Orthodoxy on Bullfighting, a Possible Future Revolution in Russia, Religious Statues and Homosexuality: Four Questions from Recent Correspondence

Why does bullfighting not exist in Orthodox countries?

J. S., Catalonia

Bullfighting only exists in certain once Catholic countries, Spain, Portugal, southern France and ex-colonies in Latin America. On the other hand, bullfighting is unknown in Ireland, Austria and other Catholic countries. It is also unknown in once Protestant and once Orthodox countries. However, it seems that in pagan Minoan Crete, as in the myth of Hercules who ‘took the bull by the horns’, it did exist. This suggests that bullfighting is a pre-Christian, pagan custom, once prevalent in many parts of the Mediterranean, but which survives only in the Catholic west Mediterranean, not in the Greek Orthodox east Mediterranean, nor in the ex-Greek Orthodox central Mediterranean. Why?

The fact is that Catholicism has a cult of blood and death, what we may call ‘crucifixionism’, which very clearly and suddenly began with its birth in the late eleventh century with images of ‘Jesus’ as a suffering, dying or dead human-being. (See for confirmation any of the studies of the Catholic Middle Ages by the Oxford scholar Sir Richard Southern). This developed into the bloody portrayal of the lives of the martyrs in, for example, the medieval anthology ‘The Golden Legend’ and also into the constipated sentimentalism of Catholic pietism.

This cult of blood, dead bodies and death can be seen in the pietistic Catholic veneration of human organs (bleeding hearts) and wounds, in the tortures of the Spanish (and French) Inquisition, and in Catholic art (Bosch and Goya, for example). However, it also exists in other Catholic countries, where bullfighting does not exist, for example in catacomb mummies, strange funeral customs throughout the Catholic world and customs of flagellation and self-mutilation in southern Italy and the once Spanish Philippines, especially on Great and Holy Friday.

This cult of blood is part of the Catholic cult of suffering and self-flagellation – beloved still today by Mother Teresa’s followers and Opus Dei. Morbid ‘crucifixionism’, as can be seen in Italian films on the Crucifixion or the Gibson film ‘The Passion of Christ’, the portrayal of the bleeding human-being Christ (‘Jesus’) on the Cross, is indeed partly why Protestantism rejects the Cross, seeing it as a symbol of death, instead of what it is, the symbol of Life and victory over death. It may be that the Arian-Protestant sect, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, also rejects blood transfusions as a result of the rejection of what it associates with Catholicism.

Bullfighting is unknown in once Protestant countries (although here bearbaiting, cockfighting and until recently fox-hunting were once very popular). Today, in these countries all such blood-sports are frowned on and even detested because of the prevalence of secularist values with political correctness and animal rights. Since, for secularists, human-beings are merely intelligent animals, we should not treat animals any differently from Western human beings. (Non-Western human-beings may be massacred freely, however, as in Rwanda, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and the Ukraine).

Why then do we Orthodox not cultivate bullfighting? Because in Orthodoxy, although and because we partake of the Body and Blood of Christ in Communion, we have no cult of blood, no ‘crucifixionism’. As Orthodox, we consider that we suffer enough simply by being faithful Orthodox Christians – not least through persecution by Catholicism and Protestantism, and we do not artificially seek or create suffering or entertain morbid images of torture of the human body.

We do not tolerate self-flagellation or a morbid cult of death, blood and human remains – the wax dummies that dead Catholic saints are turned into (which is quite different from the veneration of holy relics). This is because we do not imitate Christ outwardly, but imitate Him inwardly. Thus, we live in the Risen Christ, through the Holy Spirit, by Whom the Church, Whose Head is Christ and Which is the Risen Body of Christ, lives. Our cult is not of death, but of Life, of the Spirit, of the Victorious Resurrection, of Christ triumphant on the Cross.

You have yourself written that the restoration of Church life in Russia is very slow and very fragile. What would happen to the Church Outside Russia if there were another anti-Church Revolution inside Russia and the Patriarchate were enslaved again?

R.T., Seattle

I think this very unlikely, but, true, anything is possible in today’s Russia, where there are still statues of Lenin, and his mummy is in Red Square, and public places are named after other sadists and terrorists.

In such a case we would simply return to our situation nearly 100 years ago when Patriarch Tikhon founded the Church Outside Russia, precisely because he foresaw that the Church there was facing enslavement and we would so become the free voice of the Church. And I think that this time, we would be a lot stronger.

Firstly, those who are under the Patriarchate outside Russia, much more numerous than two and more decades ago, would surely quite naturally join us, if the administration inside Russia were enslaved again.

Secondly, I do not think that this time there would be any harmful and unnecessary political schisms in Paris and North America, as there were in the 1920s; this time the emigration is united in its Orthodoxy and would not let anti-Russian renovationist and masonic political interference from Constantinople or elsewhere disturb Church life.

Is it true that Orthodox do not worship statues like Catholics because statues are three-dimensional, whereas icons are two-dimensional? And why does that make a difference?

P. A., Manchester

I think that the truth can be expressed more clearly than this. It is not so much a question of two or three dimensions as a question of our concept of realism.

First of all, Orthodox do not worship anyone or anything except the Holy Trinity. However, we do honour, revere and venerate holy things, such as icons, the cross and holy relics. We do not have statues in churches (but they may exist as memorials outside churches), because they are an attempt to create realistic representations of God or human beings. For the same reason we do not paint or make realistic, two-dimensional, images of Christ, angels and saints. An icon is precisely not an attempt to create a realistic image (like a statue or a Catholic religious picture), but is a spiritual portrait.

Realism portrays only fallen nature, which we precisely wish to restore. This is why an icon does not have perspective or represent the body anatomically. It is the opposite of a realistic portrait – or a statue. This is why, although there are many Orthodox saints of whom we have photographs, we do not venerate their photographs. We venerate only icons – attempts to produce spiritual photographs, representations of the spiritual essence or soul of the saint in question, restored to their primal beauty as they would have been before the Fall. That is our realism.

Can a homosexual be ordained?

A.T., Norfolk

We condemn the sin, not the sinner.

Many, but not all, homosexuals appear to be of two sorts, though with a multiplicity of variations: he who by repression has become narcissistic (narcissism always come from a personality complex), nasty, aggressive, jealous, backbiting, slanderous and vengeful. On the other hand, there is he who is camp, obviously homosexual, can be kind, charming, boylike and is very popular with females, because, unrepressed, he has no aggression at all and so presents no threat to them.

The question of ordination is for a bishop, though I suspect that any bishop of any jurisdiction, canonical and non-canonical (there are homosexual clergy in all jurisdictions) would either answer a definite ‘No’, or else would ask: ‘Which homosexual’? After all, the custom of classifying people according to a category, ‘French’, ‘homosexual’, ‘English’, ‘Catholic’, ‘Russian’, ‘married’ depersonalizes them: I think we should see people as individuals first of all. As we all know, some homosexuals are ordained.

Thus, the second sort of obvious homosexual would not be ordained (though I have met exceptions among those who have been ordained by homosexual bishops). However, the first nasty narcissistic sort, if ordained – as, sadly, they are, are catastrophes, especially when they become bishops, as many sadly have.

However, there are exceptions. Although there are two main sorts of homosexual, there are also those who have control both over their illness (and the illness of homosexuality is a heavy cross to bear) and over their aggressiveness. With such people bishops would make exceptions.

1917-2017: 100 Years in the Empire of the Double-Headed Eagle without the Emperor

The Last Christian Emperor

Russian Orthodox of all nationalities belong to and live in the spiritual Empire of the Double-Headed Eagle, uniting East and West. We are subjects of His Imperial Highness. The fact that our Christian Empire has had no earthly Emperor for a hundred years has caused catastrophes of repaganization the whole world over, exactly as was the plan of the international forces which overthrew him. These disasters have taken place not only inside but also outside the borders of the former Empire, including where we live, in the spiritually backward West.

The fact that we in particular live in these spiritual provinces where we have been cut off from the One Christian Empire for far longer, well over twelve hundred years, makes our lives even harder. However, still we believe that the Empire will be restored, that we are simply between earthly emperors, learning from the wisdom of the last Tsar so that we can prepare for the next Tsar and his Restored Empire. That has been our purpose for one hundred years – to learn and prepare for the Restoration of the Empire, for the future belongs to us.

The last Christian Emperor of the only Christian Empire on earth, the martyred Tsar Nicholas II, was and is portrayed by the enemies of Christ as weak and incompetent, the martyred Tsarina Alexandra as hysterical and fanatical and the martyred prophet and healer of the Heir, Gregory (Rasputin), as demonic and debauched. Why? Those who created such absurd propaganda myths – and even repeat them despite the opposite affirmations of unbiased history! – needed to rubbish Russia for their own self-justification and legitimization of their seizure of power.

Treason, Cowardice and Deceit

Their slander and mythology show their own spiritual impurity – for in reality they are talking about themselves – incompetent, fanatical or demonic. Thus, the shameful reason why the supposedly free Russian emigration did not canonize the Tsar, martyred in 1918, and the other martyrs until 1981 is because there were such elements in the emigration who were responsible for the overthrow of the Tsar and so indirectly for the horrors that followed. They could not admit their many tragic errors and repent of their sins and so we had to wait for long.

When the powerful ‘abdicated’ from him, the last Christian Emperor spoke of ‘treason, cowardice and deceit’ to explain his illegal usurpation. These three words prophetically and exactly define the whole history of the last one hundred years and all that faithful Orthodox Christians have been through in that time. We have experienced the treason of those who put themselves in place of the Church, the cowardice of those who put their own well-being in place of the Truth and the deceit of those who swam with the tide, saying one thing and doing another.

Thus, in the last hundred years there has been the treason of those who betrayed the unity of the Church in Western Lands and the Orthodox calendar under the pressure of foreign powers, to whom the Church of God is alien. Then there has been the cowardice of those who, although representing the Church, refused to be faithful to Her teachings through fear and failed to spread Her Truth in the world. Finally, there has been the deceit of those who told the faithful clergy and people one thing, but did another behind their backs, thus deceiving themselves in their faithlessness to those who sacrificed their lives for Christ.

The Next Christian Emperor

Thus, treason to the Church has been by betrayal of Her Faith, cowardice to the Emperor by not defending the principle of the Empire from its disincarnate enemies, and deceit of the People through propaganda lies. Therefore, we must show faithfulness to the Trinitarian Faith, courage in affirming the Incarnation, and the truth of the Spirit before the people. We must not be sidelined by nostalgia for a lost past, personal opinions on minor matters and petty personal ambitions. We must adopt the great project – the restoration of the next Emperor.

In each of the Western provinces of the former Empire where we live, we represent the Sovereign Spirit of National Resistance and, together, European Resistance, to Antichrist. Our task is to prevent the conditions necessary for his appearance and enthronement, so carefully and cunningly prepared since the overthrow of him who restrained until 1917, by restoring the next Christian Emperor. From the Irish and Portuguese Atlantic coasts to the statues of the Tsars in Helsinki and Sofia we represent Orthodox Europe, the True Europe of the first millennium.

For the false Europe of the second millennium, as a giant with feet of clay, is collapsing in the third millennium. As a priest in my native town, I can say that in our greatest struggle we have achieved what we have achieved despite faithless traitors, visionless cowards and loveless deceivers, the narcissistic, spineless and jealous, the spoilers, thwarters and underminers, despite all who have ignored us, spoken evil of us and tried to destroy us and our Local Church unity. That we can achieve this here means that as much and more can be achieved elsewhere.

Pelagianism Past and Present

The collapse of empires brings much spiritual confusion and an attraction to the exotic. Thus, the collapse of the Soviet Union a generation ago led to some Russians adopting occultism, Hare Krishna and even Catholicism (!), the collapse of the British Empire led to some British people adopting irrationalism, Transcendental Meditation and even Islam. In ancient times the collapse of the pagan Roman Empire led to its citizens adopting all manner of ‘end of the world’ -isms. For example, in provincial Britain one secularist philosopher came up with a heresy of Christianity which asserted that man did not really need God, that he could cope quite well on his own in effortless consumerism. His name was Pelagius and his humanist fantasy of confidence in man became known as Pelagianism.

His fantasy was typical of the psychology of provincials who placed an irrational and over-confident false hope in man’s ability to survive, just when he faced the menace of the collapse of the Empire. Today, as the Western Empire, headquartered in the USA and taking in Western Europe and Japan, collapses all around, both economically through debt and morally through depravity, we see the same phenomenon. It is the collapsing West that has heard talk of ‘The Triumph of the West’, ‘The West is Best’, ‘The End of History’ etc. It is most ironic, but such things always happen among the spiritually blind just before the end. Such was the case among the pagan Romans 1600 years ago, such is the case in the pagan West today, with its defeated NATO legions and EU vassal states held hostage.

What we have to do in such negative times is to find the positive way ahead out of and after the collapse which is already taking place. What will survive from beneath the rubble is all that is spiritually living. That which was invented for reasons of elitist self-justification 1000 years ago and manipulation of the masses 500 years ago will not last. The old manmade, crowd control religions with their hypocritical moralizing, the old State-controlled Western propaganda media used to justify imperialism and exploitation, the irrational philosophies of death whose founders are dead, are all doomed. Just as the poor slaves of pagan Rome brought the Light of Christ to that fallen and discredited Empire, so we plebs can bring the Resurrection again here and now. If not, then the end is here.

Those Who Lapse and Those Who Last: The End of ‘Euro-Orthodoxy’ and the Beginning of Orthodoxy in Europe

For some 40 years between the 1960s and the end of the twentieth century, some two thousand Anglicans joined certain parishes of the Orthodox Churches in England – mainly those under the then Parisian ‘Sourozh Diocese’. Together with a small number of ordinary (Non-Anglican) English people, they joined the Church for many reasons. Some of us, perhaps especially the Non-Anglicans, joined because we were sincerely seeking, not being influenced by any personality, but called by Christ to help rebuild His Church in the Western desert. For us, the Orthodox Church was and is the only Church, our spiritual home, to which we had come after realizing that this is God’s Will for us and our souls will die without spiritual food, that is, outside the Church. We have lasted and not lapsed because for us, belonging to the Church has always been a matter of spiritual survival, although and because we have been voices crying in the anti-Orthodox and so secularist wilderness.

However, some did not last but lapsed, for it seems that they were not attached to the Orthodox Church and Faith. Dissatisfied with the ever-changing and ever-new fads of Anglicanism, they attached themselves only to some personality or intellectual philosophy, and not to the Church Herself. Some were perhaps received by marginal figures who, without support from Churched Orthodox, needed to build personality cults for themselves among the naïve, ill-prepared, uninstructed or deluded. In other words, attraction operated for negative reasons, by being against something else, and some never accepted the Church as She is. Deluded by anti-Incarnational fantasies, sometimes of Hindu or Buddhist origin, Russian fakirs and charlatans and secondary and superficial attractions, some remained ‘converts’, not actually becoming Orthodox because of their baggage. They joined the Church, but did not become and live as Orthodox Christians.

The fundamental error of such ‘converts’, as they often liked to call themselves, consisted in not first separating themselves from the 900 + years of the anti-Orthodox and therefore also anti-English, Norman-founded British Establishment. This included its Anglican extension under the syphilitic Tudor tyrant Henry VIII and his followers, not least his murderous ‘theologian’ daughter Elizabeth, the genocidal Cromwell and then various other mercantile Dutch, German and ‘British’ Protestant Imperialists with their ‘Rule Britannia’ jingoism that invaded and enslaved the world. In no way therefore were they able to adopt the Orthodox Faith, for they had not first cleansed their minds and souls from the Anti-Orthodoxy, which they had been conditioned and deluded into thinking of as ‘Western Christianity’. Not having first made room in their minds and souls for the Orthodox Church, the only authentic Western or any other Christianity, they could not last and so lapsed.

Unwilling and so unable to live according to the Orthodox way of life and the Orthodox view of the world and so to think naturally in an Orthodox way, many lapsed completely, some returned to Anglicanism, and others lapsed into a fringe ‘Anglican Orthodoxy’. This inability and unwillingness to integrate meant that these latter tended to form exclusive cliques and convert clubs, which made their church into a ‘Halfodox’ hobby, Anglicanism with icons. Thus, some allowed the baggage which they had brought with them into the Church to define their lives and block possible spiritual growth and understanding. This was because their Western-founded Norman Establishment has always called us, the people, ‘Anglo-Saxons’ or ‘plebs’, although we have always called ourselves simply ‘English’. Their alien Norman Establishment has always patronisingly despised us natives and all who ‘go native’, that is, all who are Orthodox Christians in mind and heart, who are foreign to them.

With this mentality of Establishment condescension and pride towards us English, they also rejected the Orthodox people, with our unintellectual and unphilosophical simplicity and uncomplicated and unmoralizing piety. Thus, some refused in their imagined racial ‘superiority’ and intellectual theorizing to ‘go native’. Between about 2000 and 2010, with Anglicanism altogether disappearing into the New Age blur, few Anglicans asked to be received into the Church, while the by then ageing converts from the last century began to isolate themselves and die out. In recent years, however, a new period has begun. Some ordinary (Non-Anglican) English people from the vast majority have begun to join the Orthodox Church. Like the few Non-Anglicans among those who had preceded them, they have had little difficulty in renouncing the Norman-founded British Establishment and its corrupted culture, because they have in any case never even belonged to it.

Thus, unlike some who had preceded them, they have never been tempted to put British Establishment culture above Christ, so betraying Christ, His Church and also His Orthodox England. For this reason they can begin to develop a real English Orthodox culture. Far more importantly, what has happened in England is only an example of the wider situation all over Western Europe. The betrayal of Western Europe by its Christophobic elite, making it into a wayward, schismatic and isolated province through heresy in 1054 and then apostasy, the betrayal of the real England, Orthodox England, finally destroyed in 1066, the repeated Western betrayals of the Christian Emperors and invasions of the multinational Christian Empire between 1204 and 1917, these are what real Orthodox in Europe reject. What we accept is the end of the old compromised ‘Euro-Orthodoxy’ of the philosophers and the beginning of the real Orthodoxy of the saints of Europe, the Restoration of Europe.

The choice for Christophobic and so Russophobic Europe today is fast becoming Apocalypse or Repentance. Europe, on its suicidal death-bed, caught between self-invented Secularism and self-imposed Islamism, has a last chance. If the peoples of Europe can yet throw off the degeneration of their millennial brainwashing, they can still learn that the truth will set them free from stepping lemming-like off the precipice into the abyss. If they can accept that their elites have deluded them into thinking that they are ‘free’, by being enslaved to the elites’ millennial secularist ideology, regardless of whether it is called Roman Catholic, Scholastic, Protestant, Anglican, Conservative, Socialist, Communist, Democratic, Liberal, Agnostic, Atheist, Post-Modernist, then suicide can be averted. If they can accept that their roots are only in the Tradition, Orthodox Christianity, the Church of God, and not in any latecomer manmade religion, then Repentance even at this late hour is still possible.

An Intercepted Message: Victory is At Hand!

The following message has been sent to us, intercepted from the Dark Net.

Hell Headquarters
12 December 2014

To All the Disincarnate,

The one whose name we dare not mention describes Faith in what the humans call ‘The New Testament’, but we demons call ‘The Words of Death’. There he describes the words and acts of Faith and his struggle against the immoral institutionalism of Religion and the Pharisees and the amoral indifferentism of Pilate and the Saducees.

Over the last millennium we have seen our success in gradually creating our complete infestation of the Western world, bringing it back from Faith into the institutional religion of Phariseeism and the indifferentism of Saduceeism.

1. Phariseeism

As you will recall, our first success came when we created our structure of Command, when we invented feudalist Papalism 1,000 years ago. For some 500 years after that we worked very hard on corrupting the top, institutionalizing Faith by putting it under earthly command and so making it into mere Religion.

2. Saduceeism

As you will recall, our second success came when we created our structure of Control, when we invented individualist Lutheranism 500 years ago. For some 500 years after that we worked very hard on controlling the masses by reducing faith to mere moralism and the myths of individualism (freedom and democracy), so that we could exploit them in our industrial ‘civilization’.

3. Destructionism

Brothers! Now comes the moment of our triumph. Thanks to 1,000 years of OUR patience, they are now so brainwashed that they believe that they are free because we tell them that! At last, they are ripe for total repaganization by having their identities destroyed. Soon they will no longer be men and women, fathers and mothers, but transgender zombies who will do as they are told by our politically correct State. Our final victory is at hand!

There will no longer be any ladies and gentlewomen, because they have lost their souls. According to one of our greatest agents, Darwin, they now believe that they are, at best, intelligent apes, who are guided by us whom inspire the basest instincts in them. At worst, they now know that they are inconvenient and so deserve abortion or euthanasia and then incineration, of which our great friend Hitler, an admirer of Darwin, was the ideological forerunner.

However, on the verge of victory, we must be careful: despite our globalization of the West, there are still outposts of resistance outside and even inside the Western world. Beware of being expelled by them! Victory is at hand, but is still not yet quite ours. Remember that gradualism is the key to our success. Soon all Earth will be Hell. This will be our great prize. Remember it.

The Aleut Martyrs At Last Commemorated

As is well-known, Native Americans, North and South, were massacred and maltreated by European invaders and settlers. Nearly all of the Native Americans were animists, and like their forebears in Siberia believed in shamanism, pantheism and nature-worship. However, some in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands were Orthodox Christians.

75 years late a small Orthodox group in North America known as ‘The Orthodox Church in America’ (OCA), responsible for Orthodox in Alaska, has decided to commemorate the nearly 100 mainly Russian Orthodox Aleuts who died as a result of US mistreatment during the Second World War and the nearly 800 survivors. Their Orthodox church and homes were burned down by the US authorities. This is very much to be welcomed. What is regrettable is that it has taken so long. One suspects that this OCA group may be ethnically biased towards the US Establishment. A non-phyletistic, politically free group would surely have acted long ago. See:

https://oca.org/news/headline-news/holy-synod-commemorates-75th-anniversary-of-wwii-internment-of-aleut-people

https://www.nps.gov/aleu/learn/historyculture/unangan-internment.htm

The Wild West Is Winning

There are many Wests.

There is the West of good roads, clean water, villas with baths and central heating. There is the West of pagan Romans who liked to see people killing each other for their amusement and slaughtered heathen peoples in order to steal their lands. There is the West of the Age of Saints that loved Christ. There is the West of barbarian invasions and slaughter. There is the West of settlement, learning and beautiful illuminated manuscripts. There is the West of terrorists on horseback called knights, protection racket castles, short-living serfs and feudal exploitation. There is the West of Scholastic philosophy and learning that argued about angels and pinheads. There is the West that continually started aggressive wars and was primitive, dirty and disease-ridden. There is the West of much admired art, sculpture and book printing. There is the West that committed genocide in New Worlds, enslaved their peoples and destroyed their cultures.

There is the West that invented new religions and killed and oppressed its people using these religions as pretexts. There is the West that killed its children and exploited its poor in filth. There is the West that made classical music. There is the West that invaded almost the whole of the rest of the world, impoverished and massacred its native peoples and tried to strip them of their natural resources. There is the West of knowledge, science, medicine and technology. There is the West that invented guns and bombs of terrifying power. There is the West of culture, refinement, literature, opera and ballet. There is the West that started World Wars, mutilating and massacring its youth by the million. There is the West that works for justice and peace. There is the West that forces itself on the rest of the world and destroys and pollutes local cultures and family life, imposing mass abortion, euthanasia, perversion and worldwide electronic dictatorship.

There is the West of culture, light and life and the West of destruction, darkness and death. The first we call the West of the Saints, the second we call the Wild West. The first is the West of the highest common denominator – of Christ and holiness. The second is the West of the lowest common denominator – of Antichrist and anti-holiness. The second has been winning for a thousand years. But nothing is inevitable.

Suggestions for a Future Cathedral on the Site of the Martyrdom of the Imperial Family and their Faithful Servants

In my article of 9 July on the authenticity of the remains disinterred near Ekaterinburg in 1991 and 2007 and said to belong to the Russian Royal Family and their servants, I suggested that a great Cathedral be built on the site of the martyrdom of the seven members of the Imperial Family and their four faithful servants. I have been asked how I see this. Not in any way responsible for this and with no influence with the powers that be, I can only make humble suggestions, like anyone of the 164 million strong flock of the Russian Orthodox Church. Here they are:

Firstly, all four of the Imperial servants, the cook Ivan Kharitonov, the footman Alexei Trupp, the shy parlour-maid Anna Demidova, as well as the distinguished and learned Dr Evgeny Botkin, must be canonized by the whole Russian Orthodox Church, and not just the New Martyr Evgeny. Although canonized long ago by the Church Outside Russia in 1981, three of them still await canonization by the whole Church. Of them Alexei Trupp, a Roman Catholic, was considered by the Synod of Bishops of the Church Outside Russia, as explained to me by the late Archbishop Antony of Los Angeles, to have been baptised in his own blood (as so many of the early martyrs of the Church and those of the Old Testament). All four were faithful to the end to the Imperial Family, preferring to be martyred together with them than to run away. It seems strange to canonize one and not the three others.

Secondly, special geological and engineering surveys would have to be carried out before any building could begin. The area is marshy and mining has been carried out. Piles would have to be driven and other preparations made in order to avoid possible subsidence.

Thirdly, the Ekaterinburg area would have to be renamed and all other traces of Soviet-period commemoration of the monsters who carried out the martyrdom removed, through renaming and removal of statues.

Fourthly, in collaboration between Church and State, the State and local authorities would have to provide appropriate infrastructure, in particular roads to the site.

Given this, we can imagine a Cathedral with a central cupola for the Saviour, seven others around it for each of the five women and two males of the Imperial Family, and then a further ring of four cupolas symbolizing the faithful servants. That for Alexei Trupp would represent that part of the Western world which in penitence also bows before the feat of martyrdom of the Imperial Family. That for Anna Demidova would represent faithful womankind. That for Ivan Kharitonov would represent the faithfulness of those who labour with their hands. That for Evgeny Botkin would represent the faithfulness of those who labour with their minds. This Cathedral would be built on the contributions of the Orthodox faithful from all over the world and of all nationalities. It would be a ‘Universal’ Cathedral (Вселенский Собор), welcoming the penitent and pilgrims from all over the world. And alongside the Cathedral would grow up a pilgrimage centre, a monastery and a convent.

Who is the Traitor Now?

(Slightly edited with permission from a US reader’s blog).

The loudest Liberal Globalist haters of Russia are also haters of America under President Trump, a post-Brexit Britain and Europeans. These people hate Russia because under Putin they are thwarted from having complete domination of Eurasia over which they seek to impose the European Union (EU) and NATO, which they view as “stepping stones” to total global control. Putin stands in their way of this, and an independent Britain does the same, and any other “-exits.”

Trump has pledged to put American interests first, over those of these “Liberal” Globalists who seek the submergence of every European country and America with unending Third World and, especially in the case of the former, Muslim, immigration. Their hatred of Trump for seeking a thawing of relations with Putin makes sense in that both men are enemies to their dreams of their Global Empire, and these Globalists, through their ownership and control of the large corporate (i.e. “mainstream”) news media, are able to unendingly demonize both Putin and Trump. I believe that they will go, and indeed are going, so far as to promote civil wars in America and Europe and even world war with Russia. They are not thinking rationally or humanely, or prudently, in order to further their goals.

The fact that there are Conservatives who act as their objective allies under the guise of being “Never Trump” and Neo-Conservative is worse, for these people know better about the Globalists, yet, for their variously ideological reasons, personal embitterment, and perhaps, self-righteousness, are willing to surrender their country to Globalists in order to seek confrontation with Russia abroad and bring down a President whom they irrationally hate. Past, and present, American interference in the relations of other countries’ elections is never talked about, including that of Ukraine, whose pro-Russian, democratically elected government the Obama administration helped overthrow, right on Russia’s border, containing sizeable numbers of pro-Moscow Russians in eastern territories, and pro-Western Ukrainians in its far western territories (formerly Poland), has been the largest and most dangerous “bone of contention” between Western-based Globalists and Russia. Whatever one thinks about Ukraine’s proper borders, their borders are irrelevant to the question of America’s and the West’s survival. To put them, now especially, at the very apex of American and European interests is, in a sense, to adopt Ukrainian nationalism as one’s chief loyalty, or at least as being more useful to advancing Globalist objectives of expansion, while rejecting American or British or German nationalism as a retardant on Globalist objectives.

The EU, NATO, and Globalists and Republican NeoCons like Graham and McCain have SEMANTICALLY substituted obedience to their plans for Global control as being “loyalty to America and the West.” American patriots should recognize that the Globalists have made the hatred of Russia under Putin MORE important than actually having pro-American foreign AND domestic policies, and in fact their other policies, i.e. like immigration, actually harm Americans; they have made this rash foreign policy of confrontation with a country that does not threaten us their test of loyalty and treason, while actually sacrificing, willingly and in a calculated manner, the very defense and survival of America and the nations of Europe, while demonizing those seeking “detente,” or better, peaceful relations with Russia, whose public philosophy in morals is far closer than those of “our” godless, Globalist Establishments in the West.

The Globalists, it cannot be overstressed, hate Christianity and White people, what the historic West was, and both of which they seek to destroy, and in so doing really are the epitome of treason, but, through their control of the media, they have reapplied the names of “treason” and “traitor” to patriots like Trump and his supporters, who have the pragmatic desire for a more multipolar world, one that also will keep the Globalists from achieving their goals of world domination and keeping us out of needless wars. It is the Globalists and their Vichy Conservative allies who are the traitors, the former by principle and the latter by their spite, are cooperating with them. To the extent that American and European patriots are “pro-Russian,” it is because they see Russia as a bulwark, as allies, against the Western-based, but thoroughly anti-Western in substance, Globalists.

The Big Question of who and what is a traitor today revolves around the question of who is the biggest threat to the actual West: The Globalists inside the West whose goal is the destruction of the West and its peoples, and their lapdog “Conservative” allies whom the Globalists will reward with the sinecures of a castrated, “loyal opposition,” free to expound academic doctrines of purity in political economy in unread “position papers”, academic articles, and political “platforms” that double as tissue paper, or the national patriots who seek to end the Globalists’ domination and get out from under their wars of empire, and who see Putin as an ally in their patriotic struggle?

For American and European patriots to see support in Russia is not unlike the rebellious Protestant American colonists who sought an alliance with Catholic, Monarchical France in their struggle to break away from the British Empire in 1776. I can imagine that they were accused of being “pro French” and “pro Catholic” by some of their Loyalist neighbors, or at least “anti-British” in seeking this alliance, but their motives were to make American independent of Britain, not making America dependent on or even resembling France in religion and government. In a hierarchy of values, loyalty to nation and culture is the far truer test of who is a patriot and who is a traitor than seeking peaceful relations with foreign states which do not threaten us. The Globalists’ efforts to invert this priority, in order to subvert what is primary, is both cynical and dangerous, and if they persist in it, may do irreparable harm to America, the West, and indeed, the whole world.

Can We Kneel in Church on Sundays?

I have a question about something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’ve read that the Church canons say that you are not supposed to kneel or prostrate on Sundays, but I was wondering how strictly that’s interpreted in practice?

I currently attend a Romanian parish and among Romanians (as you probably know) it is customary to kneel during the Our Father, the Creed, the Gospel reading etc and some people kneel throughout much of the liturgy. I personally think it is a beautiful sign of reverence but I was wondering why it has become customary and accepted in Romania but not in other places, and if the “prohibition” against kneeling on Sundays is really necessary or what the purpose of it really is?

I know some other parishes where people barely show any reverence at all so it still seems to me to be better to kneel or prostrate than to just be completely passive…

Question from a Correspondent in Europe

‘Since some people kneel in church on Sundays and on the days of Pentecost, with a view to preserving uniformity in all parishes it has seemed best to the holy Council for prayers to be offered to God while standing’.

Canon XX of the First Universal Council

The canons you refer to are the above, Canon XC of the Sixth Universal Council and Canon XV of St Peter the Martyr of Alexandria, all from the first seven centuries. So, yes, on paper, you do not kneel on the liturgical day of Sunday (Saturday evening to Sunday evening) and not between Easter and Pentecost (the kneeling prayers read at Vespers of Pentecost are the first when you kneel). Why? Because Sunday is the day of the Resurrection and the period between Easter and Pentecost effectively the afterfeast of the Feast of the Resurrection. If we are risen with Christ, then we are risen and so stand.

So much for the theory. What about practice?

One of the easiest ways to tell the difference between certain converts and Orthodox is whether they kneel on Sundays or not (especially on the Sunday of the Cross during Lent). Converts, whether of the zealot old calendarist or of the liberal new calendarist variety (extremes always meet), refuse to kneel because of their head knowledge, Orthodox kneel because of the movements of their hearts. As one person has said in answer to an uptight convert who insisted that Orthodox stand during services: ‘No they don’t: Russians stand, Greeks sit and Romanians kneel’.

Why this difference? It is all a question of piety – or lack of piety. Sitting is a lack of piety (unless the person is ill, heavily pregnant etc), which has entered the Greek Churches (including the Antiochian) only very, very recently. Pious Russians are horrified when Greeks and Antiochians sit during the Epistle. But kneeling is a great sacrifice. I admire those Romanians who kneel throughout the liturgy as an act of piety which accords with their temperament. I don’t think I could do it physically. Equally standing is also a matter of asceticism.

A common Russian practice among bishops and priests is to kneel at certain points during the Liturgy, for example during ‘Our Father’.

Certain converts, often of a Protestant background, tend to interpret the canons literally, according to the letter. Such individuals, it seems, used to be fundamentalists in their interpretation of the Scriptures, and quote canons as they used to quote chapter and verse, hoping perhaps to send their fellow human-beings to hell (and themselves to a very prideful heaven). If this is the case, then it is all pure phariseeism. (‘Do not heal or do good on the Sabbath day’).

Conclusion: Pray and then do what your heart tells you to do, observing those around you, so that you scandalize no-one. This is called humility and it stands above the letter of the law because it keeps the spirit of the law. When I as a priest see metropolitans and bishops, or for that matter pious laypeople, kneeling on a Sunday, I have no hesitation in kneeling with them. We should refuse to put ourselves above others. I only know that of Christ returns next Sunday, I will neither sit, nor stand, but be on my knees in front of Him.