Thursday, January 31, 2013

Handel's Messiah

A very uniquely beautiful performance of the complete, Handel's Messiah-from Barcelona, Spain. 


Though this marvelous composition, is not, directly, an Orthodox Christian religious or cultural expression, yet for the Baroque era in the West,  to my mind, this great & inspired work, is
very scripturally  and Christ centered and spiritually uplifting, and worth our appreciation.

This great work, is at about the highest spiritual level possible, in western Christian expression that has been produced in recent past times, and which Christ-centered focus, is now today, so very lacking,
in this faithless post-Christian era.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Manchukuo

3 Videos: Some old history of Japanese-held, 'Manchukuo' -Japanese occupied Manchuria & it's Puppet Government

Category: Probably the historical root-origin of  the term, "The Manchurian Candidate", referring to this Japanese puppet head of state, installed by them, to be their figure head ruler of their puppet 'Manchukuo' conquered dependency.

Notice this man in the company of Japanese Emperor Hirohito himself, supposedly a descendant, of divine origin.

This Japanese ruled and run, "Manchukuo" (Manchuria), is the result of Japan's winning of the Russo-Japanese War, and of the 1906 "Treaty of Portsmouth, New Hampshire", ending that war.

Manchuria, which had as a large part of it's resident population, generations of many Russians, Russian businesses and enterprises, and Russian Orthodox churches and  institutions.

Apparently, all three of these historic films, are Japanese propaganda pieces.
(Everyone and everything seems so prosperous, so happy???




Analysis of the OCA Enthronement

A critical analysis of the OCA Enthronement of their new Met. Tikhon (Mollard):/Moscow insults OCA!


{Information found on OCA loyalist-member, George Michalopulos's Monomakhos blog:}
*With a few of my added explanatory notes and brackets, etc. for better clarity.
Rd. Daniel

Lessons from the Enthronement of [New OCA Metroplitan] [sic] Tikhon (Mollard)
January 29, 2013 6 Comments


Let’s see how Syosset spins this one. Michael S: grab your megaphone! Carl: you, Diogenes, Phil R Up and Tom Paine grab your pompoms! “All together now: On Syosset! On Syosset! The Restoration is complete! / Now we throw Jonah out onto the street!” (Sung to “On Wisconsin!)

==================================

IntroductionWe have all seen the pictures of the enthronement (or installation) of the OCA latest First Hierarch, Metropolitan [sic] Tikhon. A bevy of pictures were posted on the OCA website trying to portray the event as a success and although the Syosset spin machine tried its best to list almost every person who was there, not that many showed up. The enthronement Liturgy was not much better than average Sunday Liturgy just a couple of years ago at St. Nicholas Cathedral and it was not nearly the attendance at Metropolitan Herman or Metropolitan Jonah’s respective enthronement Liturgies.

Here is the list of Orthodox bishops and who they represented as reported by the OCA website on January 27, 2013:

Among the guest hierarchs and clergy representing sister Orthodox Churches were His Eminence, Archbishop Justinian of Naro-Fominsk, who represented His Holiness, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia; His Eminence, Archbishop Dimitri, Metropolitan of Batumi and Lazeti, North America and Canada, who represented His Holiness and Beatitude, Catholicos Patriarch Ilia of All Georgia; His Grace, Bishop Nicholas of Brooklyn, who represented His Eminence, Metropolitan Philip of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America; His Grace, Bishop George of Mayfield, who represented His Eminence, Metropolitan Hilarion, First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia; and Archpriest Aleksa Michich, who represented His Holiness, Patriarch Irinej of Serbia and His Eminence, Archbishop Mitrophan. [Editor's note: nobody from the GOA was there.]

A Brief History of the Last Two OCA Enthronements
By way of comparison, the OCA reported this about the enthronement of Metropolitan Jonah on December 28,2008:

Among the guest hierarchs and clergy that were able to attend the Enthronement were His Grace, Bishop Mercurius, Administrator of the Patriarchal Parishes in the USA, who represented His Eminence, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, Patriarchal Locum tenens of the Church of Russia, His Grace, Bishop Ilia of Philomelion, representing His Beatitude, Archbishop Anastasios of Tirana, Durres, and All Albania, and His Eminence, Archbishop Abel of Ljublin and Kholm representing His Beatitude, Metropolitan Sawa of Warsaw and All Poland.

Hierarchs from North American jurisdictions taking part in the Enthronement included His Eminence, Metropolitan Christopher of the Serbian Orthodox Mid-western Diocese, His Eminence, Archbishop Nicolae of the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese in America and Canada, His Grace, Bishop Thomas of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America and His Grace, Bishop Jerome of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

In addition to visiting hierarchs, we welcomed Fr. Mark Arey, the ecumenical officer of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, who represented the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Archpriest Jan Polansky, representing the Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia and Archimandrite Kirill Hovorun who represented the Church of Ukraine.

Also, We were also honored to have with us the Russian Ambassador to the United States, His Excellency, Mr. Sergei Kislyak…

And to draw a circle on the last three enthronements of OCA Primates, here is who came to Metropolitan Herman’s enthronement as reported by the OCA website on September 7, 2002:

Among the concelebrating hierarchs representing the sister Orthodox Churches were His Grace, Bishop Savas, Chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Patriarchate of Constantinople; His Grace, Bishop Georgios, Patriarchate of Alexandria; His Grace, Bishop Demetri of Jableh, Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, Patriarchate of Antioch; His Eminence, Archbishop Damaskinos of Jaffa, Patriarchate of Jerusalem; His Eminence, Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk and His Grace, Bishop Mercurius of Zaraisk, Patriarchate of Moscow; His Eminence, Archbishop Nicolae, Romanian Orthodox Church in America and Canada,Patriarchate of Romania; His Beatitude, Metropolitan Sawa of Warsaw and All Poland and His Eminence, Archbishop Abel of Lublin, Orthodox Church of Poland; His Grace, Bishop Simeon, Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia; His Eminence, Metropolitan Daniel of Tokyo, Autonomous Orthodox Church of Japan; and His Eminence, Archbishop Avgustin of Lviv and Galicia, Autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Moscow Patriarchate. Other Churches were represented by clergy.

Every Orthodox Church in the world was represented at Metropolitan Herman’s enthronement.

Success or Failure?It is clear that the latest enthronement was not a success – and success being defined as a show of support by other Orthodox Churches for the OCA. Another way to look at it is,
Orthodox Churches represented at Metropolitan Tikhon’s enthronement:
  • The Orthodox Church of Russia
  • The Orthodox Church of Serbia
  • The Orthodox Church of Georgia
  • The Antiochian Archdiocese in North America
  • The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia
  • and of course all the hierarchs of the OCA.
The Orthodox Churches not represented at the enthronement:
  • The Orthodox Church of Constantinople
  • The Orthodox Church of Alexandria
  • The Orthodox Church of Antioch
  • The Orthodox Church of Romania
  • The Orthodox Church of Cyprus
  • The Orthodox Church of Greece
  • The Orthodox Church of Albania
  • The Orthodox Church of Poland
  • The Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia
The declining representation displayed at the Tikhon usurpation enthronment is unmistakable. Even the response to Saturday’s enthronement banquet was poor. The banquet room was downsized from a room for 500 guests to a room for 150 guests and that number was not reached. Even more embarrassing is that of the 140 +/- that did show up, only 60 bought tickets, the rest got free tickets to fill the room! 

Even More Bad News:
But maybe the biggest blow to the OCA was that His Eminence,[MP] Archbishop Justinian of Naro-Fominsk, who represented His Holiness, Patriarch Kirill[Gundaev] of Moscow and All Russia; His Eminence,[Georgian Patriarchate] Archbishop Dimitri, Metropolitan of Batumi and Lazeti, North America and Canada, who represented His Holiness and Beatitude, Catholicos Patriarch Ilia of All Georgia and His Grace,[ROCOR/MP] Bishop George [Schaffer]  of Mayfield, who represented His Eminence, [ROCOR/MP] Metropolitan Hilarion [Kapral] First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia,[ROCOR/MP]. at the conclusion of the enthronement Liturgy, left the cathedral and  walked next door and offered their personal greetings to [former] [ forcibly retired], Metropolitan Jonah {Paffhausen]. Observers noted that Lefty [OCA Archpriest Leonid] Kishkovsky [a bigshot in the OCA's Syosset Administration] was livid at this affront. (What a capstone to a [his] miserable career in ecumenism.)

After their meeting with Jonah, they left DC and did not attend the Enthronement Banquet.  

So this is the very tenuous starting point for the new and improved post-Jonah OCA. The OCA Synod met on Monday to deal with their new reality and their increased isolation here in North America and around the world. The ironic thing is that although Tikhon has been placed in a gilded cage of Kishkovskyite manufacture, he really has the ability to break free from his chains. After all, what is Syosset going to do? Replace yet another Metropolitan?

==============================================

*Correction: to my recent sharing of the 'Two Reports' on this enthronement, where I mistakenly stated that it was the MP New York St. Nicholas Cathedral that gifted new Met. Tikhon with relics of 3 French saints.  It was actually the OCA's Washington DC St. Nicholas Cathedral that gave him those 3 relics.
Rd. Daniel.

Monday, January 28, 2013

revniteli.livejournal.com

Vechnaya Pamyat!  Memory Eternal!

Comment: This is being shared, to honour the memory of Eugene Lvovich Magerovsky.

To access the many valuable articles on this site, click on to
"171 journal entries"...and scroll downwards.....

His last entry was on January 14, 2009, 4 days before his passing.
In these English, Revniteli articles, 

and also on his Russian language site,
are many pieces of useful evidence/documents of the early stages of our ROCOR's public  betrayal to the MP, which information is still of much value today.
Rd. Daniel Everiss

GROUP'S GOALS: 
Our aims are to preserve and continue the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, as it was organized and ordained by the late Blessed Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky). We object to the effected rapid merger of our Church with the Moscow Patriarchate before all the outstanding questions separating us have been fully resolved.

One of the main questions separating us is the uncertain status of the Moscow Patriarchate since it was founded on Stalin’s order in 1943. The path of the church that was contrary to the pronouncements of the Church Council of 1917-18 was begun by Metropolitan Sergei (Stargorodsky) in 1927, when he first introduced the teachings of “Sergianism” that made the church serve the communist state, which continue in effect to the present day. We also cannot accept unification with a church in a state which still keeps the emblems, signs, names, customs, melodies, statues, legal norms, etc., of the accursed communist past. These manifestations and the participation in the Ecumenical movement are openly allowed and accepted by the Moscow Patriarchate. 

All Orthodox believers, wishing to safeguard the purity of the Orthodox Faith and help the Russian people return to their historical path of serving the God’s Truth are welcome in our continuation of the Erstwhile ROCOR. For this purpose the Church seeks to make connections with the believers in dioceses and parishes of Russia Abroad, RF, Ukraine and Byelorussia.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Putin and the monk

How much influence does MP Fr. Tikhon Shevkunov have over the Russian president?

Category: A few more insider glimpses of what goes on inside of Putin's head & regime, etc.
More and more we receive such evidences of what exactly, this MP-'church', especially at it's 
dizzy top power levels,  is truly all about,
that Kremlin enslaved, 'MP', organization that Met. Lavr Shkurla so foolishly
 submitted a large part of our old free ROCOR to, in June of 2007 (!)


How much influence does Father Tikhon Shevkunov have over the Russian president?

©Igor Starkov/Salt Images
Father Tikhon Shevkunov
Father Tikhon Shevkunov looks a little too polished to fit the image of the Orthodox Christian monk branded into the western imagination by Dostoevsky. The beard is just unkempt enough, but his chin is a bit too sculpted, his mane of shoulder-length hair too full and flowing, and his TV delivery too flawless to belong to any crazed, self-flagellating anchorite from The Brothers Karamazov. Father Tikhon is a picture of movie-star self-assurance – with a passing resemblance to Russell Crowe. 

While Dostoevsky’s monks stuck to their unheated monastic cells, Tikhon is no recluse. When I interviewed him in December, he was back from a visit to China and off soon to Latin America. The whitewashed walls and onion domes of Sretensky monastery, which he presides over in downtown Moscow, is not exactly an ecclesiastical island of contemplation, isolated from the modern world. 

Call the monastery, for example, and you will get a switchboard operator. Need to use WiFi? No problem. Walk into an outbuilding and you will see the largest publishing house of the Russian Orthodox church and, since 2000, the best-known and most-used Orthodox website: Pravoslavie.ru.

“At Mount Athos they only just got electricity, and at Sretensky [monastery] the monks all have iPads,” laughs Yevgeny Nikiforov, a friend of Tikhon’s and head of Orthodox radio station Radio Radonezh, referring to the Greek monastery which is the Orthodox religion’s gold standard in terms of cloistered asceticism. “Of course, they need these [iPads] for their proselytsing work,” he says, turning serious when he sees that I am writing this down.

Father Tikhon wields influence in the church far above his modest rank of Archimandrite, or abbot, due primarily to his contacts in the Kremlin. The story that travels with him, which he will neither confirm nor deny, is that he is the confessor to Vladimir Putin. The only details he gives is that Putin, sometime before he became president at the end of 1999 (most likely while he was head of Russia’s FSB security service from 1998 to 1999) appeared at the doors of the monastery one day. Since then, the two men have maintained a very public association, with Tikhon accompanying Putin on foreign and domestic trips, dealing with ecclesiastical problems. But according to persistent rumour, Tikhon ushered the former KGB colonel into the Orthodox faith and became his dukhovnik, or godfather.

Imported Image 14.tiff©AFP

Father Tikhon does appear to have a very intimate knowledge of Putin’s religious life: in 2001 he gave an intriguing interview to a Greek newspaper, saying Putin “really is an Orthodox Christian, and not just nominally, but a person who makes confession, takes communion and understands his responsibility before God for the high service entrusted to him and for his immortal soul”.

He also would appear to have influence – he has campaigned almost single-handedly for anti-alcohol legislation in Russia, and achieved surprising results: just before the New Year, Russia’s parliament banned alcohol sales after 11pm. 

When I press on the real extent of his influence, he is blunt, saying only that he and Putin are well-acquainted, but he refuses to be drawn on the dukhovnik question. “You can believe those rumours if you want, but they certainly aren’t spread by me,” he says. The word “Putin” is nowhere to be found in his autobiography Everyday Saints and Other Stories, which became a publishing sensation in Russia last year – the top-selling book of 2012, beating even the Russian translation of Fifty Shades of Grey.

Whatever the truth of the dukhovnik question, it is something that the Kremlin finds it useful not to deny. “It’s a very private matter,” says Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, “I simply don’t know,” though he confirmed that Tikhon is “very popular” and the two men do know each other well. “No one for sure would know whether or not he is the dukhovnik. If someone knows you are the dukhovnik, then you are not the dukhovnik any more”.

A former film-school student who was baptised in 1982 at the age of 24, Father Tikhon has thus found himself in the uniquely influential role of other historical churchmen in close proximity to the ear of state power, though he insists, rather credibly, that “I am no Cardinal Richelieu!”

Strictly speaking, he is right, says Yevgeny Nikiforov. “In our confessions there is not very much specific information. You just say ‘I stole’ or ‘I fornicated’. Maybe you add a few specific details like how much and how often. But you don’t need to be very specific. If Father Tikhon is captured by some foreign intelligence service and tortured, there would not be much he could tell them.”

Imported Image 15.tiff©ITAR-TASS
Georgy Mitrofanov of the St Petersburg Theological Academy
Georgy Mitrofanov, a St Petersburg priest, says that the fashion for having a dukhovnik is something that has only recently hit Russia’s elite business and political circles. “It’s an interesting phenomenon, which has happened as rich Russians have started to join the church.

“Most people do not have a personal confessor, it’s something that most people do in crowded churches, like on a conveyor belt. The wealthy want something personal, some see it as a form of psychotherapy,” he says. “However that puts the dukhovnik in a vulnerable position – they become very dependent on their patron.”

Father Mitrofanov doubts that Putin has a real dukhovnik “other than himself”, and says that several years ago he asked Father Tikhon if he was Putin’s confessor, and Tikhon replied that he wasn’t. “However, that was a long time ago and things may have changed,” he says. 

. . . 

The association between Putin and Father Tikhon is odd for any number of reasons, but the first and foremost is historical. Visitors to the Sretensky monastery may miss the innocuous stone cross unless they are looking for it specifically. It sits in the garden, abutting one of the whitewashed walls, tended by cassocked monks and genuflected over by kerchiefed ladies with the look of salvation on their faces. “In memory of faithful Orthodox Christians, tortured and killed here in the years of turmoil”, reads a bronze plaque set to one side.

Placed in its present spot in 1995, the cross seems to exist in oddly tragic symmetry with the building just a block away at the other end of Bolshaya Lubyanka street – the eponymous headquarters of the former KGB, an organisation which in various incarnations has killed or imprisoned more than 300,000 church workers in the name of official atheism since 1917. During Soviet times the 600-year-old monastery was closed and housed an NKVD (precursor to the KGB) barracks. It is said the premises was even used for executions.

Imported Image 16.tiff©Igor Starkov/Salt Images
Father Tikhon in a tea room for guests at Sretensky monastery. The painting on the wall is of the Russian tsar Alexander the Third
Today, much has changed. The Lubyanka, which houses the KGB’s successor, the Federal Security Service, now has its own dedicated Orthodox chapel. Sretensky monastery, reopened and renovated, has come to symbolise an awkward alliance of the church and its former persecutors. It has become the centre of a spiritual revival among Russia’s ruling circles, who are disproportionately drawn from among the former KGB, and who flooded into the Kremlin 12 years ago on Putin’s coat-tails.

For Father Tikhon, the ravages directed at the church by the institution which to all intents and purposes governs Russia today are not something to dwell on – not a matter for public confrontation – but neither are they something to be specifically hidden away. They are, like the stone cross in his cloister garden, there to be seen only if one is looking for it. 

He says he will never be reconciled with the Soviet period of Russian history, but he nonetheless does not consider the crimes of the NKVD or the KGB to be the responsibility of contemporary individuals: “They didn’t have anything to do with that. It would be like blaming some American soldier today for what happened in Vietnam,” he says. 

Rather than assigning blame, Father Tikhon seems eager to hammer the 70-year Soviet period into a single arc of historical Russian statehood. All the while they worked for the Soviet state, many of those KGB officers, he says, were in fact serving Russia. “The intelligence officers that I know did what they did on behalf of the Russian state,” he says, “and so to say they were guilty of repressions would be totally false.”

This is, needless to say, something of a minority attitude within the church, especially among the formerly dissident rank-and-file clergy. But it is a view that is nonetheless welcomed and cultivated by the Kremlin leadership, who seem keen to overcompensate for their atheist past, and take advantage of the church’s image. According to a 2010 poll, it is the second most trusted public institution in Russia, despite the fact that only a small minority of Russians attend church regularly. Falling approval ratings and the rise of a street protest movement appear to have accelerated Putin’s efforts to co-opt the church, according to Geraldine Fagan, who monitors religious freedom in Russia and is author of a new book, Believing in Russia

“Russians identify with the Orthodox church as the only major social institution to have survived their nation’s turbulent history, so Putin wants to capitalise on Orthodoxy’s image of permanence, even as his own legitimacy crumbles,” says Fagan. Sretensky is at the centre of this effort: the head of one Moscow public relations firm jokingly calls the monastery “the Kremlin’s department of ideology”. But it is not really a joke. 

Once suffused with ideology at every level, Russian political life has for centuries been vulnerable to all-encompassing doctrines and programmes, and many see the kind of muscular, politically tinged orthodox Christianity espoused by Father Tikhon as starting to fill this awkward vacuum left by the disappearance of communism. Father Tikhon denies that he is anyone’s “ideologist”, but the label has begun to stick, especially after 2008, when Tikhon directed and starred in a documentary film and controversial political parable on the collapse of the Byzantine empire, shown three times during prime time on national TV: The Fall of an Empire – the Lesson of Byzantium.

Russian hardliners are fond of the idea that Russia is “The Third Rome” – the inheritor of Byzantium’s fallen Orthodox greatness – and the message of the film does much to reinforce this historical connection, along with justifying in historical terms a profoundly anti-western world view. The Fall of an Empire glosses over the role of the Ottoman Turks, who conquered Constantinople in 1453, and instead argues that Byzantium rotted from within and succumbed to ideological predation by an envious west.

The film charges that rather than sticking to its traditions, Byzantium reformed at the behest of western (Venetian) bankers, portrayed in the film wearing carnival masks with particularly long noses, lest anyone miss the point. The west’s individualistic culture sapped Byzantine resolve and destroyed its hierarchical values. The public lost faith in their rulers. 

At the time it was shown, the film raised a scandal among liberals who saw it as eccentric and obscurantist. Today it would barely register on state airwaves dominated by paeans to state authority, historic revisionism, and charges of foreign-financed subversion directed at Kremlin opponents. Tikhon, in other words, was a bit ahead of his time – but now has trouble getting noticed in the midst of a wholesale swerve of the political elite towards conservative nationalism and xenophobia following Putin’s return to a third term as Russia’s president last May.

Imported Image 17.tiff©Denis Sinyakov/Reuters
Pussy Riot, later found guilty of 'hooliganism motivated by religious hatred', in 2011
A secular state according to its 1993 constitution, Russia recently flirted precariously with religious law in last year’s strange prosecution of punk band Pussy Riot, which transformed them into global martyrs after they were given two-year prison sentences (one has since been set free), guilty of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”.

Prosecution documents state that the laws broken by the three defendants – who performed “Blessed Virgin, throw Putin Out!” wearing Day-Glo balaclavas in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour cathedral – were articles 62 and 75 of the Quinisext Council, held under the emperor Justinian in the seventh century. According to these articles, access to the solea and pulpit of Orthodox churches is reserved for clergy. While the final sentence by the judge in the case dropped references to the Quinisext Council, it did cite as expert opinion the fourth-century Council of Laodicea, according to which: “The solea and ambon have special religious significance for believers.”

Many in the church think the state may have overstepped the mark in its zeal to cover itself in the mantle of church legitimacy, and the scandal opened a row between high-ranking church dignitaries, such as Patriarch Kirill, and the formerly dissident clergy, many of whom seek reforms. “These medieval canons have nothing to do with state law,” says Father Mitrofanov. “They simply used the church as ‘ideological cover’ in the same way a Soviet court would use communist ideology to justify a decision.” 

Father Innokenty Pavlov, who retired from the church in 1993 and is a noted liberal opponent of the Orthodox establishment, says he doubts there is anything aside from political expediency behind the newly religious attitude of Russia’s rulers.

“It seems our leaders learnt one useful thing from their scientific atheism classes,” he laughs: “Voltaire said ‘if there were no God it would be necessary to invent him’. They thought, what a good idea, let’s implement this.”

Even Father Tikhon signed a petition calling for reducing the sentences. He is harshly critical of Pussy Riot’s behaviour, saying: “The state must react to this, or else it is not a state”, and “If they did this in Westminster Abbey, they would have got a prison sentence for sure.” Yet he adds, “but two years is too much”.

Perhaps as a result of overdoing his hardliner image, Father Tikhon has of late been anxious to emphasise his softer side. He raises funds for the monastery’s children’s centre that cares for about 100 handicapped children, which is financed jointly by the monastery and the state.

“If you are looking for a ‘symphony’ of church-state power – this is it,” he says, using the fifth-century Byzantine term for theocratic rule. “This is an example of the church and the state working together for good.”

Imported Image 18.tiff©ITAR-TASS
Sretensky monastery, Moscow, one block away from the former headquarters of the KGB
If Father Tikhon has indeed gone soft, there is no better evidence than his recent autobiography Everyday Saints and Other Stories. It is devoted mainly to reminiscences of an older generation of churchmen, Tikhon’s teachers, who he presents through a rather gauzy, nostalgia-laden portrait of a time when life was simpler. Unlike his earlier film project, there is no overt chest-thumping nationalism or pro-regime political propaganda, only a rather well-written and compelling narrative about the lives of monks in the Soviet Union.

It was actually a particularly harrowing experience with a Ouija board in 1982 that started Father Tikhon – still in film school at the time and named Georgy Shevkunov – on his long road to the heights of secular and spiritual power in Russia. The decision to be baptised was not taken lightly back in the days of the pre-perestroika Soviet Union. But Shevkunov had a pretty compelling reason. 

An amateur spiritualist, he and a group of friends had taken an interest in the occult, finding that, with the help of a few candles, a planchette and the right attitude, they could “establish contact with certain completely incomprehensible but nonetheless absolutely real entities” from the spirit world, according to his autobiography. The new acquaintances introduced themselves variously as Napoleon, Socrates and even Stalin. It was fun for a while. And then, it almost went horribly wrong.

One evening, the group managed to contact who they believed was 19th-century author Nikolai Gogol. But he was in a terrible mood, and the group recoiled in terror when, in a fit of extreme crankiness, Gogol told them all to commit suicide by ingesting poison. They raced from the room, and the next day, headed straight to the nearest church, where a priest chastised them. The foolish youngsters had not really been in contact with Gogol, said the priest. Instead, they had simply been the victims of a clever prank. By a minor demon, most likely. His recommendation: baptism.

Tikhon’s generation were spiritual explorers, which drew many like him to Christianity. The Soviet prohibition on religion only made it more attractive – the forbidden fruit. Yevgeny Nikiforov, who is in his fifties, laughs today when he remembers the antics of his 1980s generation.

“First we all learnt yoga, then we studied Sanskrit, then we read the New Testament. It was all the same to us at the time. Only later did we become spiritually mature,” he says. “No one had the first clue. The KGB even thought karate was a religion,” he laughs. “We watched Bruce Lee movies thinking they were some sort of mystical experience. Can you imagine?”

Father Tikhon says what drew him to Christianity (aside from an attempt to avoid demonic possession) was that it became obvious to his generation that “all the great figures of the world and Russian history” – he mentions Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Kant, Goethe and Newton, among others – “all those whom we trusted and loved and respected, all of them had thought about God in a completely different way from us.” On the other hand, “those who evoked no sympathy whatsoever” – Marx, Lenin, Trotsky – “all these destructive revolutionaries who led our state to what it had become, all were atheists.” The choice, he says, was clear.

Soon after baptism, Shevkunov took up residence in Pskov Caves monastery, an onion-domed former hermitage in Russia’s northeast, one of only two functioning male monasteries that remained by the 1980s of the nearly 1,000 which had existed before the 1917 revolution. In 1991, he took his monastic vows, taking the name Tikhon, and became the Archimandrite of the Sretensky monastery in 1995.

Imported Image 19.tiff©ITAR-TASS
Father Gleb Yakunin at a political meeting in 1990
Tikhon’s autobiography is mainly devoted to those “everyday saints” whom he calls his teachers, who endured far more than he did at the hands of the Soviet regime. Father Tikhon’s own dukhovnik Father John Krestiankin, the late Archimandrite of the Pskov Caves monastery, had his fingers broken during interrogation by the NKVD shortly before being sent off to Gulag for five years in 1950.

“Thank God, I did not have the same serious conflicts which my predecessors had,” Tikhon says today. “In the 1980s, we did not have such repressions, they could ruin your professional life, ban you from studying, or from having prestigious work, but no more than that.”

But while occasionally something akin to anger shows through in the prose, Everyday Saints is written in a mellow and forgiving spirit, mainly devoted to personal reminiscences of the quirks and loveable foibles of an older generation of churchmen. Critics say the book is notable for what it leaves out: that in addition to clashes with authorities, the clergy often compromised. Many level the accusation that church dignitaries worked for the KGB, which essentially controlled the levers of promotion within the church through the end of the 1980s.

No one knows more about this painful episode of the church’s history – the co-operation between top-level clergy and the KGB – than Father Gleb Yakunin, a former priest and liberal reformer who was excommunicated in 1997 partly for his criticism of the church. On the subject of the uncanny success of Tikhon’s new book, Yakunin admits he and his wife both liked Everyday Saints. But he says it represents “half the story” – the positive half – and dismisses it as “Socialist realism” (a reference to the Soviet school of official art devoted exclusively to painting happy factory workers and peasants).

Yakunin himself spent five years in a prison in the 1980s. Then, in 1992, under pressure from then President Boris Yeltsin, Yakunin was granted access to the archives of the KGB’s fifth directorate, fourth department, which dealt with religious groups, and spent a month going through the agent reports. While he was never given the card file with the identities of the agents, he was able to glean from the patterns of their reports who they were by comparing their codenames with information on the activities of top-level clergy.

Imported Image 20.tiff©Dmitry Astakhov/AP
Putin and Father Tikhon in Jerusalem, February 2007
For instance, he found an intriguing travel itinerary of agent Mikhailov, who, according to his reports, travelled to New Zealand and Australia in February 1972 and then to Thailand in January 1973 for meetings of the World Council of Churches.

Cross-checking these with news entries in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, Yakunin found that a certain Archimandrite Kirill, who worked in the church’s department of external relations, took such a trip on those dates. In 2009, after four decades of rising though the ranks, the white-bearded, portly Kirill was named patriarch of the Russian church. The church maintains that Kirill was never an employee or agent of the KGB. Representatives of the patriarch declined to comment further.

According to Father Yakunin, the church was so thoroughly infiltrated by the KGB that “virtually the entire episcopate were recruited as informers”. There is no evidence that Father Tikhon was himself compromised by association with the KGB – he would have been too young to make an attractive target for recruitment. However, people he writes about were – for example, in the mid 1980s he spent two years as assistant to Father Pitirim, the head of the publications department of the church, who Father Yakunin refers to by his alleged KGB codename “Abbot”. 

“I respect Father Pitirim and wouldn’t want to throw any stones at him” says Father Tikhon, a bit obliquely, on this subject.

Twenty years later, compromises made under the Soviet regime are still the subject of a painful debate within the church. Instead of purging the former collaborators, it is those who have raised the issue, like Father Yakunin, who have been purged.

“The Russian church created Russia,” says Father Tikhon. “Russia can sometimes be an obedient child, and sometimes a child that revolts against its parents. But the church always has felt responsibility for Russia.”

Charles Clover is the FT’s Moscow bureau chief. 

Source:
Beware of aggressive cookies
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/f2fcba3e-65be-11e2-a3db-00144feab49a.html 




Short-Biography of Eugene MAGEROVSKY




From Portal-Credo.ru, Russian & English, a Short-Biography of Eugene Lvovich MAGEROVSKY- 


Comment: Much more could be written about  this life-long ANTI-COMMUNIST, a very good man's amazing productive life and works.

*He loved his real Russia, and he loved his America, both.

I was very privileged to have spoken to him daily via phone, as his friend and confidant,  for about his last year and a half, up till his passing, as we both faught that foul bogus 're-union' which was a Kremlin engineered plot from the start of it, and was not only aimed to subvert/capture the  anti-communist Russian diaspora church people, i.e., ROCOR, but also as another perfidious fifth-columnist plot against America!-which country the KGB Kremlin gangsters still see, as their number one enemy in this world! ..and I know just how very dedicated he was to freeing his beloved  Russian land and people and church! from the oppressive godless communist yoke and it's present neo-soviet KGB controlled debased  condition, and returning/resurrecting  Russia to what was best, most noble in old historic Russia, the real Russia, that Old Russia which the reds have murdered off, or totally still do enslave, by in large.

Yet his pro-Kremlin propaganda lying slanderers called him, 'anti-Russian', a 'hater of Russia', and 'working for the CIA', etc....others claimed that he was 'working for both the KGB...and...the CIA!'.  WHAT RUBBISH!!!

He refused any compromise with those who have betrayed, in 2007, a large part of our old free ROCOR, to the KGB controlled MP 'church'.

And thus, he spoke boldly and, 'rudely'...in the ears of many. To them, he was 'strident', 'unpleasant', 'divisive', etc.

Eugene Lvovich Magerovsky spoke the truth, no matter who wanted to hear it...or not.

May his soul now rest near the God of Truth, the God Who..... cannot abide.... any.... liars.

Vechnaya Pamyat! and Memory Eternal! to A GOOD MAN!
Rd. Daniel Everiss  in Oregon


••
Russian


(This  English text has been humanly corrected and streamlined from the crude machine-English, for better clarity of meaning)

January 19, 2009, 15:55
SUMMARY: Eugene Lvovich Magerovsky (Eugene L. Magerovsky) (+ 18 January 2009)

Feinberg Magerovsky [apparently his daughter's married name, Feinberg, as she must be the reporter of this]:

Eugene Lvovich Magerovsky, known church activist and an active member of the social movement of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) - was born on December 11, 1934 in Prague. He was the son of Lion Florianovich Magerovskogo. He attended a Russian school in Prague. At the introduction of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia the  Magerovsky family moved to the U.S. occupation zone of Germany. He continued his education in the Russian Real High School in Regensburg (Germany).

Later he moved with his family to reside permanently in the United States and he  completed his secondary education at George Washington High School (New York). Then he studied at the City College of New York, where in parallel with the academic courses, he also took part in officer courses. He graduated from college with a Bachelor of Arts. At the same time he received the rank of Second Lieutenant [ 'Stock'] (1956). He then enrolled at the Faculty of Political Science and the Russian Department, (and later -The Garrimanovsky) Institute of Columbia University.

In parallel with his studies he  taught at various universities. E. Magerovsky began serving with the U.S. Strategic Intelligence Service [added note: he was not ever connected to or with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a totally separate agency of the US government]. After graduating from the Russian Institute with a Master of Arts, he  started his preparation work for the Degree of Doctor. In spite of his military service and his teaching, he  successfully defended his work, receiving a Doctorate in history, specializing in Russian and East European history, and he was a  graduate of  Political Science at Columbia University.

As part of his research work, he researched many stacks and archives in Europe and America. His trustee materials he submitted to a number of Russian foreign national organizations for storage in the archive: 'Bakhmetyevskaya' of Columbia University. He was one of the founders, and then deputy head of the Department of Slavic Studies at New York University. He also served as assistant director of the Institute of Soviet Studies at Middlebury College, where he taught a course on the history of Russia and the USSR. He taught in the department of history at the Institute for the Study of Modern Russia at Fordham University. He asdvised the New York Office of  Public Education on matters related to the teaching of the Russian language and Russian studies, and the establishment of Russian-English "bilingual" education programs in urban schools. He has held a number of other academic, research, scientific and administrative positions. He was a member of a number of American professional organizations. In his participation in his service of  Strategic Intelligence, he  advised the U.S. War Department. He served as Operations Officer and then -as  the Commander of Operations of the Department of Strategic Intelligence. In the 1970-ies. he spent several years as an academic officer in the Army Institute for Russian and East European Affairs, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany). Then he served in the War Office until his retirement. He retired after 35 years of service with the rank of Colonel.

After this he taught Russian history at U.S. universities. He participated in seminars and lectured at the University of National Defense. He was a consultant and advisor to public and private research institutions in international relations, and in national defense and national security. He was a Professor and Co-Director of the Department of Russian Studies at Georgetown University in Washington. He supervised graduate students of Russian history at Georgetown University. He was the Co-editor of the "New Journal" (1980-1986).He was  Vice-chairman of the Russian Academic team in the U.S.. He was Co-editor of the annual "Memoirs of the Russian Academic Group in the United States." He was Vice-Chairman of the Russian Foreign Expert Committee to Determine the Fate of the Remains of Members of the Russian Imperial House, founded in 1989, and he was an active member of the "Society of Zealots Memory Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitski)" (USA) and one of the lead authors of "loyalty" ("Fidelity"), of the Church and Public Publications of the Society. He was an active opponent of "unification" of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR (A) with the Moscow Patriarchate. After the "unification" of the ROCOR (Lavr) with the MP, which action he  did not agree with, he actively participated in the creation of the Provisional Supreme Church Authority (PSCA) ROCOR, headed by Bishop Agafangel (Pashkowsky).

He was a member of the public committee for "The Continuity and Revival of Russia" (Moscow), whose goal is to promote the societal views and proposals related to the need to establish a legal and historical continuity in the modern Russian Federation, of the pre-soviet Russia. He was married to Catherine V. (nee Brunst). He resided in Kinnelon, New Jersey, USA.

Friday, January 25, 2013

New Economic Deal for Ukraine


New Gas Deal Between Ukraine and Royal Dutch Shell, may help free Ukraine from it's political/economic dependency on Putin's RF


Archbishop and Petya 2

"A second dialogue between the Archbishop and Petya" -about the MP, Eumenism, etc.

My Comments-

JUST MY PRIVATE VIEWS:... intended to only clarify some points...... not for argument.

Comments: 
I share this, 'Second Dialogue', which are the astute and valuable  views of this Petya and himself, from SiR Archbishop Chrysostomos (Gonzales), of Etna (California).

I do not disagree with 99% of what is expressed here, by an honored and highly respected archbishop of our beloved sister church, the Greek Synod in Resistance, or of what this Petya says either.

But, I have had to help to clarify some people's names,  and points he or this Petya  makes, with my use of [ ] brackets, plus myself make a few explanatory/corrective  notes.

The learned Archbishop, (who is much more knowledgeable about Greek church history and matters, than of all the Russian, post Bolshevik revolutionary  chaos and of the Russian Diaspora's & often convoluted complicated history sometimes, he seems to forget our current ROCA's official stance about ourselves, i.e., that our Russian Church Abroad, today,  under our present Holy Synod, headed by our Metropolitan Agafangel (Pashkovsky) is THE rightful and only fully truly canonical continuation. of the old free pre-union, ROCOR.

Our heroic Metropolitan Agafangel, who himself was a full canonical hierarch in that old pre-union pre-2007 ROCOR Synod of Bishops, ALONE, in the pre-union ROCOR, resisted and  refused that union with the MP, and he now heads our Continued-ROCA.

That part of the old free ROCOR that in 2007 submitted to Moscow, is not! any longer canonical, nor is it part of The Universal Orthodox Church,  but it is a total subservient, graceless,  tool of the KGB run MP.

It has cut itself off from the living real Church, it is a walking corpse, a fraud.

It is utterly uncanonical, graceless, and is in schism and more and more, in heresies.

It is a bogus theatrical tool of the godless KGB, which also runs it's 'Mother Church', the Stalin in 1943,  founded MP.

The MP  is the KGB's 'religious front', a pretend Russian Church.... created  after the passing of Holy New Confessor Tikhon (Belavin), and in no way connected to him or to the real pre-revolutionary true Russian Church! 

Vladyka Chrysostomos's ..or Petya's (?) comment about the past 90 years,  something about the old ROCOR's attitude about the MP, 'the ROC' ...is very debateable & and is an outsider's semi-uninformed observation about the past official stances of our anti-communist Russian Diaspora's ROCOR hierarchs or our flock regarding, precisely, HOW we in the old ROCOR, historically regarded the MP, when and how we might 're-unite' with 'it'.. (or with some others in Russia?..or with  a totally new true 'local Russian Land Sobor Church' there?), etc.

Just read all of years of the official ROCOR condemnations against the MP!...if that doesn't tell the history enough. 

Further, regarding any 'anathema' pronounced, today, by our ROCA, yes we are indeed hotly currently debating within our church, of making that official condemnation against apostate Sergianism & Ecumenism, which is personified by the MP organization.

We feel that it is not only our canonical right so to do, but that it may help to save souls... which is the sole purpose of all anathemas, anyway., ...and indeed of all the canons.

It is our canonical and Orthodox DUTY to pronounce this anathema.

Apparently, on that point, we and Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna, a bishop of our sister church, apparently, are not in full agreement.

Our two separate churches, though in fraternal intercommunion, have much in common, but we also have different stances and positions, different histories,  different LOCAL PASTORAL APPROACHES & local church DISCIPLINE, on some specific issues and problems.

We have differences.
Such is life!...does that surprise anyone?

It shouldn't, as that is the centuries of church history, of the entire Orthodox Church history, world-wide.

Just my unofficial perspectives, for anyone who wishes to waste their time to read them-

But, yes indeed, what the Archbishop and this Petya here states, IS of much value, and very worth reading

May God bless them both!.  MANY YEARS!  MNOGAYA LETA!  to them.

Rd. Daniel Everiss in Oregon ..a no-body, but loyal to our ROCA under our Metropolitan Agafangel and our
Archbishop Andronik.



Subject: A second dialogue between the Archbishop and Petya

Begin forwarded message:

From: Archbishop Chrysostomos
Subject: Re: Things are moving ahead!
Date: 24 January 2013 18:36:07 GMT

Exarchate Clergy and Faithful: a long but perhaps useful exchange.

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Dear Petya,
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Blagoslovite Vladika Chrysostomos
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Gospod' blagoslovit!
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Dear Vladika Chrysostomos

 I just don't know where to begin.  Thank you for setting the record straight in your response to a father Alexis.  It truly saddens me to read such articles only because of the deceptive  manner in which the union of the Church of Christ is being handled.  When the MP- metropolitan Hilarion [Alferov] visited the Vatican in Sept 2011 there was no mention in the report of his visit that the MP and Rome would work for a strategic alliance (http://fondgb.ru/index.php?ss=31&s=49&id=34364).

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It is very interesting that, for all of its liberal posturing, the ecumenical movement is anything but transparent and open. Indeed, it was not until our Mother Monastery in Phyle began distributing video presentations of the antics that so long marked the WCC's international meetings (with ritual presentations even from clearly pagan sources) that many Orthodox (and especially in Eastern Europe) had ever heard of these travesties.

The vile actions against Metropolitan Cyprian and our Synod of Bishops and against Patriarch Diodoros I of Jerusalem, after he visited our monastery in Greece on its Feast Day and publicly praised our work in Greece and openly endorsed the courageous stand of Metropolitan Cyprian (before a multitude of feast day visitors), can be traced directly to the anger of the Orthodox ecumenists at these exposes of outrageous ecumenical excess heretofore largely hidden.

This was so fierce that the Oecumenical Patriarchate convened a pan-Orthodox conference of Orthodox ecumenists to censure the Patriarch of Jerusalem in an absolutely unprecedented display of un-Orthodox action against one of the oldest Patriarchates in Christianity!
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   When ROCOR joined the MP it was only until way after the union, that Archbishop Mark of Berlin publicly stated that he'd been in talks with the MP way prior to the "rapprochement".
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We, a Sister Church, learned of them, as you know, only by way of the Internet.  And when Metropolitan Cyprian rightly and justly began to ask for clarification from the ROCA, there began a sure and at times rather disrespectful attempt, among pro-union advocates, to portray us as fanatics, despite our moderate Patristic ecclesiology.

In due time, one of the more circumspect Bishops (most of whom privately admitted to us that they had been caught up in a process that they could not stop) admitted that Moscow dictated an end to communion with us and our Sister Churches. (You read the document, in fact.)  Thus, Moscow exacted final revenge for our exposure of its very intense and irresponsible involvement in the ecumenical movement and a betrayal of the confession of Faith that is implicit in all that MP-Metropolitan Hilarion [Alferov] of Volokolamsk, heir apparent to the Patriarchal throne ("our man in Moscow," as one Uniate theologian insightfully calls him), preaches in his ecumenical mission to unite Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Running behind him with his own "union" card, sadly enough, is the ecumenical Oecumenical Patriarch
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In both cases, as the Met Hilaron [Alferov] states below there were "doctrinal differences" but, they are put aside to be worked on in the future.
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This seems to be the rule applied to everyone except us conservative anti-ecumenists who, strictly abiding by the Canons, are immediately declared heretics and outside the Church without trial and without any opportunity to defend themselves. This is how the Orthodox meaning of ecumenism and memerbership in the Church have been distorted in contemporary Orthodoxy.

As an aside, one of the great ironies is that the extremist resisters against ecumenism, in unilaterally condemning the ecumenists in the same way, oddly enough adopt the same tactics as those whom they resist.  This even applies to some of the extremists in the [pre-union] ROCA, who immoderately misinterpreted its censure of ecumenism, when it was still in resistance, and thus made this error.

Thus, to add irony to irony, many of those who groused about the restoration, in 1994, by the ROCA of communion with our Synod alone, from among all of the Greek old Calendarist factions, owing to moderate ecclesiology, nonetheless accepted union with one of most active ecumenical jurisdictions, aside from Constantinople: i.e., Moscow! [the MP]

Moving from irony into insanity, we were then condemned by the... "extremists" [i.e. those anti-MP super-correct jurisdictions who declare only themselves as the only True Orthodox, and endlessly condemn all whom they consider, inferior or defective, etc...i.e. what some label, 'The Mathewites"]  for leading the ROCOR into its union with world Orthodoxy and the abandonment of its former position as a bastion of Orthodox traditionalism.  Never mind the fact that we did not join world Orthodoxy and are universally reviled by it!

In every case, it was a lack of transparency, a lack of truthful communication with the faithful, a distortion of the Patristic ecclesiology of the Church, and the downright nefarious ways of ecumenical politics that led to the sad situation in world Orthodoxy that we see today, when it is assumed that there is a de facto union of what we Orthodox consider wrong beliefs (papism, among them) with sacred Truth for the sake of "alliances" and social cooperation.
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 In both, the cultural and social aspects are/were being played as a uniting.force and in both cases the reality is that unity of one Church of Jesus Christ is ignored.
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Ignore and, more frighteningly, defined locally, in Orthodoxy, along ethic lines or, worldwide, as having as its foundation, not in a common confessiom, but in social action and political and cultural solidarity defined as "the defense of the West." This is simply the flip-side of Islamic imperialism and the desire for a universal caliphate. Again, betrayal always creates irony and contradiction.
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  In all instances it is as if they are ashamed to broach the fact that there are differences that should be rectified in the name of Jesus Christ.  They are afraid to speak about the true things that block True union but only talk about earthly things that human beings have in common - society and morality (which the Soviet system did perform poorly on both and were the bulwark of the atheistic system).  This whole process reminds me of when I was working in the bureaucracy.
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You are absolutely on the mark!  In fact, such a spirit has always been considered the spirit of Antichrist in the Orthodox world.

These are, indeed, things that belong to politics and governmental bureaucracy, not to the Church and its ends!
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  Whenever changes were to be made that could potentially result in problems, we would be fed theoretical utopian scenarios to distract us from the realty in efforts to win us over.
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Precisely what you are seeing in the Church today.
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"I would like to stress, once more, that there are well-known doctrinal differences between the Orthodox and Catholic faiths, but there are also common positions in regard to morality and social issues which, today, are not shared by many of the representatives of liberal Protestantism," MP Hilarion [Alferov] concluded. "Therefore, cooperation is first and foremost necessary between the Orthodox and Catholic Christians - and that is what I call a strategic alliance."
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Given the incredible scandals that have blackened the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church, this is an astonishing statement about Protestantism.  Of course, the issue is that Roman Catholicism has a unified power and presence in the world that, quiet frankly, Protestantism does not.  It is a bigger, better, and more useful corporate sister than divided Protestantism!
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So, in order to avert the obvious dogmatic differences and heaven forbid, humbling oneself and asking for forgiveness in true brotherly love, the MP Met. Hilarion [Alferov] strikes out with a strategic alliance!!
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Which seems to rule out certain liberal Protestants, who have been the champions of ecumenism.  Once more, how ironic!
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  Now, what in he world would you want a strategic alliance for, when you are speaking about the Church of Christ?   So I found out the definition of strategic alliance.   It is "a relationship between two or more parties to pursue a set of agreed upon goals or to meet a critical business need while remaining independent organizations."   The advantages of strategic alliance include:

1.      Allowing each partner to concentrate on activities that best match their capabilities.
2.      Learning from partners & developing competences that may be more widely exploited elsewhere.
3.      Adequate suitability of the resources & competencies of an organization for it to survive.
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You turned to the right reference points: business and politics.
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This now makes sense!  it is a business model that the Harvard school of Business, the London School of Economics and HEC at the Sorbonne all would be proud of!  Imagine, reap all the benefits of being a Church through subsidaries - the St. Gregory Theological Foundation (http://fondgb.ru/) and the Urbi et Orbi Foundation (http://home.catholicweb.com/McCarthyAssembly/index.cfm/NewsItem?ID=346898&From=home&sharedarticle=1
without the accountability and with no inherent cost as all the dogmatic issues are set aside!
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There you have it in a nutshell. That is why ecumenical love and unity, as we hear them preached in Godless compromise, are unacceptable to the Church.
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  It has nothing do with the Church of Christ and it all has to do with as you say, Vladika, "The Papacy, an invention of the Middle Ages, is an absolutist theocracy and [neo-soviet] Russia is an oppressive oligarchy. Yet numbers, money, and influence make them compatible bed-fellows. A curious thing, unless one strips all of the religious rhetoric from this arrangement. All one then has left is this: power, worldly prestige, and fancy talk about a utopian Christianity that never existed and, if it ever does, will be the antithesis of Christianity."

This all fits perfectly into a Strategic Alliance.  It is just fitting for our generation, the Pepsi generation, that in reality what the MP  Met. Hilarion [Alferov] is saying and parleying is that "I'm ok, your ok" and let's get on with the business at hand and that business has nothing to do with the Church but with power and influence i.e. government.
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On the mark, Petya!
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It now also makes sense why the [pre-official union] ROCOR Preparatory committee agreed on maintaining independent administrative and organizations between ROCOR and the MP.  It was not to acquiesce to the faithful in the diaspora or to do good by ROCOR who had said for 90 years that the ROC [the MP], and ROCOR ..."are one" [debateable point], and when the situation in Russia changes, they are to be REUNITED.  No, separate organizations are necessary for this business model.  In effect, the MP and ROCOR [via that 2007 union], created their own strategic alliance!  No need to deal with the sensitive issues, no need for True forgiveness, just join for the sake of culture, the Fatherland and the advancement of what the MP always refers to - Orthodox Culture.
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I have to agree with you, as one looking from the outside in. (As our Bishops were told, we, not being Russians, had nothing relevant to say in this matter. When I insisted that Orthodoxy defines our Faith, not ethnicity, I was dismissed as a liberal and innovator and told to mind to "Greek affairs"!)
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This whole thing is sad as it has nothing to do with brotherly love, honesty, Truth or the Church.  Rather, as Christ said Himself - Mammon!
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Amen.
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Forgive me, Vladika Chrysostomos, for venting but after five years of trying to figure what was going on, the truth is being revealed.  The goals of this Strategic Alliance has nothing to do with the Church but for the MP strengthening and abetting with Putin's self serving goals.
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This is why I maintain that we must not condemn, revile, and anathematize those who entered into union with the MP.  We must feel great sorrow for them, love them as brothers, and pray for their return to their former witness.  If those who were reared in the Church could not understand what happened (but by God's Grace knew - like you - enough not to accept it), think of the many others who, hearing good and logical rationalizations and denied access to us more moderate and level-headed opponents of world Orthodoxy, simply accepted the union out of a misguided sense of obedience or ethnic nostalgia.
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 The fact that our family and friends were guided to the Greek Orthodox Church in Resistance and you, Your Eminence is not only reassuring but is truly a Godsend!
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We must never forget that it was the old ROCA that provided the Greek Old Calendarists with Bishops.  It was also to it, when our Synod alone restored union after opportunism, extremism, and factionalization marred the image Greek Old Calendarists and led to alienation from the ROCA, that we turned as a first move to uniting the separated Old Calendarists.  Sadly, the old ROCA went in a different direction [the part that bowed to the MP in 2007], within a decade of our restoring union. That tragedy not withstanding, we owe much to the ROCA and are simply paying back one small part of a great debt.

As for me, I am a largely inactive clergyman now; my work is behind me; and I really did nothing in the past but support our Metropolitan Cyprian, a truly inspired holy man who has been reviled on both the right and the left, but who in the end helped maintain what was given to us by the ROCA and which we all today enjoy together.
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  The fact the the Grace from ROCOR was transferred to the Greek Synod and back to Vladika Agafangel is also a Godsend and is a True example of His works!  May Christ have mercy on us all and protect us by His Grace.
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That Grace also unites us to all Orthodox, so that our unity as the Small Flock must also serve to reinforce us to keep the faith, fight the good fight, and in every way protect those traditions to which even world Orthodoxy, in its deviations from the Faith, must return, if it is to be healed.  The Church is a hospital for those ailing in the Faith, as the Fathers teach, and we must do all that we can to maintain its therapy of love and to make our refuge a refuge for others.

It is in this spirit, as you know, that our Synod has agreed to give episcopal oversight to those former clergy and faithful of the Free Serbian Orthodox Church who have approached us.  I mention this because His Grace, Bishop Auxentios left yesterday for Australia, where he will help to install His Grace, Bishop Ambrose as the Bishop for the communities there (with the eventual hope, of course, that we will find suitable candidates to assign Bishops of Serbian descent in due time.)

So please pray for both Bishops, since, as you know, we have been the beneficiaries of abhorrent insults and nastiness - including racial attacks - from the Serbian Patriarchate and world Orthodoxy for acting, in this instance, just as the ROCA acted  to in the 1960s in providing the Greek Old Calendarists with Bishops, when the blessed Metropollitan Chrysostomos died.
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Goodnight, Vladika, it is getting late.
Your spiritual son in Jesus Christ.
Petya
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With paternal and filial affection in Christ, + AC