ROCOR and Moscow Reunification [sic]

[Catherine5]

I'm pleased that you could apologize, Joasia [what does that name mean actually?] I never expected that you would [written with a smile]. I was merely trying to say that I had a comment in mind that day all ready to add to the thread. But I found your outburst there that had been posted first! So I wanted to distinguish that I was going to write about another topic and was not remotely referring to your attack on Mt Carmel.

You have made good points in the past - I have read a few - and I'm sure you are pious. But how about a stringent reduction diet on the vitriol?! We should all try to cooperate together. Clearly nobody agrees with everybody else on here 100%; but why not address all other Forum commentators with kindness, giving them the benefit of the doubt or perhaps even a chance to express themselves more clearly before launching a broadside attack on their words ?
Not all TOC people are professional writers. So some phrases may be poorly expressed. Give the person time to make their point further. If someone's really crazy, that's for the moderators to adjudicate.
I like divergences of opinion, myself. I think it's refreshing to hear other points of view such as that by the unusual poster Incognito. I think people shouldn't be so defensive that they can't hear objections voiced without flying off the handle, as many did in reply to the provocative challenges he made. I call for his reinstatement!

But we must realize that the number of TOC-sympathizers is few. The vast majority are oppressively jeering at the rest of those who don't accept them. Obviously the Junior Chapter of the MP Fan Club hopes by keeping up a constant campaign of peer pressure to dissolve the strong principled approach of TOC people separately, weak link by weak link. The Fan Club cheers the MP with pom-poms and so much fanfare that one knows they don't even believe it fully themselves. Hence the missionary zeal to affirm themselves by picking up any stray defectors from the TOC groups. Of course MP-ROCOR broadcasts those fish they catch, but never mention the many who have fled their death grip ---! It reminds me of the time of Henry 8th, when most people in England went along with his insane ideas whether they agreed or not. But the few who resisted were the most valuable people in the land, such as St Thomas More, who refused to be lured by all the cajoling, carrots and sticks applied much as the MP-ROCOR had done to those souls who held out against the union.

So all of us must treat each other on the basis of respect. We can objectively examine points of difference within the framework of appreciating the points upon which we are in agreement. Such as universal veneration for the Blessed Metropolitan Philaret. No one here would ever scoff at him the way the MP-ROCOR does [see remarks of Laurus, which precisely expressed the absolutely insane mocking of the devil for the great light of Metropolitan Philaret's soul.]

[joasia]

Catherine,

Of course, you are right. I am mistaken. I appreciate your understanding.

Joanna

[Kybihetz21]

Prof. I. M. Andreyev writes in his article "The Catacomb Church”:

“And not only were we ready to die, but many did die, confident that somewhere there, outside the reach of the Soviet authorities, where there is freedom, there the truth was shining in all it's purity. There people were living by it and submitting to it. There people did not bow down to Antichrist. And what terror overwhelmed me when, fairly recently, I managed to come abroad and found out that some people here 'spiritually' recognize the Soviet Church. Spiritually! Many of us there fell, 'for fear of the Jews,' or giving in to the temptation of outward cooperation with the authorities. I knew priests of the official church who, at home, tore their hair out, who smashed their heads making prostrations, begging forgiveness for their apostasy, calling themselves Cain, but nonetheless they did not recognize the Red church. But these others abroad, it is precisely spiritually that they submit to it. What good fortune that our priest-martyrs, in dying, did not find out about this betrayal!"

[Catherine5]

I read this earlier and was struck to the core by the truth it revealed.
We all must take a step back, and read this over and over to refresh our memories.
Especially as the anniversary of D-day looms near.
By the way, I opened my book on the royal palaces of France to this very line:

"On 17 May 1770 - [what a date!] the Dauphin [heir to French throne] and Marie-Antoinette were married in the chapel at Versailles."

Another ill-fated, ill-advised marriage took place on the same date in 2000 and 7 !

A happier footnote is that St John Maximovitch spent time at apparently some section of the palace of Versailles while head of ROCOR parishes in Western Europe. I recall reading anecdotes of people visiting him there and being received with offers of tea by him. [Wonder what type he served?!]

This quotation should have posed such a severe warning for the unionist group. If they had been sincere, they would have looked back, seen the writing on the gilded Versailles wall, and realized what they were getting themselves into. Clearly it was a done deal from the start, so no one wanted inconvenient, wrenching observations like this to interfere.

Hope some 'Sleeping Uglies' will wake up from their 100-year naps, yawn and realize it's time to find an independent way beyond the frontiers of the MP which are tightly controlled by the same old types today as back in the pre-revolutionary era. Church slave of State, interference by Masons and other nefarious groups. Let's not forget the role of American firms in shoring up the Bolsheviki. Is that the right word?
I have it engraved in my thoughts that it was Prescott Bush's Wall Street firm which gave huge support to Lenin. Then his descendant, George, gave a free pass to Putin to do whatever he wanted during his time in office. There were the notorious Armand Hammer and so many other Americans who pushed quietly for recognition of the Communist regime in Russia, loaned them money to keep them afloat and provided all support they could. Today, as expert watchers warn, as a result of many factors, including the mass influx of Russian students allowed into the US from the 1990s on, there too many Americans who are sympathetic to leftist ideas and even Communism out of Russia.

These willingly work to influence every American administration to extend a warm handshake to Russia while clamping fiercely down on supposed "terrorism" as the enemy.

Notice how rarely Russia is in the mainstream news! If there's an accident, yes. Otherwise, hush hush, out of sight, out of mind, so far has Russia been allowed to become widely regarded as a cozy ally instead of the wary adversary of the United States it always has been.

Many thanks to you, Kybihetz, for such a powerful quotation to remind us all quite starkly of how Russian nationalists outside of Russia stray so badly and make poor choices like for the union, due to this excessive praise of Russia or at minimum, allowing it too much slack. Even in the Gorbachev era, Russians living in russia couldn't stand their leader. But he was the folk hero of the West and perhaps some Russian-Americans. Hopefully not those in ROCOR who should have known better. I bet the OCA was unblinkingly adulatory toward him.
PS Is your birthday coming up not long after that fateful date? Happy Birthday!
Hope you're doing well despite all the ecological disasters around Florida.

[mtcarmel]

How poor we would be indeed without Arm and Hammer baking soda -- the socialist toothpaste. Once the Obama "reforms" have ben completed I look forward to using it on a regular basis. Hammer branched out and was allowed to build toothpick factories in the new Soviet Union. If it weren't for him so many beautiful art treasures and icons might have been lost in the Bolshevik conflagration? What's the big deal if he himself was also an avid collector? The irony of much of it was that he was Jewish. But no big news there, as a number of Jews were influential members of the original soviet. The one who executed the tsar was Jewish as I recall. In any case, "socialism" has been quietly infused into the American social and educational sytem at least since the Frankfurt school emmigrated to the U.S. in the 1930s during the rise of the Nazi party. Well, the library is closing...

elias

---

Catherine wrote:
Armand Hammer and so many other Americans who pushed quietly for recognition of the Communist regime in Russia, loaned them money to keep them afloat and provided all support they could.

[Catherine5]

This is one of the best and most humorous posts so far on the site that I've seen. Thank you Mt Carmel, both informative and clever.

Well may I suggest a ban on this baking soda - with the outsize illustration of the ugly proletarian elbow being brandished most aggressively. It is unhealthy to even keep such a thing in one's house. Why? Because it silently but constantly transmits the slogan which any resident, even a pet, could pick up SUB-consciously: workers of the world, 'unite'.

I searched for other brands but they are rare.
I tried to find Organic baking soda to use as toothpaste substitute. [I regard dependence on toothpaste as one of the most-brainwashed things - what did billions of people in other cultures do before the advent of modern chemical-laden Crest ? Some cultures used special bark from the "peelu" tree - which works like a charm and has no 'sodium laurel sulphate' suspicious additives.
I feel to AVOID this socialism mentality, smart people MUST carve out their OWN path, not follow the hordes, which ARE those indoctrinated masses so clear in Communist states--- but the many brainwashed in many ways in the secular Western world do not attract the same notice.
Especially Americans - Europeans are more sophisticated politically - believe in like children whatever their media and advertising industries tell them.
Readers of this site hopefully see that the two are there not to help one to make wise choices, but to "hammer in" a carefully calculated agenda.
In short, the goal is never to help improve lives of people but to shape the mental outlook of indecisive, often ignorant or under-read audiences to robotically support either companies' products or govt policies.

With their American flocks especially, the Board of Directors of the MP-ROCOR merger were successful due to this same astonishing lack of curiosity, lack of questioning, passive acceptance of the new policy which was pounded in from the top down and reinforced in almost the same format as an advertising campaign. ]

Despite probably a market for it, there is no Organic baking soda. Why not?

Besides, those little freezer boxes with the same annoying picture don't do much if anything to deodorize one's freezer.
It's psychological, I think : one FEELS safe that the refrigerator odors are being tackled by a brawny socialist worker. In reality, what is pure about a Communist - !
I came up with a system to put TEA LEAVES loosely placed in little round dishes at the back of the refrigerator on various shelves. Tea absorbs humidity which leads to that same mildew/mold.

Don't ever be programmed! Question convention, but most especially Arm and Hammer baking soda!
There's a good truly natural toothpaste called "Auromere" that uses peelu bark. I recommend that as one of my 'Tips for the day to avoid socialist products that don't work'.
Select from yummy Licorice, average Mint or average plain.
But skip that Tom's of Maine line or any others marketing baking soda natural toothpaste. Probably they are all made with Arm and Hammer baking soda, but even if not, those products are classic rip-offs.

I bet no balanced investigation of Armand H. has been produced in book form. I didn't know he was Jewish. That means that the media and officialdom will cover for him, vociferously shout down any opponents OR persecute any who persist in exposing any Jewish or pro-Israeli politician or figure. It's always the same, if you don't believe me, do some research into the strangle-hold over American "intellectual life" exerted by pro-Jewish figures today. Too long to explain here, but this site may be one of the relative few where people can express themselves openly on prohibited topics. That's why I always try to counterract that propaganda and bring out much more of the truth, for example about the Middle East.

Back to Mr. Arm and H., I remember reading in 80's books about KGB collaborators that he bought up those art treasures. Wonder where they went after his death? Bet there's a whole story there to be investigated, how he got them so easily from the Bolsheviks. Perhaps some long ago were sold or given to museums. Probably the Russian govt will start to try to recover them if it hasn't already.

[Kybihetz21]

This is a short article I quickly wrote for another site where the main administrator had changed the name of the group to reflect a more "lukewarmness" stand (either consciously, or as I am prone to believe, rather unconsciously) toward the MP:

"With all due respect to the group administrator, it is my personal opinion that the title of this group should have remained the same, to show the antagonistic stand of its members. Some will say but why should there be such antagonism against the MP and its past and present members? Didn't the ROCA always taught that once the powers of evil left Russia we could unite with the Russian Church in the Fatherland? I will briefly explain my position, quite exhausted but yet firm, on this issue. Archbishop Nikodim of Richmond of blessed memory once said that "better no Church than the soviet church". How right and wise were his words. Already for a hierarch that lived during the times when some of the hierarchy of the MP was still comprised of former members of the pre revolutionary Church of Russia (Rossiskaia Tserkov), it was quite apparent that the irreconcilable experiences created by those who chose to betray Christ and His Church were a stumbling block for even any talks of union or communications. Some have said that the ROCA's position was not hard enough against the MP until the 70s and 80s, and that afterwards that position returned to the previous, more conciliatory position of the early years. The fact is that, whether for good or bad, any hopes for union with the newly created organism called the MP were solely based on economy toward the faithful, and let's us be honest, nostalgia toward the fact that most of the bishops participant on it were former members of the Russian Church, and in many cases, personal friends. It was quite a shock to those early hierarchs of the ROCOR to see their former fellow brothers in the episcopate act and behave with such an animosity toward them, and offer their entire submission to Belial, not Christ. The hopes that, as done after the Renovationalist schism, some of them were to repent, never died in many of those early hierarchs of the Russian Church in Exile, something which is clearly demonstrated in the return of some of them to the former Russian land after the end of the WWII. Eventually, it became quite clear the inner aspect of the newly formed “church”, and as the older hierarchs died out, the newly consecrated episcopacy of the ROCA took upon themselves the task of not only preserving the spirit of the former Church of Russia, but to carry it all over the world, as a light in the darkness of the land of Western heretical thought and syncretistic and neo pagan teachings. It was not until those bishops themselves started to die, than a new nostalgia appeared among those who were being born into the ROCOR. I have been personally been told by many of the “hard liners”, those that left right after the revolution and the 20s, how it was moot for them to return to a land that was “no longer theirs, no longer Holy Russia”. It was understandable to see how they had realized, very early, the changes that the demonic powers had brought upon the land of their fathers. But then you have those that left the Soviet Union in the 40s and 50s, who had already been diluted with the spirit of the “new man” created by Lenin and Stalin, and who knew no better. Many of them educated their children on the hopes of returning to the “Motherland”, the non existing Holy Russia. That, along with the influx of thousands of new comers in the 90s, along with the blinding luxuries of the now all powerful MP, convinced many of the need to “unite” with the “Mother Church”, under any circumstances. The newly formed “church” that now rules and governs the needs of the Russian people is not the Russian Church of old. It is not a mother, a sister, a daughter, or any sort of blood relative, of the former Church of Russia, nor of the former, now destroyed, ROCA. The MP is nothing but the bad step sister, brought in the middle of the night by evil doers and enemies of Christ to replace the suffering and almost dying ancient Church of the All Glorious Orthodox Empire, with the aims to fool and confuse both the clergy and the faithful. It has not won, but its victory will be apparent, as long as there are some among us that will think of this government organization as a “church” we must look up to, either with the hopes of change, or as the successor of that church that once gloriously gave Russia its Holy name."