Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov Became Head of the Pskov Metropolia

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The Holy Synod of Patriarchate of Moscow and all the Russias appointed the Head of the Patriarchal Council on Culture, Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov, Ruling Bishop of the Pskov Metropolia. After a meeting of the Synod on Monday, the Press-Secretary of the Patriarch of Moscow and all the Russias, Fr Aleksandr Volkov, informed journalists of the appointment. He said:

Bishop Tikhon of Yegoryevsk became head of the Pskov Metropolia, whilst remaining Head of the Patriarchal Council on Culture.

Bishop Tikhon shall receive the rank of Metropolitan. V R Legoida, the Chairman of the MP Synodal Department for Relations with Society and Media, wrote on his official webpage:

New Pskov Metropolitan is Tikhon Shevkunov.

The Pskov Metropolia has two dioceses, the Diocese of Pskov and Porkhov and the Diocese of Velikie Luki and Nevel. The head of the Pskov Metropolia was previously Metropolitan Yevsevy Savvin of Pskov and Porkhov. This metropolia includes a major pilgrimage destination, the Assumption Pskov-Pechersk Lavra, where Bishop Tikhon started his monastic career.

14 May 2018

TASS

http://tass.ru/obschestvo/5198557

Editor:

This is a sad day for the Church. Shevkunov is a fraud. He doesn’t have a theological education and he played a murky role in the Dickie Wood affair. Furthermore, he believes that Tsar Nikolai Aleksandrovich was the victim of a “Jewish ritual murder”. I shit you not! That’s blasphemous and false. Shevkunov is the perfect embodiment of a Black-Hundred bishop. He sucks up to the oligarchs and protects American alt-right creeps like Gleason and Jesse Dominick. The first is a renegade priest who swanned off to Russia without letters dimissory and the latter is a clueless rightwing asshat who spent all of his time at STS on online “traditionalist” rightwing forums.

My friends in the Rodina assure me that Shevkunov, who has delusions of becoming Patriarch, doesn’t really have a “party” in the episcopate. The real odds-on favourite to follow Patriarch Kirill is Metropolitan Mark Golovkov. Shevkunov is the confessor to members of the Putin family (not to VVP… his starets is at Valaam) and he’s used that to further his ambitions. Well, he’s only one of many “white hats”… it shows that HH still has to keep lines open to the oligarchs. Expect much loud BS from the konvertsy on this.

As I said, a sad day. He believes that Jews killed the last tsar in a ritual murder. Need I add more? No real Christian can accept that. We’ve fallen… shall we get up?

BMD

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10 October 2016. Have a Care With Seemingly “Official” Orthodox Sources

THIS is what our Holy Patriarch teaches about the so-called “Free Market”… it sure isn’t what the rightwing konvertsy spout, is it?

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Live every day as if it could be your last, and when you go to bed, don’t forget to say your prayers. I do, because I know we’re living in the proverbial “interesting times”…

Russell Bonner Bentley

callsign “Texas” in the DNR Army

People should have a care with pravoslavie.ru… this website is NOT official; it has no ties to any patriarchal publishing or news organisation. It isn’t an official production of OVTsOS. It purveys the personal opinions of Tikhon Shevkunov (don’t forget… his degree is in film production, NOT theology), not the official stance of the Church. The site employs questionable people such as Jesse Dominick and Elijah Borek… it posts material from CBN (!) and produces posts praising the pro-American “Ukrainian Orthodox” and ignores the Orthodox socialism of the Peoples Republics in the Donbass. Indeed, the site praises Free Market Crapitalism, in direct contrast to the teaching of HH… who teaches that the Free Market is a fraud and buries ordinary working people. A priest in good standing and of some seniority told me about Borek:

I blocked Elijah Borek months ago. He’s an ass who thinks he knows more than anyone about Holy Orthodoxy. He continually argued with me that the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary was NOT sinless. I finally had enough of his arrogance and blocked him.

This is the sort of questionable person that Shevkunov is gathering about him. You should take great care in using ANY material from pravoslavie.ru or pravmir.ru. I repeat… neither one is an official website. There’s much in them that isn’t in step with the Mind of the Church; it’s just rightwing blather. As “Texas” said, “We’re living in the proverbial ‘interesting times’”… have a care, for many deceivers come in “Christian” vesture (yes, even seemingly “Orthodox” vesture at that)…

One last thing… pravoslavie.ru doesn’t tell about the foreign leftist volunteers who’ve come to fight in the Donbass with the patriot forces who embrace Holy Orthodoxy because the Orthodox Socialism of the Peoples Republics is so attractive and genuine. “Texas” is one… Alfonso from Colombia is another… there are more… you can embrace Real Orthodoxy and godly communalism and coöperation or you can embrace rightwing Pseudo-Orthodoxy and godless individualism and greed. You may have Christ or “Conservatism”…

The Choice IS yours…

BMD

27 September 2014. “Thanks, But No Thanks”… OCA Rains on EP-Sponsored “Canonical Restructuring” Parade

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We’ve all heard the wind from the so-called “Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America”. This group is nothing but an EP-sponsored “talk-shop”. A notional “Proposal for Canonical Administrative Restructuring” surfaced from this social networking group (for such is what it is)… the EP groups are for it, everyone else is underwhelmed and less than enthusiastic about it… even the OCA! Read this for the OCA response to it… let’s boil it down to a sentence… “No way, no how, no Bart in our Town”. I think that the real reason the Centre shitcanned Fatso (for he did lose the Mandate of Heaven, no doubt on that score) is that they weren’t sure on how he’d react in re Bart and his pretensions to being the “Orthodox Pope”. Mollard is much more malleable and controllable… as the Centre showed by its showering of awards upon his party when he made his ad limina visit (for that is what it was, kids)… something that it NEVER did for Fatso and his drooling pack of konvertsy admirers. As a Cabineteer wrote me:

Sounds like the OCA is finished…. still insisting that its autocephaly is relevant…

I quite agree, but expect the OCA to linger on life-support for at least two more years, for it suits the Centre’s purposes. I believe that the Centre is using the OCA (and the pliable Mollard) to fuck up Bart’s planned Dixie Fry in 2016. You see, the Centre, Serbia, Poland, Czechia/Slovakia, and Bulgaria will insist that the OCA receive a seat at the “all-Orthodox Sobor” as a full discrete independent voting member. Bart won’t give in on that point… that’s clear. It’s also clear that HH will use this to scupper the assembly… and probably convene a Sobor of his own, maybe, at the newly refurbished Novy Ierusalime Monastery. HH wants to force Bart to come out openly as a Vatican puppet… and the OCA is one of his “cards” to make him do so. That is, the OCA has usefulness for the Centre now, and up until 2016. After the scuttling of the “all-Orthodox Sobor”, all bets are off. None of the OCA sorts have ANY cred at the Centre. By the way, Fatso and Dickie Wood had no real cred or tread at the Centre… if they had, firstly, Fatso would still be in charge and, secondly, Dickie wouldn’t be suspended. Both were pals of Tikhon Shevkunov, quite another thing entirely. For instance, Dickie’s getting no support from any real powers like Varsonofy Sudakov or V A Chaplin. The most that he’s getting is posts on questionable sites such as Portal-Credo and posts on oligarch-friendly venues (as Tikhon Shevkunov is part of M A Gelman‘s circle at the Vanil Restoran). Fatso has no real support at the Centre at all… if he did, his petition to enter the ROCOR would’ve been a done deal, and it wasn’t.

Besides, the status quo suits most normal people in the OCA quite well… as one told me:

Mollard’s our choice… no, he isn’t competent… no, he isn’t a leader… no, he isn’t inspiring. But he’s our choice… we need peace, and that’s that, as you say. Mollard won’t rock the boat and he’ll give us peace. Nothing else matters at this point. In any case, we had to stop Dahulich. As I said, Mollard’s our guy, not because we like him, but because he’s going to leave us alone.

That says it all… however, isn’t the LACK of news refreshing? Remember the old saying, “Happy is the land that has no history”… indeed…

I’m constantly learning… boy, I’ve learned much in the past seven years… what I see doesn’t speak well for the long-term survival of the OCA… however, in the near-term, it’s a done deal, and that’s that.

BMD

3 June 2014. A Point to Ponder… HH on What a Bishop Should Do

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HH said the above at a training session for new bishops. We tend to forget that the MP is much more professional, bureaucratised, and institutionalised than ANY of the diaspora groups are. The MP DOES have the money to attract and pay competent lay staff, as well as clergy. This has its advantages and disadvantages. Nevertheless, the MP can afford to do such things as spend the money for proper training for bishops before they go into the field. Besides which, academic qualifications for MP bishops are much more stringent than those found here in the diaspora (neither JP or Mollard would’ve made the cut… let alone Moriak, Maymon, Eliel, or Brum). That’s why Tikhon Shevkunov isn’t a bishop… he lacks the necessary education (being the confessor for the Putin family and half the oligarchs in Moscow can only take one so far). Lastly, we don’t believe that bishops are infallible or the “last word”… bishops are just as fallible as we are. In short, HH is being an activist hierarch… that’s what takes up his time and that’s why he’s not at some political events. He can spend his time politicking or he can spend his time “bishing”… he prefers to do the latter (Metropolitan Yuvenaly Poyarkov and Fr Vsevolod Chaplin do the politicking and controversial commenting for him… that’s their job). I think that he’s “got his mind right”.

BMD