Many of Those Condemned in the Trials of the 1930s WERE Guilty

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Some of the “best people”, that is, our intelligentsia, turned on the FSB’s director because he pointed up that some of the people convicted in the trials of the 1930s were actually guilty, as they wish to do nothing more than condemn what they call the “crimes” of the Bolshevik authorities. What he said was:

Although many say that this period saw a massive fabrication of charges, the archival material shows objective evidence in a large proportion of criminal cases, including famous “show” trials. That the group around Trotsky wanted to overthrow or even eliminate I V Stalin and his colleagues in the VKP (b) leadership wasn’t fiction, as were the ties of these conspirators with foreign intelligence services. In addition, many of the defendants in those trials were members of the nomenklatura and officers of the security organs long involved in corruption, arbitrariness, and official injustice.

https://www.rg.ru/2017/12/19/aleksandr-bortnikov-fsb-rossii-svobodna-ot-politicheskogo-vliianiia.html

Are you telling me that all the repressed Old Bolsheviks were innocent? On the other hand, is it just because a part of the intelligentsia sees these people as their historical predecessors, and is afraid of a similar verdict by the court of history and in the verdict of the people? In fact, the only true innocents were those few people who didn’t betray the tsar and their faith, who suffered for their allegiance to them. Many of the New Martyrs were amongst them. However, the collective sins of many Russian classes are obvious to me… as is the justice of the punishment that struck them. By the way, only Protestant rationalists, contrary to Scripture and Tradition, believe that sins can only be personal.

Was the peasantry, who seized land from the manors, perfectly innocent? Who was innocent amongst the clergy, who only protested when it affected their corporate interests… or, the aristocracy, many of whom donned red cockades… or, the Duma Deputies, industrialists, and party leaders who plotted against the tsar in wartime… or, the Red commanders who shot down their own people? The Lord God isn’t mocked. True is His justice. He metes out according to our just desserts. This isn’t just about the past.

24 December 2017

Vsevolod Chaplin

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Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin sez that Priests Shouldn’t be Affluent… but They Shouldn’t Live in Poverty Either

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Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the head of the MP Department for Coordinating Church and Society (ОВЦО/OVTsO), warned that well-heeled affluence (мажорства) and miserable poverty amongst the clergy were equal dangers, saying at a Moscow panel discussion on the public perception of the Church’s image, “Of course, most emphatically, the clergy mustn’t succumb to the consumerist notion that we see today… affluence and access to material goods can cause stratification within the clergy, dividing them into rich and poor. This is very bad”.

He went on to say that ordinary people “internally rebel when they see an affluent clergyman”, yet, equally, he doesn’t believe that “it’s beneficial to the Church if the clergy become marginalised outcasts”. He said that there’s a “diminution of the clergy’s status” amongst Catholics and Protestants in the West, which is due to the fact that “secular forces squeezed them out and made them social outcasts. The same thing could happen with us… it’ll drive priests crazy or force them into the labour market if we allow the notion that clergy should live in miserable poverty to settle amongst us. In Russia and Greece, indeed, in all Orthodox lands, the priests usually had a living standard a little bit better than the average working-class family”.

According to Fr Vsevolod, if there’s wealthy people in his parish (or, at least, the comfortably well-off), if the priest lives in want, if he must constantly beg on his knees for his livelihood, “it’s a shame upon the flock, upon that church community, upon all those who frequent the place where that priest serves”. Fr Vsevolod concluded, “Don’t attend to people who imply that a priest shouldn’t live in dignity, with enough material goods”.

5 July 2013

Interfax-Religion

http://interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=51853

Editor’s Note:

Many priests are at the mercy of obscurantist parish boards… let’s not be coy about it. That’s wrong. It’s forced priests into the labour market, and, as Fr Vsevolod points up, it’s warped them. It has created a two-tier priesthood here in the Orthodox diaspora… and it’s toxic in all respects. On the one hand, you have affluent priests like Potapov or Warnecke, who’re more bureaucrats or managers than clergy… on the other hand, you have priests on food stamps. That’s wicked. It also means that affluent priests have more effectual power than the bishops do, for “money talks and bullshit walks”.

We’re in the deep kimchi… and the sooner that we realise it, the better off we’ll all be. However, shall we?

BMD  

Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin Urges Orthodox to Change the World… not to Bow Down to It

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Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the head of the MP Department for Coordinating Church and Society (ОВЦО/OVTsO), noted that Christians are called to change the world, rather than to follow ephemeral secular notions, saying at a Moscow panel discussion on the public perception of the Church’s image, “The role of the Church in society is to change it… not to adapt to it, not to follow it, not to be its willing lapdog… to act as the Lord taught us in the Gospel“. In his view, today, some in the Church are trying to argue that standards vary, based on real or perceived public sentiment, whilst the Lord “submits that we should remake the world, that’s what ​​the Apostles did, even though society was opposed to it”.

Fr Vsevolod believes that the mission of the Church is to speak uncomfortable truths, for which one could face crucifixion, death, or, at least, ridicule; the logic of the historical existence of the Church shows that “if you face criticism for the sake of what’s written in the Gospel, you’re right, you’re part of [the Church’s] mission. Orthodoxy isn’t just some sort of personal faith, without a public dimension. When I hear those who speak like that, I remember the Soviet times, and that the modern West is just like that, where Christian or post-Christian elements are docile and house-broken, trained to behave in an always-apologetic manner”.

According to his lights, the Christian ideal of an optimum society is one modelled along the lines of the Kingdom of Heaven, not ravaged by supposedly inevitable contradictions; a harmonious society in which there should be not only symphonia between the State and the Church, but also between the different layers of society, between the People and Power. Fr Vsevolod also pointed up that the Church as a gathered community of believers has the most dynamic authority in this world, because it gives Christians the Lord, which gives it much greater clout than the power found in the state, public organisations, money, the media, or human intelligence. He reminded us that the Lord entrusted the power to pronounce judgement on mankind’s sin and virtue to the Church, “and the judgement of the gathered Church on issues of human life and death affect our eternal destiny”.

5 July 2013

Interfax-Religion

http://interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=51854

Editor’s Note:

Fr Vsevolod speaks the Truth. That being said, the Church has a nuanced position on many issues… and always shall. For instance, the Church is opposed to homosexual propaganda and homosexual clergy and monastics… but it’s also against the Know Nothing ignorance of the Ancient Faith Radio crowd and the konvertsy gathered about James Paffhausen (and others). Remember Nikon Mironov… the last two patriarchs gave him high Church awards for his steadfast confession of Christ’s Truth (no one who burned Schmemann’s and Meyendorff’s books on a public bonfire can be all bad).

For instance, one of the Cabinet told me how some terminally-dumb konvertsy were making the life of a priest (traditional, not an unprincipled SVSnik) miserable because he gave communion to a lesbian couple. They don’t march in parades… they’re known quantities in their (genuine) small town… and the Church doesn’t excommunicate lay homosexuals. In other words, in another case, Fr Ted Bobosh can give communion to Mark Stokoe (after all, Archbishop Job Osacky knew of and blessed this action)… if you have a problem with that, as one priest said in a similar case (with heavy Russian accent), “You can go to bishop if you have problem!” Need I say that the person involved didn’t dare go to the bishop (it was an Old School ROCOR priest, not some SVS or Angliochian floozy).

The Church DOES stand for the Right and it doesn’t compromise. Nevertheless, the Church DOES wield oikonomia as a divine tool of housebuilding… oikonomia never cancels out a principle… it only says that we CAN make individual allowances in discrete and isolated cases. Furthermore, the Church DOESN’T crusade… that’s more a papist or Proddie concept, isn’t it? Remember… there are sins much worse than homosexuality is… such as the love of money, which the Scripture tells us is “the root of all evil”. Certainly, it puts a new face on the konvertsy infatuation with the greedy and warmongering rightwing, no? Think on it…

BMD

Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin Believes that Russia can Become the Centre of the Christian World

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Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the MP Department for Church and Society, believes that Russia is moving in the direction of greater self-sufficiency, which would allow it to become the centre of world Christianity. He wrote in an article published in the newspaper Русь державная (Rus derzhavnaya: Sovereign Rus), “It’s no coincidence that many today see Russia as a defender of Christian ideals and traditional morality, as a place that can offer a real alternative to the world’s golden calf and its destructive concepts of freedom. To begin with, Russia should act as though it were the centre of the Christian world. That’s the only way it can work. Anything else, firstly, is petty, and, secondly, self-destructive”.

Fr Vsevolod went on to say, “During the past few months, Russia showed the world that she can speak confidently, to speak as an independent and strong nation with a tradition and experience of life that gives it the right to its own path. Russia isn’t only entitled to defend its vision of the social order, but it also can offer it to the world”. He also pointed up that fringe groups based upon foreign ideologies try to pressure the Russian authorities. They claim to act “in behalf of Russia’s future”, in the name of the “other Russia”, for the “real Russia”, but they accomplish nothing.

Fr Vsevolod noted, “Today, despite the West’s objections and reproaches, we mean it when we say, ‘We insist that we must protect our children from premature sexual awareness, and even more so, from the promotion of homosexuality. We hold that the adoption of Russian children by foreign families in a time of demographic crisis is a highly irrational move. We don’t want perverts to adopt these children, so that they’d lose the faith into which they were baptised, to lose the hope of a normal life’”.

1 July 2013

Interfax-Religion

http://interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=51775