Voices from Russia » Andrew Phillips

“It’s All Over!”

01varvara — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:40:00 +0000

Positive mental attitude is a psychological term that describes a mental phenomenon in which the central idea is that one can increase achievement through optimistic thought processes. PMA implies that one has a vision of good-natured change in one’s mind; it employs a state of mind that continues to seek, find, and execute ways to win, or find a desirable outcome, regardless of the circumstances. It rejects negativity, defeatism, and hopelessness. Part of the process of achieving PMA employs motivating “self-talk” and deliberate goal-directed thinking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_mental_attitude

Affirmations in New Age and New Thought terminology refers primarily to the practise of positive thinking… fostering “a positive mental attitude supported by affirmations will achieve success in anything”. More specifically, an affirmation is a carefully-formatted statement that should be repeated to one’s self and written down frequently. For an affirmation to be effective, it needs to be present-tense, positive, personal, and specific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_thinking

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The “ideas” or “cognitions” in question may include attitudes and beliefs, the awareness of one’s behaviour, and facts. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours, or by justifying or rationalising their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

The fact is that when the Church is persecuted, people can either support the persecuted or else support the persecutors. It is our Christian duty to forgive our persecutors, but, we cannot and, indeed, must not forget, so that this does not happen again.

Archpriest Andrew Phillips

http://orthodoxengland.org.uk/judgement.htm

JP and Co tell us continuously, “It’s all over! Everything has changed!” Of course, the Millennium is not upon us, the Second Coming has not occurred, the lion has not lain down with the lamb, and the Money Tree has not sprouted in the backyard. The very vehemence of this statement is a sign that the driving ideology behind JP is NOT Christian… it is emphatically an example of an “affirmation”, which is a form of “Positive Mental Attitude” (see the definitions above). Don’t confuse Positive Mental Attitude with the Positivism of Comte and Durkheim… they are NOT the same; the former is more a petit-bourgeois affectation (found especially in the affluent effluent in American suburbia), whilst the latter is a real intellectual thesis (although I, and others, would argue that it is deeply flawed).

One reason why people are rejecting this statement of JP is that the facts on the ground contradict his words, causing an acute case of cognitive dissonance (see definition above). For instance, immediately after his election, and directly after he declared the ancien régime dead and buried, everyone saw the news of the Sidebottom settlement on oca.org. THAT set off alarm bells in many minds, mine included. It was the same old lawyerly evasion that the old gang used… set in the same prissy and evasive prose… “We have done no wrong”. Then, why was there a “confidential settlement?” Everyone was waiting for an apology from JP to Mr Sidebottom… it didn’t occur. Doubt entered the door… it wasn’t cognitive dissonance yet… but, it put many of us on the alert.

Then, the Koumentakos case lingered in the courts, and the OCA backed Raymond Velencia to the hilt. JP went to Venice FL to pay his respects to Bobby K (who kept his sinecure as “Parish Outreach Coordinator”… an office lacking in most parishes due to lack of funds)… Igor Burdikoff stayed on as Dean of Upstate NY (after “losing” four years’ worth of diocesan financial records)… Lyonyo Kishkovsky retained the same office that he occupied since the days of Feodosy Lazor… and expenses not delineated in the published budget surfaced (LK going to Kazakhstan, JP and Co going to Moscow, and the legal expenses for the Koumentakos case, for instance). As “Moses” put it so well, “Well, the new boss looks just like the old boss”.

If there has been substantive change… where is it? There is one change… and it was not for the better. Matushka Nina Stroyen pointed up to me, “Herman was a megalomaniac, but, he was Orthodox to the bone”. That is true… Herman Swaiko was a bastard, to be sure… but, he WAS “one of us”. I could NEVER imagine Herman allowing SVS to sign a pact with a TEC seminary. Herman would not have done so… he would have sent a drooling “absent-minded professor” academic priest to that spurious Anglican conference, and that would be that. Certainly, he would sign no “covenant” with the TEC, thank you very much. JP and Hatfield did so. This was a MAJOR break with the past. It was also a MAJOR break with the policy of the MP as regards the TEC (Moscow has broken off “dialogue”)… but, that’s another story, isn’t it? (I think that it’s unwise in the extreme for JP to disregard Moscow in this… after all, they are his only “canonical lifeline”. He doesn’t seem to care… interesting, nicht wahr?)

What is interesting for us in this present case is that JP and Co are not “defending” their actions (at least, not in accessible public venues)… it is as if they believe that if they ignore it long enough, it shall “go away”. That brings us back to “affirmations” and “Positive Mental Attitude”. These are major portions of what I call “Godless Suburban Positive Therapeutese”. Its high priests are “therapists”, “facilitators”, and “counsellors”, that is, the “shrinkie-dinkie” has taken the place of the clergyman. Indeed, in the OCA (and, I believe, the AOCANA) no man can enter seminary unless a shrink vets him (shades of Timothy Blumentritt, eh?). True, they are just aping what they see in the heterodox confessions… God forbid that we should follow our own path… they may not invite us to their parties!

Note well that oca.org acts as though everything is “normal”, everything is “fine”, and the situation is “stable”. I have seen this on a smaller scale in my parish. During the years of crisis under Herman, one heard not a peep about it (I am NOT lying… no one said a word). One only saw that this one or that one “disappeared”. No one said anything… and if one asked about it, one received either evasions or a smile from the Iggster (he has the broadest insincere “sincere smile” that I have ever seen… I have seen the face of evil… it is not “ugly”, it is bland and smiling). Everything was “normal” and “fine”, and everything was “stable”. Note well that Iggy is one of those around JP and Co (they don’t mind that he “lost” church records… they do keep him in office, after all!)… he is also deeply up to his neck with the New Skete crowd (do recall JP’s fulsome praise of that lot). Therefore, I have had direct observation of one of the most notorious and hated modernists in the Church… I can see how JP and Co are going to act… they are going to act with the same smiling evasive blandness that Iggy employs. If it is evil in the case of Igor Burdikoff, it is evil in the case of JP. There is no way around it.

We’ve been “had”, people. We all believed in a will o’ the wisp because our hatred of the actions of Herman Swaiko blinded us as to the true nature of JP. Now, there is an unholy trinity of former Episkies (JP, BP, and Hatfield) running the OCA. They intend to take the OCA into an Anglican direction, as the Nashotah House pact indicates. All that shall linger, I fear, is an Orthodox shell, a mere “Eastern” liturgical veneer over a noxious mixture of Anglican comprehensiveness and convert hubris. We did want Herman out “at all costs”, didn’t we? Well… I’ll admit freely that my dislike of Herman’s overbearing highhandedness blinded me… I think that I am NOT alone. “At all costs”… the bill is now due for payment, and we don’t like it. However, there is a fly in the ointment, folks. The Lord gave us EXACTLY what we asked for.

“It’s all over!” Yes, it is… but, not in the sense that JP means. Furthermore, we must, first, REMEMBER. As Fr Andrew points up, “We cannot and, indeed, must not forget, so that this does not happen again”. Think on that when someone like JP or BP tells you to “move on”… ask yourself, “WHY?” Otherwise, we shall chain ourselves to a carousel of folly. Our fate shall be self-inflicted and fatal… our children shall show more sense than we have… they shall pick up and leave (as too many have done over the past 40 years due to mischief by clerics and the gossips they allow free rein).

I believe that there is still time to turn back to sanity… shall you join me?

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Tuesday 3 November 2009

Albany NY

“Europe should keep in mind that Russia protects it From an Islamic Deluge”

01varvara — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:15:57 +0000

26 May 2009

ABC.es

As quoted in Narochnitskaya.ru

http://narochnitskaia.ru/cgi-bin/main.cgi?item=1r300r090601130700 (in Russian)

Editor’s Afterword:

In his recent trip abroad, US President Obama had the gall to lecture both Prime Minister Putin and Pope Benedict. Needless to say, neither man was impressed by the American popinjay. In fact, Mr Putin went from meeting Mr Obama to a meeting with Russian bikers, who were preparing to go on a mass bike rally in the Ukraine to celebrate the Russian Black Sea Fleet and the liberation of Sevastopol in the 2^nd Great Patriotic War. Mr Obama bleated about how “spheres of influence should not exist in the modern age”. Well, Vova gave the bikers a large Russian flag to fly during their motorcade through Little Russia. Bully for Vladimir Vladimirovich! By his actions, he told that posturing American loud and clear, didn’t he? (Pope Benedict didn’t give in to The Greatest Hope of All Time either. I doubt that BO shall get the message, though. His messianic and self-righteous sort is DENSE.)

From the above, it is clear that Ms Narochnitskaya shares Mr Putin’s views completely. In fact, it is a point-of-view shared by virtually all educated Russians, save for a small minority that is in thrall to Western notions. Americans should shake themselves loose and SEE what is happening. Messrs Obama and Biden (the latter was in my area on Thursday last saying such to the true believers) are both croaking, “Recovery is just down the road!” If you believe that one, boy-oh-boy, do I have a wonderful one-owner bridge just for you!

Remember… iniquity and lies only triumph when we are quiescent. The truth SHALL set you free…

Towards a Different World Order

01varvara — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:42:49 +0000

President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) in Madrid with Spanish President Francisco Franco y Bahamonde (1892-1975) in 1959. President Eisenhower’s words on the Military-Industrial Complex are “meat, indeed”. Reflect on the fact that a former general spoke those words…

In 1953 President Eisenhower said: “The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: A modern brick school in more than thirty cities”. Leaving office in 1961, he said: “We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage”.

In 1815, at Waterloo, Napoleon’s atheistic French Empire was defeated. In 1912 the Titanic, symbol of titanic British arrogance, sank. And in 2008, the American Empire, become decadent like that of Old Rome, went bankrupt. The neocon world has had its Waterloo and its “New World Order” fantasy, like the Titanic, has been sunk by the iceberg of reality.

True, the Masonic slogan of the new world order, Novus Ordo Seclorum, with the pyramid and the all-seeing eye, still stares out at us from every dollar bill. However, the dollar, the symbol of the whole Western financial system, has gone bankrupt at this turning point in 2008. The USA, the centre of world capitalism which so boastfully made global propaganda for the “free market” and “deregulation”, has become United Socialist America. In this new country, corrupt banks have had to be nationalised, like any bankrupt and corrupt Soviet industry of 25 years ago. They have been subsidised by 700 billion dollars (18.288 trillion roubles. 514.71 billion euros. 399.21 billion UK pounds), “gifted” to them by the American public. The greatest bank robbery in history has taken place.

This financial bankruptcy has come from spiritual bankruptcy. In other words, all this has come about because the West overreached itself. The attempt to destroy the Muslim world by arming Israel to the teeth and then invading Afghanistan and Iraq, has failed. Instead of undermining the real centres of Islamic terrorism, among its friends in oil-rich Saudi Arabia and strategic Pakistan, the West attacked the wrong countries in its war of terror on other peoples. Indeed, even the British ambassador and military commander in Afghanistan have in the last few days publicly admitted what we the public all knew from the beginning, that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable.

Some failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam. These are:

You cannot win a war by terrorising the ordinary people, even if you do call them all “Taliban”
You cannot win a war by occupying countries and then setting up corrupt and unrepresentative puppet governments in their capitals (Hitler did that and also failed)
You cannot impose “democracy” by bombs and terror, especially when your own country seems not to be democratic, but, rather appears to be ruled by a clique of billionaires, who share the same corrupt “ideals”

Similar to the attack on the Muslim world, the neocon attempt to restart the Cold War by destroying the Orthodox world has also failed. The plan to manipulate the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Jerusalem, break Serbia up, EU-ise first Greece and then Cyprus, Bulgaria, and Romania, is one thing. But, the plan to encircle Russia through the Ukraine and Georgia went too far. True, according to the French newspaper Le Canard Enchainé, 120+ American “advisors” did help in the massacre of over 1,600 innocent South Ossetian civilians and destroy their capital of Tskhinvali with their Ukrainian-supplied rockets. This attack can be likened only to the attack on Pearl Harbour, where similar numbers perished in a similarly undeclared and unprovoked attack. However, while the US personnel tragically killed at Pearl Harbour were largely US Navy, in South Ossetia the neocon-backed warmongers chose to massacre civilians.

Ukrainian-supplied Georgian MLRs firing at the innocent civilians of Tskhinvali. Bush, Cheney, Rice, McCain, and Palin support such blood-letting. We all know what to do on 4 November… at the very least, do not vote for murderers.

As for the illegally-supplied Ukrainian military hardware which brought down four Russian aeroplanes in the defence of South Ossetia, its suppliers, like those of the other military hardware delivered to Georgia, will be punished. Yushchenko, like Saakashvili and so many other tinpot puppets in the banana republics of Latin America in the past, will be ejected by their own peoples. The neocon Caucasian adventure, like the neocon Ukrainian adventure, is over. The paymaster has gone bankrupt. As one Orthodox bishop put it last Sunday, “I have experienced two dictatorships in my life, Hitler’s and the Communist. I did not wish to experience a third, an American”.

This spiritual bankruptcy has come about because Christian principles have been abandoned by the Western world, both in its finances and in its politics. So, economic collapse and political crisis have ensued. The greed that characterised the financial feeding frenzy of the last decades in the Western world has no basis in the Gospel. “You cannot serve two masters, God and Mammon”. This frenzy has been punished by the greatest bank robbery in history, as the American public has been robbed by their government and banks of 700 billion dollars, the same amount as the US “Defence” Department currently wastes on its military forces every single year. But, it is not only the US which is involved. No better is happening anywhere in the Western world, especially in the EU countries. In Western Europe, too, debt, greed, and irresponsibility have been nationalised and gone unpunished, because they were all allowed and indeed actively promoted by political élites who fed at the same trough.

Royal Martyr Tsar St Nikolai Aleksandrovich the Passionbearer (1868-1918)

What hope is there? It is there in the story buried in the small print of the Western media. (Who says that the Western media are free, when they all tell the same lies? Surely, they must all be orchestrated from the same central point?). This is the story that the sleepy courts of the Russian Federation, stuck in the inertia of their Communist past, have at last rehabilitated the long since canonised Russian Royal Family, murdered and martyred by the Communist regime in 1918. Ninety years on, the innocent have actually been declared innocent and a justice system has actually done justice.

Nominally Russian Orthodox Society is at last beginning to catch up with the practising Russian Orthodox Church. The 95% of baptised, but, un-Churched Russian Orthodox are beginning to understand something. Namely, that Communism spelled financial bankruptcy, because it professed spiritually bankruptcy. It is time to unbolt the hundreds of statues of Lenin, who murdered the now-rehabilitated Royal Family, statues that still befoul hundreds of provincial Russian towns. It is time to remove the red star from the Kremlin tower. It is time to restore the noble names of thousands of metro stations, streets, squares, towns, and regions, at present named after mass-murderers. It is time to set free the Russian media, the Ministry of Education, and a hundred other Russian State Departments from their atheist inertia, their spiritual death.

The Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square. Let Lenin be reburied decently without desecration. Let this building remain as a memorial to all who died in the Bolshevik era in the repressions.

Finally, it is time to remove the corpse of the syphilitic mass-murderer and his Babylonian ziggurat in Red Square. It is time that the relics of the sainted Russian Royal Family, and so, their values, were enshrined at the heart of Russia. It is time that the whole nation did repentance, and, also, if by miracle it were possible, all the Western nations, which so hypocritically supported the Russian Revolution and rejoiced at the downfall of the Tsar in 1917. In the sainted Russian Royal Family the whole modern world has been given a role-model, an ideal. This family is a global, but, not globalist, phenomenon.

Of course, globalisation has not ended. But, the globalist takeover plan has been postponed. Antichrist will still one day come, but, the Apocalypse has been delayed. We have all been granted a breathing space through the prayers of the saints. Today, we are heading towards a different world order from the one world order planned by the prince of this world and set out only a few years ago. We do not know what exactly this different world order will resemble, but, it will certainly have many centres and a diversity of orders and values. The world is turning towards diversification, “multiglobalism”, with space for different values and different causes, some of them, thank God, at odds with the self-indulgent, self-worshipping humanism of the millennial Western project, which has deified man in all his sin and vice.

Our Orthodox values are those embodied by the Russian Royal Family, long ago canonised by Churchmen, today rehabilitated, even by secularists. These values proclaim that sinful man has not become god, but, that sinless God has become man and that in His footsteps and in His Church we can all find spiritual freedom from spiritual bankruptcy, economic collapse, and political crisis.

Fr Andrew Phillips

Felixstowe, England UK

25 September/8 October 2008

St Sergius of Radonezh

founder of the St Sergius-Holy Trinity Lavra in Sergeyev Posad, one of the holiest sites in Russia

A Church Built for an Anti-Russian War Shall Become a Russian Orthodox Church

01varvara — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:34:47 +0000

The old garrison church at Colchester, soon to be the home of St John the Wonderworker parish

In ancient times, when it was a province of the Roman Empire, Colchester, a city located some 80 kilometres northeast of London, was the first capital of Britain. It was a garrison town of “special designation” in that period. In the nineteenth century, during the time of the Crimean War (1853-56), Colchester again became the location of a military base, where some 5,000 soldiers were trained for dispatch to the Crimean front. For their spiritual needs, the British government built a large garrison church. Today, the majority of English historians have come to the conclusion that the Crimean War was an entirely unnecessary conflict, it was “an error”, a “failure”, and many lives were ruined in the course of its useless slaughter.

In the years since, Colchester has remained a major British army base, being enlarged and updated over the years. In March 2007, the original garrison church was closed and divine services in it ended. A new, somewhat smaller, chapel was built for the servicemen in its place. It was in this area, with God’s blessings, through the prayers of our Patron and Father amongst the Saints John Maksimovich the Wonderworker, and with the material support rendered by the readers of the journal Orthodox England and the internet site Orthodoxengland.org.uk, that our parish leased modest premises in the small seaside town of Felixstowe for some 11 years, a place where St Felix (+647) preached in antiquity.

When it became available, I dared to believe that I could acquire the large (and now closed) church in which the soldiers of the Crimean War period said their prayers. Finally, we received the news last Wednesday, on 7 May 2008, that our tender for the purchase of the old church building was accepted. We were shaken by this good news. The total floor area of the church building is 650 square metres (@7,000 square feet), and the area of the chapel, office, conference room, and hall add an additional 170 square metres (@1,800 square feet).

We intend to dedicate the main church in honour of St John Maksimovich, who, some 50 years ago, was the ruling archbishop of London. We shall dedicate the chapel to All the Saints Who have Shone Forth in the British Islands. It seems to us that St John Maksimovich himself shall bless our intentions. Soon, we shall visit Russia and acquire an iconostas and all necessary church utensils and fixtures. The very existence of our parish, the only permanent Russian Orthodox church in the East of England, seems to me to be nothing short of miraculous. Everyone who sacrificed to help us in the acquisition of this former Protestant church that we intend to convert into a proper Orthodox church is a co-participant with us in this miracle. This miracle was a miracle of the survival of an Orthodox community that overcame many obstacles, having to move here and there, but, because of the spirit of self-sacrifice, determination, and fortitude shown by its people, it has lasted these past 40 years.

A church built by the heterodox and which served the forces fighting in an anti-Russian war, now, becomes a parish church of the Russian Orthodox Church. Some shall see it as an irony of fate or history, others shall see in it divine judgement, and it shall be an example of what we call in English “poetic justice”. We consider it a spiritual victory that we were allowed to acquire this church, it is a celebration of the purity of Orthodoxy. This church was built to admonish and inspire soldiers fighting a country confessing the Orthodox Faith. However, God’s inscrutable ways unfold before us, and before our eyes this previously heterodox chapel is converted into a temple of holy Orthodoxy.

Truly, Thou, O God, are the God who works miracles!

13 May 2008

Fr Andrew Phillips

Pastor, along with the clergy and parishioners of St John Maksimovich the Wonderworker

Pravoslavie.ru

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/put/080513123310 (in Russian)

Editor’s Note:

If anyone heard of this worthy project through my posts, thank you. Fr Andrew and his parish still need help, you can access his website via the blogroll on the right-hand side of the page.

Bog blagoslovit, Batiushka!

A New Hymn to Vladyki Laurus by Fr Andrew Phillips… the veneration of Vladyki’s memory begins!

01varvara — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:37:43 +0000

Blessed Hierarch-Confessor Laurus Skurla the Silent of Jordanville. Pray for us sinners, Vladyki!

Vara,

This all came to me in the night, even the melody of Tone V and the image of the icon. I did not write it, it just came. I got up early and wrote it all down, as it was given

Fr Andrew

Holy Hierarch Laurus of Jordanville

Sviatitel Lavr Iordangradskiy

(3/16 March):

First Suggestions

Troparion Tone V

Rejoice, O ye Carpathians,*

and dance all ye trees of the forests of New England!*

For the good and faithful servant,*

the humble monk and wise hierarch Laurus,*

who from childhood was pleasing to God,*

preaching the testament of Holy Russia*

and who on the feast of the Lord’s Ascension gathered into one *

those who in former times were divided,*

today sends up his soul into the heavens.*

This is indeed a triumph of Orthodoxy,*

as on the shores of the Pacific Ocean*

the angels ring bells of victory*

for him who on earth conversed with them;*

and we unworthy, scattered across the face of all the earth,*

pray to Thee, O Christ our God,*

that through his prayers our souls may be saved.

Icon

This should in outline resemble his official photograph with staff in hand, but as an icon resemble the San Francisco icon of St John of Shanghai in his mantle. However, he should be holding in his hands not a model of that temple, but a model of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow.

A personal e-mail communication from Fr Andrew Phillips

I cannot speak… I have no words in commentary. Read this and be edified, I say.

Fr Andrew on Metropolitan Laurus and St Kirill of Kazan the New Martyr

01varvara — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:18:04 +0000

In Memoriam Metropolitan Laurus:

Metropolitan Laurus Skurla, Archbishop of New York and Eastern America, in the First Week of Great Lent 2008, the last week of his life

On the Holiness of Metropolitan Kyrill of Kazan and the Healing of the Russian Church of Extremism

Russian history is all about morality triumphing over difficulties, temptations, dangers, and enemies. That is how it always has been and how it always will be.

Ivan Ilyin

Foreword

The truth is always persecuted, slandered, hated, or ignored, that is, killed by indifference. Our Lord Himself warned His disciples that this would be so. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you (John 15:20). Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake (Matthew 24:9). Naturally, we have abundant evidence of this in recent and present times, as well as in the past.

In 2007, there took place the momentous and historic re-establishment of Eucharistic communion between the two parts of the Russian Church. They had been divided by the forces of spiritual impurity and worldliness following the persecution of the 1920s and the compromises of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) who had usurped power in Moscow with Communist backing. The re-establishment of canonical communion had been unthinkable only seven years previously. Why did it take place?

What brought it about were the unambiguous statements of the hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate at its Jubilee Council of August 2000. Then they rejected Sergianism, Ecumenism (in the generally accepted sense of the word), and accepted the glorification by ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia) of the New Martyrs and Confessors. These acts were in fact the rejection of former positions, the rejection of extremism forced on the Church inside Russia by persecution. Having verified that these new policies were being put into practice, the re-establishment of canonical communion became merely a matter of time… not of “if”, but of “when”.

Patriarch Sergei Stagorodsky blessing troops of the Dmitri Donskoi Tank Brigade during the Second Great Patriotic War

In the World

This Jubilee Council marked the departure of the Patriarchate from the position adopted by the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius in 1927. Essentially, that Declaration had been a compromise by the Church administration with the Soviet Atheist State, showing an Erastianism and servility of extraordinary proportions. It implied that the triumphs of militant atheism were the triumphs of the Church. For a long time senior individuals within the Soviet Union had lied in order to justify Metropolitan Sergius’ compromise and been forced to put that lie into practice. The shift in 2000 was to take the compromises of Metropolitan Sergius out of the spiritual centre and put them back to where they belonged… on the political left. This “revealed the Renovationist nature of Sergianism”¹.

Renovationism was a form of modernism, or apostasy from the Orthodox Faith and Tradition that had begun mainly in St Petersburg before the Revolution. It had been promoted by pro-Revolutionary left-wing groups and was espoused by Gnostic philosophers and aristocrats. It was actively encouraged inside Russia in the 1920s by both the Communist Party and the Patriarchate of Constantinople. However, the abandonment of the Renovationist positions of Metropolitan Sergius in the Year 2000 left the remaining Renovationists in Moscow and abroad, notably those who for decades controlled the Sourozh Diocese in Great Britain, high and dry, despite their efforts.

For it should not at all be imagined that Renovationism existed only inside Russia, its scars affected the life of the Moscow Patriarchate in the Diaspora very deeply. This was despite the fact that most of the Renovationists, semi-Orthodox aristocrats and intellectuals in Paris and elsewhere, had left the Russian Church for the Patriarchate of Constantinople some three generations before, in search of a westernised Orthodoxy with its personality cults of dubious intellectuals. After 1945, the Paris Renovationists exported their ideology to Great Britain and North America, where they are still very active. In this way, Moscow Renovationists in Great Britain at least found the ground taken from under them and were faced with the opportunity of repenting and following the disciplines of the Church or otherwise rebelling and leaving for isolation.

Sadly, but exactly as predicted, the largely Anglicanised Renovationist group decided to rebel and leave the Russian Orthodox Church… all the while, incredibly enough, claiming to be “Russian Orthodox”. Thus, 25 years after being cast out, slandered and exiled to our Siberia, we faithful Russian Orthodox were charged with translating into English the documents from His Holiness in Moscow re-establishing Orthodoxy in the Sourozh Diocese. We were able to re-enter the Ennismore Gardens Cathedral of the Sourozh Diocese in London and find our rightful place there once more. In a historic concelebration, we were able to proclaim the long-awaited Russian Orthodox Church unity in the British Isles, in a Church now free of alien influences, our generation-long confession of the Faith vindicated.

Metropolitan St Iosif of Leningrad/St Petersburg the New Martyr (+1940)

Not of the World

Of course, it is true that the Renovationist Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius of 1927 had also provoked sectarian reactions at the other extreme inside Russia. These included extremists, self-proclaimed “traditionalists” and westernised moralists, who fell into Donatism. Among them were those who falsely proclaimed that they were only following the holy Metropolitan Joseph of St Petersburg, martyred for Orthodoxy in 1940², who had strongly opposed the compromises of Metropolitan Sergius. This was not the case.

They used the good name of Metropolitan Joseph as an excuse and justification for extremism. As a reaction to the servile attitudes of Metropolitan Sergius, some of these right-wing ideologues were actually willing to see a Crusade of the West against Russia, as preached by the Pope³. These were those who considered Sergianism a “heresy” and stated that the Moscow Patriarchate had no grace, welcoming Hitler’s 1941 invasion as a deliverance and even fighting alongside Hitler’s Orthodox-hating and Slav-hating forces. This was a tragic error.

So great had their hatred been that they found themselves hating their own, unable to allow for the miracle of repentance, like the elder son, who was unable to forgive his prodigal brother. They did not understand, as the last Rector of the Optina Monastery had predicted after the Revolution, that Communism would not fall through military intervention, but by itself, through its own economic and moral bankruptcy⁴. Thus, they accused other Orthodox, including those who, willingly or unwillingly, followed Metropolitan Sergius, of having no grace. This was devilish pride, a form of self-flattery and sectarian exclusivism. For in denying others grace, they were in fact granting themselves all grace, setting themselves up as the judgement of God.

The Martyrdom of Metroplitan St Kirill of Kazan the New Martyr (+1937)

In the World, But, Not of the World

However, there were those who stood in the middle ground, following the royal path, veering neither towards the administrative Renovationism of Metropolitan Sergius, nor towards sectarian Pharisaism, which asserted that all other Russian Orthodox had “lost grace”. Adopting the position of the ever-memorable Patriarch Tikhon, those in the middle ground followed the spiritual lead of the holy figure of Metropolitan Kyrill of Kazan, the holy Patriarch Tikhon’s first deputy.

Born in 1863, Metropolitan Kyrill was a widowed priest who had gained immense experience as a missionary both among former Nestorians in Persia and then in Russia, working against sectarian movements in Tambov. He was also the hierarch who had presided over the funeral of St John of Kronstadt, the centenary of whose repose we celebrate in 2008. Having lived for 37 years in the nineteenth century, he lived for 37 in the twentieth century. Of the twenty years he lived under the Bolsheviks, seventeen were spent in camps, prisons and exile and he was martyred in November 1937.

Metropolitan Kyrill was an outstanding practical pastor and also spiritual figure. He was one of those who had the discernment to see between the strictness of akrivia and the dispensation of oikonomia. He saw that although Metropolitan Sergius was wrong and therefore communion with him should be avoided, the Metropolitan was not a heretic. His error was due to his personal sin and weakness, it was not a sin of the whole Church.

The New Martyrs of Solovki

The Royal Path

This perception came from the fact that Metropolitan Kyrill of Kazan was neither a bureaucratic administrator and academic theologian like Metropolitan Sergius, nor a zealous but simplistic and ill-educated ideologue like some of the extremists in the anti-Sergianist movement. He was a pastor and, at that, a holy pastor. Little wonder that Metropolitan Kyrill was recognised by those in freedom as the true head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Thus, of Metropolitan Sergius, Metropolitan Kyrill wrote:

“I acknowledge it as a fulfilment of our archpastoral duty for those Archpastors and all who consider the establishment of the so-called ‘Provisional Patriarchal Synod’ (by Metropolitan Sergius) as wrong, to refrain from communion with Metropolitan Sergius and those Archpastors who are of one mind with him. By thus refraining, for my part, I am not in the least affirming or suspecting any lack of grace in the sacraments performed by Sergianists (may the Lord preserve us all from such thought), but I emphasise my unwillingness and refusal to partake of the sins of others”⁵. He considered that the talk of sacraments as being without grace was “zeal not according to knowledge”⁶.

A little later, in October 1929, Metropolitan Kyrill again wrote to Metropolitan Sergius on the subject of the latter’s extremist attitudes towards those who could not accept his unacceptable compromises with the atheist State: “How bitter it is, Vladyka, that you too, to an equal extent, reveal the loss of spiritual balance…the whole fullness of my abstention (from concelebration with you) concerns only you and the hierarchs who are of one mind with you”⁷. For Metropolitan Kyrill, as for the whole of the free Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, Metropolitan Sergius was “a usurper of Church authority”⁸. In 1934, he wrote again: “The disorder in the Russian Orthodox Church I view not as concerning the teaching which She holds, but as concerning administration”⁹.

Blessed Elder Seraphim Rose of Platina (+1982)

Afterword

Over thirty years ago, the ever-memorable Hieromonk Seraphim Rose summed up these events in Orthodox wise: “A correct ‘Orthodoxy’ deprived of the spirit of true Christianity… this is the meaning of Sergianism, and it cannot be fought by calling it a ‘heresy’, which it is not, nor by detailing its canonical irregularities, which are only incidental to something much more important”¹⁰….“Metropolitan Kyrill’s position… is nothing but the balanced ‘royal path’ of Orthodox moderation between the extremes of Renovationism and Sergianist legalism on the one hand, and a too-hasty accusation of Sergianist heresy or lack of grace on the other”¹¹. Metropolitan Sergius’ error consisted in his “exceeding his powers”¹².

It is in the figure of the true Churchman, Metropolitan Kyrill, martyred in 1937, that the Church finds its spiritual centre of balance again. Through him we clearly understand the aberrations of Metropolitan Sergius. The voice of the Church spoke through him and it was he, and not Metropolitan Sergius, who has since been glorified and canonised by the whole Russian Church¹³. His voice is that of the New Martyrs and Confessors, the voice of unity, the voice of the Truth of God, the voice of the “spiritual sobriety of holiness”¹³. His was the voice of the spiritual purity of living Orthodoxy against the impurity of the Renovationist legalism of Metropolitan Sergius and also against the impurity of the sectarianism of those who declared that his sacraments possessed no grace. For it is only holiness that heals and it is only through holiness that Orthodoxy has been fully restored within the Russian Church.

Today this should be particularly apparent to us in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, who mourn our Metropolitan Laurus, the Restorer of Church Unity in the spirit of the Holy Hieromartyr Kyrill of Kazan. For his lifelong struggle was also for the spiritual purity of the heritage of Holy Russia against extremism, against the dead letters of laws, against the abuse of canons in the interests of self-justification. This includes both the laws and canons of Renovationism, including the administrative Renovationism of Metropolitan Sergius, and the laws and canons of Old Calendarist ideologies which lead straight to the sectarianism of groups, which split away from the Church both inside Russia and outside Russia.

To His Eminence Metropolitan Laurus, the Restorer of Church Unity:

Eternal Memory!

Sunday of St Gregory Palamas

The Preacher of Grace

Second Sunday of the Great Lent 2008

10/23 March 2008

Priest Andrew Phillips

East Anglia

Professor Ivan Mikhailovich Andreyevksy, Confessor for Christ’s sake on Solovki, author of Russia’s Catacomb Saints (under the pen-name I. M. Andreyev)

Notes:

1. Zhuravsky, A. V. In the Name of the Truth and Dignity of the Church (NTDC), The Life and Works of the Holy Hieromartyr Kyrill of Kazan (Sretensky Monastery: Moscow, 2004) p. 768.

2. Schismatics using Metropolitan Joseph’s good name as an excuse to justify their extremism have considerably delayed his canonisation by the Church inside Russia. Although not at all excluded in the Church’s Report of 1995, that canonisation still has not taken place there, where there are small extremist groups who object to such things as tax code numbers and new passports and make of them some new heresy and are prepared to break away from the Church as a result. These still justify themselves using the holy Metropolitan Joseph as an excuse. ROCOR had no such inhibitions when it canonised him in 1981, because it did not fear any schisms as a result of his canonisation. (See NTDC, p. 790).

3. NTDC, pp. 786-87

4. The words of His Holiness Patriarch Alexis II himself in Sobiratel Russkoi Tserkvi (Moscow, 2001) p.54

5. Andreyev, I. M. (pen-name of Ivan M. Andreyevksy) Russia’s Catacomb Saints (RCS), Lives of the New Martyrs (Platina CA, 1982) p. 244

6. NTDC, p. 382

7. RCS, p. 248-49

8. RDS, p. 250

9. RCS, p. 253

10. RCS, p. 257

11. RCS, p. 257-58

12. NTDC, pp. 770 and 797-798

13. NTDC, p. 382

Fr Andrew on the Legacy of Vladyki Laurus

01varvara — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:41:34 +0000

In Memoriam:

His Eminence Metropolitan Laurus

[1928-2008]

Today my heart and soul are filled with spiritual joy, spiritual mercy, the mercy of God. I am always joyful when I am in the holy Russian land. For me this is a Holy Land. I am joyful when I am able to concelebrate with hierarchs, priests and their flock, to pray to God and be worthy of the great mercy of God – to partake of the Mysteries of Christ here, in this holy land.

For myself, I am from the Carpathians. That is where the Slavs came from. And we were brought up to look on Russia, the Russian land, as a Holy Land… I ask for your holy prayers that the Lord may make us worthy to be together with the saints, especially with the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, who suffered and abundantly watered our Russian land with their blood.

Metropolitan Laurus after the Divine Liturgy at Sretensky Monastery in Moscow on 24 February 2008, as recorded by Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov

There are people whose calling and destiny it is to fulfil a great task. They do not in the least seek after this, but they are chosen by God. They have greatness thrust upon them. For example, in Moscow on Monday 17 March, the influential Russian Union of Orthodox Citizens (SPG) suggested naming a street after a poor peasant boy from Slovakia.

“The merits of His Eminence Metropolitan Laurus are so great that streets in our cities deserve to be named after him. A majestic Cathedral should be build to commemorate this outstanding man and the unification of the Russian Orthodox Church”, said Kirill Frolov, the head of the SPG Moscow Department. He added, “The SPG regards Metropolitan Laurus as a national hero. The unification of the Russian Orthodox Church was a great deed on the part of His Eminence, who achieved it despite devilish resistance from opponents of the Church and of Russia. The fact that Metropolitan Laurus passed away on the day of the Triumph of Orthodoxy is the clearest proof of this. The unification of the Russian Church is indeed a great triumph for Orthodoxy”.

Vladyka had been found early on Sunday, 16 March, the morning of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, by Protodeacon Victor Lokhmatov. “His hands were under his head, as I always saw him when he slept”, he said. “He taught souls through the example of his life. He would get up earlier than all the others, he worked harder than all the others… He always had something good to say about others”. The future Metropolitan “carried out all the monastic obediences, starting from the cowshed to the typography”. We should not forget that the Monastery in Jordanville did its utmost to send out books to spiritually-starving Russia. Its postage bill to Russia at the beginning of the 90s was $5,000 a month.

As a bishop, the future Metropolitan was to be seen dressed as a simple hieromonk. One of his obediences was to wash the dishes in the Monastery. He would not have dreamed of removing his name from the rota, just because he was the abbot and had become a bishop. He was famed for his borshch soups. It was always possible to talk to this exemplary monk, always accessible like all the best hierarchs of the Church Outside Russia. And, on being chosen as Metropolitan in 2001, he said:

“And, now, what I feared has come to me. In my old age, my brother bishops have bound me and entrusted the ship of our Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia to me. I have accepted this as obedience to God, to the Church of Christ and to our Council of Hierarchs. For my part, I do not feel any superiority or any strength to guide this ship. I merely trust in God’s help and the prayers of our flock. Russian Orthodox and Orthodox in general must be one in spirit and deed”.

The Shrine to St John Maksimovich the Wonderworker of Shanghai, Paris, and San Francisco at the Cathedral of the Mother of God the Joy of All Who Sorrow (San Francisco CA)

It was at the Council in San Francisco in May 2006 that I first understood the nature of the Metropolitan’s humility. Here I saw not a Metropolitan, but, rather a poor village boy, whose mother had passed away, in the Carpathian foothills in Slovakia. In my mind’s eye, I saw him pedalling his bicycle, one of the best investments that the local Monastery ever made, to school in Svidnik, avoiding the Nazi soldiers. (Where is that bicycle now? Standing rusting in the corner of a barn in the Carpathians?) But, then, in San Francisco, Metropolitan Laurus stood side by side with Metropolitan Amphilochy of Monetengro, with a dozen bishops, presiding over a Council of a worldwide Church on the far distant shores of the Pacific Ocean.

This was a destiny. How was it possible? Because the Metropolitan was not a learned professor, not a politician, not a prince of the Church, who talk, but, do not do, but, for over sixty years a true monk, who simply listens and then does. He conquered by his example, by his Carpatho-Russian sincere faith, which is indeed greater than riches, by his virtue, by his humility.

As for the greatest event in his life, the canonical communion of the two parts of the Russian Church, the Metropolitan suffered greatly at the dissent of the vocal (but small) minority who opposed the episcopate. He always wanted to keep everyone together. Indeed, there will be those who will say that the stress caused by that dissent brought on his repose. He hid his emotions and his peaceful and calming spirit no doubt helped limit the amount of dissent, but nevertheless he suffered, a victim of the disobedience of others.

Having returned from his beloved Russia two weeks earlier, the Metropolitan served all the offices of the First Week of the Great Fast, except for Saturday, because he was not feeling well. The manner of his repose was that which Orthodox pray for – “painless, blameless, peaceful”, and it happened on the Feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, when by Moscow time, that Triumph had been completed. The day of the restoration of the icons was the day of the repose of him who had restored unity. He had completed his task, fulfilled the destiny which had been asked of him, the good and faithful servant had run his course and it was time to rest.

There may be some who will try and use his repose for their own ends. We believe it more likely that his repose will rather seal unity and bring back to the fold those of goodwill who are still reticent. As a prominent laywoman in New York, Lyudmila Kholodnya, has said: “The schism is already on the sandbanks and I think that it will end with this”. We recall that less than a month ago Metropolitan Laurus was in Moscow, receiving the Compatriot of the Year prize from the Mayor of Moscow. The Metropolitan said: “We must save our souls in love for each other and in unity”.

Exactly a week ago I sent Vladyka a postcard from the shores of the North Sea and asked for his prayers. I do not know whether he received it or not. I remember how I had once wanted to ask him a question. He smiled at me in his grandfatherly way. I had received my answer and it was no longer necessary to ask my question. Everything had been said in his smile. But, I will remember him best at the Council in San Francisco. In the talk I gave there, I said a word in his native Carpatho-Russian, po-nashomu, meaning “in our (Carpatho-Russian) language”. His smile was unforgettable. I think he was touched that someone had remembered his Carpathian roots, those simple and honest roots that had determined the course and pattern of his life and set us all an example.

Archbishop Hilarion Kapral of Australia and New Zealand (1948- ), locum tenens of the ROCOR

Metropolitan Laurus, the fifth First Hierarch of the Church Outside Russia in 87 years, was Metropolitan for only seven years. He was the last bishop of the pre-war generation. All our other active bishops are aged under 60. We do not know what will happen at their Synod after the Paschal celebrations and who will take the place the Metropolitan as Sixth First Hierarch of our Church. All we can do is pray and obey, as the Metropolitan would surely have advised us to do.

But, if I may add a thought of my own, the best thing that could happen is that all those who call themselves Russian Orthodox and live outside Russia, whether in Western Europe, the Americas or elsewhere, should now, with the blessing of Patriarch Alexis and His Synod in New York, join themselves to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. In this way, the spiritual unity that we already have may be transfigured further into a visible administrative unity. This would be the greatest memorial to Vladyka Metropolitan, much greater still than a majestic Cathedral in Moscow. To him we all sing:

Eternal Memory!

17 March 2008

Fr Andrew Phillips

(no URL, the source was a personal e-mail to me)

Editor’s note:

I can only wholeheartedly endorse everything written by Fr Andrew. I, too, wish for the unity of all Russian Orthodox Christians. It is time for the Soviet construct known as the OCA to end, and for the healthy elements within it to reunite with the mother church. We should ask the Carpatho-Russians and Ukrainians to join us as well, if they will, and one hopes that they shall. We should send the Romanians in the OCA back to their mother church in Romania, which is now free, with our blessings and good wishes, and with the hope that we shall remain good neighbours (and, no doubt we would!).

Brothers! A sign of Orthodox unity in Moscow

There is no hope at all for the idealistic “union of all Orthodox Christians in America” preached by SVS and the Again crowd. Indeed, because of the nature of diaspora Orthodoxy, it may never be. Instead, we should work at uniting the various strands of Orthodoxy in our country, that is, there should be a united Serbian Church, a united Greek Church, a united Russian Church, a united Arab Church, and a united Romanian Church. We could indeed cooperate on projects of good will, and we could do much good together. Nevertheless, the discarnate “united Orthodoxy” preached by some recent converts (especially in the Antiochian archdiocese) is not only unattainable, but, dangerous in the extreme.

This “Union Orthodoxy” is suffused completely with amoral American suburban notions, and its primary credo is not Orthodoxy, but, rather, it subscribes to a positivism that is little different from its secular analogue. Indeed, it is MORE dangerous because of its religious veneer. One can see this in the refusal of the OCA to effectively remove Nikolai of Alaska for ordaining a convicted sexual offender to the clergy. The OCA’s response has been psychobabble. What would the Metropolia bishops have done? They would have called in the Alaska State Troopers, removed Nikolai from church housing, and banned him from all Church property by the issuance of the proper court order (an easy item to procure, by the way). QED, done quite smartly, and without delay or fuss! Methinks that the OCA is a step DOWN the evolutionary ladder!

We must honour Vladyki’s memory by completing his project of Church unity. If a few unrepresentative intellectuals squawk, let them do so, and let them wander away to whatever destination they choose. They shall be happier there than amongst us. As for us, we should clasp our hands together and fashion the unity that God has set before us, not the notional unity that was nothing but an opium dream of heretics such as Alexander Schmemann.

We owe Vladyki that much. We shall honour him by following his deeds, not by repeating his words. May God bless us in the completion of such a task.

Batiushka Andrew Speaks on Zaccheus Sunday… The Blood of the Martyrs is INDEED the Seed of Faith

01varvara — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 23:42:10 +0000

Batiushka Andrew from England spoke some powerful words on the New Martyrs, repentance, and the moral example of leaders yesterday. Follow the link below to read them.

http://orthodoxengland.org.uk/sermzac.htm

“Virtue is more important than riches”

01varvara — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 23:28:03 +0000

Follow this link to this article:

http://orthodoxengland.org.uk/virtue.pdf

Centenerary Anniversary of Miracle of St Nicholas in Pennsylvania

01varvara — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 23:25:40 +0000

follow this link to this article:

http://orthodoxengland.org.uk/100_anniversary.pdf