USA
BEWARE: PUNK-TRUE-ORTHODOXY IS HERE!
They
have set their mouth against heaven, and their tongue roveth in the
earth.
Psalm
72.9.
Let
not the throne of iniquity have fellowship with Thee, which maketh mischief in
the name of the law.
Psalm
93.20.
Introduction
An
Orthodox bishop once said: the lives of the saints reveal an infinite variety,
in the image of God's infinity, but sin is always boring,
always the same. Truly "there is nothing new under the sun," as the wise
Solomon said, having tasted of almost everything this fallen world can
offer. However, we need to qualify this judgement
somewhat.
Since sin is always boring, the sinner is always bored with himself, and so is always
seeking new expressions for his everlastingly boring content. Moreover, Satan is
always seeking to catch us out by presenting sin in new forms, new, unexpected
and "kinky" combinations.
Modern western culture revels in such shocking new combinations. Take the
rock singer Marilyn Manson. A conventional Satanist, one might think. After all,
one of his records is called "Antichrist Superstar", and he has large placards
on stage while performing that red: "KILL GOD!" On the other hand, he wears a
large cross in a prominent position over his demonic face, and has
published an article entitled: "The Cross I bear". Does he respect the
Cross even while trampling on it? Of course not... And yet the modern phase in
populat culture, which may be said to have started in the 1970s with the rise of
the punk movement in the West, and about ten years later during
perstroika in the East, is definitely religious by comparison with
its predecessor. Clearly Satan came to the conclusion that the frontal assault
on religion - through the persecution of the faith in the communist countries,
and through the preaching of unbridled licence and the relativisation of
religion (ecumenism) in the capitalist countries - should now be brought to an
end. It was time, while not completely abandoning the old methods, to combine
communism with capitalism, licentiousness with asceticism, Christianity with
Antichristianity. And since that time Satan's agents have no longer
striven to sweep the very name of God from off the face of the
earth. Instead, the names of God and Christ and the Mother of God appear
everywhere - but never in a holy context, always in combination with filth
and blasphemy. Thus a singer in Los Angeles and London calls herself
"Madonna" and spends millions on propagating the Kabbala, while a cult
leader in Kiev with links to the KGB calls herself "Deva Christi", "Virgin
of Christ".
One of the first True Orthodox thinkers to study this phenomenon and write about
it was Hieromonk Seraphim Rose. Having drunk deeply of the "delights" of
hippy-nihilist culture before converting to Orthodoxy, he was in a good position
to analyse it and anticipate the ways in which it might invade the culture of
True Orthodoxy. His book, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the
Future, touched a chord in the hearts of many, not only in
America but also in Russia.
One of Rose's admirers is Igumen Gregory Lourie. Scion of a famous Jewish family
(the Russian Jewish
Encyclopaedia calls them "aristocrats among the Jews"),
and
a direct descendant of the foremost Kabbalist in Europe in the sixteenth
century, Issak Lourie Levi (a link of which he is reported to be proud), he is a
product of the Leningrad rock underground of the 1980s as Rose was of the San
Francisco hippy scene a generation earlier. Like Rose, he has set himself the
task of interpreting the nihilist culture of contemporary youth for a True
Orthodox readership, and, vice-versa, of bring True Orthodoxy to the down
and outs of the Russian cities. Unlike Rose, however, he has not fully
broken with his past... The result is a horrific hybrid, a mixture of True
Orthodoxy and nihilist art and philosophy - "Punk-True-Orthodoxy" - which has
already created havoc (and some court cases) in Russia, and which he is
threatening to bring to America through a proposed union with HOCNA - the
"Holy Orthodox Church in North America". (see my "Open Letter to Fr.
Gregory Lourie").
Lourie's
Punk Orthodoxy
In order that we may
better understand the essence of this horrific hybrid, here is an extensive
quotation from an article on it by N.D. Nedashkovskaya, former Director of the
Centre of Orthodox Enlightenment in St. Petersburg entitled "Taking
Inspiration from Emptiness, or: The Theology of the Gutter":-
"First: blasphemy against God as the Creator of a perfect and beautiful world
that has not finally lost these qualities even after the fall of Satan and man.
As it is written in [Lourie's] "Swiss Time": "You want to be a good person?
I
do not, whatever this 'goodness' may consist in. But if after
all I have to be a man, then I would do better to try and become the kind of man
I myself want to be, and not the kind that someone here (even
God) would consider to be 'good'. But if I were to set
about thinking even harder, then I would not find in the idea of 'man'
(any
man, 'man generally speaking') anything for the sake of which it
would be worth living, even on the condition of immortality: the senseless does
not acquire sense if it becomes infinitely long... Such a picture of
Paradise - in the form of an infinitely long and infinitely happy human
existence - begins very much to smack of Mohammedan dreams
of blessedness beyond the grave. But the Mohammedans have in mind the
usual physiological 'pleasures' raised to an infinite degree, while with the
Christians it turns out to be something closer to psychodelics: some special
kind of 'kick' which you don't find in everyday life (the same 'psychodelic
paradise' that Yanka Dyagilev [a Russian pop star' rejected!). One can't help
thinking at this point that the Mohammedans nevertheless have something healthy.
"
"I should like immediately to point out either the illiteracy or the deliberate
distortion of concepts in Fr. Gregory Lourie, who is advertised as a
'theologian' or 'patrologist'. He substitutes for the positive infinity of
being, well-being,
of the creature in the Kingdom of Heaven the "bad"
infinity. The latter will be realised in hell. By the way, in this extract
we have a vivid example of the characteristic style of our author: mocking
and overstrained, the exact opposite of the style of the Holy Fathers, which is
full of seriousness and weeping.
"The
failure to distinguish between the "heights" and the "depths", the substitution
of the one for the other, and demagogic play on the antimonies: the world as the sum total of God's
creation, created as a mirro in which His all-perfection is reflected for the
Noetic Powers and for man; and the world in the ascetic sense, as
the name of the sum total of the demonic and human passions. In
this consist the spirit of the world-view of "Luciferyanism" (we retain
Fr. Nektary [Yashunsky]'s term). However, for the author we have his own name
for himself: "punk-orthodoxy": "I am conscious of, and recognise in myself,
something of the rocker and even... of 'punk-orthodoxy', writes Fr. Gregory
Lourie.
"Second blasphemy: a blasphemous distortion of the lofty patristic teaching on
the final end of the existence of the world and man - deification. As Fr.
Nektary writes in the above-mentioned work: "... Once the daystar 'said in his
heart, 'I will ascend to heaven: above the stars of God I shall set my
throne... I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will make myself
equal to the Most High' (Isaiah 14.13-14). But Hieromonk [Gregory] truly
aspires to become equal to the Most High. He writes: 'Being with God is
not the infinity of unlimited human existence, but real eternity, which has not
only no end, but also no beginning'. He apparantly hopes to excel in deification
even the Son of God Himself, or at least he ascribes this to the Holy Fathers,
who, insofar as 'in them the real aim of the Incarnation of Christ has been
completely accomplished', 'themselves became primary sources of the teaching
of the Church' ('Swiss dogmatics')..."
Nedashkovskaya
continues her article: "Thus we see a direct merging between the theology of
Luciferyanian
"deification" and the "simple" Luciferyanism of the punk-nihilists... That is
Fr. Gregory Lourie's Orthodoxy!...
"But of course the
apotheosis of his theology is his insinuation of a "discovery" of the
unfortunate Nietzsche, who died of syphilis. In the course of eighteen and a
half centuries there was nothing that was not thrown at the Church: both
heresies and schism. But neither they, nor the most savage enemy of
Christianity, Talmudic Judaism, ever thought up such a blasphemy against the
Life-Giver Christ as was born in the rotting brain of the made Nietzsche and
which is now being taken up as a revelation of Fr. Gregory Lourie's "purified"
(from Christianity "direct path". It is terrible even to repeat this blasphemy,
but the Internet is teeming with it: Christ committed... suicide:
"The image of the death of Christ, to which our death must be
conformed, has long ago been named in the unbelieving world: suicide (F.
Nietzsche)" ("Let's try this").
"Here is some
correspondence between Fr. Gregory Lourie [and someone else] in the "suicides'
club":
"Someone: They
say that if a person believes in God, it's kind of more difficult for him to
decide on the step [of suicide]. Tell me, please: do you believe that this is
true?
"Fr. Gregory:
It depends how you look at it. You can also believe that deciding on this step
would even be easier. On this subject there is a special song by Yanka
Dyagileva, "The flocks are flying". But if you believe in an Orthodox way, then
all problems are removed, while new ones (even worse?) appear (4 January,
2002).
"Someone: I'm
almost, I don't want to live... It's true, it's a great thing.
"Fr. Gregory:
One "wants" to live, but one mustn't." (5 January, 2002).
Nedashkovskaya
concludes: "How have we got to such a life?
"Such a horrific phenomenon as Fr.
Gregory Lourie's punk-Orthodoxy is not a chance phenomenon, just as the
appearance of another horror, ecumenism, was not a chance phenomenon. Horrific not in an abusive
sense: we call horrors the fantastic union of that which cannot be united by
nature. And if ecumenism is justly called a pan-heresy, then we can call the
newly-born chimera, "punk orthodoxy", a hyper-heresy. The essence of ecumenismis
the bringing to earth of the commandment on love, bringing it down to the level
of an earthly, non-spiritual phenomenon. The pseudo-struggle of "punk orthodoxy"
with ecumenism leads to a denial of, and blasphemy against, all manifestations
of love - except love for one's own pseudo-divine ego. The stages on the
inglorious path of apostasy from God were indicated by Fr. Seraphim Rose in his
work, Subhumanism..."
Lourie
and True Orthodoxy
So much for Lourie's
Punk Orthodoxy, which, as should be clear now, is not only not Christian or
Orthodox, but the purest Antichristianity. However, if that were all there is to
the man, he would not represent such a threat to the True Orthodox. Surely he
cannot enter among us, one may object! But he entered already eight years ago...
How could such a bizarre, deluded man make serious inroads into our enclosed,
traditionalist, anti-modernist world? By presenting himself as traditionalist
and anti-modernist to some, while practising the destruction of tradition in the
mot cynically modernist spirit in front of others...
We must not
underestimate what Lourie can achieve and has already achieved: his horrific
hybrid "Punk-True-Orthodoxy" is spreading fast in Russia - and he plans to bring
it to America through a secretly planned union with HOCNA... Fr. Panteleimon of
Boston was already courting Lourie in the year 2000. In September, 2005 he went
for three weeks to Russia...
One
of the reasons for Lourie's success is his ability to think strategically
about Orthodoxy in the contemporary world in clear, coherent lines
that seem to make sense of the present "time of troubles" while giving concrete
indications as to how the Church is to survive in the 21st century. Such
strategic thinking is very rare in True Orthodoxy today, obsessed as we are by
tactical
questions - that is, inter- and intra-jurisdictional issues. These
cannot, unfortunately, be avoided; but for the soul, especially the young soul,
they are meagre food. "ortunately,
be avoided; but for the soul, especially the young soul, they are meagre food…
As the wise Solomon says, "without a vision the people
perish..."
So let us examine some
aspects of Lourie’s strategic plan for the Orthodox Church in the twenty-first
century:-
1.
Lourie’s Eschatology
It is best to begin at
the end, with Lourie’s idea of how things are likely to develop, because this to
a large extent determines his outlook on other subjects.
Lourie is resolutely
opposed to the idea that there will be a restoration of the Orthodox monarchy
(which he in any case considers to be an "Old Testament" institution!). Thus in
July, 2003 the ROAC Synod, at Lourie’s prompting, declared: "The old 'Christian
world' has gone, never to return, and that which is frenziedly desired by some,
the regeneration of the 'Orthodox monarchy' in some country, in which the true
faith will reign, must be considered a senseless utopia." Assuming that the
signatures under this decree are genuine (which one can by no means assume in
the ROAC), then we must conclude that the ROAC has officially rejected the hope
of all truly Orthodox Christians in the resurrection of Orthodoxy under an
Orthodox Emperor, and in particular the resurrection of Orthodoxy under a
Russian Tsar.
How this renunciation
of the hopes of the Catacomb Church and the old-style ROCOR can be reconciled
with the many prophecies that speak of a restoration of Orthodoxy and the
Orthodox monarchy before the end, has never, to my knowledge, been explained by
Lourie. The authenticity of some prophecies may be doubted; the sanctity and
true inspiration of some of the prophets may perhaps be challenged; but a
rejection of all the prophecies, and the characterisation even of the
hope of the resurrection of Orthodoxy as a "frenzied desire" for a
"senseless utopia", indicates more than a cautious scepticism. It is as if
Lourie does not want the resurrection of Orthodoxy, as if he is
determined, for motives that are unclear, to root out this "superstition"
from the minds of believers (who happened to include very many of the saints and
martyrs of the twentieth century).
In his most recent article Lourie also
attacks the idea that Russia must undergo some kind of collective repentance in
order to receive again an Orthodox monarchy. "The worst thing about this
'penitentialism'," he writes, "is that it blocks all thought about the
regeneration of Russia as a State without her regeneration as an Orthodox
State" (my italics -V.M.)… Lourie here forgets that St. John Kronstadt said
Russia without an Orthodox tsar is "a stinking corpse"…
"Perhaps," he
continues, "such a destiny [having an Orthodox State] still awaits Russia. But
for us now, who again find ourselves in about the first century of Christianity,
such historical conjectures are of practically no topical interest. Whether we
like it or not, we are living in the midst of an unbelieving people. If we do
not consider that its unbelief is a reason for wishing it the speediest
annihilation, then it would be reasonable on our side not to imitate the
eschatological escapism of Old Ritualism…" ("Russkoe
okaianstvo i pravoslavnoe pokaianstvo" (Russian pestilentialism and Orthodox
penitentialism), portal-credo.ru, 3 October, 2005)
One might think that
Lourie simply believes, as do so many Orthodox Christians today, that the
Antichrist is just round the corner, so there is no hope of a "Triumph of
Orthodoxy" before the Second Coming of Christ; we must simply bunker down in our
catacomb-like cells and wait for the end, renouncing missionary work and all
long-term plans for the establishment of large-scale Orthodox structures –
Churches or States.
Not a bit of it!
Lourie talks little about the Antichrist – he is much too anchored in the here
and now. And he is the very opposite of a Catacomb Christian in his mentality
and aspirations (which is why the Catacomb hierarchs of the ROAC have been
trying, and now finally succeeded in obtaining his defrocking - whether
canonically or not, as Lourie contends, is another matter). He is a media man, a
performer, a "star", just made for the age of the internet. He and his very
active disciples in St. Petersburg and elsewhere write articles, publish
journals, speak on the radio, create web-sites and web-forums and even organise
press conferences to propagandise their views. Lourie seeks publicity because,
as he writes, "for the successful mission of the Church in the contemporary
world the Church organism must be not only Spirit-bearing, but also dynamic and
effective" – as if acquiring the Holy Spirit is not the ultimate and completely
sufficient aim of the Orthodox Christian, but has to be supplemented by worldly
"dynamism" and "effectiveness"!
2.
Lourie and Politics
This brings us to
Lourie’s highly controversial relations with politics and politicians.
Lourie believes that,
even in this "post-religious" world, as he calls it, the Church should get
involved in politics. This is made clear in his writings. "The True Orthodox
Church should exert a strong influence on the religious politics of its State."
"Her strategic interests coincide with the interests of any patriotic government
of its country." (Interesting...) "The process of degeneration is unstoppable,
and the Old Calendarist movement is no longer able to save itself…" (HOCNA, take
note!) "Its only chance is to get hitched up to a tug-boat." (That "tug-boat" is
the State – and Lourie is not too finicky about what kind of State: the Soviet
State under Stalin and the neo-Soviet State under Putin are equally acceptable.)
"For me it is evident that in Russia there is required a restoration of those
relationships between the MP and the State that were bequeathed to us by the
great Stalin."
So Sergianism is just
fine, and Stalin is “great” (in other places he speaks of his “respect” for
Stalin, and the “genius” of his socialist realist art)! And yet in other works
of his Lourie blasts both ecclesiastical Stalinism and the Sergianism of the MP!
More than that: he blasts the pre-revolutionary Synod for being
"Sergianist" before Sergius!
In this amazingly
hypocritical tactic Lourie displays a close kinship with the "Living Church"
renovationists of the 1920s. Before the revolution, these heretics were among
the foremost critics of the Church’s too-close dependence on the Orthodox
Tsarist State, and were usually anti-monarchists. After the revolution, they
immediately entered into an extremely dependent relationship on the
antichristian Soviet State, and justified all the horrors of Lenin and Stalin in
the name of Christ.
There can be no doubt
that when the time for the next State-sponsored persecution of the Church comes,
Lourie will be on the side of the persecutors. After all, if, as he says,
Bulgakov and Pasternak "should not have been left alive" by the "great" Stalin,
what mercy can we, the True Orthodox Christians expect from him in time of
trouble? Already, he has powerful protectors in high places, such as the Kremlin
"polittechnologist" and betrayer of the dissidents, Gleb Pavlovsky, who provides
him with money and lawyers and makes visits with him to the bedside of
Metropolitan Valentine…
Some have speculated
that Lourie is a KGB agent. I have no proof of this, and just as we had to wait
until 1992 for final proof that the leading hierarchs of the MP were KGB agents,
so we shall probably have to wait until the arrival of a True Orthodox tsar
before Lourie’s true status is elucidated beyond doubt. But his activities would
seem to indicate that here is a new type of agent – not the crude Soviet
mouth-pieces of the Brezhnev years, but a much more "flexible" force (the word
was used of Metropolitan Sergius), more like an "agent of influence", that is
probably given much more freedom to choose his own strategy, more rope with
which to hang others – and himself. Lourie is no atheist planted in an already
Sovietised institution, but a sincere "believer" – an eccentric and heretical
one, but a "believer" nonetheless, whose ambition can be guaranteed to bring
about the required results for the government without any (or only very little)
instructions or encouragement. Lourie probably feels he is using the government
rather than being used by it (again the parallel is with Sergius): the important
fact from our point of view is that Satan is manipulating both of
them.
3.
Lourie and the MP
So what is Lourie’s
relationship to the MP? Just as Metropolitan Sergius, as Hieromartyr Damascene
pointed out, took a suspiciously long time to leave the renovationists in 1924,
so Lourie was remarkably late in leaving the MP in 1997. In the case of many,
perhaps most, converts, this could be put down to ignorance of the true state of
affairs. Not Lourie. A patrologist and Byzantinist, a former secretary of
Metropolitan Ioann (Snychev) of St. Petersburg, he must have been well aware
long before he left the MP that it was a thoroughly corrupt and heretical
organisation. Certainly, the MP’s betrayal of the faith at Chambésy and Balamand
in the early 1990s would have made him think of leaving (he appears to be a
sincere anti-ecumenist), and he was prominent in the criticism of these unias
within the MP. But precisely because he could still have influence within the
anti-ecumenist movement in the MP, he was not going to leave it simply on
anti-ecumenist principle immediately heresy appeared. Lourie never acts
on principle alone…
This lack of principle
is evident in his ambiguous attitude towards the question of when the MP lost
grace. There is an interesting parallel here (and not the only one) with Fr.
Panteleimon of Boston. The Bostonites are usually considered very zealous
anti-ecumenists, and I would not deny them that title. But why does Fr.
Panteleimon consider that the new calendarists lost grace only in 1965, when the
official position of the Greek Old Calendarists (and of Archbishop Auxentius,
from whom Panteleimon’s bishops obtained their orders) is 1935, a full thirty
years later, and a full fifteen years after Patriarch Athenagoras made his
super-ecumenist declaration: "We are in error and sin if we think that the
Orthodox Faith came down from heaven and that the other dogmas [i.e. religions]
are unworthy. Three hundred million men have chosen Mohammedanism as the way to
God and further hundreds of millions are Protestants, Catholics and Buddhists.
The aim of every religion is to make man better."? The probable answer is that
since Fr. Panteleimon left the new calendarists in 1965, to assert that the new
calendarists lost grace before that would imply that Panteleimon – heaven
forbid! – was once a heretic. Far better to say that the new calendarists lost
grace precisely when Panteleimon left them! Then he can claim he had never been
in heresy or a false church! Similarly, when the Bostonites left the ROCOR in
1986 (so as to save Panteleimon from a court trial and defrocking for
immorality), they conveniently stated that the ROCOR had lost grace at
that time. They could not say that the ROCOR lost grace earlier, for then
the Bostonites would have been graceless at least for a time. But they could not
say it remained Orthodox after they left, because it had always been a
cardinal doctrine of Boston that one can leave a Church for no other reason than
heresy, and leaving for any other reason constitutes schism…
Lourie’s attitude to
the question of grace is not so clearly defined, but no less opportunistic. He
has carefully not subscribed to the view that the MP lost grace in the 30s or
40s, as the great majority of the New Hieromartyrs of Russia declared, nor even
when the MP entered the World Council of Churches in the 1960s. In fact, it is
not at all clear when, if at any time, he considers the MP to have lost
grace.
This makes sense in
terms of his overall strategic plan, which is not to replace or convert the MP –
he considers such an idea wildly unrealistic, even undesirable – but to keep
it in place as the church for the uncultured masses. What, then, should the
relationship of ROAC be to the MP, in his opinion? A form of "alternative
Orthodoxy". For, as he said in a press conference in 2001, he regards the MP,
the Old Ritualists and the ROAC as the three forms of Orthodoxy in Russia. The
ROAC is not a rival, but an alternative to the MP. For whom? For those
who are really serious about their Orthodoxy, for the elite believers…
4.
Lourie and the Church of the Elite
Elitism runs like a
silver thread through all of Lourie’s writings. Now an éélite does not live in
complete isolation from the common crowd: rather it is like the leaven in the
lump, working to transform the lump while not being corrupted by it. It is
useful to compare Lourie’s Church of the Elite with two other forms of
quasi-élitist religious organisation: the Masonic lodge and the
monastery.
Lourie writes: "The
True Orthodox Church is distinguished from a Masonic lodge by the fact that it
is not an esoteric organisation: on no 'level of initiation' do they communicate
something that contradicts what is communicated on lower levels." This reveals
that for Lourie the TOC is in fact rather like a lodge, only more "open". And in
fact the similarity, not of the TOC as a whole, but of his own sect within the
TOC, to Masonry is remarkable. Like the lodges, the sect exists in order to
subvert existing ecclesiastical authority, to effect a revolution in the Church.
The élite who are privileged to be given access to this lodge are initiated into
a series of "secret" doctrines, which it would be as well not to proclaim too
quickly or too openly. For example, the doctrine that the Name of God is
God, a heresy condemned by the Greek and Russian Churches in 1913. (It was
for preaching this heresy that Lourie was defrocked by the Synod of the ROAC in
September, 2005.) Again, the doctrine of "samobozhie", that all True Christians
are gods, having no beginning or end (see the "second blasphemy" in
Nedashkovskaya, above). Of course, pseudo-patristic arguments are cited in
favour of these doctrines. For without such arguments the doctrines would not be
accepted – and it is the purpose of the sect to spread their doctrines in the
wider world, just as it was the purpose of the Masonic lodges to spread the
revolution.
Lourie combines
quasi-masonic élitism with a strong emphasis on monasticism. But not Orthodox
monasticism. The first book of his that elicited controversy within the True
Orthodox Church, The Calling of Abraham, is a call to monasticism of a
special, Manichaean kind, in which the monastic or virgin life is seen as the
only possible way of life for the New Testament Christian, while marriage
is for "Old Testament Christians", who live according to the law, not grace.
Lourie himself abandoned his wife against her will in order to become a monk in
the world – a way of life that he recommends for his closest followers (rock
music is the preferred preparation for this kind of monasticism!). The present
writer was contacted by Olga Mitrenina, his closest disciple, very shortly after
the sect had joined the ROAC, and was exhorted to "slomat’sa (break myself)" and
become a hieromonk. Olga, though half my age and knowing me not at all, did not
bother to consider whether I or my wife wanted to be monastics, whether there
was a monastery in England, whether I was worthy to become a priest, etc. No:
the master calls, and the disciple (chosen to be such against his will, even his
knowledge) must follow, must "break himself"…
5.
Lourie and Globalism
So far, Lourie’s cult
is comparatively small – a few hundred people at most, - but with thousands of
sympathisers - confined mainly to Russia. However, cults, like malignant
cancers, have an inexorable tendency to grow – and Lourie’s influence is growing
rapidly. In the present writer’s opinion, his defrocking is likely to be only a
temporary setback on his road to religious superstardom, and may even be
exploited by him to his advantage. For if he succeeds in having that decision
reversed under a new first-hierarch, he may even gain complete control over ROAC
– after the diehard catacombniks have fled in horror…
Lourie’s appeal lies
in his exotic mixing of many elements hitherto considered to be incompatible,
and in his ability to appeal to strictly traditionalist "theologians", on the
one hand, and punks, drug addicts and suicides, on the other. He is, or tries to
be, "all things to all men" – except that, unfortunately, the purity of the
Apostolic message is lost along the way. Moreover, he realises the full import
of a fact too often lost sight of by the leaders of True Orthodoxy today: that
almost all new members of the Orthodox Church today are converts, even if
they happen to be Greek or Russian by origin, and have to be taught the
fundamentals of Orthodoxy from the beginning. In this increasingly small
and interconnected world, to retreat into an ethnic reservation, preaching
Russian Orthodoxy to Russians only, or Greek Orthodoxy to Greeks only, is no
longer an option, for the simple reason that young Russians and Greeks, for
better or worse, already belong to a cosmopolitan culture in which
internationalist science, internationalist art and international politics are
the staple fare. This means that if the Church is to expand and flourish it must
fulfil the command of Christ: "Go and teach all nations, baptizing them…
and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded
you".
Lourie is ready and able to
do this – according to his lights. And so already his tentacles extend from St.
Petersburg and Moscow to Paris and Berlin to Boston and New York…
The
Lourie/HOCNA Connection: A "Fatal Attraction"
If Lourie’s planned
union with HOCNA takes place, this will unite two consciously cosmopolitan
jurisdictions, one with its roots in Greek Orthodoxy and the other in Russian
Orthodoxy, with a potentially global outreach and appeal. Lourie will accept
HOCNA as his representative on the American continent and Africa, while HOCNA
will accept Lourie as their representative in Russia and probably also in
Western Europe (although this and other geopolitical questions will obviously
have to be negotiated between them). For many, very many people just coming to
the light of Orthodoxy, this genuinely global jurisdiction, transcending
narrowly phyletistic divisions, yet with a traditionalist, anti-ecumenist ethos
and a strong emphasis on the teaching of the Universal Faith, will be undeniably
– fatally – attractive.
But are there no
theological differences between the two groups?
There are. HOCNA will
have to accept – or agree to ignore – Lourie’s name-worshipping and other
heresies. And Lourie will have to accept – or turn a blind eye to - HOCNA’s
veneration of Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky and his "Dogma of Redemption",
which Lourie rejects. But these differences are not insuperable; for, for all
their claims to strict, patristic Orthodoxy, Metropoulos and Lourie are
pragmatists in theological matters; they can "drop" a theological crusade as
quickly as they take it up if that is "for the benefit of the
Church"…
So how are we to
combat this "fatal attraction"? Only by returning to the "basic instincts" of
the Orthodox world-view. One of these is: never trust a morally corrupted
person, however brilliant his talents and convincing his arguments (see
www.hocna.info). Secondly: never trust a man or a movement that is not founded
upon the rock of the confession of the Russian Catacomb Church – whose
representatives in the form of the ROAC Catacomb hierarchs have delivered
(however clumsily and even, from a formal point of view, uncanonically) a
crushing verdict on the teachings of Fr. Gregory Lourie. And never lose the hope
that God will save His Church - and without the help of man if necessary; for
"not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord…"
(Zechariah 4.6).
An
Afterthought
A final thought.
Supposing Lourie succeeds in building up a flourishing Church organisation,
perhaps in union with HOCNA. What will be the relationship of this organization
to other Church jurisdictions in Russia?
Lourie has
already given an answer to this: the ROAC as he envisages it to be under his
hidden or overt leadership will not be a rival to the MP, but an
alternative. The problem with this is: the MP brooks no rivals, and no
alternatives. So for its long- or even middle-term survival,
Lourie’s sect will have to move closer to the MP, and eventually into union
with it.
But that will be no
problem for Lourie. For, as we have seen, he wants to be head of an
elite. But an élite presupposes a common mass of men who are not the
élite, but who are in some kind of communion with the élite. So Lourie will
return to the MP with which he has spiritually never really broken, having a
position a good deal more influential than that which will be reserved for the
returning Lavrites...
And what will HOCNA do
then?
Vladimir
Moss
September
23 / October 6, 2005.
Conception
of St. John the Baptist