The First 300 Years of Russian Orthodox Churches Outside Russia: 1617-1917

Introduction

Although several Russian churches in Europe date back to well before the Russian victory over the atheist tyrant Napoleon and the liberation of Paris by Russian troops in 1814, ignorant and ethnocentric Western Europe only began to understand the reality of Russia then. The Russian Empire was not after all some kind of Asian khanate, but a fully-fledged modern Empire. Russian science and art flourished with names of world renown and the theological academies brought fame to the Russian Church, amazing obscurantist European scholarship. Although the treason of 1917 put an end to this, today, with freedom come, we are once more seeing Westerners taking a more enlightened attitude to the Russian Orthodox Church, whose presence among them now dates back 400 years.

1617-1817

The 1617 Peace Treaty established the legal status of a Russian priest in Stockholm’s Ryssgarden. Services were conducted in premises which merchants rented. A real and more or less permanent Russian church was founded in 1700, with a diplomatic representative in Sweden, and from then on services were conducted almost continuously. In 1684 an embassy mission to China opened. Church life began in Berlin in 1718. In 1721 a church opened in London. In 1727 the embassy in Paris started Orthodox services. That same year under Anna Petrovna, Grand Duchess of Holstein, a church was set up in Kiel and lasted until 1799. A church which lasted briefly was founded in Tokaj in Hungary in 1749.

From 1759 till 1765 there was a church in Königsberg. A church was set up in Madrid in 1760 and in Vienna in 1762. A church opened in Copenhagen in 1797. The Russian embassy in Constantinople (1802) marked the establishment of the church there. That same year two more churches were founded, one at the court of Ekaterina Antonovna, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and the other in Üröm, near Budapest, the location of the burial vault of Alexandra Pavlovna, Palatine of Hungary and sister of Emperor Alexander I. In 1804 a church opened in Weimar and in 1808 in Ludwigslust (Mecklenburg-Schwerin). A church was founded in The Hague in 1816.

1817-1917

A church opened in Bern in 1817, later moving to Geneva. That same year a church opened in Teheran. The Stuttgart church was organized in 1819. The church in Rome was founded in 1823 and in Rothenburg (Kingdom of Wurtemberg) in 1824. Emperor Nicholas I sent an ambassador to newly liberated Greece and a Russian church was set up in Athens. In 1844 churches were set up in Naples and Wiesbaden. In 1847 Archimandrite Porfiry (Uspensky) opened the Mission in Jerusalem. A church was set up in Amsterdam in 1852, Baden-Baden in 1858 and Nice in 1859. Two churches were set up in 1862, in Brussels and Dresden, and in 1865 in Karlsruhe and in 1867 in Pau in France. In the following year churches in Karlsbad and Florence were built. In 1870 the mission to Japan began under the future St Nicholas of Tokyo.

In 1874 a church opened in Prague. There was a church in Coburg-Gotha from 1874 to 1905. In 1876 a church was set up in Bad Ems and in 1878 in Vevey in Switzerland. The church in Marienbad opened in 1882. An Orthodox community opened in Argentina in 1888. A church was set up in Franzenbad in 1889, in Biarritz in 1890 and in Menton in France in 1892 and in Merano in Italy in 1897. Two Church missions were founded in 1897 ─ one in Urmia in Persia and the other in Seoul in Korea. In 1898 a church was built in San Stefano, near Constantinople, and in the following year in Darmstadt and in Homburg. Three churches were founded in 1901 ─ in Hamburg, Herbersdorf (Silesia) and Kissingen. Finally, by 1910 there were churches in Sofia and Budapest. Several churches were attached to the main ones in cities like Berlin, Constantinople and Nice.

Conclusion

Thus, by 1894 the Synod and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs oversaw 51 churches with 96 clergy and during the reign of the Tsar-Martyr, this increased to 56 churches. In addition, in 1912 the United States Diocese had 286 churches, while the Japanese Mission had 266 communities, the Beijing Mission fifteen, the Urmian Mission seven and the Korean Mission one. Since the flood of refugees from atheism after 1917, hundreds more churches have opened, and not counting the thousand or so in autonomous Japan and China and in autocephalous Poland, the Czech Lands and Slovakia and North America, the total in 2017 is about one thousand, all dependent either on Moscow or on the Church Outside Russia, now based in New York.

(Our thanks to Deacon Andrei Psarev for information supplied for this article)

Principles of the Coming Russian Orthodox Metropolia of Western Europe

Introduction

We first called for a Russian Orthodox Metropolia of Western Europe early on thirty years ago, in April 1988, against the background of the then dying Cold War. Far more importantly, 15 years later, in April 2003, after the Cold War, but before the reunion of the two parts of the Russian Church, Patriarch Alexis of Moscow did the same. 30 years on, there is still no Metropolia, but we feel that, despite all the frustration, impediments and delays, its time is at last coming. A Metropolia, and then Church, that is Orthodox, but also Local, is inevitable in Western Europe. What principles must this Metropolia adopt?

  1. Faithful to Orthodoxy, not Heterodoxy

First of all, we say ‘Away with nationalistic Finnish, French and American ideas of ‘localism’’ (Finland / Rue Daru / OCA), which ignore the integrity of the Orthodox Faith, putting the local flag before the Cross. Instead of ideas propagated in Paris and transferred to the USA, we choose a Metropolia that is both faithful and local. This cannot be based on anti-canonical compromises, on spiritual betrayal of the Faith, in the name of State-sponsored or of self-imposed cultural conformism. We must keep the Orthodox calendar and Church canons, ignoring old-fashioned modernism and ecumenism.

  1. An End to Old-Fashioned Ecumenism

It is this latter ecumenism that has especially delayed the formation of a Metropolia, the foundation of a new Local Church. There were those who said: ‘We must not offend the Catholics/Protestants. We must not give local titles to our bishops’. Such voices were those of traitors to Orthodoxy, those who saw us and see it as a mere piece of foreign exoticism, of folklore. No Metropolia could be born until those voices had fallen silent – and they were still very strong in 1988 and in 2003. It is time to move forward to the free and independent future, to the Autocephalous Church of Western Europe.

  1. Bilingual and Missionary

Unlike the old Russian immigrants (and those of other nationalities), who were intent negatively on preserving and pickling the past, even when nobody any longer knew what it meant, and so guaranteed that they would die out – the future Metropolia will have to be bilingual. Here too we put the Cross before the flag. Only in this way will we be able to pass on the spiritual heritage and values of Russian Orthodox Civilization in a missionary fashion to both the descendants of Russian immigrants and to native Western Europeans. Only in this way can a truly Orthodox and a truly Local Church be born.

  1. Pastoral, not Bureaucratic and Racist

One of the greatest problems in Church life at all times is the tendency to put administration above pastoral care, to put marble and gold above church buildings and, above all, human souls. (We can think of the Irish and Rome). There can be no more second-class (or third-class) citizens; non-Russians must be treated as Russians. The past, all too recent past, is a very dark area indeed in this respect. In such a Metropolia, the foundation of a true Local Church, there can be no racism. The old-fashioned attitudes and mistreatment of native Orthodox is not acceptable and must be severely sanctioned.

Conclusion

Fifty years ago, with the Russian Church paralysed, there was still a hope that Constantinople would abandon its Greek imperialism and take responsibility for the Diaspora. It utterly failed to do so. Indeed, the spiritual decomposition of the Constantinople with its new lurch into Eastern Papism, means that its serious clergy and people now want to join the Russian Church (although the long-term solution would be for the Church of Greece to take over the Greek Diaspora and make it Orthodox). The recent, long-awaited appointments of new bishops in Western Europe and those to come, carried out by both parts of the Russian Orthodox Church, are all steps towards the future Metropolia.

 

 

Another Step Towards a Russian Orthodox Metropolia of Western Europe

On Thursday 20 September, the six bishops of the ROCOR Synod meeting in London established the Diocese of Richmond and Western Europe. This combines the former Diocese of Richmond and Great Britain and Geneva and Western Europe. The ruling bishop is Bishop Irenei (Steenberg), former lecturer at the University of Leeds and venerator of St Irenei of Lyon, whose name he bears.

Orthodox Church Statistics

With various irresponsible and inaccurate articles being published at present, suggesting that the Orthodox Church has 250 million (or even 300 million!) members, we are republishing our statistical survey of the Orthodox Church. We would be grateful if anyone can correct the statistics presented, if they are incorrect. Thank you.

 

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 fourteen 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 in all over 218 million members with some 843 active bishops.

1. The Russian Orthodox Church 164,000,000

Also known as the Patriarchate of Moscow, this accounts for 75% of Orthodox. It cares for Orthodox living in the canonical Russian Orthodox territories, spread over one fifth of the planet (the former Soviet Union except for Georgia, plus China and Japan) and peopled by 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, such as Latvia (250,000). The Russian Church also includes the self-governing, multinational Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (400,000 worldwide, mainly in the Americas and Australia as well as parts of Western Europe.), the Japanese Orthodox Church and the Chinese Orthodox Church.

2. The Romanian Orthodox Church 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.

3. The Greek Orthodox Church 10,000,000

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

4. The Serbian Orthodox Church 9,000,000

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

5. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church 4,500,000

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

6. The Georgian Orthodox Church 3,500,000

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

7. The Patriarchate of Constantinople 3,500,000

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 autonomous parishes in Finland and small groups of other Non-Greek Orthodox elsewhere.

8. The Patriarchate of Antioch 1,800,000

The canonical territory of the Arab Patriarch, who lives in Damascus, includes Syria, the Lebanon and Iraq. There are also parishes in the Diaspora, including some 10,000 ex-Protestants in the USA and 300 ex-Protestants in the UK.

9. The Patriarchate of Alexandria 1,600,000

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 the vast bulk of its faithful are Africans, spread over 54 African countries.

10. The Orthodox Church of Cyprus 700,000

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

11. The Polish Orthodox Church 600,000

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

12. The Albanian Orthodox Church 200,000

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

  1. The Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia 170,000

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

14.The Patriarchate of Jerusalem 130,000

Although its Patriarch is a Greek and his appointment is in the care of the Greek government, this Patriarchate cares for Arab Orthodox in Palestine and the Jordan.

 

 

 

 

Love – or Why Husbands and Wives Stay Together

Introduction

There are four reasons why husbands and wives stay together and create stable and so happy families. Each of these reasons corresponds to a different part of our complex human nature.

  1. Physical: Sexual Attraction

The reproductive instinct, our hormones, is such that one sex naturally looks for its other half. However, despite the last fifty years of commercial sexualisation and conditioning in Western societies, which has stressed egoistic sexual life (called ‘love’), this is the least important reason for a couple to stay together. If the attraction of boy and girl to each other is only sexual, the relationship will be short. It is guaranteed. It is why modern Western societies are littered with single mothers, fatherless and illegitimate children and lonely men.

  1. Intellectual: A Common Mind

Another aspect, also relatively unimportant, is the intellectual and educational level of husband and wife. The fact that this is relatively unimportant is proved by the existence of many couples with very different intellectual levels. Here we see that the factor of complementarity begins to be vital. Two couples who are very similar easily get bored with one another: too much in common can almost be as much a problem as too little in common. Husband and wife must not be ‘the same’. The attraction of the different is very important. A man is a man and a woman is a woman. If you confuse male and female identities, as the Western world deliberately has over the last fifty years plus, you are asking for trouble.

  1. Emotional: Common Feelings

Men and women are generally quite different emotionally. Men generally hide their feelings, women talk about them openly and willingly and need to do so. But emotional happiness is still just as important for one as for the other. However, again, in this field too, we see the role of complementarity. We often hear women saying: ‘Oh men, they’re all the same’, and men saying: ‘Oh women, they’re all the same’. I would say, fortunately! We need one another and expect each other to behave in certain ways and want and need that.

  1. Spiritual: Souls on the Same Wavelength

To our mind, the most important reason why men and women are attracted to each other and then stay together is because they are on the same spiritual wavelength. This does not necessarily mean that they both go to church or even have exactly the same religious beliefs. What it does mean is that they have common cultural values – for these are the result of spiritual values. For example, they should agree about who will do what in the relationship, who will care for children, who will do the shopping, who will clean, who will provide most of the money. It also includes common tastes in furniture, clothing, colours – things that are in themselves secondary, but actually very important when living together day by day. This is because they all stem from common values – they stem from being on the same spiritual wavelength. This similar wavelength is called love.

Conclusion

Thus, we can see that attraction and the desire to be and to stay together depend on four different factors. When they all coincide, then the relationship will be long-term, indeed, until and beyond death.

The Third Rome or the Fourth Rome?

In an astonishing interview with the well-named Greek newspaper ‘Ethnos’, Metropolitan Emmanuel (the Greek ethnarch for France and often considered to be the successor to Patriarch Bartholomew) has just confessed a number of heresies.

Firstly, he has insisted on calling the Patriarchate of Constantinople ‘the Mother-Church’ of vast territories, which are completely canonically independent of Constantinople and have been for centuries, and that this title gives it the right to meddle in their internal affairs today.

Secondly, he has stated that Constantinople’s ‘process of granting the Ukraine autocephaly has begun’ and that this ‘is a priority’. In other words, Constantinople is going to grant the phyletist schismatics of the US-run Kiev junta (he calls them ‘the Ukrainian people’!) autocephaly, and that this is not a matter of if, but of when. (Is this revenge for the Russian Church not attending the heretical ‘Council of Crete’ in 2016, with its Obama-esque agenda?).

Thirdly, he has stated that ‘in 1054 Christianity was divided into Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism’! Yet every Orthodox schoolchild knows that in 1054 the Western European ruling elite split away from the Orthodox Church and invented Roman Catholicism!

It is clear that all of Orthodox Civilization, which has as its spiritual leader Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow and All the Russias, is facing a choice. It can, like the President of Moldova, Igor Dodon, whom certain forces attempted to assassinate in Chisinau last week, choose Orthodoxy. For it is he who stated, ‘I am the President of Orthodox, not of sodomites’ and for 13 September has organized ‘The International Congress of Families’ against the anti-Christian globalization project of the New World Order of the US and its EU and NATO vassals. Or else it can prefer dollar bribes to Orthodox Christianity, so committing apostasy from the Church of God and losing salvation in eternity.

Now we see that the prophecy of St Paisius the Athonite (+ 1994), which only thirty years ago seemed impossible, is coming true. Here we refer to his prophecy that a third of Turks will be baptized. When on 15 July 2016 Washington tried to murder the Turkish President Erdogan and he was saved with only half an hour to spare by a warning from Russia, he then changed sides from Washington to Moscow. The time is coming when we will see a Turkish Orthodox Church, opened by the Russian Orthodox Church. In its phyletism Constantinople has consistently refused to do so. (In our parish we already have a modest three Turkish Orthodox parishioners and their families).

This will be the Russian reply to Constantinople’s century of divisive meddling throughout the Diaspora, in Estonia and now in the Ukraine. We Russian Orthodox of all nationalities have known for over 500 years that with two Romes fallen, the Third Rome is Moscow and that a Fourth Rome there will not be. However, first Paris, next London, then Berlin and now Washington have all tried to be a Fourth Rome. They were and are foolish.

As a huge storm gathers on the East coast of the USA, just south of Washington, it too is going to learn that you cannot play at God. Just as the French, British and German Empires all crashed out of history, so too will the American Empire and its vassal in Constantinople. A Fourth Rome there will not be. All 216 million Orthodox now have to make a choice: Moscow or Washington’s satellite, Constantinople.

 

 

The City is Lost! The Church is Found!

Introduction: The Bad Old Days

It is always sad to see the clerical elite of Local Churches fall into the sins of treachery and apostasy. It happened in Constantinople just before its Fall in 1453, when those in charge fell into the sin of Uniatism, hoping that the Vatican, and not God, would save them from the Muslim invader. It happened in 1948 when CIA thugs kidnapped the canonical Patriarch Maximos V and threatened to kill him if he did not get into their Presidential aeroplane and go into exile in Geneva, appointing in his place the half-Orthodox American Archbishop Athenagoras. As an eyewitness, his Archdeacon and later the Bishop of Birmingham, told me, Patriarch Maximos said as he was being forcemarched away: ‘The City is lost!’

And now it is happening again, with the latest anti-canonical decisions of the latest Patriarch, a Turkish citizen who depends entirely on the US State Department for his survival, with his absurd ‘Council of Crete’ and, above all, his meddling in the territories of other Local Churches. Whether in the USA (setting up its own jurisdiction, thus destroying Church unity), in Russia (supporting the renovationists against St Tikhon), in Finland (the notorious Aav schism), in France (the Evlogian schism), in Estonia (the ‘Apostolic Orthodox’ schism), in England (the Sourozh schism), in Greece (in the ‘New Territories’), in Macedonia or now in the Ukraine, tiny Constantinople has been trying to create for itself a flock which it does not have, by stealing the flocks of other Churches, in disobedience to the most basic canons, but with the support of illegitimate, US-backed, regimes.

Of course, there is still, but only just, time for repentance for the latest intended insanity of Constantinople. This is in the impoverished and wartorn Ukraine, controlled by vicious US-sponsored corrupt oligarchs, who live no differently from primitive African tribal leaders. However, if repentance does not come, despite the last minute journey to the Phanar and the desperate pleas of Patriarch Kyrill for repentance last week, then Constantinople with its tiny flock will fall away from the Church. This would be tragic for them – but not for the rest of the Church, for Divine Providence can always bring good out of human stupidity.

Possible Positive Results

Firstly, as Constantinople, for centuries the plaything of foreign powers and their bribes, has over a century become the bastion of modernism, all the Orthodox parts of that sorry Patriarchate, its faithful clergy and people and Mt Athos, could transfer to an Orthodox Church, at last feeling at ease under genuine Orthodox bishops. Here the most likely option would be to enter the present Church of Greece, though with long-awaited guarantees for the internationalization of Athos and so permission for thousands of monks from other countries to live there. This would become inevitable if the Archbishop of Athens took the title of Patriarch of Constantinople. This would be logical, given that the present one is falling into schism and even heresy.

Secondly, the modernists with their papal calendar and liturgical illiteracy, who have infiltrated some smaller Local Churches, would find themselves without support. Thus, we might see the eight smaller Churches, Alexandria, Antioch, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Albania, Romania, the Czech Lands and Slovakia, returning to the Orthodox calendar, as the Church of Poland already has. In this way, they would repent and rejoin the 80% of the Orthodox world that remained faithful in the Churches of Russia, Serbia, Georgia and Jerusalem. The old calendar schisms in the above eight Churches could thus also be overcome.

Thirdly, it could lead to solving the divisive Diaspora problem, created initially by the phyletism of Constantinople. This would put all Orthodox nationalities under the single but multinational jurisdiction of the Russian Church, as was the case in the USA before the 1917 Revolution. This is not some sort of hegemony a la Constantinople, Eastern Papism or ecclesiastical imperialism, but preparation for autocephaly. This has been the case with other Orthodox missions of the Russian Orthodox Church down the centuries, from St Stephen of Perm to St John of Shanghai. Unlike Constantinople, the Russian Church has always helped towards independence, not created dependence. We cannot forget that Constantinople has never freely given any Church autocephaly, but has always clung on to power for as long as possible.

Conclusion: The Good New Days

In the future, we can see a real Orthodox Council, not a Halfodox one as in Crete, being held in order to anathematize the poison of the dogmatic, canonical, spiritual and moral errors of the Constantinople elite over the last 100 years, from new calendarism to liturgical modernism, from ecumenism to simony, from papism to the remarriage of priests.

In the future, we can see the Polish and Czechoslovak Churches returning and becoming autonomous Churches within the Russian Orthodox Church. We can see the Albanian Church returning and becoming an autonomous Church within the Church of Greece, or rather Patriarch of Constantinople, as it would then be called, making the present fourteen Local Churches into ten. We can see the diptychs being changed to classing these ten Local Churches by size: Russia, Romania, Constantinople (Greece), Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Antioch, Alexandria, Cyprus and Jerusalem.

In the future, we can see four united and autonomous Metropolias being founded in the Diaspora under the Russian Church, awaiting Autocephaly in the fullness of time, like the Churches of Japan and China already. These would be the future: Church of Western Europe, grouping all the ex-Roman Catholic and Protestant countries in Europe, from Iceland to Finland and from Portugal to Hungary; Church of North America (thus ending its present jurisdictional chaos); Church of Latin America; Church of Oceania. This would leave only certain parts of Asia, like the Indian subcontinent and South-East Asia, to come under the jurisdiction of various Local Churches, perhaps the Antiochian and the Russian between them.

For 100 years, the Patriarchate of Constantinople has in its purely worldly, prideful and racial fantasy of ecclesiastical imperialism, systematically followed divisive policies. These  have created schisms, both old calendarist, fragmenting the Church by repressing zeal, and phyletist, fragmenting the Church by nationalism, as at present in the Ukraine, all around the Orthodox world. It has made itself into an Eastern Papacy, thus gradually divorcing itself from the Church and its ecclesiology. Its departure from the Church in the coming months, however tragic for the often elderly individuals concerned, would actually clear the air, overcoming past injustices and obstructive barriers to unity, making progress at last possible after a century of frustration. This may be the moment that we have been waiting for ever since 1917.

 

 

Questions from Recent Correspondence (September 2018)

Church Matters

Q: Why does ROCOR still exist? Now that the Russian Orthodox Church is One, and Metr Nikodim Rotov, whom many considered to be a heretic and so to have compromised the Church inside Russia, dead for 40 years, why continue to have two parts?

A: The purpose of ROCOR as an administrative structure has always been purely temporary. Its spiritual purpose is to be St John the Baptist in the wilderness, heralding and preaching of the coming Tsar, for which the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was only the prelude, and then to disappear, its purpose served. Clearly, ROCOR had this purpose during the period of atheist captivity. However, as long as sections of the State (especially education, health, the mainly Western-controlled media) and sections of the population in the Russian Lands are still under corrupting atheist/Soviet influence and therefore there is still no Christian Tsar and Christian Empire based in Russia (‘Rus’), ROCOR will still exist, in some form or other, to tell the Truth and to call to repentance.

Q: Is this September’s decision by the Patriarchate of Constantinople to let widowed priests remarry canonical? And what of their decision to discuss granting some Ukrainians autocephaly in October? Could this be the moment when the Russian Patriarch talks over and becomes the real ’Oecumenical’ Patriarch?

A: Of course, this permission is not canonical! It is pure renovationism. True, some bishops in all Local Churches (as well as among the old calendarists) have always allowed some priests to remarry in such circumstances, turning a blind eye to the canons. However, these have always been exceptional and very rare acts made by economy. What is new here is that Constantinople has decided to do this systematically. This means that in trying to act papally, it has once again canonically cut itself off from the other thirteen Local Churches.

As regards a Ukrainian autocephaly, that would also be an utterly uncanonical act, made under US financial pressure ($15 million has been mentioned as the bribe). So much so that the Constantinople clerical elite would thus fall altogether away from communion with the Church, something that it has been threatening to do since 1925, if not since the fifteenth century. Some would say, ‘Good riddance’, that this might clear the air at long last. But perhaps the situation is not as bad as some say. The Constantinople elite may stand like a lemming on the cliff, but it has not yet jumped. Therefore, we will not push it.

As for the Russian Church taking over as the first among equals in the Church, it would first have to prove itself worthy and competent to do this. This means that all the bishops, and not just some, would have to become real missionaries and pastors, unlike many in other Local Churches too. They would also have to stop behaving like feudal lords and treat priests properly, instead of expelling them from parishes where they are loved, and stop treating Non-Russian priests and people as second-class citizens, instead of persecuting them, learning how to apologize.

Russia

Q: In the light of revelations this month about the murderers of the Skripals, what would you reply to the accusers of the Russian secret services?

A: No-one murdered the Skripals, though someone did attempt to murder them. Clearly, the crime was carried out by people who wanted to incriminate Russia. After all, it occurred just before the Russian World Cup and Russian elections, in which the Western candidate, a CIA recruit with immense Western financial backing, got only 5% of the vote. Had Russians wanted to murder the Skripals, a professional hitman from London could have been hired for the right sum. Pictures of two men walking along a road in Salisbury – no-one knows who they were – MI5 agents? – prove nothing. And the rare poison allegedly used, not kept anywhere in Russia today and the product of a country that ceased to exist 27 years ago, is kept just 8 miles from Salisbury at Porton Down. This is one of the most dreadful chemical weapons producers in the world and why the UN has not shut it down long ago remains a mystery. Also professional assassins would not then have thrown away the bottle used for the poison into a litter bin in a park in Salisbury!

Clearly, the criminals wanted it to be found so as to incriminate someone else. In any case, why would Russia want to kill a retired British spy, who had already served a jail term in Russia and then been released, together with his daughter, who lived safely in Moscow? And both of them, recovered from their illness, whatever it was,  but now under State censorship D-notices, have since been kidnapped by MI5 and disappeared. Who knows what MI5 has done with them? I see no reason why we should believe anything issued by the British Establishment, which has a centuries-old history of systematic lying, perfidious cunning and bloody assassination from the Norman Conquest, when it began, to Cromwell, from Ireland to Iraq and the other 180 countries it has invaded for no reason other than lust for power and riches. That is why a very large number of British people do not believe a single word of the Establishment about the Skripal case.

Q: You seem to admire contemporary Russia, but why? It is so corrupt!

A: I would agree with you about contemporary Russia, but then I do not admire it, just as I do not admire the contemporary West, which is also so corrupt. I admire contemporary Orthodox Russia – about 5% of the whole, quite unlike the rest of contemporary Russia – hopefully the leaven to leaven the lump, but God knows.

Contemporary Non-Orthodox Russia is the hangover from the drunken depravity of the Soviet Union. Every bad thing about it, abortion, divorce, pollution, corruption, statues of and places named after murderous Soviet monsters, usually not even Russians, like Lenin and Stalin, and trained in Western Europe, is the direct result of the Soviet Union. As I have said so many times before, the restoration of Orthodox Russia has only just begun. There is far to go.

The West

Q: Why is it important to venerate the Western saints?

A: Artificially cutting itself off from Eurasia, the Western European tip of the Eurasian Continent and its overseas colonies in North America have produced all sorts of things, from Gothic architecture to siege technology, from scholastic philosophy to the modern novel, from the spinning jenny to the latest mobile phone, from heavy artillery to the cluster bomb. However, the West has never produced a faith. It has only ever adopted and twisted Asian faiths and spiritual philosophies, deforming them into artificial, State-run religions. Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism are classic examples of such manmade religions, with a man, pope or king, that is, humanism, at their centre. Let us recall that Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and nationalist Judaism and Shintoism are all Asian. Even the other continents (the Americas, Africa and Oceania) produced at least animism and then adopted superior Asian faiths with fervour. But not the West.

In other words, Western Europe alone has produced no faith apart from materialist and humanist idolatry. Indeed, the West, living in its parallel universe to the rest of the world, has always destroyed faiths, conquering and erasing all religious civilizations by organized violence (crusades, colonialism, consumerist materialism), whether in the Americas, Oceania, China, India or Russia (in 1917) and Greece (imposing the Western, Non-Christian calendar and modernism after losing its protection in 1917). This organized violence, even though today it may be economic violence or mocking political correctness (censorship) and be called ‘sanctions’, is its only ideology. Our love of the Western saints is to challenge that ideology, to show that there was once a true West and it did have genuine faith – Orthodox Christianity.

Q: What are the consequences of the Protestant rejection of the Mother of God?

A: The Mother of God represents the Incarnation. Without her God could never have become man. Therefore, when Protestants refuse to venerate her and even blaspheme against her, they reject the consequences of the Incarnation. For most of them, Christianity is therefore just a God-slot hobby, something to do on Sunday morning and does not impinge on any way on the rest of life, on politics, economics etc, which are affairs of the pagan State, but is just a private matter.

Q: In your view, why were monarchies overthrown by revolutions?

A: All the destroyed monarchies, Charles I in England, Louis XVI in France and Nicholas II in the Empire, were overthrown by the rich (aristocrats/merchants or oligarchs/businessmen as we would say nowadays) who stole or seized power for themselves, wanting to get even richer and even more powerful. The new regimes, under the lying propaganda camouflage of ‘freedom and democracy’ which the naïve believed in, was and is based on lies and theft, that is, on ‘kleptocracy’, the rule of thieves. Democracy has always been a myth for the naive. This is why ‘democracy’ is inherently hypocritical and constantly produces corruption scandals, both financial and moral.

Orthodox Life

Q: There are those who say that we should not write anything new, only repeating what has been said before, in case we say something wrong. What do you think?

A: This is an extremist viewpoint of people who are negative and insecure ‘converts’, who have never moved on from that early state of mind. It is interesting that in Russia, for example, in the 1990s, beneath the wave of tens of millions of converts, they reprinted massively, but that since the Year 2000 approximately, they have moved on and have produced a huge amount of original and creative works, far greater than anything before.

Q: My Ukrainian wife says that playing cards are satanic. Is this really true? Where is the harm?

A: I think it depends on what you are doing with the cards. If you are playing for money or playing as an addiction, it is satanic. If, on the other hand, you are playing Snap with the children, that is a very different story. As so often, it is not what you do, but why you do it.

Q: Should we fly the Union Jack?

A: If at church, then there should be no flags of any sort. As for the Union Jack, originating in the 17th century, it is a symbol of exploitation and imperialism. It is as alien and contradictory as is the expression ‘British Orthodoxy’. Just like ‘Soviet Orthodoxy’, you cannot have something that cannot exist, something that is a contradiction in terms. Personally, like many others, when asked my nationality, I always reply ‘English’. By all means fly a flag at home, but the Cross of St George, which is also the Standard of Jerusalem, of the Resurrection of Christ.

 

 

 

 

 

Make or Break Time for the UK’s Political Parties

Small political parties in the UK are mere one-issue protest groups in the anti-democratic First Post the Post electoral system in the UK (as also in the US). Thus there are the regional/nationalist Parties in Scotland and Wales, the regional sectarian parties in Northern Ireland, the Liberal Democrats for the upper middle-class drinking claret in their villas in Tuscany and Provence, the Ecologists (Greens) for the disinherited ecologists and the one-issue UKIP Party, the ‘party’ now over, was killed by its own success. However, very unusually, perhaps as never before, the two big Parties, Labour and Conservative, the only ones that can ever form governments in this system, are both at the same time completely split. Essentially, both are split on the same issue – not Brexit, but Zionism. Here there are many ironies.

Thus, the Prime Minister May, a remainer, is officially in charge of the government because Cameron, a remainer, considered that he could not stay on as Prime Minister after the people’s anti-remain vote on Brexit two years ago. Apparently, she can! As for the EU, it refuses to negotiate, as, if the UK succeeds in negotiating favourable terms, it is afraid that other countries will also seek freedom from its expensive dictatorship. This is a foolish policy because since the UK will leave the EU anyway, if it leaves without agreement, the EU will suffer even more than the UK. In any case, the Conservative Party is, just as it was in the nineteenth century on the Corn Laws, totally split, as to whether it is the English National Party that puts the national identity first or simply the Mammonist Party that puts money first.

The Labour Party, having returned to its socialist roots and stopped being an ultra-Conservative Party, as it was under ‘Tory Blair’, is split by attitudes to Zionism. Its leader, a man who appears to be stuck in the Che Guevara idealism of the 1970s, is, quite naturally, under attack by the Zionist UK media for being anti-Zionist. Of course, they do not say this, they say that he is ‘anti-Semitic’, as they hope that if they throw enough mud at him, some at least will stick. It seems curious that he, the most anti-racist person in the country, does not counter-attack and refer to the fact that many of his best friends are Jewish (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Jewish_anti-Zionism) and that by far the most important Zionists are not Jews at all – for example, President Trump, George Bush, Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher.

However, the fact is that globalism is simply a code-word for Zionism – in the 1960s it was called ‘Americanization’ and in the 1990s ‘the EU’. (In the same way, the old-fashioned mythical term ‘the Free World’ was changed to ‘the International (sic!) Community’ – translate as ‘the G7’ or ’the 10%’ or ‘the Western clique’). The code-words change, but not the realities. Regardless of whether people are Labour or Conservative, there is only one struggle in Europe today: for national identity and the survival of sovereignty, regardless of left or right, against One Worldism. The arch-conservative Catholic aristocrat, Jacob Rees-Mogg (‘the Honourable Member for the eighteenth century’) and the semi-Marxist Jeremy Corbyn are at one, as too are  the multi-millionaires, ‘Tory Blur’ and the slave-owner’s scion, David Cameron.

All we lesser mortals can do is pray for Divine Intervention.