On Sunday, on a visit to the Estonian capital of Tallinn, Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev of Moscow and all the Russias urged Estonian believers to attend church more often. He said, after a service in a newly-consecrated church, whose foundation was laid in 2003 by his predecessor, the late Patriarch Aleksei Ridiger, “You can certainly pray at home. Some people say, ‘I’m a believer but I don’t go to church’. So, why is it necessary to attend church? Because the Gospel contains very important words… For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them (The Gospel according to Matthew 18.20)”. The patriarch said, “Prayer is hard work” because it’s difficult for people to focus on it even in church. However, the more common prayer unites believers, the stronger that prayer is, he said, noting, “Like a pillar of fire, the energy of our prayer reaches the throne of God. So, don’t be reluctant to come to church. Remember that there, the power of another person you probably don’t know… will make up for your weakness in prayer. This is the Church’s common prayer that reaches the Lord, and the Lord answers it”.
Nicky and I don’t attend liturgy weekly, but we do it more frequently than many do. I’ll say this… I go when I feel the need to pray. There’s something special about praying in the company of other Orthodox believers, and that’s that. Remember, the people are the Church… not the clergy, not the buildings. That’s the long and the short of it.
According to several whispers, when Mollard goes to Russia (rather sooner than later, I’m told), he’s going to Kiev, not the Centre. That’s interesting! No doubt, HH would be there, which would mean that Mollard would have a photo-op with HH and Vladimir Sabodan, something that HH NEVER gave Fatso. If he’s on the way to Kiev, no doubt, he’d also meet with President Yanukovich… something that Fatso never got, either. Why Kiev? I’d say that one reason is that most of the OCA’s following are po-nashemu Hunkies, not Great Russians. If he’s going to Kiev, is he also going to see (and serve with) Fr Dmitri Sidor in Carpatho-Russia? Now, that’d be a coup! It would also be a way of HH seeing how loyal Mollard is. You see, that’d fuck things up for the OCA with the Uniates… and Lyonyo and Jillions (amongst others) have a rather cosy little arrangement with them, don’t they (don’t forget, Jillions was their bought-n’-paid-for “house nigger”… an “Uncle Tom” if there ever was such)?
Here’s a fly in the ointment. Mollard’s asking people to accompany him, but he’s not funding them, so people are turning him down. That means that it’s not far in the future, and people can’t raise the valuta in the time given. Hmm… that means several things. Firstly, there’s no money in the OCA cookie jar… no surprise, Valerie Ringa said as much. Secondly, the Centre is only fronting Mollard a certain amount of cash, but Mollard (or someone else in Syosset, probably, Lyonyo, Jillions, and/or Tosi) wants a larger delegation to go. Thirdly, unlike Fatso, who sucked up to the Inside the Beltway crowd in the District, he doesn’t have access to outside cash from the usual cast of suspects. Ergo, people are saying, “No. I don’t have the gelt. I can’t raise it that fast. No way, no how”.
We’ll have to see, won’t we, kids. Remember… you heard it first HERE. As per usual, Lyonyo, Jillions, and Hatfield want to keep you in the dark. Reflect on that…
Remember how Potapov and Paffhausen were yelping that the Centre was going to take in JP, just you wait n’ see? Well, HH gave that one an old-school NYET. NO WAY… NO HOW. If JP’s starting a “new monastery”, where’s the money coming from? The OCA doesn’t have it… Valerie Ringa sez so. ROCOR is as flat-busted broke as the OCA is… Jordanville has fallen to rack and ruin. The Centre ain’t ponying up any cash for the OCA. In fact, Mollard’s trying to get clergy to go with him on his pending ad limina trip to Moscow (all OCA Metropolitans have to go to the Centre to get its nod… the OCA is autocephalous in name only, as everyone knows), but he doesn’t have the gelt to pay their fare and HH isn’t forwarding any either. Ergo, a “new monastery?” Well… he’ll have to pull several rabbits out of the ol’ tired hat… and I don’t think it possible. I’ll lay money that he’s gong back to Manton… where he’ll be a royal pain-in-the-arse to all concerned. We haven’t seen or heard the last of him… he’s got some nastiness to pull before he goes…
Another person wrote:
Our La-Di-Dah “Orthodoxy is so lucky to have me” converts obnoxiously presume Russians need lessons in race relations. I’ve never seen people more free of racial bias than “real” Russians and Ukrainians… especially, those from the “other side”. That’s a fact.
You want proof? How ‘bout Aleksandr Pushkin? How ‘bout his gran’pa Ivan Gannibal? Of course, I just posted about James Lloydovich Patterson… it’s clear that the Rodina wants him back. Don’t listen to rightwing pukes… Russia has always been a land of many peoples, creeds, and races. We’re a mixed lot… Eurasians, indeed! The konvertsy have nothing to teach us… NOTHING. If we follow what’s best in our Russian heritage, trust me, we don’t need “education” from condescending former-Anglican worthies.
Here’s something about one of the OCA crowd:
Michael J Pasonick Jr, a Wilkes-Barre engineer tied to several public corruption cases, has been fined by the Department of State. Pasonick was one of 156 licensed or commissioned professionals and organisations that the Department of State took disciplinary action against during May, Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele announced Tuesday. Pasonick was ordered to pay a 1,000 USD (31,960 Roubles. 750 Euros. 640 UK Pounds) civil penalty and to attend and complete at least five hours of remedial education on ethics. He also had a public reprimand placed on his permanent disciplinary record with the board and had his licenses suspended because he was convicted of a criminal offence. He previously pleaded guilty to paying a school board member in Luzerne County between 1,000 and 5,000 USD (31,960 to 159,800 Roubles. 750 to 3,750 Euros. 640 to 3,200 UK Pounds) to win the board member’s support for his efforts to secure school district contracts. During court testimony, Pasonick also said he paid 2,000 USD (63,920 Roubles. 1,500 Euros. 1,280 UK Pounds) to former Lackawanna County Commissioner Robert Cordaro to keep engineering contracts with a sewer authority in the county.
Pasonick was tight with Herman and Mollard. He’s trying to get reinstated as a deacon, but one of my contacts at St T’s told me in the car park that that’s going nowhere FAST. Pasonick was one of Bobby’s confrères… and that’s the kiss of death, now.
In short, the usual stew pot is bubblin’ away. God do help us… our “leadership” certainly isn’t…
The above is a snap taken at St T‘s during the Pilgrimage. Note well that Yustinian Ovchinnikov isn’t there… neither is George Schaeffer, Jerome Shaw, or Peter Lukianov. Nathaniel Popp (and his vicar bishop) is MIA, as is Liolin and Golitzine. None of the AOCANA bishops are there. The only non-OCA bishop present is Hilarion Kapral… and that’s because he’s a “nice guy who doesn’t know how to say ‘no’” (as an exasperated ROCOR clergyman told me). I talked with several sources at the Pilgrimage, and they all told me the same thing:
Mel Pleska‘s too sick to wear the white hat. Don’t say precisely what the problem is, he doesn’t want it known publicly yet. He was out of the running, so, we chose the least-objectionable candidate.
What I can say is that the konvertsy stories about Mel being an alkie are lies. He’s not a Peterson, a Soraich, or a Brittain. Suffice it to say, Mel’s plenty sick, and the Sobor participants were put “in the know” as to the exact story, and that’s where it’s gonna be for the time being. That’s to say, Mollard was the choice of the Sobor, as he wasn’t Dahulich or Peterson, nor was he considered overly-much in Fatso’s camp.
The same situation faced the MP after the death of Aleksei Simansky. Of all the candidates for the funny white hat, Pimen Izvekov was the least-bad of those acceptable to the Party. As one bishop said at the time, “Pimen’s our choice… no, he wasn’t the best choice… but he was the best choice on hand”. Pimen managed to steer the Church in a workmanlike fashion until the election of Aleksei Ridiger (who was one of the greats, as his handling of the situation surrounding the breakup of the USSR proved). In like fashion, Anastassy Gribanovsky pushed forward Philaret Voznesensky in 1964, to avoid a succession fight between Vitaly Ustinov and John Maximovich. Philaret wasn’t the best choice… but he was the only choice available who could be seated without an acrimonious fight.
That’s the result of the Parma Sobor. They did NOT “kick the can down the road”. They had to choose SOMEONE as First Hierarch, so, they chose the least-nasty candidate. Peterson has a “past” and he’s known to be even more solicitous of the HOOMie cultists than JP was. Dahulich didn’t come up in the OCA (that is, he came up outside of the OCA/Metropolia institutional culture), and, even more serious, he carried more than a hint of being Bart‘s man (he’s also the most quasi-papist of the bishops). WHO ELSE WAS THERE? That was the point that my sources emphasised the most strongly. As one priest said, “The OCA’s going down, but it hasn’t sunk yet, so, we had to choose someone to lead it for the time being”.
Tikhon Mollard will stumble and bumble… as the job is beyond his abilities. As one of the Cabinet told me:
I don’t think that he wanted the job. He knows his limitations.
However, what’s needful at the present moment is something different. The OCA needs someone at the helm who isn’t going to go off on this-or-that idiosyncratic tangent, as Paffhausen did. There will be rough patches due to Mollard’s passivity… but there won’t be the rollicking and roiling antics of a James Paffhausen. The OCA neither needs nor wants a visionary… it wants someone who’ll leave the parishes alone to figure out their future. The OCA is a “dead man walking”… all except the konvertsy delusionaries can see that. It’s in the hands of the people, now… and they haven’t made up their minds yet. SVS… Syosset… Lyonyo… Jillions… they’re all superfluous now. The rest of us… it’s wait n’ see…
The Antiochians? I find that hard to believe… Metropolitan Phillip will eat him for breakfast. I’m sure Maymon would warn him about that…
I replied:
I find it IMPOSSIBLE to believe, but I report what’s “out there”.
They went to say:
IF he goes to the Antiochians, he’ll put his neck in the noose… so much for his love of Russianpraxis. What a fucking phoney! Is Phillip going to use him to keep the converts quiet? I’ve heard there are rumblings again about misuse of money… those Arabs are sneaky with the dollars.
As I wrote to my friend, I find the present rumour hard to take at face value (or at any value at all, to put it plainly). However, it’s “out there”, and it “refuses to die”. My take on this is that the OCA, the ROCOR, and the Centre all stymied JP, and his partisans are floating all sorts of nonsense. Believe nothing until there’s an official announcement. Bite the coin before accepting it… there be some debased coinage in circulation. Have a care…
Choir in rehearsal for this event… even though the pro-zapadnik Portal-Credo.ru reposted it, it didn’t originate with them… they’re not original enough to create such, truth be told
Vladimir Legoida, head of the MPInformation Department, said, “This year, the Festival will follow an informal format; it’ll be an event on an unprecedented scale, featuring many events in one day. From year to year, we’ve been doing our best to see to it that the festival strikes a personal note with everyone who happens to attend. Our purpose is to ensure that Kirill and Mefody are household names amongst ordinary people”.
Scholars believe that in the time of Kirill and Mefody, the 9th century AD, Slavs had no difficulty understanding each other. Experts state that Slavic people believed that they spoke the same language, as they shared the same system of sounds. The two brothers developed this system into an alphabet, to translate Greek religious texts into Slavonic. The Cyrillic alphabet became a foundation for creating alphabets for other Slavic languages.
Street signs in Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Serbian, and Macedonian at the Moscow festival will remind visitors of this fact. Many of the festival’s events have the purpose of popularising the Russian language. Moscow professors will give public lectures on Russian, whilst famous performers will read excerpts from Russian classic literaturenear the statues of Aleksandr Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolai Gogol, and Marina Tsvetaeva. Some 30 choirs, comprising at least 3,000 singers, will gather in Red Square for festival’s closing event… a gala concert entitled The Most Loved Songs. The choirs will perform church anthems, along with a large number of folk and pop songs, all to the accompaniment of a combined orchestra. Those willing to join the professionals will be able to follow the songs on large screens installed all over Moscow.
Sofia Apfelbaum of the Ministry of Culture (Minkultury), said, “Moscow has never seen such a large-scale cultural celebration before. We hope that this experiment will be successful. The songs are popular and known by many people. The gala’s repertoire was picked specifically for the purpose of bringing all people together so that the crowd in Red Square could sing along with the performers and so that everyone would know that Russians have a specific cultural standard”.
Fr Pavel Shcherbachyov of the MP Patriarchal Council for Culture, said, “A harmonious combination of the secular and religious adds a particular flavour to the festival. Even though spirituality in the religious sense of the word played no role in Russian society for a long time, these songs’ lyrics reflect the traditions of previous centuries. If we analysed the words of these songs, we’d discover that they reflect the traditions of the past, when there was an alloy of culture and religion”.
