Our Hope for an Orthodox Church in Norwich (Update 13)

The Update: £4,000 Extra Needed!

Now on 22 June, we are coming to the end of the saga of establishing a multinational Orthodox church in Norwich. However, we will need nearly £4,000 more than we originally thought because of extra building costs. It was on 15 April 2016 that we managed to buy the premises for our future church in Norwich. After a three and a half month wait to receive planning permission from the ultra-bureaucratic Norwich City Council, we had to wait an additional six months for exactly the same organization to send our solicitor the lease. On 9 May, building work starting inside in order to transform the building into an Orthodox church and on 25 May workers began knocking down internal walls. On 29 June we will set up the new iconostasis. After this will following painting and the laying of floor coverings. God willing, the first Liturgy will take place in August. At last a permanent home for Russian Orthodoxy in Norwich after over thirty years of struggles. Thank you!

History

In the East of England there is at present only one multinational and multilingual church faithful to Russian Orthodoxy with its own urban premises. This is St John’s Church in Colchester. God willing and with your support, we have now been able to buy a second one, in Norwich, exactly 60 miles, 100 kilometres, to the north of Colchester.

Why Norwich? For the last five years I have been visiting Norwich and some of the 200 Russian Orthodox there, mainly recent immigrants from the Baltic States, especially from Estonia. I have baptized several in their homes, married couples in Colchester, buried, blessed houses, listened to confessions, visiting every few weeks, sometimes twice a month and am Orthodox chaplain at Norwich Prison.

We thought of dedicating our community to St Alexander Nevsky. We attempted to begin liturgies using the Greek Orthodox church building in Norwich, but were impeded. How are our people and English people and others interested in the witness of the Russian Orthodox Church, to be cared for pastorally? Only from a church building. And such life is required not only by Russian speakers, but also by Romanian, Bulgarian and English Orthodox. Most of our regular parishioners, only one of whom has a car, live within easy walking distance of this building.

On Friday 8 May 2015, Fr Andrew saw a leasehold property for sale on the rightmove website for £50,000 at 134, Oak Street, Norwich. It measures 88 square metres externally and is at present used as offices and rooms for a cultural centre. It has electricity, heating and water and is in very good condition. It is so cheap because it is leasehold, in other words, you have to pay £100 rent per month for the ground it is built on. This amount is fixed until 2032. The lease itself is even longer – it lasts until 2047.

On Wednesday 13 May 2015 we organized a visit to these premises, attended by 9 local Russian Orthodox.

By Friday 15 May, Orthodox in Norwich had generously promised to donate £5,250.

On Monday 18 May Fr Andrew received Archbishop Mark’s blessing to buy the building if possible, meaning we could start obtaining pledges to donate.

On Thursday 21 May we heard from the surveyor that it would cost £3,000-£5,000 to knock down the internal walls and make good the floor and ceiling, so we could use this building as a church. This was lower than Fr Andrew had estimated.

On Wednesday 27 May we heard that our offer of £42,500 had been accepted. However, since conversion and furnishing costs will come to £13,500, this meant that we would need £55,000 in all.

On Friday 29 May we submitted the planning application for change of use from offices to a place of worship. This, we were told then, would take at least 6-8 weeks but should result in a positive answer.

On Wednesday 3 June we launched an internet appeal for £55,000 in order to set up our own church in Norwich.

By Wednesday 29 July, eight weeks after the appeal launch, total gifts and pledges had reached £55,000.

On Tuesday 29 September, after over three and a half months!, we finally received planning permission to convert the building into an Orthodox church.

On Friday 15 April 2016 we were at last able to complete the purchase of our premises and prepare to engage a builder to start work on the premises.

On Wednesday 20 April we received the keys and saw builders to obtain quotes to do the necessary work of knocking down internal walls and then making good the electrics, plumbing, floor and ceiling.

On Friday 22 April, the electricity and water were reconnected and supply contracts prepared.

On Tuesday 3 May, we chose the building contractor we wish to use.

On Monday 9 May, electrical and plumbing work began and the structural engineer called in.

On Wednesday 25 May, almost exactly one year after our offer had been accepted!, demolition of internal walls began and Fr Andrew saw a locksmith to replace the broken lock on the main door and a signwriter to replace the signs on the outside, so that all will know that this is an Orthodox Church, and new lighting was bought for installation. Following this the electrical system and plumbing were adapted to our needs.

On Monday 30 May, we were told that the building work would cost almost £4,000 more than expected because of unforeseen structural problems. Although we did not have the money in the Norwich fund for this, we put our faith in Providence and decided to go ahead anyway.

On Monday 20 June workers at last began replastering the ceiling and walls and putting in the new floor.

On Wednesday 29 June we will hire a lorry and take everything that had been prepared in Colchester to Norwich and set up the iconostasis.

The Double-Headed Eagle: Orthodox Christianity Incarnate

Foreword: A Real Council is Coming

In view of the shameful masonic and humanist apostasy going on behind closed doors at the robber conference of a few in Crete and which has little or nothing to do with the Church, we have felt it necessary to compose some initial response. The efforts of the secularists and compromised to impose on the Church the same old-fashioned 1960s heresies as were promoted by Vatican II will not be successful, for the gates of hell will not prevail, and a real Council will in time reply. Below is our first response, a response of free Orthodox, to the syncretism and ecumenism of the Teilhard de Chardin Halfodoxy of Crete. This is a vision of the Church that is both Trinitarian and Christological, both local and global, both of the Tradition and also realistic.

Introduction: The Heartland

Orthodox Christianity is by earthly origin Asian. However, within a few years of the Resurrection of Christ, symbolized by the Cross, it had spread to Europe. The symbol of its geographical spread thus soon became the double-headed eagle and it remains so to this day. The double-headed eagle unites north and south and looks east and west, which by the fifth century meant India and Ireland. The centre of the Orthodox Christian world, the Orthosphere, is therefore in Eurasia, what is called ‘The Heartland’. Since the late fifteenth century this has meant the lands of the Russian Empire, with today over 75% of the world’s Orthodox Christian population, the other 25% living in peripheral lands or else scattered through all the lands of the earth.

For the Father: The Orthodox Christian Faith

The word Christian became debased, especially during the second millennium and today it often means Roman Catholic and Protestant, which are transformed and deformed nationalized versions of Christianity. This can clearly be seen in the actions of the imperialistic and bloodthirsty Roman Catholic Crusaders who actually wore a cross on their backs, as they massacred to extend their power-grab. This is why we are obliged to use the term Orthodox Christian. Even here we must be careful, for there are those who, though calling themselves Orthodox, are in fact false Orthodox and are inclined to be Halfodox. Genuine Orthodox Christians are all the faithful who are not controlled and conditioned by the world, whose prince is satan.

For the Son: The Orthodox Christian Sovereign

Orthodox Christianity is Incarnate, lived in daily life, in monasteries, parishes and families. It is not some disincarnate and abstract daydream of intellectuals, ‘spiritualized’, full of spite for the living Tradition, and so irrelevant. We now await the Coming Sovereign Emperor and Tsar, who according to the prophecies of the saints of God will appear soon, but only if we manage to repent and resist the ongoing preparations of the secularists to enthrone Antichrist in Jerusalem. We Orthodox Christians are heirs to the Christian Roman Empire, not to the Pagan Roman Empire and its materialist ideology and idolatry, whether it is called Capitalist or Communist. ‘No man can serve two masters…You cannot serve God and Mammon’.

For the Holy Spirit: The Orthodox Christian People

The Orthodox Christian faithful are of many nations and races, north and south, east and west. The faithful are not nationalists, racists or, in Church language, phyletists. The faithful come from and live in ten different regions of the world: to the centre, the majority live in the Eurasian Heartland; to the far west in North America and to the west in Western Europe; to the far east in China with south-east Asia and to the east in Kazakhstan and Central Asia; to the far south-west in Latin America and to the south-west in Africa; to the south in the Middle East; to the far south-east in Australasia and to the south-east in the Indian Subcontinent. The mere existence of the faithful witnesses to the presence of the Holy Spirit amongst us.

Conclusion: Faith, Throne and People in the Isles

These Isles are distant provinces and yet they were visited by both the first Christian Emperor and the last Christian Emperor. On 25 July 306 the future St Constantine the Great was proclaimed Emperor in York and founded New Rome, between Europe and Asia. And in 1894, 1896 and 1909 these isles were visited by the future St Nicholas II, who was later martyred on 17 July 1918 in Ekaterinburg, a city which straddles Europe and Asia, equidistant between Iceland and the Pacific Coast. Some would say that any hope that the Double-Headed Eagle of the Christian Empire can be restored is fantasy. No doubt they would have said the same if they had been told that the Twelve Apostles would conquer the Pagan Roman Empire. ‘Fear not, little flock!’

Free Europe

After making a series of threats if the peoples of the UK vote for freedom next Thursday, including starting World War III, creating economic meltdown and mass employment, destroying the health system and bankrupting the State pension fund, the Remain enslaved to the EU lobby, has exploited the murder of one of theirs by a lunatic as yet another reason to intimidate the public. Having used the US and German leaders and every single member of the British Establishment, from former spies to the Canadian head of the Bank of England, from corrupt businessmen to the ever-sycophantic BBC to spread their propaganda, they then had to exploit a murder.

All of this is a sign of their desperation. Of course, the chances are that their intimidation will work and the end of EU tyranny will not come next Thursday. The UK and 27 other European countries will not obtain their freedom from the Fourth Reich. The peoples of Europe, like those in the Netherlands, France and the Czech Republic, who have already requested it, will not be able to obtain free votes on ending tyranny. It does not matter. The end of the EU will inevitably come. It is only a matter of time. Nevertheless, it is a national sadness that in all probability it will not be the peoples of the UK who will fulfill their historic duty in bringing freedom to Europe, but some other people and event.

Serbian Church Changes Mind

Torn between the EU/NATO and Orthodoxy, the Serbian Church authorities have, on the very eve of the Crete meeting, changed their minds and are now going to attend it. We suspect that the US ambassador in Belgrade and sums of money or else promises of power have played a role. Torn by the US-fomented schism in Kosovo and betrayed internally, it is difficult to see what those authorities believe in – a visit to the synagogue or Orthodoxy. One day they must make up their minds.

Multinational Council or Isolationist Sanhedrin?

Soon there will be a great council, called ‘holy’, but this will be precisely the Eighth (Impious) Universal Council.

St Kuksha of Odessa (+ 1964)

Now that, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and to the great relief of all faithful Orthodox worldwide, the ‘Great and Holy Pan-Orthodox Council’ has been reduced to an Inter-Greek monologue with 24 Romanians, whose presence has been ordered by the US ambassador in Bucharest, what lessons can be learned?

The first lesson is that if there is to be some meeting of all the Local Churches, then it must be carried out by consulting the faithful, listening to their wishes and talking about the issues that really matter, in an Orthodox way, rather than imposing some irrelevant top-down ‘agenda’, in a secular way, like some transnational corporation.

The second lesson is therefore that hubris and Eastern Papism are dead (was it ever alive?) and have been replaced by humility and the Holy Spirit.

The third lesson is that threats and intimidation from the US State Department, or anywhere else, do not work with free Orthodox.

The fourth lesson is that all Orthodox bishops must be invited to any Council, as is the Tradition. That half of the world’s approximately 700 Orthodox bishops present would be from the Russian Orthodox Church would be just a fact of life. After all, of the world’s 216 million Orthodox, 164 million, over 75%, belong to the multinational Russian Orthodox Church.

Therefore, the fifth lesson is that if you want to be a big Church, do not fall into flag-waving phyletism (narrow nationalism) and then you will find that other nationalities will want to be with you – over 60 nationalities make up the Russian Orthodox Church. Flag-waving phyletism is for football hooligans, not for Orthodox Christians.

The only beneficial result of the Crete meeting so far is that the Patriarchate of Constantinople has promised not to interfere in the Ukraine, unlike as it sadly did in Estonia. If we can learn the above lessons as well, perhaps this whole affair will, by the Providence of God, turn out to have been positive.

Russophobia: Hatred of Christ

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/religious-roots-russophobia-charlemagne-charlemagne-our-days-exposed/ri14877?utm_source=Russia+Insider+Daily+Headlines&utm_campaign=b72df1e14d-Russia_Insider_Daily_Headlines11_21_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c626db089c-b72df1e14d-183204397&ct=t(Russia_Insider_Daily_Headlines11_21_2014)&mc_cid=b72df1e14d&mc_eid=5c8d1856f4

Irreligion in England and Wales

Last month the Roman Catholic St Mary’s University in Twickenham published the following statistics:

1. 48.5% of the English and Welsh adult population identifies itself as of ‘no religion’, 19.8% as Anglican, 15.7% as Christian but Non-Anglican and Non-Roman Catholic, 8.3% as Roman Catholic and 7.7% as members of Non-Christian religions.

2. The religious make-up of England and Wales has changed dramatically in the past three decades. Anglicans have suffered the biggest declines: from 44.5% in 1983 to 19.8% today.

3. For every one Roman Catholic convert there are 10 cradle Roman Catholics who no longer regard themselves as Roman Catholic. For every one Anglican convert there are 12 cradle Anglicans who no longer regard themselves as Anglican.

4. Of those who currently identify as Roman Catholic, only 27.5% say they attend church services at least once a week. 39.2% say they never or practically never attend.

Source: http://www.stmarys.ac.uk/benedict-xvi/docs/2016-may-contemporary-catholicism-report.pdf

1916-2016: 100 Years of Saints and Traitors

Introduction

100 years ago there began the last stages in the greatest injustice in world history – the betrayal of Imperial Christian Russia. Then on the point of victory in the First World War and so of liberating New Rome, called Constantinople, and also the Holy Land, it was also about to liberate the peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany, so undoing the injustices in Central Europe and the Balkans and in the tyrannical Second Reich of Bismarck, so reconstituting a free Poland, and perhaps also righting the injustices of Western colonization worldwide. Had it not been betrayed, there would never have been any Bolshevik genocide (millions of dead), no Third Reich and no Hitler, no World War Two, no Teutonic holocaust of the Slavs (30 million dead) or of the Jews (over 5 million dead), no American fire bombs and atom bombs on Japanese civilians (1 million dead?), no Communist China (30 million dead?), no abortion holocaust (100 million dead?), no……

In May 1945 one Russian soldier – he later became a priest – was standing in the ruined Reichstag in Berlin. Surrounded by incredible destruction, but also great relief, victory had come at a huge price on the Russian Easter Day, which that year had coincided with the day of the feast of St George the Victorious Soldier-Martyr. There, in the Reichstag, the soldier saw Tsar Nicholas II surveying the scene, examining every detail, thinking that in 1917 he would already have stood there, surrounded however not by destruction but by an intact capital of culture. The ghost of Tsar Nicholas has haunted Europe ever since it betrayed him in 1917. He has been here all the time, to this very day, looking with eyes of pity at the merciless destruction and self-destruction of the Western world, as it sinks into its self-made abyss. Betrayed at the last moment in 1917, according to a plot prepared in detail in 1916, he looks on the lost souls and cultural heritage of the Western world and his heart weeps.

Inside Russia

The first sign that the plot had been implemented was the assassination of the peasant-healer Rasputin in December 1916, betrayed by decadent Russian aristocrats, who hated the Christian peasantry, and murdered by British spies, who hated Russian Orthodox. Financed by its enemies (Germany and Austro-Hungary) and by its ‘allies’ (Britain, France and the US, who had already financed Japan’s transformation into militarism and its murderous attack on Russia in 1904), sabotage and treason laid the Tsar’s Russia low. In 1917 this developed into anarchy (the so-called ‘Revolution’), which was created by ‘liberal’ opportunist traitors in February and exploited by ‘Bolshevik’ opportunist traitors in October. Anarchy (falsely called ‘Revolution’) was fabricated in the salons of the jealous and the ignoble, grand dukes and princes, generals and politicians, freemasons and lawyers, industrialists and bourgeois – ‘have money, want power’ – traitors to the people and their Tsar.

All of them were utterly unfaithful to the three (three because Trinitarian) tenets and principles that had upheld the Christian Empire of the Tsar. These were: the Faith (uncompromised Orthodox Christianity); the Tsar (the Anointed Christian Sovereign); and Rus (the multinational Christian Empire). As atheists and apostates, they committed sabotage and treason with regard to all these values, which represent Faith in the Father, the Incarnation of the Son and the Presence of the Holy Spirit. Those who remained faithful to these three tenets inside Russia were the New Martyrs and Confessors and those who venerated them. The salt of the earth, they were the ones who were to begin the great restoration that has been under way since the official fall of Bolshevism twenty-five years ago, but in fact long before, from the moment of their exploits. Thus the traitors were countered by the saints and, although the traitors still do not understand how or why, the saints always win.

Outside Russia

After the anarchy, there began the resistance and then the defeat and so emigration of those known as ‘White Russians’. Once in the emigration (though even before), it could plainly be seen that here too there were saints and traitors. To the left hand side there fell away those who betrayed the Faith and the Tsar. To the right hand side there fell away those who betrayed the Faith and Rus. On the left hand side were the renovationists, who so hated the Russian Church that they left Her, compromising Her Faith, and so hated the Tsar that they actually justified their treason, which had led them into the self-punishment of exile. On the right hand side were the nationalists, who so hated the Russian Church that they made Her into a narrow nationalist flag, forgetting Her multinational mission, and so hated Rus that they allied themselves with its crazed Teutonic enemy, not understanding that the victory of 1945 was the people’s victory, the victory of repentant Rus.

There were also those who understood that the task of the emigration was to keep faith with all three tenets. We knew that as long as all three principles were respected, all would be well and it would be simple to reunite with Russia once it was free again and restoration had begun, with the New Martyrs and Confessors officially venerated there. We understood that the Faith could not be compromised by heresies, dreamy and disincarnate renovationism and personality cults, regardless of the fact that we lived outside Russia. We understood that the memory of the Tsar, the universal Christian Emperor, had to be kept for restoration, in order for a new Christian Emperor to come and oppose the worldwide evil that has been unleashed ever since Tsar Nicholas was deposed. We understood that our mission is to make Rus universal, worldwide, regardless of race and language, and that our mission is among the people and must not be compromised by political Establishments.

Conclusion

In our own times we are seeing a daily miracle: over the last 25 years we have seen in the Russian Lands what we and those before us had been praying for over the previous 75 years, the slow restoration of the Tsar’s Christian Russia. Yes, it has been a slow and tortuous process, with many hesitations, deviations and falls, but the general direction has been right. This process of restoration is of course far from over, indeed, in many respects it has only just begun, but the icons of the New Martyrs, including those of the Royal Martyrs, are everywhere. As the new Cold War NATO occupies the Ukraine and Estonia, attempting to destabilize governments from Macedonia to Moldova and Armenia to Kazakhstan, and prepares to attack all along the Russian borders, its aircraft and submarines, tanks and troops everywhere threatening resurgent Russia, the last bastion of Christianity in the world, we see the desperation of the world’s elite in its bid to impose its New World Order.

Having destabilized all Latin America and much of Africa, striving to undermine China and India and using tides of poor Muslim immigrants to threaten European identities, having destroyed Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya and Syria, and attempting to destroy the Russian Orthodox Church and Faith, the satanic New World Order’s proposed Orthodox Council has led only to our clear identification of the unrepentant traitors in our midst – by waiting for them to reveal themselves, we now know who is ready for cleansing. The tiny but immensely powerful elite that stands behind the USA, the EU, NATO, the whole Western world indeed, and pulls the strings of its media, puppets and all the deceived and gullible, knows that if Russia resists it successfully, its aim of global domination and control will be foiled and the coming of the Kingdom of the Great Deceiver, Antichrist, that it knowingly and unknowingly seeks will be postponed, perhaps even for many years to come. May it be so, O Lord.