JUDAS, PILATE AND ROCOR

Vladimir Moss

Sergianism is the sin of Judas, the selling of the Body of Christ for the sake of security – the “security” provided by the Committee of State Security (the KGB). Ecumenism is the sin of Pilate, the turning away from the quest for truth in dogmatic questions for the sake, again, of security – the “security” provided by union with World Orthodoxy and World Religion in general. At one stroke on May 17 ROCOR will have committed both sins, and fallen into a double condemnation, when it enters into the “ecucommunist” organizations of the Moscow Patriarchate and the World Council of Churches.

The parallels between Sergianism and the sin of Judas, and between Ecumenism and the sin of Pilate, are closer than might be expected. Just as Judas sold Christ to the Jews, to Annas and Caiaphas, so Metropolitan Sergius sold his Church to the Jews – the atheist Bolsheviks who at that time controlled the Soviet Union. Decades later, as has been established by the MP priest Fr. Sergius Gordun, the Bolsheviks compelled the MP to enter the World Council of Churches because in this way they could obtain the seal of approval from the Gentile “Christian” world for their own apostasy. And so, before that impious tribunal, after washing their hands in a hypocritical confession of their innocence, the Soviet hierarchs proclaimed that there was no persecution of the faith in the Soviet Union, thereby condemning the true confessors to further torments while absolving the true thieves and murderers, the Barabbases of our age, of all blame. They then proceeded, as the holy Metropolitan Philaret of New York put it, to “put a sign of equality between truth and falsehood”, Orthodoxy and heresy, by signing up, over the course of the last 46 years, to a long series of anti-Orthodox resolutions of the WCC. In this criminal indifference to truth they were true Pilates, wearily shrugging their shoulders before Truth incarnate and saying: “What is truth?”

“But what has this to do with us?” say the ROCOR uniates. “We are free of the sins of our holy Father Sergius. We protested for a time, and now we have decided to stop protesting. After all, as our most holy Patriarch Alexis says, ‘the declaration of Metropolitan Sergius has gone into the past.’ Let bygones be bygones.” But did not the Jews of Christ’s time say: “His Blood be on us and on our children”? And does not the blood of the New Martyrs betrayed by Sergius fall on every succeeding generation of Russian Christians that does not decisively and publicly denounce his sin? After all, St. John Maximovich said that the guilt for forcing the tsar’s abdication falls on all Russian Christians to all succeeding generations who did not then, or do not now, condemn those who forced the withdrawal of “him who restrains”. Metropolitan Sergius’ sin of 1927 is a continuation of the sin of 1917. If the first removed the restraining power of the Orthodox State, the second removed the restraining power of the confessing Orthodox Church…

Shortly after the Bolsheviks came to power, they erected a statue to Judas Iscariot in Tula. Now the MP is erecting monuments to Metropolitan Sergius in his homeland, while in Ishim, home of ROCOR’s Bishop Eutyches of Ishim, a monument has been erected to Stalin. More than that: a MP website is proclaiming to the whole world that the greatest feast of the Church year is not Pascha, but May 9, when Stalin’s God-hating Red Army, after raping German women, gained the victory over Nazi Germany, thereby “trampling down death by death”! So Stalin, not Christ, is the saviour of the Moscow Patriarchate. No wonder that Metropolitan Sergius thought that he was “saving the Church” when he surrendered his Church into the hands of Stalin!

Judas at least had the strength to throw away his thirty pieces of silver. Will the ROCOR uniates have the strength to do the same when they at last face up to what they have done? Only God knows the answer to that question. What we can say, however, is that it is unlikely that considerations of pure truth alone will be enough to sway those who have already combined Pilate’s indifference to the truth to Judas’ betrayal of the truth. More likely to sober them up will be a material or psychological shock: the removal of their church by emissaries from Moscow, perhaps, or the replacement of a beloved pastor by a hireling or wolf from overseas.

Those who love ROCOR as she used to be must hope and pray that God will count them worthy of such a sobering-up. In the meantime, they cannot say that they have not been warned – and not only by us anti-uniates. They can do no better than listen to the words of the second hierarch of the Moscow Patriarchate, and probable future patriarch, Metropolitan Cyril (Gundyaev) in his August, 2006 letter to Putin.After calling Metropolitan Laurus a “heresiarch”, and his clergy “false pastors”, he writes: “No contacts whatsoever are permitted with the schismatic collaborationist Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, which has not repented publicly before us for the great sin of blessing the stooge Fascists by her heresiarch and collaborator, Anastasy.

“We confirm the decision of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate which excommunicated from our Church the false Metropolitan Anastasy and the schismatics of the ROCA during the years of the holy war [WWII] of the Soviet people under the leadership of our great Orthodox leader, Joseph Stalin, against the fascist enslavers. This verdict against the criminal was pronounced by the State Court.

No assembly whatsoever, much less one of the political character, or pannikhidas for the followers of Vlasov or the Cossacks, who entered into the service of Hitler, can be allowed. We bless all our faithful children to publicly expel the followers of the Karlovchanians from the parishes of the ROC/MP and of the ROCA. Our clergy and laity are permitted to overthrow the monuments of the fascists stooges von Panwitz, Sultan-Girey, Krasnov, Shkuro, and Vlasov on the territory of the Patriarchate's metochion of All Saints at Sokol and of the parishes of the ROCA…

“May the Lord aid you in the God-pleasing labor of eradicating the impious Karlovchanians with their Vlasov-Fascist world-view, headed by their false Metropolitan Laurus…”

So from the mouth of the new Caiaphas himself in his letter to the new Herod we know exactly how he intends to deal with the new Judases of ROCOR! Nor will ROCOR be able to appeal to help from their new “brothers”, the Pilates of World Orthodoxy. They will be alone, utterly alone, to reap the bitter fruits of their new Babylonian captivity.

“I will not speak of the Mystery to Thine enemies, nor give Thee a kiss as did Judas…”

April 8/21, 2007.