Four Ecclesiologies

There used to be three ecclesiologies (teachings as to what the Church is), but last month we saw the birth of a fourth. What are these ecclesiologies?

  1. Orthodox Ecclesiology (‘Christianity’)

This is the ecclesiology of the Holy Trinity, Unity in Diversity. It is the ecclesiology of the Family of Churches, which together form the Body of Christ, of which obviously Christ is the Head. In practical, that is, incarnational terms, this results in the existence of a family of Churches, like those described by the Apostle Paul in his letters to the Corinthians, the Ephesians, the Thessalonians, the Philippians, the Romans etc. Their differences and problems are regulated by Councils. Indeed, this conciliarity, in theology and history called Catholicity, is one of the four basic signs of the Church, together with Oneness, Holiness and Apostolicity. Therefore, a ‘Church’ which does not have this Catholicity is not the Church, certainly not the fullness of the Church, as it is deficient in one of the Church’s four essential qualities.

  1. Papal Ecclesiology (‘Papocaesarism’)

Papal or Roman Catholic ecclesiology asserts that the Church is centralist and imperialist. There is only one Pope, Who as the Vicar of Christ is the Head of the Church. This is the ecclesiology of centralism, which cannot survive without the Pope, Who is Infallible, as He is the source of the Holy Spirit on earth. This is the ecclesiology of the Crusader, the Inquisitor and the Conquistador.

  1. Protestant Ecclesiology (‘Caesaropapism’)

As a reaction to centralist Papism, this says that you can make your own church, everyone is a pope, everyone is the head of their own church: ‘Make it up as you go along: we are all popes now’. If you disagree, you go off and start your own church. Inevitably, and from the very start, this leads to small, weak and divided groups being taken over by States, kings, princes, presidents and politicians, a process known as erastianism, whereby the State controls the Church. Inevitably, and from the very start, this has led to State Churches, phenomena like the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, the Church of Norway. These are all State-controlled organizations, which inevitably end up adapting their doctrines to the demands of the secular State.

  1. Phanariot Ecclesiology (‘Eastern Papism’)

This power-grabbing ecclesiology, which has been a century in the making in the Diaspora has just now been born in all its fullness in the Ukraine. It is in effect not Orthodox ecclesiology, but a mixture of Roman Catholic and Protestant ecclesiologies, Papocaesarism and Caesaropapism. On the one hand, it is centralizing Papism: all must be gathered together under the Patriarch of Constantinople, who is the ‘Eastern Pope’ (not ‘Western Pope’). On the other hand, it gives what it calls ‘autocephaly’, in reality only a diminished autocephaly or minor measure of independence, to any Church within any nationalist organization or ‘State’ – even though that ‘State’ may be new, temporary, artificial and tyrannical or even already have an authentic Orthodox Church on its territory.

In other words, this new imperialist/nationalist ecclesiology is a combination of the worst of both the Papal and the Protestant worlds. It is a pastiche of authentic Trinitarian Orthodox ecclesiology. On the one hand, it is centralizing, able to exploit its new ‘churches’ as subservient cash cows. On the other hand, it provides a measure of independence to pseudo-autocephalous entities, but no protection for them from the local dictatorship, even in dogmatic questions. For the local ‘State’ can demand and force changes in doctrines in accordance with its own demands, which subordinate Christ to its nationalism. Thus, Phanariot ecclesiology does not affirm Local Churches, it only affirms, Protestant-style, the right of ‘States’ to have their own ‘Churches’. In other words, it merely uses Protestant-style nationalism to increase its own power base. Therefore, this is a double heresy.

 

 

Can the European Union Survive Until 2034?

In 1985 an island-country larger than the whole of today’s European Union left the European Community: this was an island in the Atlantic Ocean called Greenland. However, for the then European Community the departure of this then Danish colony, with a population of 50,000 and technically part of North America and not Europe, had little significance. However, the departure of the UK, now in the grip of media-encouraged panic-buying of food before Brexit, which is also an island-country in the Atlantic Ocean although far, far closer to the European mainland than Greenland, is very different.

It comes at a time when the Franco-German couple which in reality runs the European Union, under US guidance (NATO headquarters is almost next door to EU headquarters in Brussels), is in trouble. France, torn by continuing violent internal strife for over two months, is going bankrupt. Immigrant-full Germany is on the brink of recession. Both face the UK’s Brexit, caused by the extraordinarily intransigent and self-satisfied Franco-German refusal to reform the corrupt and dictatorial EU. Both now face a national and eurosceptic government in Italy, which is fed up with uncontrolled immigration from Africa, triggered by the US-sponsored Franco-British destruction of Libya.

Neither has been able to stop the civil war in Europe, in the Ukraine. They encouraged this under strict US instructions, even though they never had the slightest intention of taking the Third World Ukraine into the EU. Both face the problems of national identity-conscious Eastern Europe, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Lands. They refuse to admit any Muslim immigrants from the catastrophes inflicted in Syria and Afghanistan by US greed for oil and gas and its obsession for total control of the whole world. Eastern Europeans all lived under the tyranny of Soviet Union Mark I and do not want to live under the Soviet Union Mark II, even though it may be called the EU.

Neither has been able, with US backing, to do anything about what they call ‘the western Balkans’, whose countries it has long been hoping to recruit into its EU club. Here, Macedonia (FYROM) has been forced into changing its name to North Macedonia to stop its membership being boycotted by Greece, but this is still disputed; Serbia and so-called Kosovo are being encouraged to swap territories, but bloodshed is threatened daily; the Italian-named Montenegro is, like the largely unrecognized Kosovo, becoming a US-run colony for bandits, smugglers and illegal organ-transplanters. As for Bosnia-Herzegovina, it remains an artificial state which, like Kosovo, will depend eternally on NATO troops for its survival.

Greece and Cyprus are both bankrupt. With phenomenal rates of unemployment, the young leave. As for the three Baltics, like Romania, Bulgaria and equally corrupt Non-EU Moldova, nearly all of whose citizens have $10 Romanian or Bulgarian passports, they long ago had their factories closed down by Germany as a prerequisite to entering the EU. Only the old, who bitterly regret the collapse of the Soviet Union, and civil servants remain; the young have been forced to emigrate to Italy, France, Spain, Germany, the UK and anywhere they can make a living to survive.

What is the future for a politico-economic club, which exists only because France and Germany spent exactly three generations, seventy-five years, fighting three bloody wars against each other between 1870 and 1945? As we approach the seventy-fifth anniversary of the 1945 end of their last quarrel in 2020, does the European Union make any more sense? We are not of course suggesting yet another round of tribal and xenophobic strife as in the European Wars of 1914 and 1939, but surely there must be a better way than the corrupt, overcentralized and dictatorial EU. Can the EU survive until 2034, the fiftieth anniversary of 1984? May God show us the right way out of this mess.

New Jerusalem and All Rus?

Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God….and I will write upon him….the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem…

Revelation 3, 11-12

And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God…

Revelation 21, 2

Shine, shine, O New Jerusalem! The Glory of the Lord has shone on Thee!

From Easter Matins

The term ‘Moscow Patriarchate’ was to some extent discredited in the Soviet period. For some even now it suggests political compromise with an atheist State, as well as ritualism, bureaucracy and centralization. Indeed, for extremists, the very words are literally anathema. For example, the present Ukrainian crisis is coloured by so-called ‘Christian’ (whether nominally Catholic or nominally Orthodox and actually atheists), now sponsored by the Phanar, chant, ‘Death to the Muscovites!’ It seems to us that their extremist nationalism must be countered by Russian Orthodox Church internationalism. What does this mean? Let me explain.

We can see both from the history books and contemporary newspapers with their Roman Catholic clerical scandals how the First Rome ended up. And now in the last few weeks, after centuries of extraordinary decadence culminating in the Ukraine, we have seen how the Second Rome (‘New Rome’) has ended up. Therefore, the alternative rallying call of ‘Moscow the Third Rome’ seems to us less attractive. There is an alternative: This is ‘Moscow the Second Jerusalem’. And outside the secular and post-Soviet Russian Federation government and secular metropolis that is today’s Moscow, this is possible in a place that has now been restored.

After the historic events of the reunion of the Russian Church on Ascension Day in Moscow, soon after, on 18 May 2007 I gave a talk at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy entitled ‘Orthodox Russia and a World Council of Orthodoxy’. This was of the possible future importance of the New Jerusalem Monastery complex outside Moscow, where restoration after the ravages of both Soviet Russian and Nazi German atheism was then about to start. Founded by Patriarch Nikon in the 17th century, the whole complex had been intended to recreate the Holy Land in the area of Moscow by the River Istra, which takes the role of the Holy River Jordan.

In the main church there is indeed a place for the Patriarch of each Local Church to stand. It was conceived as  the Church of International Orthodoxy. I said then that this might one day become the centre of World Orthodoxy, a place of Church Councils. I said: ‘Indeed, we would dare to suggest an actual location for this World Council – at the New Jerusalem complex, west of Moscow. Built in the seventeenth century as a counterbalance to Imperial ideas of the State, this complex, centred around the Monastery of the Resurrection, was chosen to embody parts of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, with the River Istra representing the River Jordan.

It was meant to be open to all peoples and there monks of different nationalities, including those converted from the West, strove together in true catholic unity. Although still to be restored, this site is surely most appropriate, since it is centred around a Monastery, dedicated to the Resurrection of Christ. It stands in stark contrast to Chambesy in Calvinist Switzerland. There, Protestantism financed a basically secular conference centre for the Patriarchate of Constantinople, with its pseudo-Orthodox ‘cinema’ chapel’. Those were my words then, printed in a bilingual booklet in Russian and English. They were spoken with prayer and hope.

As Ukrainian Fascists cry with hatred their slogan ‘Death to the Muscovites’, perhaps the time has come. As the Russian Orthodox Church at the end of December set up two new missionary Exarchates, ‘of Paris and Western Europe’ and ‘of Singapore and South-East Asia’, uniting East and West beneath the double-headed eagle, perhaps the time has come. To do what? In these eschatological times, to rename the Patriarchate of Moscow, ‘The Patriarchate of New Jerusalem and All Rus’. It seems to us that  nationalism must be countered by internationalism. For, ‘The Lord doth build up Jerusalem: He gathereth together the outcast of Israel’. (Ps. 146, 2).

THE EU TRAGEDY

Locked in its windowless ivory towers, the EU elite has lamentably failed to deal with the reality of Europewide popular discontent with it. Indeed, the elite, blinded by its own self-satisfaction, has contemptuously dismissed this profound discontent as ‘populism’, that is, the despised views of the people. For the same reason it has refused to negotiate with the UK on Brexit, which was caused by that selfsame discontent. Here is why the UK has so far been unable to reach a negotiated deal with the EU on Brexit.

And yet in riot-torn and bankrupt elitist France, whose banker-President has banned any public demonstrations in the elite’s capital (he does not want to know about them), in AfD Germany, in eurosceptic Italy and all of EU-ravaged Eastern Europe, the dissatisfaction with the EU goes on. Only the rich have benefited from the EU; the poorer you are, the more discontent you are, the more Brexit you are. And that is universal: many Europeans are jealous of Brexit, because they are not allowed it in their own countries.

Of course, there has also been crass political mismanagement typical of the UK Establishment. This has allowed a remainer Prime Minister to negotiate to leave the EU! The result was a patchwork of compromises which does not give Brexit, does not represent public or Parliamentary opinion and so has been rejected by Parliament. The lies of the Project Fear metropolitan elite, designed to panic the ‘ignorant plebs’, have always maintained that any deal is better than no deal, better still, no Brexit at all.

However, most people do not believe this elite, grown wealthy from the EU gravy train, even though it controls the media. The same elite has also put out aggressive propaganda for yet another ‘People’s Vote’, even though we have already had one, only the elite did not like the result. It ignores that any new ‘People’s Vote’ would almost certainly result in an even larger majority to leave the EU mafia, whose accounts cannot even be audited. Any sort of conspiracy to stop Brexit is the order of the day among the elite.

What is the future? Unless the EU at last begins to negotiate constructively, and not obstructively, after the two years it has wasted so far, it will lose the £39 billion fine it has imposed on the UK for leaving. More than this, the freedom-loving UK will leave the EU on 29 March 2019, trading with it on World Trade Organization terms in the future. The self-inflicted loss to the EU will be great. And other countries and peoples will want their own Brexits. Such is the state of an elite blinded by its own hubris.

 

 

The Orthodox Church: 220 million Faithful and over 1,000 Bishops

The Orthodox Church is a family of Local Churches, just like the Churches of the Galatians, the Ephesians, the Romans, the Thessalonians, the Colossians etc, as described in the letters written to them by the holy Apostle Paul. Each of the Local Orthodox Churches has a main administrative figure, a chief bishop known as a Patriarch, or in the case of smaller Churches, a Metropolitan or Archbishop. However, the Church as a whole has no earthly head, because the head of the Orthodox Church is our Lord Jesus Christ. His authority is expressed in the Orthodox Church through the Holy Spirit as revealed particularly through Church Councils and the saints. Below you will find details of the Orthodox Churches and their approximate sizes, totalling: Bishops: 1,023. Priests: 79,592. Parishes: 71,993. Monasteries: 2,988. Faithful: 220,000,000.

Russia: Bishops: 419. Priests: 40,000. Parishes: 36,878. Monasteries: 1.000. Faithful: 164,011,000

This is the only real multinational Orthodox Church and accounts for 75% of all Orthodox. It cares for Orthodox living on canonical Russian Orthodox territory, spread over one fifth of the planet (the former Soviet Union except for Georgia, plus China and Japan) and peopled by over 62 nationalities. These territories include the Russian Federation, the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Transcarpathia (the main part of Carpatho-Russia), Kazakhstan, Central Asia and the Baltic Republics. The Russian Church also includes the self-governing New-York-based Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (mainly in the three continents of the Americas and Oceania), the Japanese Orthodox Church and the Chinese Orthodox Church, as well as Exarchates for Paris and Western Europe and Singapore and South-East Asia.

Romania: Bishops: 57. Priests: 15, 513. Parishes: 13,527. Monasteries: 637. Faithful: 18,800,000

Also known as the Patriarchate of Bucharest, apart from in Romania there are also many Romanian parishes in the Diaspora, especially in Western Europe.

Serbia: Bishops: 53. Priests: 3.000. Parishes: 2,974. Monasteries: 204. Faithful: 8,000,000

The canonical territory of the Patriarchate of Belgrade covers Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Croatia and Slovenia. There are also many parishes in the Serbian Diaspora.

Greece: Bishops: 108. Priests: 9,117. Parishes: 8,000. Monasteries: 598. Faithful: 8,000,000

Under the Archbishop of Athens, this Church cares for all Orthodox in Greece.

Constantinople: Bishops: 131. Priests: 5, 935. Parishes: 3,196. Monasteries: 148. Faithful: 5,250,000

This includes Greek Orthodox in Istanbul (about 1,000), those on Greek islands such as Crete and Rhodes (700,000), and above all the Greek Diaspora in the Americas, Western Europe and Australia. There are also twenty-four parishes in Finland and small groups of other Non-Greek Orthodox, mainly Ukrainian, elsewhere. It has 58 titular bishops.

Bulgaria: Bishops: 29. Priests: 1,500. Parishes: 2,600. Monasteries: 120. Faithful: 4,500,000

The Patriarchate of Sofia covers Bulgaria and a number of churches in the Diaspora.

Georgia: Bishops: 47. Priests: 1,100. Parishes: 550. Monasteries: 172. Faithful: 3,500,000

The Patriarchate of Tbilisi covers Georgia and a small Georgian Diaspora.

Antioch: Bishops: 44. Priests: 408. Parishes: 496. Monasteries: 32. Faithful: 3,000,000

The canonical territory of the Arab Patriarch, who lives in Damascus, includes Syria, the Lebanon and Iraq.

Alexandria: Bishops: 45. Priests: 500. Parishes: 1,000. Monasteries: 3. Faithful: 3,000,000

Although for historical reasons its Patriarch is a Greek and his appointment is in the care of the Greek government, this Patriarchate is in Egypt. It also cares for St Catherine’s Monastery on Mt Sinai, but most of its faithful are Africans in over 54 African countries.

Cyprus: Bishops: 18. Priests: 600. Parishes: 628. Monasteries: 28. Faithful: 650,000

Under an Archbishop, this Church cares for all Greek Orthodox in Cyprus.

Poland: Bishops: 12. Priests: 420. Parishes: 237. Monasteries: 13. Faithful: 600,000

Under the Metropolitan of Warsaw, this Church cares for Orthodox of all origins who live mainly in eastern Poland.

Albania: Bishops: 8. Priests: 154. Parishes: 909. Monasteries: 1. Faithful: 200,000

Under the Archbishop of Tirana, this Church cares for Orthodox in southern Albania, most of whom are of Greek origin.

The Czech Lands and Slovakia: Bishops: 7. Priests: 197. Parishes: 240. Monasteries: 4. Faithful: 170,000

Led by a Metropolitan, this Church cares for Carpatho-Russian, Slovak and Czech Orthodox, as well as large numbers of Ukrainian Orthodox immigrants.

Jerusalem: Bishops: 25. Priests: 50. Parishes: 50. Monasteries: 25. Faithful: 130,000

Although its Patriarch is a Greek and his appointment is in the care of the Greek government, the flock consists of Palestinian Orthodox in Palestine and the Jordan.

OCA: Bishops: 20. Priests: 1,098. Parishes: 699. Monasteries: 3. Faithful: 90,000

Not recognized by all Orthodox, this group is composed mainly of the descendants of Slav immigrants from the old Austro-Hungarian Empire to North America, especially to Pennsylvania.

 

 

Three Generations and Three Approaches to Orthodox Europe

Foreword

Although this brief article concerns the future of Russian Orthodoxy in Western Europe, it also concerns any nationality of any generation in the Orthodox Diasporas, for example, in the Americas and Australia, since human psychology and human nature are the same everywhere. The only difference is that historically the Diaspora in North America is a generation older than in Western Europe, which in turn is a generation older than in Australia.

Generation One: The Ghetto

The first generation of the Russian emigration, which was born before 1917, formed the ghetto. It therefore died out. This is a suicidal mentality, common to all the Russian jurisdictions. Thus, I saw ROCOR in England destroy itself and die out between the 1970s and the 1990s. I saw the Rue Daru jurisdiction in France do the same and that of Moscow too. The first generation dreamed of returning to an idealized Russia, which no longer existed – if it ever did. As a Non-Russian I, like the descendants of this first generation, was never going to move back to Russia.

This generation lived in Europe, but in no wise associated with it, it was in no wise ‘of’ Europe. Thus, I can remember the aristocratic Parisian mitred archpriest, Fr Alexander Rehbinder (+ 1980) condemning the use of French in France not just in church, but also at home! And he was typical of tens of thousands of others, who have now gone the way of all flesh. Their churches have nearly all closed, disappeared off the face of the earth. You have to live in the real world, not the ghetto, otherwise you will lose your children and grandchildren and certainly fail to convert the natives.

Generation Two: ‘European’ Orthodox

These are the children of the first émigrés. These are the rebels (‘soixante-huitards’, as the rector of Saint Serge Fr Alexei Kniazev (born 1913) termed them in 1979 to their face). These are those born in the emigration in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, who in revolt formed the OCA and tried and failed to do something similar in Paris. They wanted to conform to and integrate the world around them, rejecting their parents’ ghettoes. In France they were almost Uniats, in the USA almost Protestants. They have stood in the way of progress of Orthodox and of the next generation, dismissing them and chasing them out, rejecting authentic Orthodoxy (calling it Russophilia, which they so despise) and especially monastic life as relics of their parents’ age. Instead, they claim to be ‘relevant’, ‘modern’ and ‘European’, though they do not have a drop of Western European blood in their veins! Thus, they reject us, the real Europeans and also Orthodox! And they want to be ‘European’ Orthodox!

In reality, no new Local Church can be born if it is not based on Orthodoxy, the real thing. The rest is intellectual fantasy and dreamers’ folklore. In the case of the Rue Daru members (now aged mainly between 70 and 90 and, excluding the Moldovans and new Russians, less than 1,000 individuals), the only logical future is to do what the Greeks want them to do: they must integrate into the Greek dioceses of the countries where they live, mainly in France. Having two Constantinople bishops in Paris is uncanonical! They must get over their psychological complexes towards their parents’ generation and their illogical ideology, which is basically built on their own psychological problems. Either lose your imagined self-importance and superiority complex racism and go to the semi-Uniat and now uncanonical Greeks (they already have the ‘new’ (= Roman Catholic) calendar and Greek vestments), or else be assimilated and go straight to the Roman Catholics. You cannot be ‘of the Russian Tradition’ and yet hate Russia and the Russian Church.

Generation Three: Orthodox Europeans

This is the generation that wants to remain Orthodox, confessing a grounded Orthodoxy, with roots, that is, without compromise, but which also wants the services in the local languages and venerates the local saints of Europe. We are Orthodox Europeans, not ‘European’ (i.e. semi-Orthodox) Orthodox. This is the way ahead because this is the way of the coming generations, our children and grandchildren. This is Orthodox Europe, the path of Orthodox Europeans. And this is the way of the new Exarchate under the new Metropolitan John of Paris and Western Europe, following in the footsteps of his missionary patron, St John of Shanghai and Western Europe.

It is this which is called on to become the Autonomous Church of (and not ‘in’) Western Europe and in due course the Autocephalous Church of (and not ‘in’) Western Europe. The Exarchate of the future, composed of 23 countries (Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, France, Switzerland and the UK), is our future, regardless of our nationality and background. Let us leave the past to the past, for we leave the dead to bury the dead and look to the future of our children and grandchildren.

 

To the Younger Generation of the Future Orthodox Church of Western Europe

As soon as the tiny Rue Daru Exarchate in Paris under the ex-Patriarchate of Constantinople was closed down just a few weeks ago on account of its Phanariot Russophobia, so the Russian Orthodox Church opened its own Exarchate of Paris and Western Europe, centred in the new Cathedral there. It is led by Metr John of Western Europe, whose patron saint is our very own St John of Shanghai. This, my vision of thirty years ago in 1988, which was almost immediately dismissed as a dream and contemptuously thrown away by a German Archbishop into the waste paper basket of his study in Asnieres sur Seine came true in 2018.

Indeed, the reality thirty years on is even better than my vision of a Western European Metropolia, because we now have an Exarchate, a step above a Metropolia, just a step beneath an Autonomous Orthodox Church of Western Europe. Time and time again we see that those who have no vision die. And that is the way it is. They have all died out, the opportunities missed. Here is simply the greatest example. In one sense now, my hopes have been realized. I can now rest and disappear, all my hopes which seemed impossible even 15 years ago, let alone 30 years ago, let alone 45 years ago when they were first born, have been achieved.

However, many unresolved problems remain. For instance, the Iberian Peninsula today has its own Orthodox Archbishop Nestor of Madrid, and celebrates its own saints. It follows the list that I drew up 25 years ago when I was the rector of the first ever Russian Orthodox parish in Portugal. On the other hand, the Exarchate includes only thirteen countries. Austria and Hungary and the Nordic countries (Scandinavia) are not yet  included in the Exarchate and the Nordics still do not have their own bishop. Then France and Italy (with San Marino and Malta, we presume) must share Metropolitan John. And there are local problems in Benelux and especially in the British Isles and Ireland, which have to share their bishop with parishes in North America.

Then there is the problem that Germany is not included in the Exarchate either. No doubt this is connected with the problem that the 70 or so ROCOR parishes in Western Europe are not part of the Exarchate. And many of these parishes are bigger than the Exarchate parishes. For example at the Paris Cathedral with its three priests there were only 170 communions at Orthodox Christmas, not much different from 7 January in provincial Colchester (the 500th largest town in Western Europe) with its three priests. There is much to do! Above all we need hundreds more priests, hundreds more parishes, hundreds more church buildings of our own.

We need far better pastoral care and internal mission. Thirty years ago my vision did not exist. Today it does. In thirty years time we should be aiming at another vision – at least 1,500 parishes in a united Exarchate of 23 countries, with their own buildings, one Metropolitan and at least eight dioceses (Germany, German Switzerland and Liechtenstein; France, French Belgium, Monaco, French Switzerland and Luxembourg; Italy, Italian Switzerland, San Marino and Malta; the Isles; Iberia with Andorra; Scandinavia; Austria-Hungary; the Netherlands; with at least fifteen diocesan archbishops and bishops, 1750 priests, 250 deacons and numerous monasteries and convents, Orthodox parishes accessible to the whole population of Western and Central Europe.

And we need an Exarchate which, though faithful to Orthodoxy and our calendar, is truly multinational and multilingual, and where Non-Russians (priests and people) are not treated as second-class citizens by phyletist bishops and their favourites, who continually persecute and abuse them, sacking them for no reason, never giving justice. Give us Christians and Christian attitudes! Here is a vision and here is a challenge for you, the coming generation. We have exhausted ourselves, having done our part without the slightest support and against all the odds in constant battle. Now it is your turn. Do not be disheartened. God is with us!

 

Who Are Orthodox Christians?

For nearly two thousand years we Orthodox Christians have been on Christ’s critical mission of salvation — our own salvation from sin and death and so that of the rest of mankind, of all living things, and indeed of the whole planet. We believe that the world can still be saved from self-destruction, spiritual, moral, political, social, military, and today ecological, chemical, bacteriological and nuclear. For nearly a thousand years this chaotic self-destruction has been the ever-accelerating agenda of greedy Western terrorism, which has been asset-stripping the Non-Western world, even more after its ‘World Wars’ of the last century.

Since the end of the World War in 1945 this terrorism has become ever more relentless and ferocious, using ever more barbaric technologies, massacring millions. The relentless Western military machine has been leaving its bloody traces in genocides all around the world, from all over South America to Korea, from the Congo to Haiti, from Guatemala to Iran, from Vietnam to Cambodia, from Italy to Belgium, from Rwanda to Serbia, from Iraq to Myanmar, from Afghanistan to all of Africa, from Syria to the Ukraine, from Libya to Yemen. This war is part of the war between Good and Evil, which affects all peoples and each one of us.

However, we believe in self-sacrificing service for our common goal of the salvation of the soul. We believe in the final victory over the war-creating enemy of mankind, Satan, who rejoices in death as he is the prince of death. This is the victory of the Church and Her Master, Christ, now and forever. For He is coming again as the Just Judge to judge all the nations and each one of us. Our nationality is Orthodox Christian, our flag is the flag of God, our faith and hope are the certain knowledge that Christ the Son of God and King of Love will win. It is this knowledge that gives us the strength to go on in the struggle for salvation.

The Russian Orthodox Church, 31 December 2018

With 164 million faithful the Russian Orthodox Church makes up 75% of the whole Orthodox Church. All the other 12 universally-recognized Local Orthodox Churches (in order of size: Romania, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Antioch, Alexandria, Poland, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Albania and Jerusalem) are in communion with her. (Sadly, the Local Churches of Rome and Constantinople also used to be in communion with her, but have over time fallen away from the confession of the Orthodox Faith. As for the tiny North American group called the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), it has never been recognized by all) (1).

As a multinational Orthodox Church, the various parts of the Russian Orthodox Church enjoy different levels of independence from its leading bishop, the Patriarch. Thus, first comes the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which has a special status of autonomy close to autocephaly or full independence, as it can elect its own leading bishop (at present His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry), but it still commemorates the Patriarch. Next come the Japanese Orthodox Church and the Chinese Orthodox Church which are both autonomous, only their main bishop needing the approval of the Patriarch. Thirdly, there are the four Churches of Estonia, Latvia, Moldova and the New York-based Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) largely looks after Russian Orthodox in the three Metropolia-type Continents of North America, South America and Oceania. These Churches are self-governing, meaning that all their bishop-candidates require approval from the Patriarch before they are consecrated.

Fourthly, there are the three Exarchates which have a limited autonomy, though they cannot nominate their own bishops. These are the Belarusian Orthodox Exarchate (Belarus), the Western European Exarchate (Andorra, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Italy, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Portugal, France and Switzerland) and the South-East Asian Exarchate (Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, North Korea, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Thailand). Finally, there is the Metropolia of Kazakhstan which also has a certain independence regarding internal affairs in relation to the local laws of Kazakhstan.

The Russian Orthodox Church today has 381 bishops in 60 metropolias and 309 dioceses. These have 38,649 churches or other facilities in which the Divine Liturgy is celebrated by 34,774 priests and 4,640 deacons. In addition, there are 462 monasteries and 482 convents. Outside the former Soviet Union there are over 1,000 parishes and monasteries of the Russian Orthodox Church, including the parishes and monasteries of the Russian Church Outside Russia (ROCOR).

Note

  1. It is difficult to see a future for the OCA group, founded for political reasons nearly fifty years ago at the height of the Cold War. It has in recent years been maintained as a challenge to Constantinople. Therefore, following the recent fall of Constantinople from communion, it will perhaps be dissolved. Rather like the recently-dissolved Rue Daru group in Paris, perhaps about half of it will return to the Russian Orthodox Church and the rest will join new calendarist groups.

 

 

 

Saved by Russia in 1941 – and in 2019?

After the defeat of France, the humiliating rout of the British Army and its flight at Dunkirk in May-June 1940, Britain found itself in a desperate situation. 68,000 British soldiers had been killed, wounded or captured in just six weeks between 10 May and 22 June.  Abandoned in France were some 440 tanks, 2,472 guns, 20,000 motorcycles, almost 65,000 other vehicles, 377,000 tons of stores, 147,000 tons of fuel and over 68,000 tons of ammunition. Six British and three French destroyers had been sunk, along with nine other major vessels, and the RAF had lost 145 of its all too few aircraft.

Thus, the tiny British Army had lost much of its inferior equipment. The USA refused to help, as one of its aims was to end all its rival European colonial empires, including the British. Hitler’s sympathizers among the British aristocracy like Lord Halifax and other unprincipled appeasers who cared only for their money wanted to negotiate. For a whole year Britain stood alone against Nazi Europe. Apart from ‘neutral’ Switzerland, Sweden and Ireland, which in fact fully co-operated with Hitler, only the Soviet Union stood in Hitler’s way in Continental Northern Eurasia from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

On Sunday 22 June 1941, the Feast of All the Saints Who Have Shone Forth in the Russian Lands, a multinational force of three million Germans and nearly one million of their many European Fascist Allies invaded the Russian Lands yet again, just like Napoleon and so many others before them. This was how Britain was rescued from the Third Reich and many at that time, Churchill among them, had been expecting it and relying on it. There is little doubt that Britain would have been crushed or starved into surrender, had Hitler set his mind to it and had not invaded the Russian Lands, but Britain instead.

In 1942 Britain was occupied by the first of two million US troops. It had lost its independence, it was no longer a Great Power. True, it was to emerge from the Second World War on the victorious side. But it was a paper, Pyrrhic victory. Britain was in ruins and bankrupt, forever in debt to banks in the USA, and by 1948 it had abandoned the Indian subcontinent, British-mandated Palestine, Greece and soon its other imperial interests. Today, Europe is still German-dominated, though only economically, for Germany itself is an occupied American vassal, its Chancellor having to swear allegiance to the occupier.

However, in 2019 Britain faces a new Dunkirk, a new flight from Europe, called Brexit. Like Lord Halifax, EU sympathizers among the upper middle-class appeasers, who care only for their money, want to capitulate in view of the EU’s refusal to negotiate. They forget that in 1940 Britain did not negotiate and still won. They also forget that a mafia-led puppet country called the Ukraine, created by the USA and the EU only in order to undermine Russia, is about to collapse. And after its collapse will follow the collapse of the EU and then of the USA. In 2019 everything, good and bad, will be possible.