ukaz of the Russian Tsar Alexander I was a usurping secular-political act and was issued in gross violation of Church law, especially Canon 34 of the Apostles, Canon 2 of the Second Universal Council in Constantinople (381), Canon 8 of the Third Universal Council in Ephesus (431), of Canons 13, 21 and 22 of the Council of Carthage, of Canons 15 and 16 of the local Council of Constantinople and others.

This imperial ukaz was, from a canonical and ecclesiastical point of view, null and void ab initio, since a diocese can only be established by the canonically justified ecclesiastical authority for it.

The Metropolia of Moldavia based in Iași and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople officially formulated vigorous protests in relation to the arbitrary and abusive act of the Russian Tsar Alexander I. The protests of the Metropolia of Moldavia and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople were completely ignored both by the imperial court in Petersburg, as well as by the Russian governing Synod, led by the Ober-Procurator Alexandr Golitsin, a layman appointed by the Tsar’s ukaz;

The Church annexation and the non-canonical occupation of the area between the Dniester and the Prut triggered and maintained a process of forced Russification, the Romanian language of worship being gradually replaced until its complete elimination, with the Slavonic and Russian languages. The savagery of this process culminated in the burning by Archbishop Pavel Lebedev (1871-1882) of church books in the Romanian language and in the exile to Siberia of Romanian priests who opposed Russification;

In 1940, in the context of the Second World War, the atheist Soviet state annexed Bessarabia. The hierarchs, as well as part of the clergy and faithful of the Metropolia of Bessarabia, were forced either to flee to Romania or to endure martyrdom. Orthodox priests and believers remaining in Bessarabia were forced to join the abusive jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, an entity subordinate to the Soviet secret police (NKVD, later KGB);

Both in 1940 and in 1944, the Metropolia of Bessarabia, composed of the Archdiocese of Chisinau, the Diocese of Hotin and the Diocese of the White Citadel – Ismail, had to temporarily suspend their activity until the end of the Russian military, administrative-political and canonical occupation;

Beginning in 1940 and 1944, the abusive jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate was implemented by the Soviet secret police through the so-called ‘Apparatus of the Plenipotentiary for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Moldavian SSR’;

The Metropolia of Bessarabia was canonically reactivated on 14 September 1992, under conditions of freedom, shortly after the end of the state of foreign occupation, being re-admitted into the canonical communion of the Romanian Patriarchate on 19 December 1992, when a Patriarchal and Synodal Act was issued regarding the recognition of the reactivation of the autonomous, old calendar Metropolia of Bessarabia, with its residence in Chisinau;

The local structure in the Republic of Moldova of the Moscow Patriarchate, titled pompously and abusively as the ‘Metropolia of Chisinau and ALL Moldova” or the “Orthodox Church of Moldova” is a non-canonical structure, subordinate to the center of power in Moscow, being infiltrated by representatives of the secret services of the Russian Federation. It has constantly been in open complicity with the unconstitutional and separatist regime in Tiraspol and was marked at its peak by the degrading phenomena of corruption, cronyism, abuse of power, immorality and depravity. The main promotion criterion in the non-canonical structure is anti-Europeanism and anti-Romanianism, fuelled by Russian propaganda structures.

Corruption, simony, abuse of power, immorality and depravity of the leaders of the Russian structure of occupation, as well as propaganda in favor of the war to which the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate indulges, are the main objective causes for which Bessarabian priests and believers decide to flee from the captivity of the Russian Church and return to the historical traditional and canonical jurisdiction of the Metropolia of Bessarabia (Romanian Patriarchate);

The attacks against the Metropolia of Bessarabia, to which the Russian ecclesiastical occupation structure in the Republic of Moldova indulges, have contributed significantly to the deterioration of relations between the Romanian and Russian Patriarchates. These attacks are in flagrant contradiction with the decision of the two Patriarchates of 15 January 1999, that their Metropolitans in the Republic of Moldova “move from hatred and confrontation to understanding and cooperation”;

The fact that the structure of Russian Church occupation in the Republic of Moldova is based on abuse of power and coercion, not on free choice or conviction, is demonstrated by the mechanism of sanctions or threats of disciplinary sanctions against priests who choose to escape from Moscow jurisdiction and ask for admission under the protection of the Romanian Orthodox Church, through the Metropolia of Bessarabia;

The Metropolia of Bessarabia receives and will receive into communion all Romanian priests and deacons from the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine who leave the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Moscow, based on a series of Orthodox canons that allow clerics to separate themselves from an abusive and oppressive hierarchy, immoral, corrupt and simoniac, propagating the heresy of war and murder, as seen today in the case of the unjust war in Ukraine. In support of these priests comes Canon 15 (part II) of the I-II Council of Constantinople (861), which says: “those who separate themselves from communion with their superior for some heresy condemned by the holy Councils, or of the Fathers, naturally [of communion] with the one who preaches heresy in public, and teaches it in the Church with his head uncovered, some such as these will not only not submit to canonical argument, exposing themselves and communion with the one who is called a bishop [even] before synodal investigation, but they will also be worthy of the honour due to Orthodox. For they did not condemn bishops, but pseudo-bishops and pseudo-teachers, and they did not break the unity of the Church with schism, but they tried to free the Church from schisms and divisions”;

An additional argument that the priests, deacons and believers who leave the abusive jurisdiction of the local structure of the Moscow Patriarchate and return to the traditional canonical jurisdiction of the Metropolia of Bessarabia have in their support concerns ethnic reality or the nation. More than 82% of the citizens of the Republic of Moldova are ethnic Romanians and a good half of them have already regained their Romanian citizenship, so the Moscow Patriarchate’s claims to exercise its abusive jurisdiction over them are devoid of any real foundation. Aware of this and in an obvious identity crisis and incoherence, the hierarchs and clerics of the Moscow jurisdiction come to the holy places in Romania and imitate the Romanian spirit, and in Moldova they slander Romania and Romanians.

All the clerics who come out of Muscovite ecclesiastical oppression are canonical and blessed clerics, and the Metropolia of Bessarabia officially classifies them as employees of the Romanian Orthodox Church, benefiting from all the advantages, including financial support, according to the legislation in force applicable to all religious cults.

The Metropolia of Bessarabia is a Church of peace and unity and has endured persecution and slander from the Russian structure for decades, but we cannot remain indifferent when simple believers or priests are attacked and intimidated, in an attempt to perpetuate Soviet occupation, under their new form, in the Republic of Moldova. Today, when attempts to leave the Russian sphere are punished by wars, military occupations and tens of thousands of deaths, we are obliged to testify clearly and firmly to the truth, because if we remain silent, even the stones will cry out (cf. Luke 19, 40).

The Communications, Media and Public Relations Department of the Metropolia of Bessarabia and the Exarchate of Plaiurilor.

DESPRE NECANONICITATEA STRUCTURII DE OCUPAȚIE BISERICEASCĂ RUSĂ ÎN SPAȚIUL DINTRE NISTRU ȘI PRUT

On the Transfer of Clergy from One Local Church to Another Without Letters of Release and the Present Church Crisis in Moldova

All Local Churches have accepted clergy, even suspended or defrocked clergy, without letters of release throughout history. Indeed, it has been common practice among all the different parts of the Russian Church in the Diaspora for many decades, but also among many other Local Churches down the generations. There is nothing new in this practice for the simple reason that suspensions and defrockings are often carried out for purely political purposes or to attempt to seize properties or money. In one extreme case, in 2006 a bishop from the Diocese of Sourozh (Moscow Patriarchate) issued letters of release to his clergy addressed to himself, then joined the Patriarchate of Constantinople where he was named Bishop of Amphipolis, and received those selfsame clergy into his new Diocese with his previously written letters of release. Apparently, this was acceptable.

In recent years the Patriarchate of Constantinople has accepted many clergy from the Russian Church without letters of release and I am talking about suspended and even defrocked clergy, suspended or defrocked for political reasons, for example for praying for peace in the Ukraine. In turn, the Russian Church, especially zealously its American Synod, known as ROCOR, has recently accepted many clergy from the Patriarchate of Constantinople without letters of release, six in Western Europe alone. As for the Moscow Patriarchate itself, it has recently accepted over 200 clergy from the Patriarchate of Alexandria, also without letters of release.

The Romanian Orthodox Church has also accepted many clergy with large numbers of Romanian-speaking parishioners without letters of release. This situation is especially topical in Moldova, where even before the present phase of the conflict in the Ukraine erupted in February 2022, some 20% of the Church (720,000 people) had transferred from the Russian jurisdiction of Chisinau to the Romanian jurisdiction of Bessarabia. Since then, this tide has been turning into a flood, with the result that the once monopoly of the Moscow group of Chisinau is smaller and more impoverished and may soon become a minority. Below is the statement of the Metropolia of Bessarabia in Moldova issued by its Communication, Media and Public Relations Department on 29 June:

The Metropolia of Bessarabia receives into its jurisdiction all clerics and believers who want to be in the jurisdiction of the National Church

In the course of the last centuries, the Orthodox Church in Bessarabia went through trying times, caused by the Tsarist and the Soviet Communist occupation (1812, 1940 and 1944). Then the clergy and believers in this region were abusively included in the jurisdiction of the Russian Church, without canonical leave and without the Russian Church taking into account the provisions of Church legislation.

This imposed its authority contrary to the wish of the Bessarabians to remain under the jurisdiction of the Metropolia of Iași and its dioceses, which had spiritual and canonical responsibility on the left bank of the River Prut. Thus, they went against the will of the inhabitants of Bessarabia, they forgot about the religious freedom of the people to choose, a fact also recorded by the historians of the time. 

At present, when in a canonical, free and legal way, the clergy and the faithful want to return to the bosom of the Mother Church, the descendants of the former aggressors issue administrative acts of intimidation and stop nature and the natural process of things. In this sense, we must specify that the change of canonical jurisdiction is a legal act, guaranteed by the legislation of the Republic of Moldova, of which we cite only a few laws: 

“A religious community may join any religious cult or dissociate from it by the freely expressed will of its members, without additional approvals or hindrances from outside.” (LAW No. 125 of 11-05-2007, Art. 6, paragraph 3, regarding freedom of conscience, thought and religion). 

“The right of religious association of believers and their communities is defended by legal or administrative means.” (Art. 7, para. 1).

“The State guarantees religious communities the defence of their legitimate rights and interests.” (Art. 7, par. 3).

Because no child denies his parents, except when he is forced, as happened in Bessarabia during the more than 150 years of Russian occupation, it must be understood that the Metropolia of Bessarabia is the only Church structure canonically and historically entitled to shepherd and protect its believers in Bessarabia.

It operates within the Romanian Patriarchate, according to the decision of the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church of 19 December 1992, when it was decided to make an act of reparation, and ‘all clerics and their pastors who are already, or will become, members of the Metropolia of Bessarabia under the Romanian Patriarchate are canonical clerics and blessed believers, and, as such, any ecclesiastical disciplinary sanction directed against them on the grounds of belonging to the Metropolia of Bessarabia is considered null and void’.

From the above, it is understood that the arguments of those who say that this is how things are known to them, that they were baptised in this Church, are not natural arguments, but show an ignorance of the suffering of our forefathers who were tortured, persecuted, exiled and killed for truth, faith, and the desire to express their God-given identity.

Considering all of this, we make it known to the believers and clerics of the Republic of Moldova that the decrees issued by the Metropolia of Chisinau (a religious structure of Russian affiliation) against the members of the Metropolia of Bessarabia have no value and are administrative acts that do not affect the spiritual state of those who come to the Mother Church, the Romanian Patriarchate.

In order to avoid the syndrome of the victim who sympathises or identifies with oppressors (Stockholm syndrome), believers must be correctly and honestly informed about the realities, in order to heal the wound and rectify the state of affairs in accordance with canonical, statutory and regulatory provisions and according to historical truth.

In this context, we make it clear that Archpriest Alexei Sîrbu, the parish priest of St Nicholas church in the village of Puhoi, Ialoveni district, a former cleric of the Chisinau Metropolia, at the community’s request has since 2022 been a cleric of the Metropolia of Bessarabia, specifically of the Diocese of South Bessarabia. All the measures taken against His Reverence are null and abusive, as he has a working priesthood and can celebrate without any restriction all the holy services.

In this sense, we urge all the spiritual sons and daughters in the parish to be with their priest and spiritual father to share in the grace of the Holy Spirit poured out through the intercession of Christ’s servants.

Knowing the decisions of the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church regarding Church life in the Metropolia of Bessarabia, the clerics who wish to come under the jurisdiction of the Mother Church are welcomed with joy into the Romanian Patriarchate.

https://mitropoliabasarabiei.md/mitropolia-basarabiei-ii-primeste-in-jurisdictia-ei-pe-toti-clericii-si-credinciosii-care-vor-sa-fie-sub-omoforul-bisericii-neamului/

To this the Moscow-run Church of Chisinau replied very aggressively and polemically on the very next day:

The Opinion of the Orthodox Church of Moldova Regarding the Press Release Issued by the Metropolia of Bessarabia

The Metropolia of Chisinau and All Moldova regrets the fact that in the press release issued by the Metropolia of Bessarabia on 29 June 2023, there is talk of canonicity, but no canon of the Orthodox Church is cited that would justify the reception of clerics from the Metropolia of Chisinau. The Metropolia of Bessarabia considers that the transfer of the clergy and the faithful into their jurisdiction represents nature and the natural process of things. In the Church, the corruption of priests and believers cannot in any way be called nature and the natural process of things, but on the contrary a violation of the canons. Selling anyone, like Esau, for a plate of lentils (Exodus 25; 29-34), was and will remain an abomination before God. The representatives of the Metropolia of Bessarabia state that the change of canonical jurisdiction is a legal act, guaranteed by the legislation of the Republic of Moldova. But we ask ourselves: Is this act also justified by canon law? How can a Church entity put the Law of the Land above the Canons of the Church?

In this sense, we quote the canons of the Orthodox Church:

Apostolic Canon 11 (condemnation of communion with the Catholics)=

If someone, being a cleric, were to pray together with a cleric who had repented, let him also repent. (28 ap.; 4 Antioch.; 10 Carthage);

Apostolic Canon 12 (letters of release)

If any cleric or layman condemned, or (yet) not received (into communion), and goes to another city has been received without a letter of release, let both the one who received him and the one who is received him be damned; (So the Moscow Patriarchate damns itself?)

Apostolic Canon 15 (transfer of clergy)

If any priest or deacon or, in general, any of the clergy, leaving his parish, goes to another, moving altogether he will go to another parish, contrary to the judgment of his bishop, we command that he should no longer serve, especially if, after being called by his bishop to return, he did not obey, remaining in disorder, be nevertheless received there into communion as a layman; (And if he leaves because he is fleeing schism?)

Apostolic Canon 16 (transfer of clergy)

And if the bishop to whom (some like these) were to be found, disregarding the suspension decided against them, receives them as clerics, let him be damned, as a teacher of disorder. (15 ap.; 15 sin. I ec.; 17 Trul.; 3 Antioch). (And if the suspension was uncanonical, but carried out for reasons of personal hatred, jealousy and greed and for schismatic reasons?)

The Metropolia of Bessarabia, in order to argue its reactivation, talks about the decision of the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church of 19 December 1992. However, we wonder to what extent this decision respects the canons of the Orthodox Church established by the Holy Fathers at the Universal and Local Councils. In this connection:

Canons 129 – 133 of the Council of Carthage

If someone (the Metropolia of Chisinau and All Moldavia) … has shepherded a territory for three years and no one has asked for this territory (the Romanian Patriarchate), then they will never ask for it again, especially if during this period there was a bishop to do it and did not do it; (This interpretation ignores the total lack of freedom under the USSR for Romanian bishops to do so and the support of the Soviet Establishment for the Russian Orthodox takeover of the region). 

Canon 17 of the Fourth Universal Council establishes a term of thirty years to litigate disputes concerning the property even of individual parishes; (See above). 

The parishes in each diocese…must remain unaltered under the authority of the bishops in charge of them—especially if for thirty years they have undoubtedly had the given parishes under their jurisdiction and management; (See above).

Canon 8 of the Third Universal Council

Let it be observed, in certain situations and everywhere in dioceses, that none of the bishops who love God should extend their jurisdiction over dioceses that do not belong to them… that the rules of the fathers should not be violated and that the arrogance of secular authorities should not be allowed to creep into the bosom of the Church and let us not gradually and unnoticed lose that freedom, which our Lord Jesus Christ, the One who freed all mankind, gave us by His Precious Blood. (See above).

The Metropolia of Bessarabia states: ‘Considering all this, we inform the believers and clerics of the Republic of Moldova that the decrees issued by the Metropolia of Chisinau (a religious structure of Russian affiliation) against the members of the Metropolia of Bessarabia have no value and are administrative acts that do not affect the religious status of those who come to the Mother Church, the Romanian Patriarchate’. We ask ourselves: how is it possible that the act of ordination, the decree of appointment as a parish priest, the acts of awarding distinctions by the hierarchies of the Metropolia of Chisinau and of All Moldova are truthful, recognised and have religious value, and the act of suspension issued by the same bishop loses its value, being considered null and void? We have the same question regarding the priest Alexei Sîrbu, stopped from serving the holy things. How is it possible that his ordination and its distinctions are valid, and the decision of His Holiness Vladimir to stop serving is not valid? (Perhaps because one act is canonically valid and not the other, because the latter is political?)

We believe that the attempt of those from the Metropolia of Bessarabia to corrupt clergy and laity from the Metropolia of Chisinau and the whole of Moldova, defending themselves with certain decisions of the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church, flagrantly violates the Canon Law of the Orthodox Church. The current mode of action on the part of this Church entity also leads to the violation of the teachings of Holy Scripture: Eager to evangelise where Christ was not called, so as not to build on a foreign foundation (Romans 15, 20). (But who evangelised this territory first? It was not the Russian Church). 

We urge all clerics who have left the Metropolia of Chisinau and All Moldova, within which they received the gift of priesthood, to remember the oath given at ordination and its violation, the slander they caused and continue to cause. Let us remember the words of the Saviour:

And whoever offends one of these little ones who believe in Me, it would be better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world, because of the fools! For folly must come, but woe to that man through whom folly comes. (Matthew 18, 6-7). To also take into account the canons of the Orthodox Church, which they must respect until death. (What if the bishops involved are offending the little ones and not obeying the canons? And surely this extract concerns pedophiles?)

Misleading the clergy and the faithful through their behaviour and personal life (Matthew 18: 7; First Universal Council, Canon 3, Sixth Universal Council, Canon 5): (And if the bishop is misleading through their behaviour, personal life, as the public photographs show?)

Violation of Oath (Apostolic Canon 25);

Public slander and blasphemy of the Metropolitan, the bishops (Second Universal Council, Canon 6). (What slander and blasphemy? Is this an attempt at censorship despite Christs’ words that ‘the truth will set you free’).

Celebrating the Divine services after ceasing to serve the holy ones (Apostolic Canon 28);

If someone has been suspended from liturgical communion and goes elsewhere to be received into liturgical communion, let him be deposed from the clergy. The canonical Epistle of the Council to Pope Celestine also tells us the same: “Those who are excommunicated in their diocese cannot be perceived as sanctified by your communion… Any misunderstandings that arise should end in their dioceses”. (Canons 116 – 118 of the Council of Carthage); (What if the original diocese is under a schismatic bishop?)

The Challenge of Schism in the Church

With regret, we note that the decisions taken by the Metropolia of Bessarabia in recent times have led to its unfavorable position in relation to the canons of the Church. Any admission of clerics from the Metropolia of Chisinau and the whole of Moldova without a letter of release is uncanonical and attracts all the canonical provisions against him who leaves, and the clerics who transferred should understand that the duty of His Eminence Vladimir is to gently rebuke those they stand against, that only God will give them repentance to the knowledge of the truth and they will escape from the race of the devil, by which they are caught, to do his will (II Timothy 2:25-26). And again the Apostle says: Rebuke those who sin in front of everyone, so that others may also fear (I Timothy 5:20). Like a loving Father, the Metropolitan waits for his prodigal sons to come home! (Where is the love of one who intimidates, threatens and damns others to hellfire because they are obeying the canons?) 

Synodal Department of Institutional Communications and Media Relations

https://mitropolia.md/opinia-bisericii-ortodoxe-din-moldova-referitor-la-comunicatul-de-presa-emis-de-catre-mitropolia-basarabiei/

Some of the Scriptural extracts and canons above seem very clear and very strict, but they are all quoted out of context and without any discernment. Moreover, they are quoted by a part of the Moscow Patriarchate, which organisation just in recent years has accepted hundreds of priests from other Churches, also without letters of release! Clearly, Church canons, often called ‘holy’ by those who infringe them (!) are being used politically, not spiritually. As one bishop screamed: ‘I don’t care what happens to you, what I want is the keys! (to the property). In other words, most of these problems are simply about property and the income that comes from it. They have nothing to do with canons and the spiritual, only about lucre and the material.

As we have commented in the text above (comments not in bold), these canons cannot be applied to many situations, especially that in Moldova/Bessarabia, a territory disputed for political and historical reasons between two countries, each having its own name for it, having been conquered by the Soviet Union and taken by military force from Romania. (Somewhat like the Church of Georgia, whose age-old independence was completely and uncanonically suppressed by the Russian Church for some 200 years; once the USSR fell, the Church was restored). Clearly, this is a political problem and these canons cannot be exploited to answer such a question.

Furthermore, the above canons presume that all bishops are Christians. What if they are not and are in fact corrupt and immoral, full of schismatic sectarianism, bullying and racist hatred, publicly declared against other nationalities, who form the vast majority of the parishioners and who therefore want to leave such oppression? The twisted interpretations of the above canons are also contradicted by other canons and by the practice of the Church. Letters of release are only necessary if priests and deacons are corrupt and others have to be warned not to accept them. As we have said, what if clergy, innocent victims of such bishops, are not corrupt, but rather the very bishops who refuse to issue the letters of release most certainly and obviously are?!!! Is there any consultation before such predators are made bishops?

To quote actual real cases in the Russian Church over the last forty years:

What if a bishop wants to sleep with the wife of a cleric or that of another man (as happened in the 1980s elsewhere and as has happened recently under a bishop precisely of the Metropolia of Chisinau?) What should that cleric do? Remain, or flee to another bishop without a letter of release? (There was no letter of release simply because the lustful bishop in question refused to issue it in order to preserve his power).

What if a bishop wants to sodomise a cleric (as happened recently under a bishop of the Metropolia of Chisinau in Moldova, and elsewhere in the Russian Church)? What should that cleric do? Remain, or flee to another bishop without a letter of release? (There was no letter of release simply because the homosexual bishop in question refused to issue it in order to preserve his power).

What if a bishop insists that a cleric become a freemason, what should that cleric do? Remain, or flee to another bishop without a letter of release? (There was no letter of release simply because the corrupt bishop in question refused to issue it in order to preserve his power).

What if a bishop creates a schism? What should that cleric do? Remain in schism against his conscience, or flee to another bishop without a letter of release? (There was no letter of release simply because the schismatic bishop in question refused to issue it in order to preserve his power).

In this latter case, Canon XV of the First and Second Council of the 318 Fathers in 861 does supply a clear-cut answer:

But as for this persons, on the other hand, who, on account of some heresy condemned by the Holy Councils or Fathers, withdrawing themselves from communion with their presiding bishop, who, that is to say, is preaching heresy publicly and teaching it bareheaded in church, such persons are not only not subject to any canonical penalty on account of them walling themselves off from any and all communion with the one called a bishop before any conciliar decision has been pronounced, on the contrary they shall be deemed worthy to enjoy the honour which befits them among Orthodox Christians. For they have defied not bishops, but pseudo-bishops and pseudo-teachers, and have not sundered the union of the Church with any schism but instead have been diligent to rescue the Church from schisms and divisions.

Beware, God is not mocked.

 

On the 1350th Anniversary of St Audrey

Praying before the icon of St Audrey on the iconostasis of St Edmund’s Romanian Orthodox church in the High Street of Little Abington just outside Cambridge, we sang a service of intercession to her, taking hymns from our untampered service composed to her. Then we went to her birthplace in the the village of Exning and her holy well and then on to Ely to pray and sing in front of the holy relic of her right hand. Today is not only her feast-day, but precisely the 1350th anniversary of her repose. St Audrey is the Mother of East Anglia and it is only because of the saints of East Anglia that this part of England survives.

May she who has protected us from the persecution of sectarians and schismatics continue her intercessions for us, always now and ever and unto the ages of ages.

Holy Mother Audrey, pray to God for us!

Archpriest Andrew Phillips,

Romanian Orthodox Metropolia of Western and Southern Europe

6 July 2023

 

Where Are You Going, Russia?

‘The situation in the Ukraine is not a regional conflict, but the total opposition of the Collective West and the rest of the world, caused by diametrically opposed views about the future development of humanity…The hybrid war they are waging against us now is their last chance to maintain the status quo in their favour and not to lose their weakened power and influence…The aspiration for independence of the countries of the Global South and East is not at all to the liking of the former colonial powers, which cling to the past with all their might’.

Dmitry Medvedev, 2 July, https://news.mail.ru/politics/56860026/?frommail=1

Introduction: The Communists and Oligarchs of the Past

In Russia today you can still find Communists. They are mainly elderly, sometimes living in retirement homes, sometimes having held high positions in the old USSR, and never recovering from the shock of the collapse of the USSR, which they want back. President Putin long ago stated the obvious majority view of the USSR: ‘Those who are not nostalgic for it have no heart. Those who want it back have no brain’. The Communist Party is then basically the Pensioners’ Party and they have a dream of another 1917 Bolshevik takeover. But where is their leader, Lenin? Lenin is a rotting mummy, embalmed in a chemical soup in his Moscow ziggurat, the Time Museum. These are the dinosaurs – they have no future.

In Russia today, though above all outside Russia, you can still find the next generation, the oligarchs – those who robbed Russia blind (‘privatised’ it) in favour of the West. These are the fifth columnists, all manner of totalitarian liberals, such as the CIA asset Navalny, who worship the so-called values of the West. Most, however, long ago fled to London, New York and Tel Aviv, with some on the French Riviera or in Malaga. Those who remain in Russia and supported Prigozhin (who is one of them and is typical of their age group) may soon be getting a knock on the door from the FSB, which replaced the KGB, about a matter of treachery. The conflict in the Ukraine is the final nail in their coffin and they know it. They too belong to the past.

The Present

Such is the past. What of the present? As a result of constant Western aggression, President Putin, who came to power at the end of 1999, has over the last generation moved from a position that was rather favourable towards to the West to one that is completely hostile to it. This is no surprise, since the West through its organisations like NATO, the EU and the IMF, only even displayed a predatory Russophobia and since 2014 has declared war on Russia through its Nazified Ukrainian proxy, which it has armed to the teeth as an Anti-Russia, openly stating that its aim is to destroy Russia and kill all Russians. Therefore, as the primary Eurasian power and by far the largest country in the world, Russia has over the last fifteen years been forced to ally itself with others, with China, the most populous country in the world, and with what we may in general call the former Western colonies of the Global South and Global East. This means all Afro-Eurasia and Latin America.

Working in close collaboration with China, the world’s No 1 economy, the Russian Federation, the world’s No 5 economy, belongs to a multipolar world. There is no place here either for Soviet Communists or for post-Soviet oligarchs. How exactly will the recently Russian-founded economic and political organisations expand? Here we are speaking of the EEU (Eurasian Economic Union), the SCO (Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, now including Iran) and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). The latter already has many dozens of applicants, from Afghanistan to Algeria, Egypt to Indonesia, and will probably come to include the whole Non-Western world, including most of Eastern Europe, at present in the increasingly dysfunctional and defunct EU. What will that future BRICS be called? What will its common gold-backed reserve currency (unlike the dollar, which is backed only by debt and a printing press) be called? How will China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the Greater Eurasia Partnership work out?

Many such absolutely vital details have yet to be elaborated in the coming years, but clearly this is where Russia is today – defending the new multipolar world whose founding Russia has initiated and helping to elaborate it because Russia is the principal Eurasian Power. Above we wrote that there is no place here either for Soviet Communists or for post-Soviet oligarchs, but in a multipolar world there is no place either for narrow and sectarian Russian nationalism. And that is a huge problem for the Russian Orthodox Church, whose leading figures have got onto bad terms with almost everyone, losing sympathy and support everywhere. That is no way to conduct yourself in a multipolar world. It seems that the senior administration of the Russian Church is stuck in a narrow and sectarian mindset, painting itself into a very dark corner.

Forward to the Future

The two great Super-Power victors to emerge from 1945 were the white star American Empire and the red star Soviet Empire. As we know, after the fall forty-four years later of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Soviet Empire crumbled. As we can see today, after the fall of the US puppet government in Afghanistan in 2021, it is now the turn of the American Empire to crumble. It too has had its day. In the twentieth century, over a period of seventy-five years, former Orthodox Christian countries fell to atheist Communism, ending in 1991. Former Roman Catholic countries fell to Fascism and that ended in suicide in a bunker in Berlin in 1945. As for former Protestant countries, they fell to Capitalism. Led by the USA and its senile President, with its nearly 32 trillion dollars of unpayable external debt (not to mention internal debt), Capitalism too is now failing.

As we have said, former Roman Catholic countries fell to Fascism until 1945. However, at the Second Vatican Council held under American pressure sixty years ago, they next fell to secularist Protestantism. From then on, the Americans began choosing the popes, most obviously the Polish John-Paul II (they appointed an English-speaking actor, just as later they appointed Zelensky). Official Roman Catholicism is like post-Protestantism now part of the Great Western Reset, and it is unclear what its present elderly and ill pope believes in. Conversely, in the twentieth century formerly Orthodox Christian Russia had fallen to Communism, but that ended in 1991. What replaced Communism? For some it was the apostasy of secularist American Capitalism – the ideology of the oligarchs. For most it is today the multipolar, Eurasian path of President Putin. However, there are others, who want to see Orthodoxy fully restored in a monarchy and a new Tsar.

For now this seems to many to be completely irrelevant and even laughable. However, in 2033, ten years on from now and forty-four years after 1989 (remember Communism emerged victorious in 1945 but lasted only forty-four years), President Putin will be 80 years old – if he lives that long. What and who will replace him? One possible answer is this Orthodox monarchist movement in contemporary Russia, which can be called ‘Forward to the Tsar’. This means the restoration of the People’s Orthodox Monarchy, Tsardom. This implies a prominent future role for the Russian Orthodox Church. This movement has support among a minority and there is a huge question mark as to how much support it has both inside and outside Russia. The problem is that the Church administration is severely compromised by the present.

Future Restoration Compromised

The fact is that several senior administrators of the Russian Orthodox Church (not ordinary clergy, monastics and people, who in the past were martyred in their millions and who in the present remain faithful to the memory of those martyrs) have long compromised themselves with the State authorities. Not to the extent of changing the Faith, but to the extent that they have collaborated with State authorities. This is the error of what in Protestant history is called ‘erastianism’, the unprincipled collaboration with the State (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Thomas_Erastus). The most obvious Russian examples up until early 1917 were in seventeenth century Russia, when many senior Church administrators took part in the State persecution of Old Ritualists, and then at the Russian February Revolution, when they abruptly renounced their oath of faithfulness to the Tsar in favour of Kerensky. They were swimming with the tide.

Then, later in the twentieth century, came another example with ‘Sergianism’, named after the Soviet Metropolitan and then Patriarch Sergius (+ 1944). Here supposed churchmen collaborated with the Soviet atheist State, making themselves into ‘Orthodox atheists’, holding to a rite without any Christian content, to the scandal of the faithful. And after the collapse of Soviet Communism, some such senior ‘churchmen’ promptly made themselves into mini-oligarchs, simply copying the example of secular post-Soviet oligarchs. As a result of their yet again swimming with the tide, ‘the Church’ understandably came to be perceived by the masses as a mere Business, a money-making institution, exploiting the zeal of sincere priests and the superstitious and sectarian desire for ritualistic magic of the by then baptised but still unChurched post-Soviet masses. As a result, the huge problems of post-Soviet Russia, alcoholism, abortion, divorce, very low demographics, have not been solved.  The masses do not attend Church or follow Her ways. Simply because they are not led by example. ‘Why should I bother? The senior ones don’t’.

Apart from the corruption of several senior Church administrators, there is also the threefold problem of their homosexuality, their work as minders and assets for secret services (mainly FSB, but also CIA), and their compromises with the Vatican. Curiously, these three problems often go together. It is exactly the same liberalism, homosexuality and collaboration with spies as in the seventeenth century, for example, the notorious Paisios Ligarides, ‘Orthodox’ bishop and Roman Catholic cardinal, business fraudster who sold indulgences and spy, traitor and intriguer, schismatic and sodomite. (https://www.historytoday.com/archive/ strange-case-paisios-ligarides). These liberal, homosexual, secret agent ‘Sergianists’, lovers of the State-Church, quite naturally love the Vatican Church-State. As they say, ‘birds of a feather flock together’.

The Third Rome or The Second Jerusalem?

The Russian Orthodox Church is still cruelly suffering from Soviet-style centralisation – Communists relied on central planning. As a result, the Church has largely ceased to be multinational. This centralisation is key to understanding why so many believing Ukrainians rejected the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church, preferring their own Ukrainian Orthodox Church, sometimes preferring Orthodox, Roman Catholic or Protestant sects, and even atheist secularism. However, the Russian Church has as a result of nationalism lost not only the territory of the Ukraine to its jurisdiction, but also Latvia and is now rapidly losing Moldova (to the Romanian Church) and Lithuania as well as many, many other countries. The Russian Church is then going in precisely the opposite direction to the multipolar President Putin.

A nationalist, and not multinational, multipolar Russian Church, an inward-looking, for-Russians-only ghetto, attracts neither Ukrainians, nor anyone else. Such a Church does not export outside Russia. Moreover, many faithful priests have in recent years been defrocked by the Russian Church merely for protecting their church properties and flocks from corrupt and predatory oligarchic bishops, or simply for expressing different political viewpoints from senior figures. To put it mildly, this does nothing for the reputation of the Church. The absurd and over the top ‘defrocking’ of faithful clergy, as practised by Russian Church administrators all over the world, have made those same administrators the laughing-stock of the world. In other words, nationalist sectarianism repels all Russian Orthodox who are of Non-Russian ethnicity from the Russian Church. And that is some 35% of the whole.

After the fall of the Second Rome, Constantinople, in 1453, the concept of Moscow the Third Rome came to Russia and was first clearly formulated in 1492. However, being Rome is automatically a temptation. The First, Second and Third Romes all fell because power went to their heads. The Gospel says nothing positive of Rome. Salvation came not through Rome, but through the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, which took place not in Rome, but in Jerusalem. Let us stop speaking of a Third Rome. It would be more helpful to speak of a Second Jerusalem. This is why we some time ago suggested that the Russian Orthodox Church administration should change its name from the Soviet-invented ‘Patriarchate of Moscow (MP in Russian)’ to the ‘Patriarchate of New Jerusalem’ (NP in Russian) and move to headquarters in the New Jerusalem Monastery outside Moscow.

Conclusion: The Cleansing of the Russian Orthodox Church

It is clear that Russia and its Church are far from ready to bring forth an Orthodox Tsar even ten years from now. Of course, a lot could happen within future years – nobody predicted the present conflict in the Ukraine between the USA and its vassals on the one hand and Russia on the other hand. The conflict in the Ukraine is clearly a historic turning-point. It could lead to a great cleansing of Russian society and also to the cleansing of its Church. After all, you have to be worthy of a Tsar. The Russian Orthodox Church I grew up in was a Church of Saints, of New Martyrs and Confessors, a Persecuted Church and not a Persecuting Church, the Church of the New Jerusalem, not of Soviet or post-Soviet Moscow. It can still (just) survive as a multinational Church, but only as a decentralised Family of Russian-founded Autocephalous and Autonomous Churches reflecting the broader Family of the sixteen multinational Local Orthodox Churches. Otherwise, it will just slip into sectarian and nationalistic irrelevance.

If the faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church should by some miracle bring forth a Tsar, He will first cleanse its administration of spiritual corruption and nationalist centralisation and so serve the whole multinational Confederation of the fifteen other Local Orthodox Churches. A cleansed Russian Orthodox Church would be a Godsent opportunity to witness to Christ amid the spiritual, moral and financial bankruptcy of the Western world, now led by a senile old man, appointed as puppet by business interests in Washington. In Europe new national-oriented governments have already come to power in Hungary, Italy and Finland. Now France has burned, increasing the popularity of the anti-EU National Party of Le Pen. Germany is in recession and the AdF (the German equivalent of Le Pen’s National Party) is ever more popular. As for the now bankrupt and freedom-hating UK, anti-EU brexiteers see their former leader, Farage, about to be exiled from his native land by the corrupt British Establishment. In a world like this, where populist patriots are making elitist globalists tremble, anything is possible.

St Alban’s Day, 5 July 2023

 

 

The End of the Two Russian Emigre Church Groups

Introduction

The two Russian émigré Church groupings that took shape in the 1920s in order to be independent of the by then Soviet-controlled Moscow Patriarchate were only ever meant to be temporary formations. Time and time again the leaders of both proclaimed that they would return to the Mother-Church inside Russia as soon as the Soviet Union had fallen. As we know, even though the USSR fell in 1991, it took many years after this before they eventually did reunite, in 2007 and 2018, but both for the same reason – that they could not canonically survive and function normally, if cut off from the far larger Mother-Church, centred in Moscow.

Unity Against Extremes

We in Western Europe, frightened especially of strange political and sectarian trends coming from the US since the 1960s, very much wanted to see both Russian émigré groupings reintegrate the Russian Church and canonical norms. And we also wanted to give them back their real missionary purpose. This was the purpose defined by, among others, St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, that of witnessing to and spreading Orthodoxy worldwide, helping to form new Local Churches, while still remaining faithful to the Orthodox Tradition. In other words, both groups had to avoid two temptations or extremes. The first was that of being a closed inward-looking, exclusivist and so sectarian ghetto, which would inevitably die out, as do all ghettoes and sects. The second was that of assimilating completely or else basically becoming an Eastern-rite Protestantism or Eastern-rite Catholicism, or in any case being absorbed by the local dominant culture and also dying out.

The small Paris group, where we have family and close friends, and which reunited with the Mother-Church only in 2018, lost over 40% of its strength in so doing, for the secularising, assimilationist party mostly left it. That was in fact a cleansing. It meant that the group could go on with its mission to help build up a Local Church in parts of Western Europe, but faithfully following the Russian Tradition, while remaining independent of Russian internal politics. In other words, it wished to become a European OCA (Orthodox Church in America). With three bishops at present, it hopes to consecrate another three bishops. However, it remains a Paris-centric Church and its presence in the British Isles, as in many other parts of Western Europe, is very small and very weak. Nevertheless, it has made and will continue to make an important contribution to a future Local Church in Western Europe, into which it will eventually merge.

Americanisation

The larger, though still small New York-based group, with twelve bishops, took another line. Unable to be an ethnic ghetto because of assimilation and the loss of Russian, it chose to become an ideological ghetto. In 2021 it duly cut itself off from the Paris group in a schism, even though both were supposed to be united in One Church. The New York group had seen most of its original Russian emigres and their descendants die out or be assimilated into secular culture despite – or perhaps because of – CIA funding. Thus, it had become almost wholly reliant either on parishioners from the former Soviet Union or else on poorly integrated and puritanical converts seeking their ideal of an exclusivist fundamentalist ‘One True Church’ sect. They knew nothing of the real Russia and real Russian Orthodoxy, but only a Disneyfied, made in the USA, fantasy version. It was this second and highly politicised convert ethos that came to dominate the New York group.

In order to assert its control elsewhere and ensure its power fantasy of ‘another century of existence’, New York decided to ‘retire’ the old school of bishops and clergy. It would send out cultish new bishops to intimidate and close down opponents and financially exploit the peripheries of its group in Australia and Western Europe. Ass imperialists they would force those peripheries into the unipolar, ultra-conservative, New York convert mould, even ‘correcting’ their language for Americanese! This would mean their group becoming ever smaller and narrower and more isolated, creating schisms with other Orthodox, cutting itself off from mainstream Orthodox, from the majority. Parishes in insular Australia were already largely Americanised, but Western European parishes, with their tradition handed down from St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, were not. Geographically next door to Russia, Russian Orthodox in Western Europe know the real Russia and Russian Orthodox culture. They could have nothing to do with the fantasy version, cultivated on the American island far away.

Western Europe

Thus, Western European dioceses would have to be repressed and basically destroyed to fit the new and loveless, unipolar ideology of the US imperialist mould with its power-seeking and money-making ethos. The American crazy convert mentality of ‘money, money, money’, podcasts for ‘incels’ and ‘orthobros’, with punishing homosexuals or misogynists a la Andrew Tate, was alien to Orthodox in Europe. Harsh and jealous right-wing Americans and Americanised extremists, with their politicking, Vlasovite, CIA-funded Possevs, Radio Liberties and Voices of America, would never be acceptable to genuine Russian Orthodoxy in Western Europe. Thus, the New York group with its aggressive Americanisation and bullying schismatic sectarianism signed its own death-warrant in Europe. A censorious and sectarian Russian old calendarism had no attraction for normal Orthodox Christians, whether for the converted, or for Russians. Isolationism and hate-filled sectarianism repelled.

Therefore, most ex-Soviet parishioners did not feel at home in the New York group in Western Europe and would have preferred to attend Patriarchal churches, linked with their homeland, had they been available. Talking to the Orthodox bishops with whom I had studied at seminary or whom I had known when they were young priests, the reaction to the Americanisation or ‘convertisation’ of the old European ROCOR was universally the same: amazement and sadness at the destruction of a genuine spiritual, ascetic and liturgical heritage and its slandering by know-nothing neophytes without monastic experience. However, looking at the schismatic and sectarian mentality responsible, the whole thing then began to appear laughable. The reaction confirmed just how bad the New York group’s reputation had become in recent years. ‘Oh, that uncanonical sect’, was the typical dismissive reaction among clergy of other Local Churches.

The Coming Collapse

Once the divisive conflict in the Ukraine is over and the Patriarchal Russian Church returns to its freedom and so destiny, the fate of the New York group will be decided. In Western Europe, it has no future. It is out of communion with the mainstream. Its remnants will flee its uncanonical extremism and be absorbed into the dioceses of canonical Local Churches, especially of Moscow, which will by then be free to receive them. That is, once Moscow has freed itself from the effects of the divisive and all-absorbing conflict in the Ukraine, when it can begin decentralisation through a sweeping programme of autocephalisation and autonomisation, eliminating oligarchic corruption and the gay mafia.

Thus, outside Western Europe and Africa, in Australia there will surely develop a separate Metropolia (especially if Australia and New Zealand come out of their US-imposed political control and isolationism and join the BRICS political and economic bloc), as also will Latin America. In Northern America (the USA and Canada) the New York group will slowly integrate the future Local Church, founded by the great St Tikhon, whose life-giving presence is still in the OCA, which will be redefined. Surely it will be joined by the 40 or so Moscow parishes, still for the moment outside it, and perhaps be renamed.

Conclusion

After the conflict in the Ukraine is over, now providentially to be hastened by Prigozhin’s treacherous mutiny, and with the removal of certain divisive traitors in the Church, the unity of the at present very divided Orthodox Family must be restored. This will have to be through an authentic Orthodox Council unifying the totality of the Local Churches, in which Catholicity and Conciliarity alone reside. Worldwide, this will mean radical changes to both leading Patriarchates, Constantinople and Moscow. Only the reaffirmation of the Catholicity of the whole Orthodox Church can deliver us from a narrow, centralised, political and ethnic model of Church life. This has already happened so many times in our two thousand-year history. Only a real Council can lead to canonical Orthodox unity everywhere, not least in the Diaspora of Western Europe, the Americas and Oceania.

 

The King Edmund Ironside League (1016-2023)

The King Edmund Ironside League (1016-2023)

 

The last King was slain a thousand years ago and more.

King Edmund’s killers said lies are true and truths are dead,

And, without regrets, those dwarves grew much in pride and war

And then, denying God, they enthroned themselves instead.

 

Taught wisdom by His Love, now we Ironside’s children, fed

By the Risen Lord Himself, are called to come to know

That in this land of Alban, Austin, Bede and Alfred

Trade is in no wise the end for us here below.

 

Once the greed for gold and the golden calf’s hateful gain,

Born of faithless lore and gilded vice, have been cast down,

We Edmund’s faithful children will raise up once again,

As long before, the Altar, the Cottage and the Crown.

Draining The Swamp

Introduction: For or Against

As I have always been critical of the compromises of the elite of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, I have twice been asked if I am anti-Greek. No, I am pro-Greek, and not just because I lived and worked in Greece for a year and spoke (now rusty) Greek, I am pro-Greek because I am against those who betray true Greek Orthodox identity in favour of anti-Christian, secularist values. Secularist (or ‘Hellenic’ – in the language of the Apostle Paul) values are not Greek, they are not part of Greek Orthodox Tradition and culture. Therefore, I am pro-Greek and not pro-ecumenist and pro-LGBT, despite what one senior individual in the Greek Archdiocese in North America thinks of that. I support ordinary Greek Orthodox people, clergy and monks, some of whom come to our church. Similarly, I have been asked if I am anti-Catholic. Once more, I do not think in those negative terms. I am pro-Orthodox, which means that I value all the remnants of Orthodoxy that have survived in Catholicism. I have seen sincere piety among Catholics and where I have seen that, I am in that way ‘pro-Catholic’. However, I am not pro-filioque, pro-papist and pro-pedophile.

On the contrary, I am for digging deep in order to reach what is below, the roots. My example is the late Archbishop Augustine of Lvov who in the 1990s told Greek Catholics in his diocese to dig deeper when they said they could not return to Orthodoxy because their ancestors buried in their cemeteries were also Uniats. ‘Dig deeper in the cemetery’, he said, ‘and you will find that your ancestors were Orthodox’. My reply to questions about whether I am pro-Russian Orthodox or anti-Russian Orthodox is the same. I am pro-Russian Orthodox. That is precisely why I am critical of the recent infiltration of the Russian Church by secularist values, including the love of money, careerism, centralisation and homosexuality, which have tried to corrupt it from inside, largely over the last thirty years. I am pro-real Russian Orthodoxy, not pro-a recent oligarchic business version, run so often by careerists, homosexuals and fifth columnists. I believe that the Russian Church should grant at the very least autonomy (with the right not to commemorate the Russian Patriarch, if the local need is such, not just to Japan and China (including now Taiwan), but also to the Twelve: to Africa, Northern America (the ‘NAOC’, though this already has autocephaly under an inaccurate name), Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, South America, Oceania, Western Europe, the Baltics (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), Central Asia, Moldova, Belarus and of course the New Ukraine, or Kievan Confederation, as it will be. The future is in new Local Churches, not Disneyland imitations of old Local Churches.

Thus, I am opposed to upstart converts who know little about the authentic Russian Orthodox Tradition, only knowing about outward show, and therefore who cause schism. They are those tyrants who come here and try to impose their crazy convert sectarian ways, including their debased English language, on people who had the Tradition before they and their parents were even born. In their incredible aggressiveness (as Orthodox of all other nationalities at once notice), manipulative arrogance and love of money and bling (they love dressing up because, as secular failures (whatever they claim on fictional cvs) they have an inferiority complex) they remind us of GIs who went to Iraq and tortured Iraqis. Why? Because they were American and therefore all was allowed them. They wanted to Americanise us, intimidating us and threatening us. As they know so little, making basic mistakes, they failed and their absurd and ignored petty punishments backfired on them and their incel yesmen followers. Their policy is the same policy as those who in their corrupt hubris, absolutely certain that they were right, went to conquer Vietnam, Afghanistan and the Ukraine, humiliating their peoples and despising and destroying their age-old cultures. They all failed and they all had to go back to where they came from and bear the spiritual consequences of their errors for the rest of their lives – and beyond. So the Russian Orthodox Church is now being cleansed. And I am for cleansing, for draining the swamp that has accumulated over the last thirty years.

The Fall of the Western World into Nazism

In reality, arrogant and aggressive Western hubris is a form of Nazism. We must understand that Nazi ideology is not about some historic German nationalist form of racism. That was only a narrow episode in the long history of the ‘Crusades’ of the Western elite against ordinary peoples worldwide, against the grassroots. Nazism is far broader than Hitlerism. Nazism is the whole ideology of Western superiority, the concept that the Western world is the only one that counts, that as the Rest are inferior to it, the West has the tyrannical right – and delusional pride – to destroy all other Civilisations and cultural values. How? By imposing its own on them through organised violence, such as that employed against England in 1066 (yes, English lives matter too), racial arrogance, economic blackmail and cultural bullying. How did this come about? Where did this all come from? Anyone who knows the West knows that there is great variety among its peoples and that many ordinary people do not share in these hubristic attitudes.

For example, from classic humanist Western culture, who would call Nazis, Dante and Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Vermeer, Shakespeare and Moliere, Cervantes and Goethe, Bach and Beethoven, Heine and Dickens, Chopin and Liszt, Puccini and Verdi, Brahms and Strauss, Hugo and Renoir, Dvorak and Grieg, Yeats and Joyce, Sibelius and Elgar? Nobody. So where did this Western culture of Nazism appear from? Any Civilisation is dependent on its essential spiritual and so resulting philosophical and cultural values. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism are the four most important belief systems in the world, accounting for over 75% of the world, though there are also many smaller systems, such as Taoism, Sikhism and the very small Judaism (0.2%). Now, although the Western foundational system later deviated into the denominational forms of Catholicism and Protestantism, the Western world began as part of Christian Civilisation. Clearly then, this Nazism began from those deviations, not from the original foundation.

In other words, we of the Orthodox Church are the West’s past. Catholicism and Protestantism are not that past. In other words, their spiritual authority is now small because they have wandered so far from the original Christianity and their institutional State forms have always, even if unconsciously, been part of that Nazi ideology of proud, self-appointed superiority. Yes, although both denominations had already added and taken away long ago, they did until relatively recently still share several basic Christian values. However, over the last hundred years and more, arguably since 1914 when Western elites massacred the flower of their own youth in the trenches, though others would say before this, others after this, they have degenerated. So much, indeed, that most of their denominational leaders now appear to deny even basic Christian values, the Three Pillars on which the Western world had built its Civilisation. How did this happen and what are those Three Pillars?

The Loss of Spiritual, National and Family Identities

Firstly, the Western world lost, or rather renounced, its own Spiritual and Civilisational Identity, that is to say, its belief in Christ the Son of God. It lost its Faith in its own foundation stone. Denying Him as the Risen Son of God and dismissing Him as a mere man and sometimes rejecting that He had ever even existed, it destroyed all faith in its own raison d’etre. Why did it exist any more? For example, it sold its Bibles to Native Americans and Africans, but then stole their lands and resources. What example did those people see in the West? What was the Western ideology worth? In the same way, its politicians and arms merchants blew to pieces Western youth in the trenches of the First World War, so that their bodies could never even be found. It became clear that the West was no longer Christian, just Capitalist, its only interest financial gain, and its reductionist forms of Christianity were only camouflage for making money. (The West always has money for wars, though not to pay doctors and nurses, for roads and hospitals). It had lost its spiritual and ideological foundation.

Secondly, the various Western nations lost their National Identity, that is their Sovereignty. They began to merge not simply into one another, but into an anonymous and homogenous, one size fits all, American standard world. Today, you can visit cities, airports and stores in Western Europe and you may well have no idea which country you are in. They all look the same, they all have the same transnational and transcorporate look and content. Western Europeans increasingly eat, drink and dress exactly like Americans and watch American films and television. The example of this is the US-modelled EU, which is supposed to be a United States of Europe, a single subservient transatlantic part of the USA with the same dollar-pegged common currency, in other words, it is little more than a set of client banana-republics. The Non-EU UK is even more subservient to that model.

Thirdly, the Western world is now in the process of destroying its Family Identity through Transgenderism. By undermining and destroying the basic building block of any Civilisation, the Family, and proclaiming that there are no longer two sexes, male and female, as God made them, it is ensuring its own death. It is even, through aggressive economic blackmail, trying to export this depravity to other countries, which have different civilisational values, in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa etc. Where will the fathers to provide the seed come from? Where will the mothers to carry children and give birth come from? Transgenderism is the last step in the end of Western Civilisation. It is suicidal, as we can also see in the forced large-scale population replacements by mass immigration which have taken place in Western Europe and accelerated over the last fifty years. It is just as at the end of the pagan Roman Empire. Immigration is always necessary for ageing and depraved societies to survive.

Conclusion: The Role of Russian Civilisation in Possible European Restoration

In the twentieth century Russian Civilisation was almost completely destroyed by the Western-orchestrated overthrow of its Non-Western, non-reductionist, traditional Orthodox Christian Civilisation. This was overthrown in 1917 by the Western ideologies of Bourgeois Rule and then of Marxism, that satanically-inspired ideological idealism. This utterly failed because it never took into account human nature, that is, reality, specifically Spiritual Identity, National Identity and Family Identity. All who opposed its straitjacket had to be massacred, exiled or silenced by fear. That was what happened, at least in the first generation of Marxism in the 1920s and 1930s, after which Russia received the Divine punishment of satanic Nazi aggression in 1941, which at last began to sober minds and prepare them for the following three generations of repentance. Today we are seeing the final phase of that repentance for stubborn sin in a renewed attack of Nazism.

In the last thirty years, the remnants of Russian Civilisation have slowly and painfully been restoring their spiritual roots in Russian Orthodoxy. This very slow and sometimes compromised return to Orthodox Christianity means that Russia is gradually returning to the same roots that the Western world once possessed, albeit long ago. This means that it is returning from that terminus towards which the West is now heading. In other words, today Russia and the West are like two trains passing each other, but heading in two different directions. The Russian train is coming from its terminus and heading towards the restoration of its Spiritual Civilisational Identity, of National Identity and Sovereignty and of Family Identity, all of which it almost lost in the years of Marxism. On the other hand, the Western train is speeding to its terminus – to nihilism, the rejection of everything.

After experiencing the Western deviation of Marxism, founded by the atheist grandson of a rabbi, today’s Russia is utterly opposed to the aggressive and narcissistic LGBT elites of the New West. It is in favour of the remnant peoples of the Old West and their potential return to their spiritual roots in an untarnished Christianity. The symbol of the LGBT New West is its leader, President Biden. He should not be in the White House as President (elected only because his senility guarantees that he can be manipulated by those behind him). Rather he should be in a nursing home with mental health care. So should all those who follow him, for they too suffer from a megalomaniac Napoleon complex, the concept that they are exceptional, that all is allowed them and all are subject to them. We, on the other hand, have worked all our lives for the restoration of authentic Orthodox Christian Civilisation, both for the restoration of real Orthodoxy in Orthodox homelands and therefore also of the real West. To help draw all up from the ruins of modernity has always been our task and always will be. The traitors to Christ will not succeed in stopping us from working for that.