Tag Archives: Pastoral Matters

On Metr Antony (Bloom) and Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov)

Q: You are one of the few people who knew well both Metr Antony (Bloom) and Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov). What do you think of them and their disputes?

A: I am not sure that I am one of the few, but I did know them both well.

The future Metr Antony was born on the same day as my grandfather, though twenty years after him. He was a typical Franco-Russian intellectual. He was very gifted, very open, to the point of liberalism, and very sincere. His father, Boris, was an Imperial diplomat who was interested in the occult and had the gift of hypnotism. His mother was the sister of the ‘mystical’, but very unOrthodox Russian composer Scriabin.

Andrei Bloom (as he then was) came to the faith in his teens and lived it in his own way. He did not study at seminary. He was completely unmercenary and lived very modestly. His interests were intellectual and in people and was very popular, especially among women. He was widely read in Western literature, but not so much in the Church Fathers or the literature of piety and the Lives of the Saints. He was really quite emotional and you can hear this in his sermons. His approach to the Faith was emotional, even sentimental, and cultural. That approach is very important to some.

Fr Sophrony was eighteen years older than Metr Antony and came from a well-off Russian family in Moscow, emigrated to France after the Revolution and was a huge intellectual, philosopher and artist who had belonged in his youth to the Art Nouveau Movement. He came to England in 1959, when a large property was given him by the Church of England in an ecumenical spirit. At that time he was still living in France, where for some 14 years he had been under the Patriarchate of Moscow after he had been expelled from Mt Athos. He had lived there for twenty years and was expelled by the Greek authorities for political reasons, together with two other Russian monks.

In 1965 he left the jurisdiction of Metr Antony of Moscow after twenty years and returned to the jurisdiction of Greek Constantinople. This happened after he had fallen out with Metr Antony, who wanted to close his monastery and ordain his priests, so he could expand his tiny diocese. Fr Sophrony (as we always called him – never starets) is now a local saint, canonised by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and venerated in the monastery, or convent, which he founded just outside a village in the east of Essex.

So we can see that Metr Antony had an emotional approach to the Faith and is very attractive to the emotional and even sentimental, especially to women, and brought tens of thousands of Russians and others to Orthodoxy. On the other hand, Fr Sophrony had an intellectual and philosophical approach to the Faith and he is attractive to highly educated people of many nationalities, many of whom have doctorates, like his monks.

Thus, they were very different people. But both played a positive role. The point is that everyone is different and there is no reason to reject or condemn either of them, as some do. Having said that, neither was my ‘cup of tea’ personally. But so what? There is room in the Church for many different sorts of people and many sorts of people are needed. Let us not be narrow! Tastes vary.

We can see this in the views of other Orthodox. For example, the then Fr Vitaly (Ustinov), later Metropolitan of ROCOR, called, I think in 1948, the then Fr Antony (Bloom) ‘a priest of Satan’, simply because he belonged to the Patriarchate of Moscow, which had been revived by Stalin. However, we know that Metr Vitaly ended his life outside the Church in a sect. Metr Antony (Bloom) did not.

Another critic, and of both the ‘Western’ Metr Antony and of the ‘delusional’ Fr Sophrony (according to Professor Osipov), is the Russian academic, Professor A. I. Osipov. His lectures are interesting for beginners in Orthodox life and he was very popular, especially in the 1990s when 100 million Russians were baptised, virtually without instruction. Once more, he is just another personality, with his own approach, a third approach, that of the academic.

All three approaches are interesting, but I don’t see why they should be mutually exclusive. However, once more he is not my personal cup of tea. But he is the cup of tea of many others. People are different! Accept that everyone is different and stop falling into that trap of sectarian narrowness and condemnation that some Russians can be inclined to, with their cries of ‘That’s uncanonical’, ‘you’re a schismatic’, ‘that’s heretical’ etc. None of that is Christian. Moreover, it is this Russian intolerance that has caused the schism between Russians and Greeks today, all the purely political divisions in the Russian emigration (meaning that today ROCOR is out of communion with the Western European Archdiocese of the Russian Church), and all the divisions inside Russia from the seventeenth century until today, Sad.

Questions and Answers October-November 2024

Q: What would the attitude of Metropolitan Antony of Sourozh have been to the war in the Ukraine?

A: It will soon be 44 years since he tonsured me reader, in January 1981.

Although he was not a monk, Metr Antony was a pastor and not a politician, and he would have prayed for peace and helped Orthodox Ukrainians and Russians equally. He would certainly have taken in and protected any priests from Moscow who had refused to pray for victory, like his disciple Fr Andrey Korodchkin, and instead prayed for peace. He would have abhorred militaristic attitudes in the Church and, while having no illusions about the pernicious role of the US and the Kiev regime in starting the war, he would have fully supported Metr Onufry of Kiev.

He must be spinning in his grave at what is going on in today’s almost Stalinist, nationalist administration of the Patriarchate in Moscow. Do not forget how Metr Antony supported Solzhenitsyn in the 1970s. To be honest, he would have contemplated leaving such a Moscow Patriarchate and perhaps taken refuge in another Patriarchate, certainly not Constantinople, but possibly Bucharest.

Q: How do you tolerate a bishop who is filled with hatred and jealousy for you?

A: Our personal experience is that you must tolerate it, knowing that their hatred and jealousy for Orthodox will always sooner or later lead to their schism and then heresy. Such was the case with the clerics Arius (a priest) and Nestorius (an archbishop), who started with hatred and jealousy and then fell into schism and heresy through their personal vice. Vice always leads to schism and then heresy. Once it has, not only you can leave him, but you must leave him. It is your spiritual duty.

On the other hand virtue leads to Orthodoxy. This is a spiritual and moral fact. Their hatred comes from the fact that you are more popular than they are because you have compassion for the people. Their jealousy comes from the fact you have a normal family life, whereas they are homosexuals or perverts and so cannot have a normal family life.

Q: How do you deal with a sociopath?

A: Sociopaths prey on the compassionate and pastoral, any whom they consider ‘vulnerable’, trying to make them their victims, trying to make them feel guilty and enslave them, thinking that they are weak and naive. Sociopaths are control freaks who try to exploit and manipulate, losing their temper very easily in order to do so. Outwardly they can be charming, but they are in fact narcissistic monsters, who bully and punish without any empathy or sense of guilt. However, they try and make others feel guilty, even to the point where some of their non-believing victims may commit suicide.

They are helped in this by the fact that sociopaths are delusional liars, they do not even realise that they are lying. There is only one way to defeat them and that is to flee from them. Always have a Plan B ready, a sideways move. They will always be astonished by this because they think that their power is absolute and they cannot possibly lose. This is why when they do lose, they lash out like a cornered animal, slandering and maligning, and they may start drinking. Then they will portray themselves as victims! We moved sideways to escape their snobbery and we have absolutely no regrets. If we may quote a world leader, talking about the USA:

‘They clearly did not expect such insubordination. They simply got used to acting according to a template, to grab whatever they pleased, by blackmail, bribery, intimidation, and convinced themselves that these methods would work forever, as if they had been fossilised in the past’.

Q: What are the results of being on the left-hand side of Church life and on the right-hand side? (By this I mean the liberal, modernist side and the traditionalist, pharisee side?).

A: The left leads to arid, dried-out intellectualism – or rather pseudo-intellectualism. The right leads to perverted narcissism.

Q: How do you deal with jealous Establishment types who repeat slanders about you?

A: Ignore them as there is no truth in their words, as the Psalmist says. They slander themselves, eaten up by their jealousy of their own hearts. I tremble for them. They will suffer for repeating open lies. As St Paisios the Athonite said: ‘I would long ago have gone mad because of the injustices of this world, if I had not known that the last word in human history will belong to Christ our Lord’.

Q: Who is part of the English Establishment, how big is it and how do you recognise it?

A: First of all, it is not the English Establishment, it is the Establishment which is in England, just as a virus enters a body as a parasite, it does not come from here. If you prefer, it is the British Establishment.

The word ‘British’ was first used by the Romans, then by the Normans (who moved the capital back from English Winchester to Roman and Norman London) and then was revived by the Tudors and all those who followed. In other words, the connotations of the word ‘British’ are purely imperial.

However, the Establishment is not a race, but a mentality, the ‘British’ mentality. It is called ‘the Establishment’ because it was established by the parasitic Norman elite after 1066. The British Establishment is the British Deep State, the part that remains constant whatever the government, whatever the ruling dynasty, whatever the century.

It concerns firstly the elite of British society, less than 1% of the population, as the money and power are with them. However, at least another 20% or so of the population have been dragged along into the Establishment by their money, their powerful media, intimidation, inertia and especially snobbery – they want to be associated with the ruling class, as it makes them feel important. This is the origin of the word ‘snob’, which has gone into many other languages, as other cultures do not have this reality.

You can easily recognise the Establishment because it is pro-Zionist (‘Western people are the chosen people’), and therefore pro-US, pro-EU, pro-NATO, pro-British (and anti-English), pro-Israel, pro-Kiev regime and, today, pro-Woke. As globalists, they always put non-national and anti-patriotic interests first, to the detriment of their own electorates. They are also contaminated by various sexual perversions, which is why they are pro-Woke.

Such is the case of the recent globalist and woke Archbishop of Canterbury who covered up child abuse. The Church of England is riddled with sex abusers and always has been, like Roman Catholic clergy also, but like the whole British Establishment – the BBC for example. This is why they are woke – it is all in self-justification: ‘our perversions are normal’ is what they are saying. This is why we should be very careful before receiving any Anglican vicars as laypeople into the Orthodox Church. There have been too many mistakes already.

Q: In the Creed we say that we believe in ‘One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church’, Isn’t this very confusing? Surely people will understand Roman Catholic?

A: This is a very old debate. Some suggest an alternative translation, like the Slavonic, such as ‘Conciliar’. Another possibility is to change the pronunciation to the Greek and pronounce the word ‘Cathólic’, with the stress on the middle syllable. Clearly, a solution needs to be found.

Q: Do you in the Orthodox Church pray for the dead?

A: In the Orthodox Church we do not believe in death and so do not have any dead. All are living, whether on this side of the veil or on the other side. And we pray for all the living, whatever side they are on.

Q: What do you think of tithing?

A: Tithing smacks of Protestantism, the Old Testament and Phariseeism. It must never be made obligatory. All giving to the church should be voluntary, never some obligatory ‘membership fee’. Remember that the widow’s mite received praise from Christ. Years ago I remember seeing a board in the entrance to a church in the Ukraine, detailing the names of people and how much each gave each month. See where that got them.

Q: Why do Orthodox rarely have names like Abel, Sarah, Zachary, Joel, Joshua, Aaron, Jared, Ruth, Deborah, Isaac etc?

A: There is nothing wrong with such names, it is just that they are rare in Orthodox societies. Why? Because these are Old Testament names and are often borne by people in societies of a former Protestant culture. Orthodox, like Roman Catholics, do not much read the Old Testament, apart from the Psalter, which the devout know well, so these names are rarely used, except in monasticism, where the Old Testament is read. Put simply, for Orthodox the New Testament is far, far more important than the Old Testament.

We have to understand that the Protestant world has always been close to Judaism, it even uses the Jewish text of the Old Testament instead of the Christian text. In English history even the revolution of the Puritan Cromwell was financed by Jewish bankers, so that they could move from Amsterdam, where they had moved from Venice and Northern Italy, to the safer haven of London. Later, in about 1916, they moved from London to the safer haven of USA, where aerial bombardment was not then possible.

Q: What is the Orthodox attitude to nature and the environment?

A: Nature was originally created by God. However, what we see around us is fallen nature. In this, lions tear apart antelopes, cats tear apart mice, spiders kill flies. So let us not be sentimental. The present environmentalism is nature-worship, as is visible in tree-hugging. The desire for clean nature is good in itself, but what we have to is a secularist form of puritanism, the search for the pure. Originally moralistic and anti-sexual (Protestant Puritanism invented witches and their hunting and murder), today’s Puritanism is all about pure nature. None of this is spiritual. Spiritual purity gives both sexual self-control and respect for the environment. Environmentalism, like Puritanism, gives neither because they are both anti-spiritual and merely moralistic.

Q: How many Romanians live in the UK?

A: Romanian speakers are by far the largest practising Orthodox group in Western Europe and in the UK, several times more than practising Orthodox Greeks, let alone the relatively small numbers of practising Orthodox Russians and others. According to past official statistics, the number rose from 83,168 in the 2011 United Kingdom census to 557,554 in the 2021 United Kingdom census. Between 2011 and 2021 Romanian went from being the seventeenth foreign language in Great Britain to the second, just after Polish.

This is over three years ago. The number is greater now and in any case Romanian, but English-born, children are not included in it and the number does not include Moldovans, who could easily number 50,000, perhaps more. Fairly reliable estimates, such as that of Dama Laura, the Romanian ambassador whom we know well in our church and count as a friend, put the actual number of Romanian-speaking immigrants and their English-born children at over 1.1 million. This is why the UK now has a Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese with its own Archbishop.

Q: After nearly fifty years in the Russian Church, how does it feel to be in the Romanian Church? Do you have any regrets?

A: The only thing that counts is to be in a free branch of the Orthodox Church, away from bullying and narcissistic sociopaths, with their hate-filled schism, guru-led sect, vicious jealousy, and that we have canonically left them (according to Canon XV of the First and Second Council of 861) and prosper more than ever. It has felt good to be back in the mainstream, just as it felt in 2007, when we helped bring ROCOR back into the mainstream for a decade – for even then American ROCOR had been threatening to leave the Church.

What is sad and I regret it, is how some hierarchs in the Russian Church quit the mainstream, just as those in the Patriarchate of Constantinople before it, persecuting clergy because they are patriots to their own country, in my case, to England (not to Britain, which is an alien, Norman construct). The worst thing is that in Moscow they have not learned from their mistakes.

For this persecution is an exact repeat of that in the 1920s when some senior clerics in Moscow persecuted all Russian Orthodox outside the USSR because they refused to give allegiance to the Soviet Communist Party and the Soviet Union. Now it has been happening again, with all the usual threats, aggressiveness and ‘defrockings’, whether in the Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania and Western Europe.  Non-Russians are generally not welcome in the Russian Church today. Never tell me that history does not repeat itself!

Being in the mainstream and with the majority both in England and in Western Europe, that is, from inside the Romanian Church, is very important because it is the mainstream and also the majority, who can therefore commit the most to the future Local Church. Romanians generally attend church; Russians, like Greece, far less.

Q: Why have we seen in the last generation the appearance and phenomenal growth of gender confusion and the trans-movement?

A: I think there are four reasons, though which is the most important of the last three, I would hesitate to say. Firstly, there are the rare genetic accidents. Just as there are genetic accidents which mean that some children are born blind or one-armed or with dysfunctional organs, so some are born with some hormonal insufficiency. Secondly, there is bad parenting, which the divorce epidemic since the 1960s has only encouraged. The fact is that some mothers have always had sons and brought them up as daughters (the Oscar Wilde syndrome) and fathers who have moulded their daughters into sons. Thirdly, there is vice. This is not only widespread, but, terrifyingly, actually fashionable.

Finally, there is chemical pollution by pesticides, food additives and hormones, which has entered the food chain and affected children’s hormones. This seems to have caused in part not only the epidemic of autism, but also the LGBTQ epidemic. Chemical pollutants, surely cause the appearance of ‘gay frogs’, ‘gay swans’ and ‘gay bulls’.

 

Q and A August 2024

Corruption Inside the Church

Q: Having seen the corruption of the new ROCOR episcopate, do you now think that those who, like Metropolitan Vitaly, warned that ROCOR would be corrupted by contact with the Moscow Patriarchate and so left it between 2001 and 2007, were right.

A: Not at all! You do not leave the Church, whose episcopate had at the time not yet been corrupted, to join a sect!

As for the corruption of ROCOR, that was the choice of those who did it to themselves, it was self-corruption. The episcopate of the Patriarchate in Moscow never imposed any corruption, just as the Russian State never imposed any political compromises on the part of the episcopate of the Russian Church. It is far worse than that – they imposed corruption on themselves by personal choice!

It is a bit like someone who goes to work in a jeweller’s shop, becomes a jewel thief and then blames the owner of the jewellery shop for his corruption. All bishops should know that there is such a thing as personal responsibility and a conscience. Clearly, they did not and I suspect that that is because they had lost their faith and become atheists, ‘princes of the Church’, as they liked to call themselves, Catholic cardinal-style. In any case, they live like atheists. As a result, we have ‘Orthodox’ killing each other in Russia and the Ukraine. This is the Judgement of God.

Q: How do you cope when you see open corruption among bishops?

A: The Church is like a mountain stream that goes down to the lowlands and becomes a fairly slow-moving river. The destiny of the water is to go to the sea, just as our destiny is to go to heaven. However, in the mountains the water gets mixed up with stones and in the lowlands the water inevitably gets mixed up with the mud. We have to live alongside the stones and the mud. It is our job not to get mixed up with either the stones or the mud, but to keep flowing (with the flow of the Holy Spirit) in the top half of the river, where the water is clean, though we do go up and down to some extent. Sadly, there are those who do get mixed up with either the stones or else the mud. Even so, as long as they don’t get caught up in the river weeds or else bogged down in the stagnant mud, they can still rise up away from the mud and get cleaned.

However, we must not fall into the sin of those who, disgusted by any possible contact with the mud, get out of the river altogether and sail down the river in small boats, some of them luxuriously fitted out, for the imaginary ‘pure’, while condemning everyone else in the river, who are in contact with the mud. These people are proud sectarians, pharisees and Donatists. They are disincarnate, that is, not part of the river, not part of the Church, cut off, judging others in their pride. As such they are actually worse than those who are in contact with the mud. At least they still have the chance of going upwards into the flow and of being cleaned by that flow. These people in their boats do not even have the chance of being cleaned by the flow of this river of eternal life, the streams of living water, but remain isolated in their self-pleasing ’comfort’ and pride.

Q: What do you do when you are slandered by a bishop? You have personal experience.

A: I pray for the four slanderers, three of whom have repeated the bishop’s slander, for the one in Colchester, the one in Ipswich, the one in Tiptree and the last in London. All their terrible personal problems to the point of alcoholism come from the fact that they tell lies and slander.

Q: Why have so many Irish-Americans joined the Orthodox Church?

A: What an interesting question. I can remember 50 years ago the then Fr Basil Osborne remark that many who had then joined the Orthodox in the USA had Irish names.

I think it is part of a general situation that those who join the Orthodox Church in Western Europe and Northern America come from oppressed minorities in their countries of origin. For example, in Germany many join from Saxony, in France from Brittany, and in England from those of peasant origin. In other words, those of the elitist Establishment background either do not join, or else, if they do, they do not stay the course, and soon abandon it, like so many Oxbridge professors and those from the London elite in England.

The Non-Orthodox World

Q: Will old calendarists go to hell?

A: This is the second time you have asked an outrageous question. I realise you are new to the Church of God, but where does this desire to condemn all others come from? Where does this hatred come from? If you are really concerned about the salvation of others, pray for them in silence. Last time, it was the same question about Protestants, from where you come. Save your own soul and leave others aside. It is none of your business. Stop meddling and heal yourself.

Q: I recently met an Orthodox woman who does not believe that bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ? Is this typical?

A: It is typical of an Orthodox who has become an atheist. I would not judge a Church of 200 million by one very lapsed example.

Q: I have started going to an Eastern Orthodox church, with the aim, hopefully, of being baptised eventually. I am contacting you because I’ve heard horror stories about people joining, then going through real turmoil in their lives. I understand that no spiritual journey or growth is painless, but I wonder to what extent is joining the Church going to destroy me. I’ve seen commentary like this online, people saying essentially that they’ve been ruined by joining the church. As a man of your station within the church, I just want to ask – is this reasonable? Or is it just hyperbole?

A: The Church ruins no-one’s life! Only sects and cults, which attract the proud, do that.

However, in the Orthodox Church we have long been besieged by psychopaths and sociopaths, misfits in society who think they can fit in to the Church and that they will find their place here. They do not. They seem to pick on the Orthodox Church, as they find us ‘exotic’. Though some of them have been thrown out of the Catholic Church or the Church of England, for obvious reasons.

I have myself received three such individuals in the last 35 years, so am also guilty. Sadly, what I did for them did not help them, as I had hoped it would. However, as they did not repent, it could not help them. They should have seen a psychiatrist first. Sadly, too, there are Orthodox clergy who receive many such people, with disastrous consequences, I mean several people every single year. The worst is, when one of these pathological individuals becomes a member of the clergy and begins to receive others like himself. And the worst is when of these individuals becomes a bishop! You can imagine how much damage that can do!

I hope you find your place in the Church. The main thing is to be sexually normal and be able to hold down a normal job. That makes a huge difference.

Q: Pope Francis has recently published a document stressing Primacy and Synodality. Could this be a positive opening acceptable to the Orthodox Church?

A: On the surface Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism have much in common: the Holy Trinity, Christ God-Man, the Mother of God, the saints, bishops, priests and therefore sacraments. Even the words Catholic and Pope are Greek!

However, the reality is radically different. The Roman Catholic understanding of the Holy Trinity is quite different because of the filioque, the understanding of Christ is full of ‘Jesusism’, that is, suffering human nature which overshadows the victorious God-Man, the Mother of God is called the Virgin, despite the fact that virginity is no guarantee of holiness and may express mere puritanism and forced clerical celibacy, the concept of the clergy is deformed through compulsory clerical celibacy and therefore the concept of the sacraments is deformed also. The same thing with those words ‘Catholic’ and ‘Pope’. The first means having the same faith as always and in all cultures, which is clearly not the case with ‘Roman Catholic’, which means imperialism, spreading the Roman mentality worldwide, and the second does not mean a distant tyrant, but a loving father!

Only if Catholicism first renounces the filioque and the Papal claims, can we sit down and talk. However, the reality is that Roman Catholicism is on the brink of splitting yet again, this time with Archbishop Vigano. This follows all its other splits, the most numerous being those in the sixteenth century, when protestors against its corruption broke away from it in large numbers.

Q: What do you make of the recent statement that the Church of England no longer has churches, but communities?

A: The word ‘church’ comes from the Greek word ‘kyriakon’, which means ‘the House of the Lord’. It can be said that parishes are church communities and monasteries monastic communities, but they are not simply ‘communities’. The renunciation of the word ‘church’ simply indicates that the ‘Church’ of England is now fully secularised and is officially a network of clubs. In fact, that is what many have long suspected, so nothing new here.

Pastoral and Liturgical Matters

Q: Did you bless people to get the covid vaccine?

A: The covid vaccine is not a dogmatic issue, but a question of personal choice. Thus, two people came to me for a blessing at that time, three years ago. This was because they both worked for the NHS and risked losing their jobs if they did not agree to it. Therefore, I blessed them to take the vaccine on condition that they make the sign of the cross over the vaccine as it was injected. They both did so and both have been fine ever since and, above all, kept their jobs.

Q: My name is Clyde and I am a Glaswegian. I want to keep my Scottish roots. If I enter Orthodoxy, what saint’s name could I take?

A: I presume you are called after the River Clyde in Glasgow. Why not take the name of another famous place in Scotland, which is at the source of Scottish Christian national identity: St Andrews? And so take the Christian name Andrew.

Q: What is the point of the liturgical fans? I have heard that they were basically introduced as fly swatters.

A: I think the fly-swatting was purely coincidental! The fans symbolise the wafting of the Holy Spirit over the Gospel and the eucharistic gifts.

Q: How do you explain the disastrous demographic situation in Western and Westernised countries?

A: For over two generations Western and Westernised women have been told that they should live, behave, think, speak and dress exactly like men. The only natural result is the demographic crisis.

Q: Why do so many British people have tattoos nowadays?

A: Because they partake of modern pagan culture. It seems that even the name ‘Britain’ comes from a word meaning ‘the tattooed’. This was recorded by the Greek explorer Pytheas in the fourth century BC. It seems to me that the Western world has rejected Christianity over the last century and more especially, each people has revived its native paganism. Thus, Hitler’s Germany was profoundly pagan, in Scandinavia they have revived Norse pagan mythology, in the Ukraine pagan symbolism is now used everywhere, in France they have returned to full hedonism etc. In Britain this has resulted in the use of tattoos, essentially war paint, which accompanies the aggressiveness of pagan life, both ancient and modern.

Q: When did the Flood occur, according to the Orthodox reckoning?

A: According to the Septuagint (the first parts of which were written down in 272 BC, which means that it is some 1,000 years older than the rabbinical/Protestant version of the Old Testament), the Flood took place in about 3,243 BC, that is about 5,267 years ago. If you follow the dating in the much later Jewish Massoretic text, with its chronology corrupted by later rabbis, the Flood occurred in about 2,348 BC – before the rule of Gilgamesh, who lived in about 2,700-2,600 BC, before the Great Pyramid was built in Egypt in 2,600 BC and before the stone circle was erected at Stonehenge in about 2,500 BC.

Q: I have read on the internet that Fr Andrew Phillips is ‘popular but controversial’. Why do some consider that you are controversial?

A: Because I tell it like it is. The truth is always controversial. There is nothing more hated than the truth. As they say: ‘If you tell the truth 99% of the time, you may survive, but if you tell the truth 100% of the time, they will certainly try and destroy you’. Look what they did to Christ. As He said, ‘The truth will set you free’. Those are the words I will have on my gravestone.

Q: Did you know Fr David (Mark) Meyrick of Walsingham?

A: Yes. I knew him quite well, having first met him in 1976. I have great admiration for him, some of his icons have been inspirational.  However, it was a pity that he did not found a permanent church, but just rented a room. This meant that after his death, it all began to fall apart. I also thought it very strange that he did not dedicate his tiny chapel to an Icon of the Mother of God, which would have been appropriate in Walsingham.

The Bulgarians Rout the ‘Phanar Lobby’: Next in Line – the ‘Lavender Lobby’

https://ruskline.ru/news_rl/2024/07/03/bolgary_razgromili_fanarskoe_lobbi

 

The following article is a translation of the above Russian article, published in Moscow on 4 July by the well-known Church journalist Anatoly Stepanov. It clearly outlines how by choosing a new Patriarch, the Bulgarian Church has come to support the canonical Church in the Ukraine under Metropolitan Onufry. Thus, it has for the moment defeated the pro-Phanariot lobby and its fake and schismatic ‘Church in the Ukraine’ (OCU), whose main sponsor is the atheistic US State Department. However, it also shows that the US-controlled liberal/ecumenist/pro-Catholic/pseudo-intellectual/celibate lobby which is trying to split the Church is also profoundly homosexual. This is not news for some of us, but it will be to many.

Moreover, this split is not a Greek-Russian split, for apart from the very well-known homosexual metropolitans, archbishops and clerics within the Patriarchate of Constantinople, there are also many others of other nationalities, such as Bulgarians and Russians. Such are also part of this homosexual (‘lavender’) lobby, for instance the notorious but only recently defrocked Moscow Abbot Peter Yeremeev. He was allowed for years and years to continue his activities quite openly in Moscow to the scandal of the faithful. As the article hints, but does not dare say openly, he and others were and are protected by powerful clerical friends of the same narcissistic ‘variety’, who, moreover, as we well know, are also very active outside Russia in corrupting Church life with their boyfriends and persecuting the faithful. Here is a translation of the article:

 

On Sunday June 30, the election of the Primate of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (BOC) was held. This attracted the close attention of Orthodox observers and the public not only in Bulgaria. And no wonder, because the fate of not only the future of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, but also the future of all world Orthodoxy was being decided.

On the eve of the elections, we witnessed open interference in the internal affairs of the BOC by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. On May 19 an extraordinary event took place: a group of Bulgarian hierarchs headed by the most influential in Bulgaria, Metropolitan Nicholas (Sebastianov) of Plovdiv, visited the Patriarchate of Constantinople and openly concelebrated with representatives of the schismatic Orthodox Church in the Ukraine (OCU).

This was not only a challenge to the Bulgarian Church, which, as you know, does not recognise the legitimacy of the OCU, but is also a revelation of the future course of the BOC. And then Patriarch Bartholomew was invited (it is not clear on whose behalf, since there was no decision of the Synod) to take part in the ceremony of the election of His Holiness the Patriarch of Bulgaria and his enthronement.

It was a public act of interference. And how many behind-the-scenes attempts to exert influence, which, for sure, took place both on the part of the American embassy and on the part of ‘our overseas partners’, as the Russian Department of External Church Relations (DECR) has long called Constantinople, which has long been under the control of the United States.

Therefore, many anxiously awaited the decision of the Council of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which was supposed to elect its Primate. On the eve of the final voting, as is known, the Synod of the BOC elected three bishops as candidates for the post of Primate of the Church – Metropolitan Grigory (Tsvetkov) of Vrachansky, who acted as Locum Tenens, Metropolitan Gabriel (Dinev) of Lovech and Metropolitan Daniel (Nikolov) of Vidin.

According to all forecasts, experts gave preference to Metropolitan Gregory, who was considered as a kind of compromise figure, albeit a conditional compromise, since his sympathies for the Phanar were well-known. However, unexpectedly, in the second round of the final voting, Metropolitan Daniel (Nikolov) of Vidin won, for whom 69 members of the Council voted, Metropolitan Gregory received 66 votes in his support. In the first round, Metropolitan Gregory received 64 votes, Metropolitan Daniel – 51 votes, and Metropolitan Gabriel – 19 votes (several ballots were declared invalid).

The decision of the Council became a sensation for many, a joyful sensation. It testifies to the fact that the supporters of canonical Orthodoxy, and it was from these positions that Metropolitan Daniel always spoke, turned out to be in the majority in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and preferred to have as their Patriarch a person who, on the eve of the elections, again clearly and unequivocally outlined his position on the rejection of the Ukrainian schismatics. Moreover, he was the only candidate for Patriarch who spoke directly on this key question

Of course, the results of the vote testify to the shaky balance of power in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church: 69 votes against 66 is the clearest evidence of this.Nevertheless, the decision of the Council is final, and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has a Primate who will defend canonical rules and norms and will not allow the Phanar to establish control over the BOC and deepen the schism in world Orthodoxy.

However, it is clear to everyone that the new Patriarch Daniel is receiving a very difficult inheritance, and his unequivocal rejection of the schismatic actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople will not go unanswered. And we are already seeing the latter answers in the form of dirty tricks. Patriarch Bartholomew, apparently dissatisfied with the results of the choice of the Bulgarian Orthodox, refused to serve the first Divine Liturgy with his newly elected brother, went home, demonstratively leaving his representative, an archimandrite, to concelebrate.

Moreover, he is one who has a very dubious reputation – Archimandrite Kharalampy (Nichev), who was once a cleric of the BOC, but was expelled after a scandal, but was accepted in his present rank in Constantinople. At the same time, this same Archimandrite Kharalampy has a reputation as a person who belongs to the ‘lavender lobby’. Moreover, during the first Divine Liturgy of Patriarch Daniel, Archimandrite Kharalampy, being the senior priest by consecration, led the service as a representative of the clergy.

There will certainly be many more such dirty tricks on the part of the Phanar. But they do not pose a danger, but an attempt to provoke a schism in the BOC from among the bishops and priests dissatisfied with the election of Patriarch Daniel is a more terrible danger. And given the results of the vote, almost half were dissatisfied. It is clear that there is a long distance from discontent to a change of jurisdiction and an attempt to split, but the problem is serious. His Holiness Patriarch Daniel will obviously have to exert a great deal of effort to prevent a split in the BOC. Therefore, it is very likely that he will take some conciliatory actions and steps first of all.

It is very likely that the opposition to the new Patriarch will be led by the already mentioned and very influential Metropolitan Nicholas of Plovdiv, who has extensive connections in political circles (there are rumours that his father served in the security service of the Communist leader of Bulgaria Todor Zhivkov, i.e. he was not the least person at that time). Metropolitan Nicholas has recently become a leader of the pro-Phanar policy in the BOC.

Metropolitan Nicholas is a visible embodiment of the failures of the policy ‘of an Orthodox direction’ of the Department for External Church Relations (DECR) of the Moscow Patriarchate, which for a long time banked on him. And it seems that there were reasons for this, in addition to the family ties of the Metropolitan of Plovdiv. He was educated at the Moscow Theological Academy and for a long time demonstratively supported pro-Russian positions in the Bulgarian episcopate. In addition to the DECR, as far as we know, our Embassy also banked on him. So this is proof of the failure of all Russian diplomacy, not only ecclesiastical. As a result, we have now received a deafening slap in the face since Metropolitan Nicholas has become the main propagandist of the Phanar in the BOC, and the DECR and the Russian embassy seem to have got it all wrong.

Moreover, Metropolitan Nicholas not only changed his political orientation, but also committed openly offensive actions against His Holiness Patriarch Kirill. We are talking about his arbitrary restoration to the ecclesiastical dignity of the former hegumen Peter Yeremeev, who was banned in the Russian Church, who has recently been seen several times at the Divine services of Metropolitan Nicholas. And this is not just an insult to His Holiness Patriarch Kirill personally, who approved the decision to defrock the former hegumen Peter, but also in fact the creation of a serious problem in relations between the Bulgarian and Russian Orthodox Churches…..

Hegumen Pyotr Eremeev is a notorious personality. In addition to the fact that he held high positions in the structures of the Russian Orthodox Church, being the abbot of the historic Vysokopetrovsky Monastery in the centre of the capital and the rector of the Russian Orthodox University, he is widely known in narrow circles as one of the most prominent faces of the so-called ‘lavender lobby’ in the Russian Orthodox Church. Believers whispered about this and spoke with sorrow. And his ban from serving was perceived with great satisfaction by many Orthodox believers as a sure sign of the cleansing of the Church from the ‘lavender filth’.

Therefore, the story of the former abbot Peter testifies to the fact that the new Bulgarian Patriarch, in addition to the ‘Phanar lobby’, has another dangerous and influential opponent – the ‘lavender lobby’. It is no coincidence that in Bulgaria they whisper about the non-traditional sexual orientation of Metropolitan Nicholas of Plovdiv. It is also surprising and sad that Russian Church diplomats considered him to be the main supporter of the Russian Orthodox Church in Bulgaria.

By the way, as informed people say, the strange inclinations of the former hegumen Peter began to manifest themselves after his studies in Bulgaria, where he met and became friends with the then vicar of the Bulgarian Patriarch, Bishop Nicholas (Sebastianov) of Znepol. These unhealthy inclinations led Pyotr Yeremeev into a scandal with students of the Moscow Academy, which was the reason for his exile from Moscow to Khabarovsk in the Far East. But then he returned to the capital, supposedly cured of the sodomite disease, a story which turned out to be untrue.

Of course, we rejoice at the election of the new Bulgarian Patriarch, especially realising that we are witnessing the manifestation of the action of Divine Providence in history, which inspires us with hope in these desperate times. But let us be aware that Patriarch Daniel faces the most difficult trials ahead. Therefore, it would be right for all of us to at least sigh before God for Patriarch Daniel of Bulgaria, who is embarking on the difficult path of struggle for the Church of Christ and for the unity of world Orthodoxy.

 

The Difference Between Orthodox Christians and Converts

The Orthodox Christian Man

He may be called Nick, George, Sergei or Jim (= Dimitrios, Dmitry, Dumitrou, Dima) and he works as a builder, carpenter, plumber, electrician or car mechanic (if Serb). He did not go to church very often, apart from to stand outside to smoke cigarettes and talk with his friends, who have the same name as him, until he turned 50, then he started seriously. He once spoke to a convert. The latter told him that his parents were not Orthodox so ‘they will not be saved and will go to hell’. Nick/George/Sergei/Jim said afterwards: ‘He talk crap’ (this sounds more effective when said with a rolled ‘r’ in an Eastern European accent). He added that ‘he look like he need good meal. That make man of him’. He tells everyone that he is the boss (his wife told him so), but he actually knows that his wife is the boss and, secretly, he prefers it that way, but would never admit to it in public.

The Orthodox Christian Woman

Her name ends in ‘a’ (for example Maria), or in ‘na’ (for example, Alina, Arina, Carolina, Ekaterina, Galina, Inna, Irina, Karina, Nina, Marina, Nina, Paulina, Valentina, Christina, Ioanna, Oana, Oksana, Svetlana, Tatiana, Elena) or else in oula (for example, Coula, Foula, Poula, Roula, Soula, Toula). She did not go to church very often until she turned 40, then suddenly she started and now she never misses a service. She is an excellent cook and like her husband is slightly overweight. Her husband says that ‘she comfortable’, which is his word for ‘plump’. She has to be slightly plump for the sake of her many grandchildren, who like sitting on her lap.  She never argues with her husband because she arranges it so he always agrees with her. Her sons, who are builders, fear her and she made sure they all got married before the age of 30. Her daughters, who are beauticians, hairdressers, nurses or teachers, spend as much time as possible with her. She encourages them to have as many babies as possible.

The Male Convert

Although his real name is Bob, Tom or Tony, he calls himself Seraphim, Moses, Vladimir or Silouan. He is single and tends to be frightened of or even despise women (which is why he is single). He has very long hair, tied into a bun at the back, and a very long beard (the parish priest has short hair and a short beard and no-one else in the parish has long hair or a beard). His favourite colour is black and he is very thin. He has a huge number of icons, many ‘Orthodox’ books, several tiny wrist-size rosaries (which for some reason he calls ‘ropes’) and watches podcasts given by gurus who look like him. His favourite word is ‘holy’, and adds it to everything: ‘holy liturgy’, ‘holy canons’, ‘holy icons’, ‘holy tradition’, ‘holy fast’, ‘holy fathers’ etc. He has very right-wing views. He litters his speech with words like ‘prelest’, ‘schema’, ‘stichar’ or ‘omofor’, which he mispronounces and which no-one else in the parish or anywhere else knows anyway. He is not at all practical and gives the impression of being rather autistic. He works part-time and has problems holding down a job. Thank goodness nobody would ever think of making him a bishop. If they did, the power would go to his head and make him crazy.

The Female Convert

Although her real name is Sue or Pam, she calls herself Seraphima or Anastasia. She is single. Although she comes from a well-off family, she usually dresses in long and old skirts. She does not look after her long hair, would never dye it, and never wears any make-up. Her favourite colour is black and she appears to wear tablecloths over her hair, though she calls them headscarves. She is to be found in food shops examining the ingredients of various foods to make sure that they contain no non-fasting foods, the slightest amount of which could cause her to sin mortally. She is vegan and very thin and pale. She does not feel confident with children and may never have any.

 

How Not to Run a Franchise

It was at the Great Rebranding Meeting at their US headquarters in 2017 that the MacSonalds Corporation decided not to rename itself. ‘Our reputation is based on Tradition’, agreed the executives. ‘If we rename ourselves to ‘The True MacSonalds’, as some have suggested, people will realise we have changed the ingredients. We must at all costs keep the same name, so that nobody notices anything’. All agreed that the franchises in North America and in their Australian colony were firmly under their rebranding control and that the only problem would be in Asia, always a thorny problem. ‘They need to follow the successful American business model’, declared the executives. ‘They’re very backward in Asia. They raise hardly any cash for us’.

Therefore, the Board voted to send a new manager to Asia to reform their small franchise operation there. But who? There seemed to be only one candidate. Several executives opposed the new manager (‘he’s too young’, ‘he’s untrained’, ‘he hates everyone except for himself’, he’s too aggressive’, ‘he’s a jealous narcissist who’ll meet an empath’, ‘he’s a control freak’, ‘nobody likes him’, ‘he’s toxic and will rub them all up the wrong way’, ‘they’ll figure out his real game’, ‘he doesn’t even speak their languages’, and ‘he’s a fake’). However, most of the rather elderly managers were blinded by the new manager’s dynamism and excellent command of English. ‘Over there it’s out of control, why, those Asian guys don’t even behave like Americans’, they said, ‘the boy will sort them all out and bring them into line. He says he’s been to college and he can even speak in what sounds to me like a British accent. Leave it to him. Send in our sheriff and he’ll clean them out’.

So, soon after the Meeting a small trail-blazing group duly went over from the US to the Asian head office and brutally sacked the senior manager, who had been there all his life, in order to make way for their go-getter protege. ‘We know best’, they proclaimed. After all, ‘regime change’, kicking out the old hands who have dedicated their whole lives to the franchise and know the people, is essential to any ‘modernizing’ American operation abroad. Of course, that all created scandal and the old Asian hands left MacSonald’s at once, in a state of shock. ‘We’ve started the ball rolling. Now, wait for the fireworks to start – shock and awe’, said the old hands, rubbing their hands with glee and adding: ‘He may be an upstart who knows nothing, but he’s sure got energy and loves money. He’ll rake in the dollars and that’s exactly what we need. We’re princes and we have to live like princes’.

So the young whippersnapper, now with the fancy title of ‘Head of Asian Operations’, came over and at once rented an expensive residence and smart car. At the very first meeting with the locals, who had been there even before the new boss had been born, he began insisting that everyone speak American. Then he revealed that he did not even know the name of the territory he was in charge of and so insulted several nationalities. He also made it clear that he would brook no opposition to his absolute rule, especially from the experienced, and would impose strict censorship on any dissenters. ‘I’ll be checking on you all and this is how you must contact me. Remember: I know everything and you know nothing’. A stereotypical nasty American – and an embarrassment to nice Americans.

Next he tried to take over the properties of the franchisees, not realising the latter had put their own money and great efforts into their properties over the decades, that the properties did not belong to him. As the lawyer commented: ‘That’s illegal, it’s a property grab’. In return: ‘The keys, give me the keys!’, he shouted down the telephone. When he could not get his hands on the property, he began to demand ‘absolute obedience’, meaning worship of himself, as if he were some sort of cult leader. Then he turned really nasty, raged, and was spectacularly rude, bullying and gaslighting, projecting all his faults onto others, demanding as much money as possible. In one of the few remaining Filipino outlets, they asked each other: ‘Who does he think he is, an infallible Pope?’ In the two Singapore outlets they called him ‘the cowboy’.

He clearly did not understand that being a successful business is not just about making a quick buck in the short term, but about looking after your customers in the long term, from generation to generation. What really enraged the jealous young man was when the local franchisees expanded because of their own success, without him. Either he would have full control or else he would close you down. It seems that he had never been told how a franchise operation works. What a pity they had not instructed him in the basics of respect for other human beings first. He would take no advice.

From that point on, all went from disaster to catastrophe. He expelled nearly all the outlets in the Philippines because they ‘did not make true burgers’. However, so much had he hoodwinked, some would say hypnotised, the oldies in the US, that they not only let him get away with this, but even approved of it. Word soon got around all the similar corporations in Asia as to who he was and they sat back and waited for him to fail. The whippersnapper found himself very isolated and he would complain about being lonely. Despite the fact that he used to alter the minutes of all the meetings to make himself look good before he sent them back to the US, the Board in the US was made aware of what had been going on.

However, they ignored what the Asian whistleblowers had politely presented and backed their protege, asking him to punish those who had warned them what was going on. It was on their own heads. No surprises then when the franchisees did exactly as they had warned and left MacSonalds after decades. The Board had not only ignored them, but also punished them for telling the truth, the very thing they hated the most. The franchisees joined the competitor, MacTonalds, which was already seven times bigger anyway and, above all, Pan-Asian and not foreign. The franchisees commented that ‘leaving had been like getting out of a straitjacket’. The whippersnapper began shouting: ‘They’re all fired!’ (too late – they had already left and joined the rival). Then the trigger-happy foreigner added frantically: ‘Only our burgers are true. All the others are fake’. Everybody laughed and laughed at him for that. The psychiatric ambulance was on its way.

When some time after all this, as had become inevitable, MacSonalds went into administration, one of the old hands commented ruefully: ‘The boy messed up big time. I guess it’s our own fault, we never taught him how to say sorry and then we backed him up. He hoodwinked us’. But it was all far too late for such regrets about the lack of any moral sense. And all because, from the very outset, they had not listened to the local people and the local managers.

Sic transit gloria mundi…

 

The Moldovan Church Saga Continues

Moldova’s population is now only about 2.5 million after the immigration of some 1.2 million Moldovans to Western Europe began after the fall of the USSR, especially since Romania joined the EU. (Most Moldovans have Romanian passports; some 15 years ago they could be bought quite simply for only $10).

The Orthodox Church in 95% + Orthodox Moldova is divided into two. Firstly, since the Soviet Occupation that began in 1941 there has been the Moldovan Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, with seven bishops and some 1200 parishes. Secondly, since the fall of the USSR there has been a second Church, the Metropolia of Bessarabia. This reconstitutes the Church as it was before 1941 as part of the Patriarchate of Romania (over 80% of the Moldovan population is Romanian). Over the last thirty years that part has gradually built up, though even now only about 250 parishes belong to it. However, that number has increased particularly over the last eighteen months, since the conflict in the Ukraine entered its latest phase.

Metropolitan Vladimir (Cantarean), the leader of the Moscow part of the Church, is losing on 2 fronts; at home and abroad. At home priests and parishes are leaving for the Metropolia of Bessarabia, which is supported both by the Romanian government and by the pro-Western Moldovan government. His ‘competition’, the Metropolia of Bessarabia, is fully canonical. This is despite the usual absurd Russian propaganda from the extremists, who ridiculously claim that those in the Romanian Church are ‘schismatics’ or ‘have no grace’!

Abroad, Metr Vladimir is also losing: young people and clergy are leaving corrupt and impoverished Moldova for a better life and so churches back home have less income and few children. Abroad, the hundreds of Moldovan parishes, especially in Italy, Spain and Portugal, have to be under the Patriarchate of Moscow, which funnels money to Moscow – not to Metropolitan Vladimir.

What can Metr Vladimir do?

He could adopt the Latvian scenario, which is to get the Moldovan State to grant him ‘autocephaly’ (independence) and stop commemorating the Russian Patriarch, as Metropolitan Alexander, the leader of Russian Orthodox in Latvia, did. Now everybody, even in the first year of seminary, knows that this is uncanonical. Only a Mother-Church can grant autocephaly. Indeed, Metr Alexander’s policy in Latvia has proved to be disastrous.

A great many churches in Latvia are now empty. The Orthodox people, nearly all of whom are Russians, are boycotting a Church where their Russian Patriarch is not commemorated. Some Orthodox are travelling to church in Lithuania and Estonia to go to church. There they do commemorate the Russian Patriarch. The income of the Church in Latvia has dropped dramatically. Of the three priests I know who continued to commemorate the Russian Patriarch despite the instructions of Metr Alexander, one has stopped commemorating under pressure, a second has been suspended and the third continues for the moment.

Therefore, in the meantime, Metr Vladimir in Moldova has written a letter to the Russian Patriarch Kyrill asking for autocephaly. On top of that he has recently been travelling to parishes abroad, notably to England and Ireland to try and get Moldovan support for an Autocephalous Moldovan Orthodox Church. If he gets autocephaly (highly unlikely, it seems), then he can claim the Moldovan parishes abroad, which are at present under the Moscow Patriarchate’s Exarchate, which is centred in Paris. This would virtually wipe out that largely Moldovan-dependent Russian Exarchate in southern Europe and pose many questions for it in Switzerland, France, England and elsewhere.

The situation has not been helped by the racism that Moldovans have experienced on the part of Russians in Western Europe and the years-long corruption involving sums of Moldovan money funnelled to Moscow. That has already quite naturally made for bad feeling on the part of Moldovans towards Russians (‘I don’t like Romanians and only half-like Moldovans’, as one young and particularly tactful (!) Russian bishop said three years ago to an audience mainly of Romanians and Moldovans!)

Most likely of all, centralist Moscow will either ignore Metr Vladimir’s letter requesting autocephaly or reject it. If so, then Metr Vladimir has an alternative which Metr Alexander in Latvia does not have; that is, to join wholesale the Patriarchate of Romania and to become an Autonomous Church within that Patriarchate, which could give him the right to autonomous parishes in Western Europe. But what happens then to relations between Bucharest and Moscow? Especially when Moscow desperately needs Romanian support against Constantinople in Church matters in the Ukraine.

 

Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard University speaks about the consequences of the G20/G21 meeting in Delhi (and ROCOR).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP4NlFchZ9w

25.50 – 26.44

‘What’s diplomacy (for the USA)’?

‘It’s bad-mouthing, foul-mouthing, it’s ignorance, it’s a lack of understanding of the perspective of others and it’s bullying and arrogance that they think can somehow work and what we’re clearly seeing in the world right now is it doesn’t work. It’s over. You can’t just bully and bluff your way through this. And the United States had better train some diplomats, not foul-mouthed insulters of others. But that’s what we’ve seen. We’ve forgotten the most basic skills of diplomacy in the last twenty years, because it’s all been if you don’t like the other country, you don’t have to talk to them, you just do a regime-change operation and so that’s the opposite of diplomacy’.

On the Extinction of the Church of England

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2022/27-may3-june/news/uk/church-of-england-r-number-suggests-bleak-future-says-mathematician

The news that the Church of England, and other Protestant denominations, are facing extinction in the UK over the next forty years is not news. It has been predicted for generations. The Church of England was after all just an expedient Establishment invention by Henry VIII 500 years ago, a property and land grab by the King and his cronies, a piece of convenient nationalism, an outward, pretend Roman Catholic Church, which was at heart Protestant, devised to keep the masses under State control. The only surprising thing is that the temporary sticking-plaster of the Church of England has lasted so long. Thus, when the secular media accuse the Church of England of being ‘out of touch with public opinion’, which is a way of saying ‘out of touch with media manipulations’, we are given the hope that it may survive a bit longer. However, it is not just the secular media who say such things, it is most of the Church of England.

Everybody knows that the Church of England has always swum with the tide. In the 18th century many of its bishops were slaveowners and proud of it. In the early 20th century many of its bishops and vicars were keen fox-hunters, but definitely against buggery, but the greatest sin of all for them was definitely divorce. Sexual morality was the only real sin for the Puritans. In the 1970s its bishops were enthusiastic about the Common Market, though in 2016 many of them were against its successor, the EU. In the early 21st century its clergy were universally against slavery and fox-hunting, but keen on same-sex marriage, which some of them lived in and divorce really did not matter any more. It is all the classic ‘Vicar of Bray’ syndrome. ‘Which way is the State directing us to go? The reason we ask is because we must follow it’. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vicar_of_Bray)

This is not an attack on the Church of England and the other Protestant denominations which face extinction at the same time, or even before. It is just facts. And neither is it written in favour of Roman Catholicism. That denomination is also in a state of chronic decline, literally dying out for lack of clergy and because its present clergy are, sometimes quite unjustly, suspected by a great many of being pedophiles. Just as Protestantism, of which the Church of England is merely a part, has come to the end of its 500-year shelf-life, so has Roman Catholicism, which is coming to the end of its 1,000-year shelf-life. The time of all the dinosaurs is up.

Is this a plea then for minority Orthodox Christianity? No. Far too many of its bishops live in small and ever smaller nationalist ghettoes, or else are bullies, Soviet-style thugs who live in luxury and are all stick, but no carrot, who threaten, intimidate, punish and try to steal from and rob real Christians. They are the corrupt spiritual descendants of those who martyred Orthodox Russia from 1917 on and try to martyr Christians today. Their ‘example’ is why Orthodoxy is so small. The time of all those schismatics dinosaurs is up. They too face extinction – or else a very long stay in a monastery to reflect on their sins and find repentance before the Church.

So what is this a plea for?

It is a plea for the authentic Orthodox Church, the Church of God, the Church of the Saints.