Why the so-called Moscow Patriarchate is Uncanonical
and Should Not Be Joined

In the summer of 1927, Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky, was suddenly released from two months of imprisonment and torture by the Cheka [proto-KGB]. He and three other clergymen who had been released from similar trials met in Moscow and declared on July 29^th:

1. That they had been “authorized” by the Soviet Union “to take over the administration of the Orthodox All-Russian Church” and vowed to prove themselves its reliable servants and “not betray its trust.”
2. That the great task of their Synod was to prove in word and deed that the Orthodox Church could be a fully loyal and obedient collaborator and supporter of the Soviet regime.
3. That the Church administration they were usurping would “be Orthodox, and at the same time see the Soviet Union as our civil Fatherland, whose triumphs and successes are also our triumphs and successes, whose failures are our failures. Every attack, boycott, public catastrophe [against Bolshevism]...will be regarded as an attack against ourselves.”
4. That, because all events happen from God, therefore this means it is God’s goodwill that the Church accept the Revolution, acknowledge the Bolsheviks, and serve them faithfully “not only from fear, but for conscience’s sake” [Rom.], as a religious duty to God-appointed, lawful rulers.
5. That the Church had previously rejected this position because it failed to understand God’s will and providence.
6. That anyone who does not assent to this new administration and policy must be silent or leave the Church.
7. Finally, “...we demand from the clergy abroad [34 anticommunist bishops and their flocks, forming the ROCOR, had gone into exile] a written promise of their complete loyalty to the Soviet government in all their public activities. Those who fail to make such a promise or fail to observe it shall be expelled from the ranks of the clergy...[and] cut off from their native Church and land.”

Yet, here are Sergius’ very own words (from the year before, 1926):

“But let us be sincere to the end. We cannot pass over in silence the contradictions which exist between our Orthodox [people] and the communists who govern our Union. The latter struggle against God and His rule in the hearts of the people, while we see the significance and aim of our entire existence in the confession of faith in God as well as in the widest dissemination and affirmation of that faith in people’s hearts. They accept exclusively the materialistic conception of history, while we believe in divine Providence, in miracles, etc. Far from promising the reconciliation of that which is can never be reconciled, and from pretending to create an adaptation of our Faith to communism, we shall remain from the religious point of view, what we are, i.e., adherents of the Traditional Church.” [Letter of June 10, 1926 to Metropolitan Evloghii of Western Europe (ROCA).]

One year later, his synod tried to perform this very reconciliation of these irreconcilable enemies and adapt Orthodoxy to Bolshevism, Christ to Lenin. But was it really possible that the Church could identify herself with Bolshevism and make common cause with it and still remain the Church of Christ?  

The Bolshevik Commisar and CPSU spokesman, E. Yaroslavsky snorted at the Sergian “Declaration”, declaring that same year (1927): “With religion, even though Bishop Sergius may adorn it in whatever worldly garb he may please, and with its influence on the masses of workers, we shall continue waging war, as we wage war on every religion, on every church” (E. Yaroslavsky, On Religion, Moscow, 1957, p. 155).

That same year, Stalin was declaring to the world: “The Party [the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [CPSU], which was the sole legal, governing political party under Bolshevism, i.e., it was the government of the Soviet Union] cannot be neutral with regard to religion, and it continuously conducts anti-religious propaganda against any and all religious prejudices because it stands for science, while religious prejudices are against science, since every religion is something contrary to science.” (Interview with the First American Trade Union Delegation [September 1927])

At this time, the Soviet Commisar of Education, E. Lunarcharsky was explaining the current Soviet policy toward religion, education, and family, reminding his fellow Bolsheviks: “Remember that the struggle against religion is a struggle for socialism [unlike Sergius, the Soviet government says the two are irreconcilable]....The program of the Communist International likewise clearly states that Communists war against religion.” “Our task now is to do away with the family and to remove women from the rearing and education of children... in common facilities...the children will be supervised by our trained pedagogical and medical personnel. There is no doubt that the terms ‘my parents,’ ‘our children,’ will gradually fall out of usage, being replaced by purely general conceptions like ‘old people,’ ‘children,’ and ‘infants.’... Under authentic Communism, the citizen will avoid any such permanent pairing as marriage and will seek to satisfy his needs via... freedom of consensual intercourse between husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, children, so that one cannot tell who is related to whom and how closely. That is how socialism is to be built.... A vast common society will take the place of that small philistine nook, that little philistine apartment, that domestic hearth, yes, that stagnant family unit which separates itself off from society.” [H. Kent Geiger, The Family in Soviet Russia, Cambridge, Mass., 1968, pp. 36, 44-5, 47-48, 68}]

Such was the Soviet Government at the time that Metropolitan Sergius and his little sect of four boldly identified Christianity with its program.

So then, where in all this does the Christian find a common cause, not to mention every common cause and complete self-identification, with Bolshevism – is it in the realm of their common morality? The Bolshevik’s dogma denies every Divine law and preaches violent class-warfare as the only morality. Is it in their common family values? Bolshevism at this time – and officially until Stalin reversed it in 1943 – preached the abolition of the family, marriage, and parenthood. Was there anything in Bolshevism, anything at all, that a Christian could morally identify with or share in? It preached the absolute destruction of everything the Church and Christ stands for. Therefore, Metropolitan Sergius’ confession or Declaration of Faith, preaching the “religious duty” of sharing in Bolshevism’s goals and aims was “dogmatized apostasy:”

‘They say: ‘the [Moscow] patriarchate has changed nothing, neither dogmas, nor services, nor rites’. ‘No’, we reply, ‘the patriarchate has violated the vital dogma of the Church of Christ, has destroyed its vital purpose – serving the regeneration of people, and has substituted for it the godless aims of communism, which are unnatural for the Church. This apostasy is more bitter than all the previous Arianisms, Nestorianisms, Iconoclasms, etc. It is not the personal sin of this or that hierarch, but the root sin of the Moscow Patriarchate, confirmed, preached, sealed by an oath before the whole world. It is, so to speak, dogmatized apostasy’” [Archbishop Vitaly (Maximenko) of Eastern America (ROCOR), The Motives of the My Life, 1955]

Referring to Sergius’ “theology of Adaptation”, later Soviet publications would declare:

“Contemporary influential atheists regard Adaptation as a modernization of religion which is politically useful for the CPSU and harmless for the materialistic ideology. “This (Adaptation) is one of the paths to the dying out of religion” (Journal, Science and Religion, no. 12, 1966, p. 78).

They were quite right; Sergius, in trying to defend his indefensible capitulation, explicitly introduced the fatal heresy that, because all events are from God, the Church must adapt, embrace, and collaborate with every regime and every circumstance, even one completely inimical to her life and faith. As one Russian writer (B.V. Talantov, “Leaven of Herod”, 1967) who perished in 1971 in a gulag for writing this, says:

“Patriarch Sergius, and later Patriarch Alexis with their newly-created bishops...assimilated well the leaven of Herod, i.e., Adaptation to the mighty of this world. Here is how, for example, Bishop Vladimir of Kirov expressed Adaptation in his sermon of May 28, 1967. ‘We must adapt ourselves to new conditions and circumstances of life like a little stream which, on meeting a rock in its path, goes around it. We live together with atheists and must take them into consideration and not do anything that displeases them.’

“It is interesting that B. V. Talantov was told almost the very same thing by the KGB on February 14, 1967: “You,”–said the KGB agent, addressing Talantov – “demand that all closed churches be opened [note: 80% of the remaining churches were being closed under Krushchev]; but you live together with atheists and must take their wishes into consideration, and they do not wish that churches be opened.”

“In the St. Seraphim church in Kirov on January 20, 1966–the day of commemoration of St. John the Baptist–one [MP] priest said in his sermon: “John the Baptist taught everyone very simply: obey the authorities in everything.” From this it is evident that the new [MP] bishop, having assimilated Adaptation to atheism, has become an obedient tool in the hands of the atheist regime, and this is a most ruinous result for the Church of the long activity of Metropolitan, and then Patriarch, Sergius.”

Our Lord said, “No one can serve two masters. He will either love the one and hate the other or he will hold to the one and despise the other” [Matt. 6:24], yet Sergianism is claiming to do so. Under the laws of the Soviet Union, people under the age of 18 could not attend Church, receive communion, or be taught religion by the Church, although everyone had to take classes in “Scientific Atheism”. Under the laws of the U.S.S.R., no one could preach the word of God outside the church building or proselytize anyone to religion, relics were confiscated and burned, the State had the right (and used) it to close nearly all of Russia’s churches; 93% were closed, although tens of millions of believers remained, protesting this, and it was illegal to hold any service anywhere else or to worship together at all without a special permit from the unwilling CPSU’s agents. Nothing religious (Bibles, Catechisms, etc.) could be published without receiving the prior censorship and approval of the CPSU agents. Everyone had to receive an atheistic education. Whenever the CPSU or KGB wanted to persecute religion, the bishops and priests had to betray believers and fellow-clergy over to death or prison, close churches, turn people away from Baptism and the Mysteries, remain silent or praise Marxist-atheist propaganda, give up Bibles and Church books to destruction, endure the mockery of Christ and all that is holy without raising a word in defense....

In sum, under Sergianism one could only obey Christ and live as a Christian to the extent that Christ’s enemies decided at any given moment, and while officially no one was absolutely compelled to deny their private beliefs, yet in word and deed they were daily forced to do so, and to do this, according to Sergius’ Declaration, was the will of God and their religious duty.

50,000 clergymen were killed and at least 20,000,000 Christians died, persecuted in one way or another for no other reason than that their faith did not and could not ‘adapt’ as Sergius’ had to the service of militant atheism and that made them ‘counter-revolutionaries.’ These martyrs (witnesses) for Christ Sergius and his successors dismissed as “political criminals,” denying that there was ever any persecution of religion or suffering for the sake of religion in the U.S.S.R. (e.g., in his Feb. 15, 1930 TASS interview and his 1941 book The Truth about Religion in the U.S.S.R. - “in the Soviet Union there was not and is not now any religious persecution”; “churches are closed not on the orders of the authorities, but at the wish of the population, and in many cases even at the request of the believers”; Church schools are being destroyed because “the Church herself does not want to have any theological-educational institutions”; etc.) This regime waging war on Christ and “all that is called ‘God’ or an object of worship”[2 Thess. 2:4], this regime Sergius and his successors ordered their clergy to commemorate in every Divine Liturgy with a prayer for its prosperity, success, and permanence, while forbidding the Church’s prayers for those persecuted by the regime (cf., his Ukaz # 549 of Oct. 27, 1928). For the atheist Stalin, for Lenin, for Brezhnev, Sergius and his successors declared “a heavenly reward” and intoned “Eternal be their memory,” (cf., for instance, ‘Patriarch’ Alexis’ March 1953 official declaration the day after Stalin’s death) while for the soul of a fellow bishop just killed by the Cheka, Sergius could not pray, “because the order for this has not yet come.”

So here is the origin and first reason for every Orthodox believer’s rejection of the contemporary Moscow Patriarchate – it was created, was kept in existence, and still exists because it willingly offered up the life and will of the Church in slave-service and for destruction to Christ’s enemies for 70 years. “You have offered to sacrifice somebody and something – the internal liberty of the Church” (Archbishop Seraphim of Ulglich, 1927 Epistle to Met. Sergius). “We will not give the Church as a sacrifice over to the mercy of the betrayers and foul politicians and agents of atheism and destruction. And by this protest we do not cut ourselves off from Her, but we cut them from us and boldly say: ‘Not only have we not gone away, do not go away, and will never go away from the bosom of the true Orthodox Church, but those who are not with us and for us, but against us, we consider Her enemies, betrayers, murderers. It is not we who go into schism by not submitting to Metropolitan Sergius, but rather you who are obedient to him go with him into the abyss of the Church’s condemnation.” (Metropolitan Joseph of Petrograd, deputy of Met. Peter of Krutitsk, an early leader of the Catacomb Church, Epistle #5, To an Archimandrite of Petrograd, 1928)

To this day, the M.P. refuses to recant of this horrible Judas-like act of betrayal and condemn this sin, but rather glorifies Sergius on a level with all the saints and true, faithful martyrs for his fathomlessly evil deed. Thus its pseudo-Patriarch Alexis II (Ridiger) addresses those present to celebrate the 50th anniversary celebration of Stalin’s appointing Sergius “Patriarch” of his Stalinist pseudo-church (1943/1993), saying:

“The host of martyrs of the Church of Russia bore witness to her faith and sowed the seed of her future rebirth. Among the confessors of Christ we can in full measure name... his Holiness Patriarch Sergius.”

Further reasons to reject the M.P.

1. This ‘Church’ is a Schism

This attempted “takeover” and seizure of the Church administration from the existing Church hierarchy by this new Bolshevik, ‘Sergian’ synod was rejected by nearly all of the several hundred hierarchs of the Russian Church, those within Russia and those temporarily in exile outside of her. A “takeover” or a usurpation (least of all by Bolshevik decree!) cannot happen in the Church – a “takeover” is simply a schism and that is what the Church called it then. What necessitated this takeover, by Bolshevik (not Church) authorization, was the steadfast rejection of this very course by the legitimate Church authority, Patriarch Tikhon’s appointed successor, Metropolitan Peter (Polianskii) of Krutitsk, whose supposed servant and deputy Metropolitan Sergius was. St. Met. Peter declared in his Sept 27, 1927 encyclical from his Bolshevik-imposed Siberian exile to the bishops of the Russian Church:

“For any hierarch, such a declaration is not permissible...I was asked, in more fitting terms, to sign the Declaration, but I did not consent, and was for that reason exiled. I trusted Metropolitan Sergius, and now see that I was mistaken.

“You Bishops must yourselves remove Metropolitan Sergius. I do not bless you to commemorate Metropolitan Sergius during Divine services...”

He also wrote personally to Metropolitan Sergius in 1930 demanding he retract the Declaration or “if you are too cowardly to defend the Church, remove yourself from the scene; give way to someone stronger than you.”

Moreover, Metropolitan Peter retained his faithful anti-sergianist, anti-bolshevik position to the end, as we read in the official record of

“the state’s version of the arrest, imprisonment, and actual death of Metropolitan Petr (Polianskii). Named as Patriarch Tikhon’s successor, he was arrested in December 1925, sentenced in 1931 without a real trial, and shot in October 1937, having remained ‘an uncompromising enemy of the existing system’ who ‘considers the struggle with Soviet power to be unending’ (110-11).” [Slavic Review, vol. 57, no. 3 (Oct. 1998), “Religion in the Soviet Union”; citing F. Corley, Religion in the Soviet Union: An Archival Reader, N.Y. 1996).]

The so-called Moscow Patriarchate today is the descendent of a Bolshevik-engineered schism, and is not a part of the Body, but a schism. It lacks Apostolic Succession and is not the Church of Christ. It is an elaborate fake; anyone who wants the real One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church won’t find it there where the unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity have all been abandoned from the beginning!

2. This ‘Church’ is Anathematized (and Justly)

Moreover, this tiny collaborator sect had defied the Church’s existing anathema on collaboration with the Bolsheviks by concluding the sort of agreement She had already called “a pact with the devil.” The Patriarch of Moscow (St. Tikhon Belavin [+1925]) and the All-Russian Church Council of 1917-18 had declared the Bolshevik rulers to be “originated from Antichrist, frenzied with atheism” and “We anathematize you, madmen,...and we lay you under ban, faithful children of the Orthodox Church of Christ, to in no wise to associate with these fiends of humankind in any matter whatsoever”, to which the Council added:

“The Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia in his epistle to the beloved-in-the-Lord archpastors, pastors, and all faithful children of the Orthodox Church of Christ has drawn the spiritual sword against the outcasts of the human race - the Bolsheviks, and anathematized them. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church adjures (binds under threat of a curse) all her faithful children not to enter into any communion with these outcasts. For their satanic deeds they are cursed in this life and in the life to come. O you Orthodox! His Holiness the Patriarch has been given the right to bind and to loose according to the word of the Saviour... Do not destroy your souls, but rather cease communion with the servants of Satan - the Bolsheviks. Parents, if your children are Bolsheviks, demand authoritatively that they renounce their errors, that they bring forth repentance for their eternal sin, and if they do not obey you, renounce them. Wives, if your husbands are Bolsheviks and stubbornly continue to serve Satan, leave your husbands, save yourselves and your children from the soul-destroying infection. An Orthodox Christian cannot have communion with the servants of the devil... Repent, and with burning prayer call for help from the Lord of Hosts and thrust away from yourselves ‘the right-hand of aliens’ - the age-old enemies of the Christian faith, who have declared themselves in self-appointed fashion ‘the people’s power’ [458 out of 567 of the contemporary Soviet rulers were Jews]... If you do not obey the Church, you will not be her sons, but participants in the cruel and satanic deeds wrought by the open and secret enemies of Christian truth... Be bold! Do not delay! Do not destroy your soul and hand it over to the devil and his servants!”  

According to the stance of the Russian Church, Bolshevism was effectively classed with Satanism and collaboration with it, collaboration with Satan. Think about it. Can a Christian really say: ‘the goals and success or failure of militant atheism are mine own, an attack on it is an attack on my Church’? Can a Christian really say: ‘it is a religious duty to support and further the reign of militant atheism on earth’? What kind of Christianity shares its success or failure with “the servants of Satan”? Or what of the Sergius’ declaration to the world in his 1930 TASS interview that “the churches and seminaries are being closed because the Church [i.e., the Sergian synod] does not want to have any”? Or that of ‘Patriarch’ Alexis I in 1955:

“The Russian Orthodox Church supports the totally peaceful foreign policy of our [soviet] government, not because the Church allegedly lacks freedom, but because Soviet policy is righteous and corresponds to the Christian ideals which the Church preaches.”

These are not Christians but communists in cassocks and klobuks, preaching ‘Christian’ Bolshevism.

That is why the Russian Church declared that anyone who would do this in the future was outside the Church (anathema). Sergius and his original little sect of 4 out of fear defied this and suffered the consequences.

The so-called Moscow Patriarchate originated and remains under an unrevoked anathema of the Russian Church, cut off and stamped “the way of perdition”, for its creedal union with and endorsement of the Bolshevik Antichrist government. One might rightly say of her too: “I heard a voice from out of heaven [the testimony of the Holy Church], saying, ‘Depart from her, My people, lest ye be sharers in her sins and receive her punishments.’” (Rev. 18:4)

3. This ‘Church’ is KGB

When Stalin decided to present a fake, Stalinist ‘Patriarchate’ to the people, he ordered the surviving handful of Sergianists to make Sergius their Patriarch (Sept. 4, 1943) and placed the whole new Soviet ‘Patriarchate’ under the direction of head of the Commissarate for Repression of Religious Cults, NKVD [proto-KGB] General G. Karpov and his “Council for Religious Affairs.” So, the head of the antireligious arm of the KGB (the Commisarate of Cults) and the director of the new Moscow Patriarchate’s church administration were one and the same man.

 

According to the “Fundamental Law of the Soviet Union”, the Moscow Patriarchate (until 1991), “is under the control of the Council for Religious Affairs” and its system of regional and local officials, all of which are composed of antireligious Communist Party and KGB leaders. KGB General Furov, the head of the “Directorate for Russian Orthodox Church Affairs” and a governor of the CPSU/KGB’s “Council for Religous Affairs”, reported in 1974 to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union:

“The Synod [of the Moscow Patriarchate] is under the control of the [CPSU/KGB’s] Council for Religious Affairs. The question of the selection and placing of its permanent members was and remains completely in the hands of the Council, and the candidature of the non-permanent members is also agreed beforehand with responsible members of the Council. All issues which are to be discussed at the Synod are first discussed by Patriarch Pimen and the permanent members of the Synod with the leaders of the [KGB] Council and in its departments, and the final ‘Decisions (Opredeleniya) of the Holy Synod’ are also agreed.”

In essence, the Patriarchate neither elected bishops nor made decisions until after the KGB/CPSU Council had told them what the election outcome or decision would be. Every official statement was co-authored by militant atheism’s chiefs and every one of the bishops was the appointee of the KGB/CPSU antichrists.

Likewise, commenting on how his own ‘Metropolia’ (a 1947 schism from ROCOR, now called the OCA) was decreed canonical and autocephalous by Moscow ‘Patriarch’ Pimen, Metropolitan Theodosius candidly remarked a few years ago: “Personally, given the political situation of the Soviet Union at that time, I am amazed that the autocephaly was granted at all. How the Russian Church was able to do this, how it negotiated with the Soviet Government’s Council on Religious Affairs– these are things I did not ask’ (June/July 1995 issue of the official newspaper of the OCA, “The Orthodox Church”, p. 10). [The supposed grant of autocephaly from the real Russian Orthodox Church was in fact a payment from the KGB/CPSU to these American schismatic bishops in exchange for the Metropolia’s surrendering to the M.P./KGB control the Japanese Orthodox Church and offering a promise of silence and collaboration with the antichristian U.S.S.R. KGB Colonel Oleg Kalugin states flatly that through this the OCA became heavily infiltrated with KGB agents, doubtless, uniformed in klobuks, crosses, and cassocks.]

It was the KGB General Kuroyedov that ordered the Patriarchate to join the Ecumenical Movement and the W.C.C. [about which we shall speak further below], reporting to the Communist Central Committee in 1960:

“The Patriarch accepted the recommendation of the [KGB] Council [For Religious Affairs] concerning the entry of the Russian Orthodox Church into the membership of the World Council of Churches and evaluated this as a major action of the Russian Orthodox Church in its activities abroad.’”

Consequently, the Soviet ‘Church’ was officially incorporated into the W.C.C. in 1961. And it was certainly on the Council’s orders that the MP issued ultimatums to the Patriarchates forbidding their Pan-Orthodox conference of 1962 to discuss their agenda topic “The Fight Against Atheism,” the act of a truly faithful servant of militant atheism, one of many such services to follow. For instance, the immediate fruit of the MP’s entry into the WCC was placement of an effective block on any WCC discussion or protest of religious persecution in the USSR (despite the fact that Krushchev had just closed 80% of the few remaining churches in the USSR and issued orders [1962] to arrest all minors [and their parents] who were caught attending Church services). At the same time, the MP WCC delegates secured (from 1969 until 1979) over $15,000,000 in WCC funding for 3^rd world communist revolutionary groups including the Viet Cong in recognition of their ‘Christian’ struggle for racial and social justice! In 1966, the Central Committee of the WCC (their chief policy-making body), declared that “American victory in Vietnam would cause long- range difficulties” and they called upon “the United States to halt its bombing of North Vietnam and review and modify its policy of trying to contain communism.” It also proposed that the West stop resisting and recognize the militant atheists also as legitimate rulers of China and welcome them into the U.N. and the Security Council, abandoning the claim of Chinese Christians and nationalists exiled to Taiwan. This and many other over and covert services to militant atheism and apostasy did the so-called MP render her KGB/CPSU council of masters under the auspices of the Ecumenical Movement.

The current Patriarch himself is a recognized, infamous KGB agent (codename ‘Drozdov’) and is cited in the aforementioned “Furov Report” as the most zealous for the Soviet cause among the MP bishops. The Estonian newspaper “Postimees” (of March 18, 1996) in “A Shadow Hangs over Patriarch Alexis (II)” has published excerpts from the KGB reports of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic preserved in the local state archives, including the following KGB report:

“Agent ‘Drozdov’, born in 1929, a priest of the Orthodox Church, has a higher education, a degree in theology, perfectly speaks Russian, Estonian, and limited German; he enlisted (in the KGB) on February 28, 1958, out of patriotic feelings in order to expose and drive out the anti-Soviet elements among the Orthodox clergy, with whom he has connections, which present an overriding interest to KGB agencies. At the time of enlistment it was taken into consideration that in the future (after securing his practical work) he would be promoted through available channels to Bishop of Tallinin and Estonia. In the period of his collaboration with the organs of KGB, ‘Drozdov’ has proved himself in a positive manner, is accurate in his reports, energetic, and sociable. He understands theological matters and international situations well. He is eager to fulfill tasks given to him by us (KGB) and has already presented a number of worthy materials...After securing the agent in practical work for the agencies of state security concretely worked out, we intend to use him to further our interests through sending him into the capitalistic countries as a member of ecclesiastical delegations...” (In other words he was a vicious spy-informer-persecutor of any Christian who was not 100% pro-Bolshevik, helping deliver them up to the KGB and the firing squad or the gulag; also, note that the KGB decided, not the Church, that he would become Bishop of Estonia; having proved so thoroughly a tool of the KGB, it next wants to use him as a foreign spy and propagandist. Finally:)

“According to KGB archival documents opened briefly in the early 1990’s, in 1988 “An order was drafted by the USSR KGB chairman to award an honorary citation to agent DROZDOV” (the future Patriarch Alexis II) “for outstanding intelligence services”.” (This eager servant of the devil now heads the Moscow Patriarchate [consisting of other KGB agent-‘bishops’]!)

The MP is the KGB-Church, the Stalinist-Church, the Soviet Church, and in that regard it is worth quoting St. John Maximovitch’s 1964 letter “On the Expression ‘Soviet Church’”:

“It is not correct to speak of the ‘Soviet Church’--which is something the ‘Church’ cannot be in the true sense of the word ‘Church’--but about the hierarchy that acts as the agent of the Soviet regime. One’s attitude toward this hierarchy should be the same as toward the other representatives of this [i.e., the Soviet] regime.”

So, how today would one approach a Bolshevik commissar? Asking a blessing? Certainly not and so neither should someone seeking the authentic Church go to a Soviet hierarch or hierarchy that received their position by virtue of the KGB’s recognition of their merits as communist agents!

4. This Church is Ecumenist

As already mentioned, the Moscow Patriarchate, being a spineless slave and pleaser of men and not of Christ, joined the Ecumenical movement on the order of their head, KGB General Korodoev in 1961. According to the Constitution of the WCC, adopted at the Amsterdam Assembly in 1948, in Protestant/Ecumenist fashion, “the member churches [ranging from Orthodox to Nestorian to Monophysite to Baptist to Pentecostal to Anglican] are already one in Christ. They do not have to do anything to create this union; they find their unity in Him.”

Not long after joining the Ecumenical Movement, the Patriarchate synodically decreed that the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches “hold the same teaching concerning the Holy Mysteries and mutually recognize the validity of the Mysteries performed in each” (*Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate*, No. 5, 1970, Russian ed.) and therefore, a kind of intercommunion was established, Catholics being permitted to commune in MP churches and vice versa. Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad, head of the MP’s external relations department, served Mass (in October and December of 1969) with Roman Catholics in the Papacy’s Russicom and shared this ‘communion’ with the papist laity.

One of the MP’s three WCC representatives was the future (current) Patriarch Alexei II (Ridiger). On behalf of the Patriarchate, he recognized the mysteries of all the WCC’s heterodox, from Nestorian and Monophysite to Baptist and Anglican, and even claimed membership in Christ for His deniers:

“‘We, the Orthodox, are lovingly disposed to our non-Orthodox brothers, for we have all been baptized in one Spirit, and we have all been made to drink into one Spirit (I Corinthians12.13).’ ‘[W]e all have been received into the nature of Jesus Christ the God-man as an integral nature. And this truth forces us to believe that every person striving towards goodness and righteousness does the work of Christ on earth, even if he intellectually has not known Christ or has even rejected Him.” [Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, 1980, no. 3, p. 59, & 1966, no. 7, p. 43]

As Patriarch, he has proven his deep commitment to this heresy, by making the Patriarchate signatory to the Balamand (1993) and Chambessy (1990) Agreements. With these official ecumenical declarations Moscow and the other ‘World Orthodox’ condemned our Holy Fathers and the whole Orthodox Church as responsible for dividing the Body of Christ and declared the Church had been in error and without right Christian love or the truth for millennia! They cast derision on the saints of God and the Body of Christ for condemning and expelling Monophysitism and Papism from the churches of God. Instead, in the Balamand Agreement, Patriarch Alexei and the Pope declare:

“that which Christ has entrusted to His Church -- profession of apostolic faith, participation in the same sacraments, above all the one priesthood celebrating the one sacrifice of Christ, the apostolic succession of bishops -- cannot be considered the exclusive property of one of our Churches [i.e., both Papism and Orthodoxy have the same (correct) profession of Faith, the same Mysteries, the same Priesthood, the same Apostolic Succession]. In this context elimination of any re-baptism is obvious.” Moreover, “they are sister Churches [i.e., in canonical communion] and must pursue perfect and total communion”!!!.

In contempt of the Ecumenical Councils and Holy Fathers, Patriarch Alexei and the Monophysite Patriarchs (in the Chambessy Agreement) declare:

“[W]e now clearly realize and understand that our two families [Orthodox and Monophysites] have always loyally guarded the same and authentic Christological Orthodox faith, and have maintained uninterrupted the apostolic tradition although they may have used the Christological terms in a different manner. It is that common faith and that continual loyalty to the apostolic tradition which must be the basis of our unity and communion... The two families accept that all the anathemas and the condemnations of the past which kept us divided must be lifted by the Churches so that the last obstacle to full unity and communion of our two families can be removed by the grace and the power of God. The two families accept that the lifting of the anathemas and the condemnations will be based on the fact that the Councils and the fathers previously anathematized or condemned were not heretics....”

(That is, no Monophysite heretic has sinned against the Faith and needs to repent and embrace the Faith of the Fathers, but rather it is the Ecumenical Councils themselves, the Orthodox Church herself, and the Holy Fathers themselves who anathematized the Monophysite heretics that have sinned! Such is the unforgivable blasphemy against the Holy Spirit wherewith ‘World Orthodoxy’ blasphemes Christ. It is the same antichristian spirit which has also led Patriarch Bartholomew to declare “the Fathers who caused the schism [with Papism] were dupes of the ancient serpent, the devil”!)

Who among those who wish to serve Christ would join the flock of Alexei and his brother-band of blasphemers, the enemies of Christ and Orthodoxy?

And let us not be surprised that being Christ’s enemies they seek union with those who boast in being his ancient enemies, crucifiers, and deniers, the Jews! For, in 1991, Patriarch Alexis II addressed an assembly of American Jewish Rabbis in New York City (11/13/91), saying:

“Dear brothers, shalom to you in the name of the God of love and peace!... We are all brothers, for we are all children of the Old Testament...we are one with the Jews, without renouncing Christianity...We are separated from the Jews because we are not yet completely Christian... For the fullness of Christianity embraces both itself and Judaism... The Jewish people are near to us in respect to faith. Your law is our law, your prophets are our prophets (note: this is not true at all since the Jews count the antichristian Babylonian Talmud and Zohar as part of “the Law of Moses”)...by our joint efforts we shall build a new society... the brotherhood of the children of the one God, the Father of all, the God of your fathers and of ours.”

Yes, dear reader, truly Alexei, appointee of the KGB-Soviet antichrist, and the totally antichristian Talmudic Rabbis are brethren, born spiritually of the same father, rightly declaring “we have one father,”....and you will not have far to seek for the record of this paternity: “Ye are of your father the devil and the desires of your father ye will do!...for he is a liar and the father of the liar...My Father, of Whom ye say that He is your God, ye have not known...” [Jn. 8:44, 54-55] and “I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are Satan’s synagogue.” [Rev. 2:9; cf. 3:9] Such then, has the MP declared itself “near in faith” and “brethren” of “Satan’s synagogue.” Quite appropriate given the MP was hand-in-glove with the Cheka-KGB and “a murderer and liar from the beginning” [Jn. 8:44].

If to the Jews Alexei becomes almost a Jew to curry their favor, why not bless Mohammed or Islam a little to win over Muslims? Yes, why not, since the Patriarch has no reverence for the sacred truth of Christ? So, Alexei did just that in his letter to the “3^rd Colloquim of the Islam-Orthodoxy Joint Commission” in Iran (2001):

“Highly revered Hojat ul-Islam Noumani, vice-president of the Organization for Islamic Culture of the Islamic Republic of Iran! Your Excellency, dear fathers and brothers!...Orthodox Christians hold Islam in great veneration as an ancient, Abrahamic faith, full of spiritual life-force....We oppose the tendencies to engender antagonism between the adherents of Christianity and Islam and to set the two great civilizations against each other. The Orthodox and the Muslims have many common goals, and we must combine our forces in order to achieve them.”

Only a man, a Patriarch no less, who is dead to Christ could say that Orthodoxy venerates Islam and finds it “full of spiritual life-force”! What “spiritual life-force” can it have without our Lord, Whom the Koran most stridently denies and blasphemes? What veneration can Orthodox offer the murderous dogmas of Mohammed, the butcher and persecutor of millions of Orthodox over the centuries? How true to form the MP shows itself in venerating and glorifying all Christ’s enemies and blasphemers, in whom she finds a common spirit with herself!

In all of the above, one reads one common thread: the MP always declares her solidarity with Christ’s enemies. Whoever has union or communion with the MP has it with Christ’s enemies. Woe to that person at the Judgment!  

In conclusion, it is abundantly clear that whoever loves the purity of the truth and Christ cannot join the MP. For the whole 80 years of her illegitimate existence she has been the creature and servant of one antichristian heresy and apostasy after another and there is no truth in her. To join the MP would be to confess that:

1. an authentic Church can be created by Stalin in defiance of the real Church’s anathemas and in schism from her lawful hierarchy;
2. that an authentic Church can exist where all her ordinations and all her decisions and all her confessions of faith are dictated to her, not by God, but by Christ’s open enemies and her destroyers (the KGB/CPSU) based on the merit of the decision for destroying Christianity and religion world-wide;
3. that an authentic Church can blaspheme the martyrs as mere ‘dead criminals’ and denounce the Ecumenical Councils and Holy Fathers as guilty of schism;
4. that the Church can deny nearly all her dogmas of the Faith and renounce following many of Christ’s commandments in Christian life, because militant atheism disapproves;
5. that it can officially declare total solidarity with Bolshevism, that is, identify herself, her success and joy with that of militant atheism, and put herself in the service of the enemies of Christ and glorify her persecutors.

The sin of the MP is in fact worse than that, but no Christian at all worthy of the name could stomach even what little we have mentioned of her crimes.

“Depart from her, My people, lest you share in her sins and receive of her punishments” [Rev. 18:4].

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Archbishop Gregory Dormition Skete P.O. Box 3177 Buena Vista, CO 81211-3177 USA	Contact: Archbishop Gregory In a New Window.
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