Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin Speaks on Berezovsky and Prokhorov… Regrets Towards the First… Opposition to the Second…

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Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the head of the MP Department for Church and Society, speaking on air at the studio of the Higher School of Trading, regretted that Boris Berezovsky, the oligarch who recently died in England, didn’t have the opportunity to start his life with a clean slate, despite all his talent, saying , “He was a pathetic person. He seemed to be a smart, talented, and energetic man, with an eventful life. However, his life wasn’t in order, but he didn’t realise that until it was too late for him to start a new life”. According to Fr Vsevolod, anyone can start life with a fresh start, but in the case of Berezovsky, he didn’t have the inclination to do so, noting, “God forbid that we should become so. Unfortunately, everyone has temptations, even if we don’t have billions and political influence”. In re ethics, Fr Vsevolod observed that ethics “isn’t only a social mechanism, handy for building interpersonal relationships, but it has eternal pros and cons that don’t change with the winds of fashion; they’re independent of our ideas about them, and they operate even if we’re heedless of them. It’s very important for people to remember these things today; it wasn’t just something that affected a well-known politician and oligarch who recently died under mysterious circumstances in the UK“.

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Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the head of the MP Department for Church and Society, speaking on air at the studio of the Higher School of Trading, criticised oligarch and politician Mikhail Prokhorov, who recently offered his religious ideas for public discussion, saying, “Recently, Mr Prokhorov said the following, ‘How can religious groups claim to speak directly to the public on moral issues? How can they have the nerve to do such?’”. Fr Vsevolod added, “Now, that’s mind-boggling logic… he can speak on such, but we may not. Well! Hold your horses, we thought that we had the same rights under the law that Mr Prokhorov does; we all have the right to address people directly. We don’t need intermediaries, especially, not some oligarch, who probably wants to make themselves such an intermediary, in order to offer a new social contract, a new ideology of their own making”.

Fr Vsevolod thought that Prokhorov’s attempt to deny religious communities the right to speak directly to the public on moral issues “wasn’t just a totalitarian idea, it’s nothing but Nazism, being nothing but a real attempt to deprive a social group of the right to publicly express its worldview. That’s nothing but Hitler and Stalin’s ideology. Obviously, the whole problem with this man’s agenda is the fact that he once said that it isn’t based in morals. We’ll speak out… we’ll always speak out. If he commits immoral acts, he should know the truth of it, he should know the truth concerning such; he has to know what’s true and what’s evil”. Fr Vsevolod observed, “Prokhorov can’t run away from the fact that he told the truth about himself, about his personal life, his business, his views, and his beliefs. You can never attend to those who want the Church to commit spiritual suicide; we can never abandon the raison d’être of the Church, which is to preach the Truth of Christ to all the peoples of the world. We’re not buying his ideas”.

Fr Vsevolod commented on a statement by TV presenter Vladimir Pozner that the greatest tragedy in Russian history was the adoption of Orthodoxy, stating, “I’ve travelled to 70 countries; so, I know life in the ‘successful’ countries of Northern and Western Europe, which Mr Pozner obviously wants us to imitate. Generally, people are much more miserable there than in Russia. By and large, ordinary people are much happier than the rich are. That’s an amazing thing, but it’s so”.

10 April 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=50763

http://interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=50766

Editor’s Note:

I’d note this from the first excerpt:

[Ethics] isn’t only a social mechanism, handy for building interpersonal relationships, but it has eternal pros and cons that don’t change with the winds of fashion; they’re independent of our ideas about them, and they operate even if we’re heedless of them.

I’d only add that American businessmen who defraud workers of their honest wages and slash benefits to their workers to ensure higher profits fall under this rubric. Don’t forget that Scripture says, “The love of money is the root of ALL evil”… but the Western right says, “Greed is Good”. They do appear contradictory, do they not? That means that no Orthodox Christian can support the amoral money-worshipping platforms of the US Republican Party, the British and Canadian Conservative Parties, or the Australian Liberal Party. Full stop.

Note this from the second extract:

I’ve travelled to 70 countries; so, I know life in the “successful” countries of Northern and Western Europe, which Mr Pozner obviously wants us to imitate. Generally, people are much more miserable there than in Russia. By and large, ordinary people are much happier than the rich are. That’s an amazing thing, but it’s so.

And this:

[We] all have the right to address people directly. We don’t need intermediaries, especially, not some oligarch, who probably wants to make themselves such an intermediary, in order to offer a new social contract, a new ideology of their own making.

I’d simply say that there are Orthodox clergy who bow before the voracious and rapacious Moloch of Western crapitalism… we all know who they are. They’ve sold out for a mess of pottage (usually, for a house in the “right” suburb)… and, then, they have the goddamn gall to paint themselves out as moral paragons. Oh, yes… they attack Iosif Stalin, and they bloviate about Sergianism. Hmm… they DID take Langley’s shilling, didn’t they? That makes THEM worse “Sergianists” than anyone in the former USSR was… fancy that.

Methinks that the pot is blacker than the kettle is… just sayin’…

BMD 

Levada Centre sez More and More Russians Embrace the Meaning of Lent, But Only 2 Percent Intend to Follow It Strictly

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Levada Centre specialists spoke to Interfax concerning their research into the depth of Lenten observance in the Russian population. This year, sociologists found that a record number of Russians (26 percent overall), intend to observe the traditional Lenten discipline in one way or another. During an all-Russian poll, 21 percent of respondents confirmed that they’re going to observe a partial fast this year… for example, giving up meat or alcoholic beverages. Over the past five years, this category has increased by six percent (it was 15 percent in 2008, a 40 percent rise in the period studied).

In particular, the respondents in this category were executives/supervisors (31 percent), disabled (27 percent) women (28 percent), Russians over 55-years-old (67 percent), college-educated (29 percent), upper-middle class (29 percent), residents of rural communities (24 percent), and citizens of small cities (less than 100,000 population) (23 percent). According to the survey, this year, as before, 3 percent of respondents are going to follow all the rules of fasting only during Holy Week, and 2 percent shall follow the fast strictly for all seven weeks of Lent.

Pensioners, women, and Russians over 55-years-old all had the highest proportions of those who intend to follow a strict Lenten rule, either in full, or during Holy Week alone. In 2008, 79 percent of Russians stated they that wouldn’t modify their diet during Lent; in March of this year, that figure fell to 69 percent. The groups that most often reported that they don’t intend to modify their diet are schoolchildren and college students (87 percent), business owners (82 percent), housewives (81 percent), men (79 percent), Russians under 25 (83 percent), those with secondary education only (77 percent), upper-middle class (77 percent), and citizens of medium-sized cities (100,000-500,000 population) (72 percent).

27 March 2013

Interfax-Religion

http://interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=50567

Editor’s Note:

Break out the bubbly! The above figures are FANTASTIC. As Fr Vsevolod Chaplin observed, in 1985, virtually no one kept the Lent. A quarter of the total Russian population intends to keep at least some part of the Lent, which means that about a third of all Orthodox Christians in Russia shall observe the Lent in one way or another. That’s great… and the growth is gradual and natural, not forced-draft and phoney (as one sees amongst the konvertsy in the USA). That’s the way REAL Orthodoxy operates… one person at a time giving the “good contagion” to another… as St Serafim Sarovsky put it, “Save your own soul, and thousands will be saved about you”. We don’t need “crusades”, “mission conferences”, “witnessing”, or marching in political parades… we need good old-fashioned self-forgetful religion.

God blesses the one and doesn’t bless the other, that’s clear. We should follow the podvigs of Patriarch Sergei Stragorodsky and St Serafim Vyritsky… not the notional fancies of Victor Potapov, James Paffhausen, Gleb Podmoshensky, and other such pied-pipers… after all, real-deal Christians don’t make demands with a lawyer in tow, do they? Let God see and judge…

BMD

13 February 2013. Arrant Bullshit from the Lukianov Clan… Absolute Utter Crackbrained Vlasovtsy Nonsense

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Here’s what the REAL Church thinks of communism… a little different from the writer below, I’d say…

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Here’s absolute crapola from one Peter Lukianov (son of Fr Serge Lukianov of the ROCOR, a true example of First Family rot if there ever was such):

He [NHM Joachim] was hung in the royal doors of his cathedral after watching two of his priests get shot in front of him. The soviets (sic) came to confiscate all the church valuables “to help the poor”. St Joachim said… no problem, we’ll do an inventory of all our valuables and then personally sell them to help the poor. Obviously the soviets had no intention of helping the poor with that money so they killed him. Not to get political, but this reminds me a little of what is happening in America with all the new taxes on the rich. Government taking from one group to redistribute to another. What’s sad is how many people bought into that logic under communism and what ultimately happened to Russia. Sure, the government in the USA isn’t taking from the Church, but they have no problem dipping into peoples personal funds for “the greater good”. Today it’s the rich but Tomorrow it could just as easily be the Church. Call me crazy but look at how our government has changed it’s attitude towards religion. Saying a prayer in school is no longer acceptable. 50 years ago, if you told my grandparents that this would happen, they would have called you crazy – but now what? What’s next? Let’s pray to the New Martyrs for our beloved USA. They are closer to us than we realize.

I kept all the grammatical errors of the original… Mr Lukianov obviously slept through English Composition class. This is rightwing drivelling rubbish worthy of anything from Victor Potapov or Rod Dreher. He’s so CONCERNED for the rich… and he considers state social welfare programmes evil… which means that he’s at odds with HH and Fr Vsevolod, just to name two. HH supports Free Cuba, universal state-paid healthcare, generous allowances for families and seniors, and gives high Church decorations to communists (most of whom are believers). Hmm… I think that’s SLIGHTLY different from Mr Lukianov’s take on the matter. The Church does NOT support the ungrounded assertions like the one above made by the rightwing faction in the ROCOR… not at all. If I had to choose… make mine HH… and Peter Lukianov can go to hell in the most expeditious manner possible.

Whilst surfing the web, I found this concerning Mr Lukianov’s bloviation:

It’s about time someone exposed the chicanery! This has bothered me for several years for a few reasons. First, the Russian Church (MP) is in a country where abortion is still legal, yet, they still pray for their civil authorities. Second, even during the communist era, the MP still used the wording “for our divinely-protected country” (о богохранимей стране нашей) during the Great Litany. Some may claim it was coercion. To that I say, “Whatever!” Look how far they’ve come since. They were in a worse situation than we were, but now theirs is better. What excuse do we have? Perhaps, prayer actually works! Thirdly, our country is always a tangential mention at the end of said petition, rather than the first. The MP parishes in this country don’t even mention the Russian land in that petition. However, they do pray for this land, since after all, they’re living in it!

Perhaps our “spiritual centre” better take a long, hard look as to why it’s crumbling. No, I’m not saying that this is “the” reason, but it’s an example of all the stupid little things that have added up over the years. The bottom line… do you want change? Do, you want better leaders? Then, pray for the ones we have! Pray that God will convert their hearts and open them to the truth! God-fearing leaders don’t just drop out of the sky (at least, not in reality). Elected officials reflect the will of the people they represent, which means that we as Orthodox Christians have work to do. The correct option is to engage them, convert them, but most importantly, to pray for them. The wrong answer is to ignore them!

Let’s be clear… there’s housecleaning to be done. We can’t afford to let the Church to be allied to the godless American consumerist Moloch… something best embodied in the Republican Party. It’s up to US… but shall we do anything? It’s time for YOU to choose…

BMD

11 January 2013. Newest Blather from Monomuckass… “Who Will Preach To Nineveh”… I Kid You NOT… They DO Need Their Nappies Changed Pronto

Here’s the sort of stuff that you NEVER see on Monomuckass… here’s HH at the big Dixie Fry this summer at Christ the Saviour in Moscow… note well that the Blunder (Hannes Jacobses’ heart-throb) is missing from this image from ITAR-TASS, but Varsonofy Sudakov and Yuvenaly Poyarkov are in the picture. That is, the Blunder is a bloviating POS with little (if any) real power (Panteleimon Shatov has more OOMPH with HH, believe it or not)… and Yuvenaly and Varsonofy are the true heavy hitters (an MP priest told me, “HH and Varsonofy are so close that you can’t slip a piece of paper between them”). This is the sort of stuff that you see here and what Michalopoulos (a posturing nyekulturny ignoramus) can’t give you… for he doesn’t know it (he doesn’t know much, does he?).

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A Cabinet member sent me this. Scroll up and read some of the other comments. No, it’s not satirical… these blozos expect to be taken seriously, no joke. Who Will Preach To Nineveh… what arrant nonsense. Firstly, none of these toddlers mentions Fathausen’s over-a-decade-long dalliance with Gleb Podmoshensky (most of it AFTER GP’s deposition from the clergy for nasty doings), nor do they mention El Gordo’s work on GP’s nutty squirrel Russky Palomnik project. I remember seeing ads for that in Platina’s rag in the 90s… GP needed money for it… I’ll bet you any amount that El Gordo’s corporate daddy put up the gelt for it. Nope, no mention of that either. There was no mention of Fathausen’s lies about his stay at Valaam… he was NOT a member of the brotherhood… he was the equivalent of Lyova the Fool at Jordanville… a barely-tolerated guest who had money that the cash-strapped brotherhood needed badly (it was the Nasty Nineties, after all). Nor was there any mention of the fact that Jimmy Boy was made an “abbot” only one year after tonsure. In short, GIGO all around.

I read the Russian press daily. I can assure you that no one, anywhere, is talking about this idiot. NO ONE. NO WHERE. NO HOW. There’s no buzz at the Centre about this. As far as the Centre’s concerned, it would’ve preferred that Herman should’ve stayed on, albeit with restrictions from the Holy Synod. It didn’t care for Jimmy and it’s not enthused over Tikhon. The only two individuals at the Centre who’re pleading Fathausen’s case are the Blunder and Shevkunov. They have ties to the oligarchs, which may hinder them in the present climate. I’ve heard that Vsevolod Chaplin is very lukewarm about it all, as is Mark Golovkov. The deal that I heard that El Gordo got from ROCOR is that they’d take him in as a retired bishop, with no powers, and he’d have to live in a monastery. In short, nothing in the Monomuckass post is true. NONE OF IT. It’s all bullshit, from stem to stern.

My recommendation is that you avoid this site at all costs. Don’t go to it… don’t get involved in their juvenile “discussions”… don’t buy into their crank konvertsy agenda. They’re a bunch of wankers off in the corner engaging in mutual masturbation. Let them be. If you ignore them long enough, they’ll go away. After all, we’re not good enough for them. That’s the way of it in the real world. You can listen to people who obviously have no clue or you can listen to informed and hip people… I read the Orthosphere media, I have contacts in the Orthosphere, and I know the culture and history of the Orthosphere. None of these demented toddlers have any of that. It’s up to you to decide whom to listen to. It’s your choice.

By the way… “Who will preach to Nineveh?” HH will… every Christmas and Easter after services, he’s out visiting sick kids… and he runs the niftiest yolka at the Centre (and sees to it that orphans and poor kids get first nibs). He’s demanded the end of the American blockade against Cuba and he’s on record as stating that the Free Market‘s a fraud from top to bottom (“Who will pay for it all? The poor working man, who’ll be crushed under the weight of all this”). You can have HH or you can have Fathausen. Make mine HH… and I think that I’m NOT alone in thinking that way.

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Friday 11 January 2012

Albany NY