Peculiar Practices of the Early Old Calendarists, Brought About by Persecution and Radicalism

Source: Ιστορική και Κανονική Θεώρησις του Παλαιοημερολογιτικού Ζητήματος κατά τε την Γένεσιν και την Εξέλιξιν αυτού εν Ελλάδι [Historical and Canonical Examination of the Old Calendarist Question, From its Origin to its Development in Greece], by Archbishop Christodoulos K. Paraskevaidis of Athens.

* * * 

At the same time… these same leading figures among the Old Calendarists were recommending to their followers to avoid every relationship and communion with the clergy of the Church of Greece, extending even to the prohibition of kissing their right hand, [205] and even to the rebaptism of children already canonically baptized, [206] and even, further still, to the refusal to accept Holy Communion celebrated in the canonical churches of the Church. [207]

NOTES

205. Chrysostomos (I), Archbishop of Athens..., On Calendar Matters, II, 1929, pp. 4–5. 

206. Ibid., p. 5. Cf. concerning the rebaptisms of children on Tinos, in: Anaplasis, 1932, p. 300.

207. Chrysostomos (A), Archbishop of Athens, On Calendar Matters, II, 1929, pp. 4–5. Likewise, Ath. Daniilides, The Correction of the Calendar or the Change of the Festal Cycle. Athens, 1926, pp. 11–13, 71. It was also reported that the Old Calendarists in Thessaloniki, loathing the holy churches of the Church of Greece, would go to the local Serbian church there, which served according to the old calendar, and that the Serbian priests photographed the numerous congregation in order to strengthen their aims toward creating an issue of the Serbian minority in Thessaloniki. Concerning Matthew Karpathakis, it was reported that he was seen sending from Mount Athos by post to Athens, inside an envelope, genuine Holy Eucharist for the communion of the Old Calendarists. Other Old Calendarists advised their followers to place, starting from the evening, a piece of bread on an icon and on the following day to partake of it as Holy Communion, while others advised separation from the marriage bed for married couples, when each member was following a different calendar. In the journal Ecclesia, there was likewise published the report that the Old Calendarists “celebrate the liturgy without commemorating [their local Hierarch], [and] rebaptize children baptized in the Orthodox Church because, supposedly, they were baptized under the New Calendar” (Ecclesia, 1933, p. 113).

 

Greek source online: https://www.myriobiblos.gr/books/book1/kef5_fas1_meros2.htm

'Disclosure Day': A Gnostic Re-Enchantment Tale

Spielberg's Alien Film Is Only Okay -- But It's Important. And It's Something Close To Evil

Rod Dreher | June 15, 2026

On Saturday night I saw Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day. Reviews have been generally positive, though audience reaction is more mixed. It was startling to see a big suburban theater on opening weekend, the first showing Saturday night of a much-hyped Spielberg movie, only half full. Make of that what you will.

Disclosure Day is a film about re-enchantment. More to the point, it’s a film about false enchantment, though I am certain the filmmakers don’t see it that way. It is a profoundly religious film. It is also, I believe, profoundly evil. Nevertheless, I strongly recommend seeing it, because it plays like a prophecy of the great deception that I believe will sooner or later present itself to us. You need to know this.

Let me explain.

Jacques Vallée’s Warning

First, this important background. Jacques Vallée, now 86, is probably the most important person in the UAP world, and has been for decades. He is a computer scientist by training, and for decades a venture capitalist. He got into investigating the UAP phenomenon many decades ago, in part because he saw a UAP in 1955, but then out of scientific curiosity. He is not a religious believer, but he also could not accept that so many reports of bizarre encounters and sightings of what popular culture construed as “aliens” could be made up.

Nor could he accept that whatever these things are, that they are creatures from other worlds. He theorizes — and he’s careful to say that these are only hypotheses — that whatever it is, it is both a material and non-material phenomenon, one that blurs lines between science and technology on one hand, and religion and consciousness on the other.

In his seminal 1969 book Passport To Magonia,  

(https://archive.org/details/passporttomagoni0000vall_m8g5),

Vallée argues that this phenomenon is simply a recycling of one that has been with humanity for a very, very long time, but presents itself to us as “aliens from space,” because that is how people in a scientific-technological age are predisposed to receive them. In one of his later books, Messengers Of Deception

(https://ia600507.us.archive.org/1/items/MessengersOfDeceptionUFOContactsAndCultsJacquesValle1979/Messengers%20of%20Deception%20UFO%20Contacts%20and%20Cults%2C%20Jacques%20Vall%C3%A9e%20%281979%29.pdf),

Vallée contends that

I have found disturbing evidence of dangerous sectarian activities linked to totalitarian philosophies. The ease with which journalists and even scientists can be seduced into indiscriminate promotion of such deceptions is staggering. In the context of an academic attitude that rejects any open investigation of paranormal phenomena, such fanatical conversions must be expected.

… Many people around us today are preparing to greet it with delight, even if that means falling under the control of forces they do not understand. These people are the UFO contactees and the believers in celestial visitation, the followers of the saucer prophets. They can pave the way for dramatic changes.

Vallée — writing in 1979 — pointed to the slow but steady collapse of the public’s faith in institutions and social structures, and the fragmentation of knowledge:

… This isolation of knowledge is matched by the failure of other social structures. Here, too, the parallel with ancient Greece is interesting. In Five Stages of Greek Religion, Gilbert Murray mentions that in Greece there was gradual awareness of two failures:

... the failure of human government, even when backed by the power of Rome or the wealth of Egypt, to achieve a good life for man; and the failure of the great propaganda of Hellenism, in which the long-drawn effort of Greece to educate a corrupt and barbaric world seemed only to lead to the corruption and barbarization of the very ideals which it sought to spread.

Under these conditions - so similar to those of the Western world today, in which human government is regarded with suspicion and in which education of the "emerging nations" by the affluent ones is nonexistent - what did the Greeks do?

This sense of failure, this progressive loss of hope in the world, in sober calculation, and in organized human effort, threw the Greek back upon his own soul, upon the pursuit of personal holiness, upon emotions, mysteries, and revelations, upon the comparative neglect of this transitory and imperfect world for the sake of some dream world far off.

A dream world far off — that is exactly what the UFO contactees are offering us when they invite us to step into a pleasant mirage, to reprogram our consciousness.

This is precisely what Disclosure Day does. Vallée — he was the model for the French scientist in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind — has repeatedly warned over the years that Hollywood has labored for decades to condition the public to accept UAPs (or, as we used to say, UFOs) as bearers of peace and salvation. He writes in Messengers (again, this first came out in 1979):

Let me summarize my conclusions thus far. UFOs are real. They are physical devices used to affect human consciousness. They may not be from outer space. Their purpose may be to achieve social changes on this planet, through a belief system that uses systematic manipulation of witnesses and contactees; covert use of various sects and cults; control of the channels through which the alleged "space messages" can make an impact on the public.

Whether Spielberg intends it or not, Disclosure Day proclaims a new religion, one that displaces Christianity (at least). It’s hard to believe that this is an accident. To be charitable, we could assume that Spielberg, no longer able to believe in the God of the Bible, and of his Hebrew ancestors, has transferred his hopes to aliens. That is the gospel he preaches in this film.

The Film’s Twisting Of Christian Symbolism, And Occultism

I’m going to try to do this without giving away too many spoilers. I’m pretty sure I will fail, so if you want to drop off here, do, and come back later, after you’ve seen the movie. Still, I’m going ahead because it’s very important to get this stuff clear.

The film’s set up has Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a rogue engineer who steals extremely classified data — footage, in particular — from Wardex, a private company contracting with the US Government to maintain and secure military footage from UFO crashes, including encounters with “greys” — the bulbous-headed aliens usually observed to contactees (or, in the film’s lingo, “experiencers”). Kellner is part of a conspiracy of Wardex whistleblowers who have stolen the master cache, and are trying to get it to a Kansas City TV station, to broadcast to the world.

He crosses paths with Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a Kansas City TV weather broadcaster who, after having a mysterious encounter with a red cardinal (bird) who flies into her house, finds that psychic powers have been activated inside her. She can speak foreign languages fluently, and can read people’s minds. The friend who saw the movie with me, a theologian, noted that this is a kind of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended on the worshipers, and they spoke in foreign tongues. The Apostles performed signs and wonders. Here is Act Chapter Two:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%202&version=NIV

Read it, and know that in Disclosure Day, Fairchild gains these gifts after a visit by a bird. (Perhaps I need to point out to my non-Christian readers that the Holy Spirit is traditionally symbolized by a bird.)

The movie is above all a chase film. Fairchild and Kellner meet up and try to stay one step ahead of Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), the CEO of Wardex, and as such, the chief Keeper of the Secrets. The religious element of the film has to do with why Scanlon is persecuting Fairchild and Kellner: because he believes that if the information gets out, the world will fall apart, because the masses cannot handle the knowledge.

Early in the film, Daniel and his girlfriend Jane (Eve “Daughter of Bono” Hewson), a former nun, take refuge in a convent. Jane was a postulant there, but left because she lost the ability to believe in the truths proclaimed by the Catholic faith. Yet when Daniel reveals to her what the secrets he’s guarding are, she initially argues against disclosure, saying something to the effect that (false) belief in God is what gives people meaning and cohesion. She exclaims angrily, “People have been raised to believe in a supreme being, and now you want to show us actual supreme beings? The world can’t handle both.”

Note the theological elision here: the assumption that aliens would be received by humanity as gods. I believe this is an accurate assumption, at least in the Christian world, in an era in which there has been a catastrophic loss of faith among many, and a loss of theological and doctrinal knowledge among many of still believe. Aliens (“aliens”) descending from spaceships to proclaim new truths to us would be rather more persuasive to the masses today than the watery god of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, wouldn’t you say?

From a purely abstract point of view, I see no serious problem within Christianity to accommodate unknown entities within the order of created being. Disclosure of extraterrestrials, if they exist (which I don’t think they do), would not shake my faith in the slightest, and shouldn’t shake a well-catechized Christians.

But we do not live in a world of well-catechized Christians. We see later in the film that a pious nun, dressed conservatively (not Sister Stretchpants), asserts that nothing in the Bible says that Man is God’s highest creation in the cosmos — only on the earth, she said. Well … yes, insofar as angelic beings are also part of the created order, and the Bible says man is “a little lower than the angels.” There could be other, unseen beings. Mother Superior is not entirely wrong, but the way she presents this claim is in context of convincing Jane to integrate the aliens’ existence into her Christian worldview. The unspoken assumption is: they come in peace to enlighten us, so what’s the problem? Welcome them as messengers.

Spielberg himself has said that the movie’s message is that if we are going to avoid war (note that the alien drama happens as the globe approaches the brink of World War III) and conflict, then we need to rediscover empathy. Well, if this movie were telling us that we need to rebalance our brain hemispheres, à la the works of Iain McGilchrist, I would be on board. But that’s not what it’s saying.

The aliens of the film are trying to teach us to be more empathetic. So, I guess this is why they kidnap and traumatize children in the night, violate their bodies, and leave them with extremely painful memories? (This happens in the film.) As Vallée has extensively documented, no “aliens” who meant humanity well would treat us as these things have done. Something real is going on here, but these aren’t intergalactic ambassadors of Up With People.

Disclosure Day is a film about Gnosticism — that is, the ancient and most durable Christian heresy, one that says salvation comes from knowledge, or knowing secret teachings. There were a number of Gnostic sects during the early Christian period, but what they generally held in common was that one would find salvation not from faith, good works, participating in the sacraments and the life of the Church, but rather from gaining occult (hidden) knowledge about the way the cosmos is constructed, and what one’s individual purpose is in life. In Gnosticism, one doesn’t depend on Authority, but experiences the Truth within.

Now, in Disclosure Day — and I definitely cross the line into spoilers here, so if you’re super-strict about avoiding them, stop reading — we see Margaret and Daniel fleeing persecution so they can Know The Truth: the truth about themselves, and reality. Indeed, both (but especially Margaret) receive infused knowledge from the non-human entities — just like “Tyler D.” (Tim Taylor) and “Simone” (Planté) in Diana Pasulka’s books. These spiritual “gifts” are bestowed not by God but by these NHIs (non-human intelligences), and are meant to assist their receivers in their mission.

But Daniel has stolen the Secret Knowledge about the Aliens from its caretakers, and risks his life to reveal the truth to all humanity. Margaret is to be its prophet, proclaiming it to the world, via global electronic media.

I thought of Marshall McLuhan’s statement decades ago. I quote it in this passage from my book Living In Wonder (which, if you haven’t read now, come on, before events compel you to, to better understand what’s actually happening):

When Marshall McLuhan, a Catholic who went to daily Mass, said that the age of electronic media favored the appearance of the Antichrist, his secular admirers had no idea what to make of it. What did electronic media have to do with the book of Revelation’s prophecy that in the last days a fearsome false messiah would appear? There are two reasons for this, he said.

First: “Electric information environments being utterly ethereal fosters the illusion of the world as spiritual substance. It is now a reasonable facsimile of the mystical body [i.e., the church], a blatant manifestation of the Antichrist.” McLuhan meant that the light that passes globally through electronic networks that connect humanity is a physical counterfeit of the doctrine that all Christians are mystically linked into a single world community through faith in Jesus Christ, the true Light of the World. McLuhan indicated that electronic media (TV and radio, in his time) made people feel that all peoples were part of the same community; had he lived to see the internet, his insight would have been utterly vindicated.

Second: “When electricity allows for the simultaneity of all information for every human being, it is Lucifer’s moment… Just think: each person can instantly be tuned to a ‘new Christ’ and mistake him for the real Christ.” This claim is easier to understand. If everyone around the world is online—and, as of 2024, an estimated 66 percent of the world’s population has internet access—it becomes possible for the first time ever to send commands around the world simultaneously.

In the film’s climax, the entire world lays down its guns simultaneously, and picks up its smartphones, to experience the New Revelation Of Truth, broadcast to the entire planet at the same time. This is technologically feasible now. McLuhan warned us. And now it’s here.

The attentive viewer realizes that Margaret and Daniel are Adam and Eve for the New World Order. They play out a reversal of Genesis. Remember this?

And the LORD God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” [Genesis 2:16-17]

In Disclosure Day, things are reversed. If you don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (symbolically), then you shall die in a nuclear conflagration. The God figure, Wardex CEO Scanlon, is actually portrayed as the Satan, the Adversary who wants to maintain control by preventing people from knowing the Truth.

As part of the initiation process — sort of like a rite of confirmation, where the seeds planted in baptism come to fruition — Margaret and Daniel have to revisit the extremely traumatic nights in childhood when they were seized by the aliens and taken somewhere else.

This is the creepiest, most wicked part of the film. The more I think about it, the sicker it seems — though I’m sure most people will not receive it this way.

Margaret returns in a lucid dream sequence, triggered by alien technology, to her childhood bedroom, where she lies awake at night, singing a song from the Disney film Cinderella: “Someday My Prince Will Come”. Suddenly friendly animals appear at the foot of her bed, beckoning her to join them — just as Cinderella had an intimate relationship with animals. We are told in the film that the aliens — the hideous bulbous-headed greys — disguised themselves as animals so as not to frighten the children.  (By the way, here is the 1918 drawing the occultist Aleister Crowley made of the demon Lam he conjured in a ritual.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Supposed_channeled_entity_by_occultist_crowley.jpg

Look familiar?)

The fake animals lead Margaret to “Hansel and Gretel’s house,” which is how the alien spaceship is disguised to trick the children. Yes, that metaphor is on the nose in the same way Ali’s fist was on Frazier’s schnozz … but worse, don’t you remember that in the Grimm’s fairy tale, this house was the witch’s lair, which she disguised as a gingerbread house to lure the innocent children to their destruction? But in Spielberg’s fairy tale, it is a place of wonder, welcome and transformation of the innocent children. Never more clearly does Disclosure Day reveal its true intent than in this sequence.

The aliens implant something in the children through their left eyes. Not both eyes: their left eye.  This is not a storytelling accident. If you want to go down a frightening rabbit hole, check out this website’s explanation of the “single eye,” its occult meaning throughout esoteric history, and its tracking of how the image keeps showing up in popular culture, especially via contemporary celebrities.

(https://vigilantcitizen.com/vc-resources/the-one-eye-sign-its-origins-and-occult-meaning/)

The lone eye is a big part of Disclosure Day’s marketing. Look at the poster at the top of this essay. Look at this one:

 

Through this knowledge implanted by violating the bodies of innocent, kidnapped children, the aliens create prophets to prepare the world for its coming transformation into creators of a world of peace, love, and universal empathy. They will deliver humanity from war and destruction in this way. This is what Bible warns about the Antichrist, who will come as a man of peace, producing signs and wonders to temporarily calm the bellicose and traumatized world, and seduce the masses into following him. In Disclosure Day, the Mother Superior indirectly grants her imprimatur to the aliens and their message, telling Jane that she, as a failed nun, had not lost her faith in God, but in people. In other words: “You didn’t think humanity could handle the ultimate Truth of the New Revelation, but you were wrong. Calm down. This is part of God’s plan.”

To step back for a moment, I actually favor disclosure, but not because I believe the “aliens” have a liberating message for humanity. I believe we need to confront the truth, come what may — even if it is part of what Christians anticipate will be the Great Deception immediately preceding the Apocalypse. Government secrecy is only leaving the masses vulnerable to the allure of forbidden knowledge, and is preventing us from developing defenses against whatever this thing is. (If you don’t believe me because I’m a Christian, then for heaven’s sake, read Jacques Vallée — who, note well, recommended to Diana Pasulka on a personal visit a few years back that she read a collection of mid-century Catholic theological essays about the nature of Lucifer, saying that this might have something to teach us about the phenomenon.)

But Disclosure Day is a lie. A big and consequential lie. Fortunately the film is not top-flight Spielberg, in terms of storytelling, so it won’t be as popular as it might have been. I think audiences might go into the film thinking that they’re going to see something flash-bang-pew-pew, like the popcorn-film alien invasion blockbuster Independence Day. It’s very much not that. It’s not a bad night at the movies, but it does play as shallow, sappy Boomer sentimentalism. There is a good film to be made about disclosure, and the philosophical, religious, and anthropological questions it would raise (Vallée’s writing is a good place to start for source material) — but Spielberg’s movie is definitely not the one. It is simply bizarre that Spielberg would reproduce the kind of intense trauma testified to by many “experiencers” as something beneficial — especially when it involves (in the film) kidnapping and violating the bodies of innocent children. Read the cultural room, Steve!

I had wondered why Kansas City plays such a big role in this film. On the way out of the theater, my theologian friend pointed out that the Midwestern city is where Walt Disney got his start. He grew up there, started his first animation studio there. Kansas City is where the man who more than any other engineered and enchanted the imaginations of generations of American children got his start. This, plus the inclusion of a Disney Studios-owned song (from “Cinderella”) in a picture made by a rival studio, shows you the symbolism at work here. Spielberg plainly intends Disclosure Day to be about the re-enchantment of humanity — the rediscovery of meaning, purpose, and magic — via adult fairy tales about aliens coming bearing gifts of universal peace.

Butterflies are key symbols in Disclosure Day. Butterflies, in general, are symbols of transformation into a higher state. Child Margaret grows up in a bedroom with wallpaper covered with butterflies. Adult Margaret wears a pendant with a single butterfly wing, a symbol of the deep and inexplicable sense of incompleteness, and purposelessness, that has been her burden prior to the drama of the film, she has been yearning for completeness. It all makes sense by the end. We even see a secret government film of a giant alien ship resembling a butterfly taking off. The message of the film is: the aliens are coming to transform us, to make us into higher beings. We should welcome them, and do as they say.

And, not to put too fine a point on it, near the end, when Margaret is about to re-live her trauma experience, a sympathetic woman approaches her and makes the sign of the cross. Margaret, who can read minds at that point, understands that the woman wants her to become a Catholic. She draws back in horror, runs, and, as she slams the door of her fake house, says out loud, “I am not anybody’s religion!”

Of course not. She’s the false prophet of the new one.

So: if Disclosure Day is so middling a movie, and its message is so anti-Christian, why do I recommend that discerning Christian readers see it? Because you will never see so blatant an instantiation of the kind of propaganda that I believe will become more and more present as the world moves forward towards whatever climax is coming.

Again, Vallée’s point is crucial. We are living through a time of a massive shift in consciousness — this time, not just a civilizational one, but perhaps even a global one. Here in the West, as I’ve written about in my last three books, and will come at again in next year’s Weimar America, we have been sloughing off our ancestral religion for the last two centuries, and with it the “myth” (in the anthropological sense) that provides the unspoken framework of who we are, what our purpose is, and how the cosmos is made. This is what I mean by disenchantment.

People cannot bear too much disenchantment. Read your Michel Houllebecq, one of the secular master diagnosticians of our era. Only a world that has been cleared of the old religion(s) will find the new one proposed to us to be plausible. You might claim that Europe is largely godless, and so is Canada, but not us in the United States. This is simply not true.

It is inarguably the case that America is more religiously observant than other Western countries — I have been living that out since I returned to the states three weeks ago, and thank God for it! — but as I have written in The Benedict Option (most of all), but also in Live Not By Lies, in Living In Wonder, and in the forthcoming Weimar America, our Christianity is heavily watered down by any historic measure, mostly cultural, and easily malleable. This is why the sociologist of religion Christian Smith says that the actually existing religion of younger Americans (and I would say many older ones too) is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.

Most of us do not have the spiritual and imaginative antibodies to resist the appeal of the Gnostic re-enchantment offered by the aliens-as-redeemers narrative. In Living In Wonder, I tell the story of “Jonah,” an American academic I met through his exorcist. Jonah was deeply involved in the occult, thinking he was worshiping “ancient gods” suppressed by evil Jews and Christians, until he realized that no, these were actually demons. He fled, and converted to a strong form of Christianity. In my book, Jonah recalls being a smart, curious kid growing up in suburban Evangelicalism, and his pastor having no real answers for the deep questions he was asking. So, out of curiosity to know, he read himself into esotericism, and eventually became a full-blown occultist, worshiping as part of a large community of others — some of them intellectuals, including other academics — who really believed that their religion was destined to displace the dying Christianity.

You, reader, might be able to watch Disclosure Day and spot the obvious problems and deceptions in its narrative. But it is extremely unlikely that most Christians you know can. They will be taken in by the pious older nun who appears serene in the face of disclosure, without questions about what the aliens claim, and what challenges they pose to Biblical truths. After all, if religion is about nothing more than increasing our love and empathy, then why not? It is no accident that the movie’s villain, Scanlon, is an older white man who wishes to hoard knowledge for himself, on behalf of the government, corporations, and power structures — and the liberators are a strong woman (Margaret), and Hugo, a black man who orchestrates the disclosure plot.

Colman Domingo, the actor who plays Hugo, was recently asked by Variety if he believes in aliens:

“I absolutely do,” he answers. “And I don’t know what they look like, what they feel like, what their objectives are, but I do believe that there has to be more. It can’t just be us.”

He adds, “I mean, I stand outside, look at the stars, believing that someone’s staring back at us, and at some point we’ll come together. So I believe that with whatever the unknown brings to us, maybe it’ll be good for all of us.”

This vacant, well-meaning receptivity is where most Americans are today, I think. Look at the numbers in this recent CBS News poll. Excerpt:

The percentage who believe intelligent life exists on other planets has become more widespread in recent years. Looking back just to 2010, fewer than half of Americans believed that. Since that time, higher numbers of men, women and people across age groups and education levels now believe in the existence of intelligent life.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-believe-extraterrestrial-life-exists-opinion-poll/

That same poll found that nearly one in five Americans has seen what they believe to have been a UFO. That’s approximately 59 million people — a massive number. Sure, you could say that what they saw was something that could be explained, though how you or I would know this is a leap of faith. The point is not whether what an individual saw was real or not; the point is that they believe it was a UFO. This tells us something important about their mindset.

A Catholic professor friend of mine told Marc Andreessen once that a medieval peasant, with his religious belief and superstitions both, is better able psychologically to cope with the world of Artificial Intelligence than contemporary man is. Why? Because he assumed that the cosmos contained other, non-human intelligences, and he believed as a matter of course that there were proven ways to deal with them. We moderns have stripped ourselves of this knowledge, and as such, are vulnerable. To be clear, this professor was not saying AI is alien tech; he’s simply saying that in the modern era, we are psychologically disoriented by the very concept of non-human intelligence.

The same point can be made about how we can and will cope with disclosure. I can’t speak for believers in other religions, but well-informed and discerning Christians will approach the topic with great prudence and skepticism — not the kind of skepticism that says “this can’t be real,” but the Valléesque skepticism that says, “This is real — but what is it? What is its nature? What does it want from us? What does it want to do to us?” And so forth. In the documentary The Age Of Disclosure, Lue Elizondo and other whistleblowers talk about high-ranking Pentagon officials who discouraged investigation on grounds that this phenomenon is Satanic

(See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjmJmwsjdGI&t=256s).

I believe this is true — that there have been and are people in authority who have acted this way — but at the same time, I don’t believe that refusing to look is a wise course of protecting ourselves from a phenomenon that I too believe is ultimately Satanic.

So: parents, priests, pastors, religious leaders all need to see Disclosure Day. It is a fairy-tale of re-enchantment for a Gnostic, occultic, scientific-technological era. Whatever Spielberg’s limitations as a storyteller in this film, he has produced a near-perfect example of the kind of false and deceptive story that we will all be led to believe in the Age of Antichrist. We have to have strong, well-informed answers to counter these stories, so we and the people who depend on us for leadership will not be deceived. The hard-line skeptical materialist response grows less credible by the day.

Though I don’t agree with all the theological material in this two-part interview between the Catholic exorcist Fr Dan Reehil and Daniel O’Connor, a Catholic author of a book about UAPs and Antichrist, I can confidently recommend their discussion to you. Part One on YouTube here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fNTO39rftY&t=1437s

Part Two is here:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtDIMqG0FQ4

Note especially Fr Reehil’s point that some people claim “aliens” can’t be demons, because the spacecraft are nuts-and-bolts machines. He points out that we know from Scripture that angels, immensely powerful spiritual beings, can manipulate the material world — and demons are fallen angels. Plus, Fr Reehil makes a point I’ve heard from other exorcists: if you have enough experience with this, you have seen it happen with your own eyes.

Coda

After the movie ended, I walked my theologian friend and his adult son to my car, and showed them the butterfly wing I found in a parking lot in front of my car on the journey to Louisiana to attend to my sick mother last week. I discovered to my dismay that it was disintegrating so I showed them the photo I posted of it last week here, after I picked it up:

 

As I said in this space last week, my mom and I have been mostly estranged these past few years, but now that she is approaching death from chronic illness, I’ve been longing for some sort of reconciliation before the end, though having no idea how to break through the walls she has put up. I prayed about this. Well, sometimes a butterfly wing is just a butterfly wing, but after the surprisingly good time she and I had together — the best in years — I interpret the discovery of the wing as both a sign that healing would come, and as a sign to lean into it — not to stunt the transformation of our difficult relationship by fear or recalcitrance. As I said here last week, to my knowledge I have never seen a lone butterfly wing — and, given the incredibly strange story from my past, in 1994, involving butterfly wings and the haunting of an unrepentant relative, believe me, I would have noticed.

So, you can imagine how shocking it was to me to encounter in Disclosure Day the butterfly — both the completed one, and the broken wing — as key symbols. I don’t think there was a personal connection, only a coincidence. Probably. But thinking today about it, I consider how much I have yearned for reconciliation, not only over the specific things that caused my mom and me to fall out a few years ago, but also more generally — the kind of longing the led me to return, with my wife and kids, to my hometown, and to the ruin of my marriage and my life.

This yearning for a sense of wholeness, of rightness, of healing and restoration is something we all carry within us, living as we do as mortal, finite creatures in time. Many of us want it so badly that we will allow ourselves to believe almost anything to relieve the pain of brokenness. We want the other wing, so we can fly. This leaves us vulnerable to messengers of deception.

I’ll leave the last word to Jesus of Nazareth, in his Olivet Discourse about how we will know that we are in the Last Days: “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea.” (Luke 21:25).

 

Source: https://roddreher.substack.com/p/disclosure-day-a-gnostic-re-enchantment

 

1985 “Open Letter” of Bishop Petros (Astyfides) of Astoria: On the True Enemies of the G.O.C. in America, Grabbe and Metropoulos

Translated from the original Greek.

 

 

Anthousa, July 16, 1985

To: Most Reverend brother Hierarchs in Christ,
Akakios of Attica and Megara,
Chrysostomos of Thessalonika,
and Gabriel of the Cyclades.

Most Reverend brothers in Christ. Once again, with the help of the Holy God, I find myself in Greece, in order to receive refreshment, so that I may be able, with God working together, to continue the much-toilsome but unseen by you work of our mission in America.

But what sort of spiritual rest can I receive, when my eyes now see the sacred struggle of Orthodoxy being trampled down and destroyed? My soul, brothers, is sorely grieved by this gloomy state of affairs.

As a bishop, I feel great is my debt before God and the sacred struggle, and this because the Lord entrusted me, on the day of my ordination, to bear and to transmit to the coming generation the sacred deposit of the Faith.

With the help of the Triune God, my beloved brothers, I labor for the preservation of the sacred deposit from a young age, having labored in the vineyard of the Lord.

There is, however, no greater blow for a hierarch than when his hierarchical status and his militant Orthodox mindset are called into question, and specifically: the evil serpent has warred against my humble person with unprecedented fury from the beginning of my missionary activity, with the most important weapon his arsenal possesses: slander. Was it not with this weapon that Satan warred against the Lord of glory and His holy friends? How often do we hear the chief Apostle Paul in his epistles complain because the “Judaizing” brethren of Jerusalem doubted his apostolic status? Was not the universal teacher John Chrysostomos slandered to a frightful and unbelievable degree? Was not Athanasios the Great, who shone before him, the pillar and foundation of Orthodoxy, slandered as guilty of bloodshed? Or do we perhaps forget the case of the ‘murdered Arsenios’?” But we have nothing else to do, brothers, except to sail to Aegina and see the thrice-great Saint Nektarios of Pentapolis shining and flashing forth in his tremendous miracles. During his life, was not this contemporary Saint terribly slandered? As immoral, he who was pure and blameless; or do we perhaps not hear even down to our own days that this most Orthodox Father of the Church was Latin-minded, an ecumenist, and an iconoclast? Shudder, O sun.

But if the saints suffered unjustly from the plotting of the devil, would I, the wretched one, escape?

If, brothers, I were a simple monk, I ought to keep silent if I heard slander against me, as Saint Agathon did; and this I wished to do throughout my whole life, to keep silent when I am slandered. This I both did and do. Did not our Lord teach us thus: “Blessed are ye when they shall reproach you and persecute you and cast out your name as EVIL for the sake of the Son of Man; rejoice in that day and leap for joy”?

Is there, brothers, another way of life for an Orthodox Bishop? Must I not imitate my Lord, Who, “being reviled, reviled not again; suffering, He threatened not”? This I must do if I wish to see the face of Christ, and this I would have done.

But when, in my person, the very substance of the Church itself is being touched, then I am now obliged to defend myself, not for my own sake, but for the sake of beloved Orthodoxy.

This, essentially, is the purpose of the present letter: namely, to clarify my position regarding specific slanders which have been hurled against me and which, consequently, as I believe, touch the dignity of the mystical Body of Christ.

I believe you are aware that I was consecrated as a hierarch in America in 1962 by the ever-memorable Archbishop of Chile, Leonty, and by His Eminence Seraphim, Archbishop of Caracas in Venezuela, both belonging to the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. This consecration of mine was officially recognized by the higher Holy Synod in 1968, which gave me an official Certificate of Consecration, protocol number 948.

Before the delivery to me of the Certificate of Consecration, and after it, I had full ecclesiastical communion with the hierarchy of Russian bishops. I also believe that it does not escape your memory how much I labored in the U.S.A. for the consecration of the ever-memorable Akakios Pappas, and for the raising up of hierarchs for the G.O.C. in Greece.

Regarding the matter at hand. A brother hierarch informed me that, when Bishop Gregory Grabbe was in Greece two years ago, he informed you that — shudder, O sun — “Bishop Petros was never consecrated by our Church; that, although he was consecrated by the Archbishop of Chile, he did this through simony; and that his Certificate of Consecration is spurious.”

First of all, before I proceed to refute the above slanders of Mr. Grabbe, I would like to tell you that the very great ..."Saint" of Boston, Panteleimon Metropoulos, also participates in my calumniation; he, together with Bishop Grabbe, warred against me by every means except A WRITTEN ACCUSATION. The warfare of Grabbe and Panteleimon was always oral.

For they knew and know that in America slander — DISCRIMINATION [written in English] — can put even the President of the U.S.A. himself in prison.

No, brothers, I was neither simoniacal, nor is my Certificate of Consecration forged.

And I denounce Gregory Grabbe and Panteleimon Metropoulos as grievous SLANDERERS and LIARS; and I challenge them: what they told you orally about me, let them inform you also IN WRITING — YES, IN WRITING.

Not with words of wind, which are easily overturned; and then the judicial justice of the U.S.A. will have the floor.

That the saying may be fulfilled: “Punish the disorderly, lest they become arrogant.” And while we are speaking about written statements, I would like to know why, since for so many years Panteleimon Metropoulos and Bishop Grabbe, the notorious baron, have been spreading accusations of simony, the Synod of Metropolitan Philaret did not summon me to try me and depose me, as I requested of it IN WRITING twice, and to try not only me, but also Leonty, who consecrated me, and Seraphim together with him? Why did they not try the ever-memorable Archbishop Averky, [St.] John Maximovitch, Archbishop of San Francisco, Bishop Sava of Edmonton, and other hierarchs and priests of the Russian Synod who had communion with me?

Do you perhaps think that all these men had not heard all these things about simony? Of course they heard them, but because they knew very well who Archbishop Leonty was, they had excluded every idea of such a crime.

Bishop Grabbe had serious reasons for making use of this base, deceitful, and underhanded behavior.

Bishop Grabbe concealed great hatred against the struggler and truly Orthodox Archbishop Leonty. He warred against him fiercely; he tried by every means to neutralize him. For this reason, although Leonty was a doctor of theological science, the then-Father George Grabbe arranged to exile the brilliant scholar, theologian, and hierarch Leonty Filipovich from the central administration of the Russian Synod.

But why this hatred of Grabbe? Quite simply, the ever-memorable Leonty had a very serious difference with Fr. George Grabbe. He did not recognize HIS PRIESTHOOD; and this because Grabbe had been “ordained” a “priest” BY A NON-EXISTENT UKRAINIAN ‘HIERARCH’ in Europe. [*]

For the above reason, Archbishop Leonty, being the struggler that he was, at a liturgical gathering of the Hierarchs and before the astonished eyes of the ever-memorable [Metropolitan] Anastasy, seized the impious Grabbe, made him kneel before the Holy Table, and ordained him a canonical priest. After he ordained him, he characteristically said to him: “Congratulations; now you are a canonical priest.” From then on, Grabbe uprooted the war against every act and action of Leonty.

You can now imagine what fury he concealed against my humble self. As an assistant in the war against Leonty, and consequently also against my own standing, he found Panteleimon Metropoulos, who was then, and is now, “actively” working in America. They said many things — very many things — concerning my consecration. But those old hierarchs COMPLETELY REJECTED the outcries of Metropoulos and Grabbe.

In the meantime, the years were passing; my old collaborators in the Russian Church, slowly, one after another, were departing for the Heavenly Kingdom.

Nevertheless, when the famous encyclical was being issued in 1974, I, in my humility, refused to sign the text of the encyclical, because I considered myself unqualified for so great a matter as taking an ecclesiological position regarding the Mysteries of 250,000,000 Orthodox Christians.

I turned once again to the Russian Church and asked for her theological direction. The Synod of Philaret answered me IN WRITING by its letter dated October 29, 1974, protocol number 3-50-242; I enclose the letter for you. [**]

I shall emphasize two points in the letter: the beginning and the end. And in both of these places, Metropolitan Philaret, as president of the Synod of the Hierarchy, calls me Bishop of Astoria and beloved brother in Christ.

Could it be that, in the twelve years after my consecration, Metropolitan Philaret had not heard the accusations against me? In the end, how could the president of the Russian Synod bring himself to call a SIMONIAC a brother in Christ and Right Reverend Bishop of Astoria? Something is not right, brothers. Is this Synodal document also forged? Are the numerous concelebrations with the Russian hierarchs, which have been photographed and filmed, also ... forged? That is, have we reached the tragic point where it is being heard and said that the written attestations of the Russian Synod of Philaret are of no force, while the things said orally by His Grace Grabbe are authoritative?

Must we then also believe the oral denial of Theophil Ionescu, that he did not take part in the consecration of the ever-memorable Akakios Pappas? But since, after all, the oral word of Grabbe has such force, listen to what he said years ago.

When the Russian Church proclaimed the Russian New Martyrs saints, I sent my priests and deacons to attend the ceremonies. When they were at the Synodal building in Manhattan, Bishop Grabbe and His Eminence Archbishop Laurus of Syracuse received them in audience. After they had discussed various matters that concerned us, they put the following question to Mr. Grabbe: Why, after so many years of cooperation, does Philaret not receive Bishop Petros?

The answer of Bishop Grabbe, before many witnesses, was clear: “The Synod itself has no impediment to receiving your Bishop; however, the Greeks who belong to the Synod have an objection.” This is the reality, the truth which Grabbe himself confesses, namely that Panteleimon Metropoulos DID NOT WANT AND DOES NOT WANT THE GREEK BISHOP PETROS TO OBSERVE AND CHECK THE EXTERNAL MANNER OF HIS ECCLESIASTICAL ACTIVITY. The unrepentant Panteleimon Metropoulos is the source of the whole wretched state of affairs; he is THE CHIEF CAUSE OF MY CALUMNIATION. May God have mercy on him.

Note that he has not met me even once. Certainly, I could write “whole volumes” about Panteleimon Metropoulos’ systematic warfare against me.

To confirm emphatically what has been said, brothers, I am sending you a photocopy of MY UNQUESTIONABLY AUTHENTIC CERTIFICATE OF CONSECRATION, with the signatures of the Most Reverend hierarchs Philaret, Nikon, and Laurus, and with protocol number 948. Together with this, I am sending you the first Certificate of Consecration from the ever-memorable Leonty and Seraphim, Bishop of Caracas, as well as excerpts from the correspondence which I had with the Synod of Philaret, which was published in Orthodoxos Logos.

In closing, I would like once again to repeat that I denounce as false everything said by Bishop Gregory Grabbe against the ever-memorable Archbishop Leonty, Archbishop Seraphim of Caracas, and my humble self. Before I proceed, you must ask yourselves, Most Reverend brothers, why Bishop Gregory Grabbe continued for so many years after my consecration to concelebrate with the above-mentioned two hierarchs, whom he considered and still considers simoniacs — perish the blasphemy. You see, in the crime of simony, as you know, not only the one who pays the money participates, but also those who accept the payment. You see how shamelessly and irresponsibly the wretched Gregory Grabbe, pitiable for the state to which he has fallen, calumniates.

My brothers, after all the above, I would like to believe that you have now been convinced that I was never a simoniac, nor did I pay money in order to become a Bishop.

I was consecrated by two Orthodox, holy hierarchs, who are known to all for their holy patristic life.

I was consecrated, brothers, for the struggle of Orthodoxy, in which I believed with all my heart.

I did not seek to become a hierarch — God is my witness. The priests of the G.O.C. of New York voted for me for the episcopal office. And the ever-memorable Archbishop Akakios Pappas repeatedly wrote to me to accept the office of the episcopacy. Finally, Archbishop Leonty himself persuaded me to accept the promotion, WITHOUT SIMONY AND WITHOUT INTRIGUES, as many would have liked there to have been, because this would have served their subterranean designs both in America and in Greece. I was consecrated, brothers, canonically and validly, for the service of the struggle of the G.O.C.

The time which I have been awaiting has now arrived, and my relevant correspondence with the ever-memorable Akakios Pappas and Archbishop Leonty Filipovich concerning the matters of the raising up of hierarchs of the Old Calendar in Greece, and other matters related to the sacred struggle, will see the light of publication. And this because the night is far spent.

Also, brothers, I would like to inform you that my Orthodox mindset has not changed in the slightest. I am the same as I was. I renounce and condemn the new and Papal Calendar, and together with it also the pan-heresy of Ecumenism. I say these things to you because recently a new slanderous attempt against me has also been circulated. It is rumored by various well-wishers that I supposedly submitted a request to Archbishop Iakovos of America for him to receive me as a Bishop into the New Calendar, and that he rejected my request.

This too is a lie, brothers, and indeed a most malicious one; but we know the source. It is the broken cistern, whose water “does not flow straight.” No, brothers, I never made such efforts so as to deny my sweetest Orthodoxy, for which I was exiled and imprisoned.

With the help of the Most Holy Theotokos, I always was, am, and shall remain an Orthodox hierarch; and without any concession I shall follow, until my last breath, the ancestral Orthodox Festal Calendar.

This is my defense to those who examine me. FROM HENCEFORTH LET NO ONE TROUBLE ME. These things are for the restoration of my hierarchal conscience, which has been brutally wounded.

May God forgive and have mercy on all those who IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER have slandered me, and may He count them worthy of sincere repentance; without repentance, the slanderer shall not see the face of God unto the ages.

I hope, Most Reverend brothers, that from the above there will finally be clarified and made plain, after 52 years of our acquaintance within the setting of the sacred struggle, the various questions which have recently occupied you concerning my humble person.

Finally, I have this to say, and I pray that the sincere and guileless nature of my character may not once again provoke your displeasure against me.

Humanly speaking, I ask each one of you, the Most Reverend hierarchs, the evangelical words: “Have I been so long with you, and yet hast thou not known me?”

I embrace you in the love of Christ,

† Petros of Astoria

 

[*] Regarding the source of Bishop Gregory Grabbe’s priestly ordination:  In 1924, then-Archimandrite Seraphim [Lade] received his episcopal consecration from the Synod of Metropolitan Pimen (Pegov), who was a part of Renovationist (schismatic) movement in Ukraine. Since the future Metropolitan Seraphim spent many years collecting historical evidence about the Lord, he was appointed Chairman of the Committee on Education and the Committee for Combatting Unbelief. In 1930, along with many other Russians of German descent, he was allowed to leave the USSR for Germany. In August of 1930, the ROCOR Synod decided to receive him without his being (re)ordained (through repentance). This fact of the reception via repentance later caused Bishop Leonty of Berdichev (later of Chile and Peru) to refuse to recognize as valid ordinations performed by Metropolitan Seraphim.

Source: https://www.rocorstudies.org/2023/12/22/metropolitan-seraphim-lade/

[**]  See:

 https://orthodoxmiscellany.blogspot.com/2025/08/why-did-bishop-petros-of-astoria-refuse.html

 

On Celebrating the Reunion with Bishop Germanos of the Cyclades and the Reception of Archbishop Arsenios Saltas of Brooklyn by the G.O.C. (1950)

 

The Holy Synod of the Church of the G.O.C. of Greece

To the Reverend Clergy of our Most Holy Church and Pious Genuine Orthodox Christians

Encyclical No. 2.

In Athens, on January 14/27, 1950

Beloved children in the Lord,

Grace to you and peace from God, and from us prayer and blessing.

Giving glory to our God in Trinity, we thank Him for His infinite mercy and His rich gifts toward us.

Previously, beloved children in the Lord, we celebrated, rejoicing in the Lord, over the joyful event of the union of the two factions of the G.O.C. of Greece, which had been divided, as they ought not to have been, and of the cooperation with us of our Brother and Concelebrant in Christ, His Eminence the Bishop of the Cyclades, Mr. Germanos, an event which had been our longing and prayer for many years. Now another joy has overtaken this joy of ours, over the joyful event of the union with us of the Greek Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians in New York, America, which is shepherded by His Eminence the Archbishop of Brooklyn, Mr. Arsenios, recognized by the President of the United States by an act of State as the Head of this Church.

This union was preceded by a written communication from His Eminence of Brooklyn to our Holy Synod, through which he made known to us his desire, and that of his clergy and flock, for union, and he entreated us to accept this union and cooperation of the two Churches of the G.O.C.

Following this letter, we recognized him, His Eminence Archbishop Arsenios of Brooklyn, as a [non-voting] member of our Holy Synod, and the Church under him as united with ours.

Therefore, let us glorify the All-Good God, and let us take care to prove worthy of His great gifts toward us; and, for His glory, let us increase our faith and our love toward our Mother, Orthodoxy. May her flame be kindled within our breasts, and may she regain the strength and splendor of 1935, so that, on the basis of what was then proclaimed by us, we may reorganize ourselves and, united, proceed toward Victory, which is not far from us, God willing.

United, all of us, Clergy and People, let us reorganize ourselves beneath the banner of Orthodoxy, setting aside egotisms, personal interests, and human weaknesses; and let us all set as the sole aim of our life the triumph and glory of Orthodoxy.

We pray from the depths of our heart that the grace of our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ may strengthen us all and enlighten us unto what is Good, that we may be deemed worthy and prove to be faithful strugglers and defenders of the Traditions, by good work and by word of Confession, to His glory alone; may His grace and mercy be with you all.

Praying to the Lord,

THE HOLY SYNOD

THE PRESIDENT

† The Former Metropolitan of Florina, CHRYSOSTOMOS

THE MEMBERS

† Germanos of the Cyclades
† Christophoros of Christianoupolis
† Polykarpos of Diavleia

Source: Voice of Orthodoxy, No. 79, January 30, 1950, p. 3.

 

The G.O.C. on the Election of Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I in 1948

Source: Η Φωνή της Ορθοδοξίας [The Voice of Orthodoxy], No. 58, October 21, 1948, p. 8.

 

 

On the Election of the New Patriarch

Upon hearing the news of the election of the new Patriarch, Mr. Athenagoras, we pray that the Lord may enlighten him, so that he may prove worthy of the Throne which he has been called to occupy, and may labor for the good of the Mother Church, which was honored and adorned by hierarchs of the stature of [St. John] Chrysostomos, [St.] Gregory [the Theologian], etc.

 

On a Struggle for Canonical Baptism in the Moscow Patriarchate: An Interview with Archpriest Joachim Lapkin (1990)

Source: Orthodox Life, Vol. 42, No. 3, May-June 1991, pp. 25-37.

 

This past summer [in 1990], Archpriest Joachim Lapkin, a cleric of our [ROCOR] church in Siberia, visited Germany. He attended several parishes of our Diocese, familiarizing himself with the church life and the conditions of freedom.

We asked him to tell us about the conditions of church life in Russia, and of the impressions which he acquired from his tour of the German Diocese.

* * *

QUESTION: Father Joachim, a significant event occurred in your life this year: you came under the protection of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. Please tell us what prompted you to take such a responsible step?

ANSWER: Even before our petition to the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, we, i.e., those priests from Siberia, who now came under the protection of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, have always been looking for a way out of the critical situation which has formed today in the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia. This is a time when many of the canons are being violated, beginning with the first mystery, Baptism, which is done not by full immersion, but rather by wetting the forehead. I have always tried to oppose this, at least to draw closer to the observance of the canonical norm, but have met opposition from the reigning bishop and elder priests. Of course I objected to this. I no longer trusted the human authority, but rather the authority of God and the authority of the Holy Fathers who established rules for us. But it is hard to fight against those in power, and during all my years of serving I have received, one might say, many lumps.

Until 1987, the Omsko-Tiumensk cathedra position was held by Archbishop Maxim. He was a bishop who, in general, was concerned about the Church, its dignity, and the moral state of the priesthood; therefore, with him it was still bearable. You were able to meet with him and discuss various questions. He always came to help us. In other words, there was some sort of understanding from his side. But it is evident that bishops live “like fish in a frying pan”; they have to satisfy the authorities and at the same time cannot offend those deserving archpriests who go along with the authorities hand in hand.

Therefore, if they go against the authorities, they could be transferred to another (even worse) diocese. If the bishop still believes and has any fear of God, he has to at least try to please Him.

In 1987 Archbishop Theodosius was sent to the diocese of Omsko-Tiumensk. For a short while he served here in Germany, but for some reason was quickly sent off and appointed to our diocese. You see, the Siberian dioceses are considered exile for bishops and, according to all the rules, those who are guilty of committing some sort of an offense are sent there for not towing the line of the authorities or some uncanonical or immoral action. In comparison to the previous bishops, everything changed with Theodosius. There was resistance and soon his moral behavior became evident. Then our spiritual father, Father Evtichky Kurochkin, a hieromonk from our diocese, rose against him. A letter was sent by Father Evtichky to the Synod concerning the moral behavior of the bishop. The documents were forwarded by the Synod back to Theodosius. Of course they soon got even with Father Evtichky. From the parish where he served in the city of Ishim they transferred him to a newly opened parish. This parish of the Great Martyr Katherine was reopened because during the years of Soviet rule it was a warehouse. Since it is a good church and an architectural landmark it was opened. A small group of twenty people or so was organized to whom the church was given. Father Evtichky was transferred there, despite the fact that he has a very sick mother whom he looks after.

Concerning my position, in 1988 I submitted a report to the Synod concerning the violation of canonical rules during the administering of the Mysteries. There was no answer. Of course the bishop resented this and accused me of schism. The fact is, that in our parish we, i.e., the senior priest, Father Michael and I, built a large baptistry and started baptizing only by full immersion and making adult catechumens one month before baptism. We began to have discussions on Holy Scriptures Sunday nights after the service and at the same time answer people’s questions. Even children began to come. This was not well received by the spiritual authorities. Many aspects of church life are overlooked by the civil authorities today. Although the Law of 1929 prohibiting homilies and catechetical studies after official services, as well as charitable works, has not yet been abolished, it somehow does not seem to be in effect now. However, when our activities became more obvious, the representative of religious affairs H. J. Zamiatin told us directly to discontinue discussions, which are prohibited by the still unabolished law.

I wrote a letter addressed to the bishop and to all the senior priests of the churches in the diocese. Based on Holy Scriptures, resolutions of the Councils, and ancient practices of the Church, I defended everything concerning the Mystery of Baptism. I showed the letter to the bishop. He accepted it benevolently and said that I had worked out my argument well and that he supported me. I sent my letter to all the parish priests and they took it as an offense. That is, how could I, a young priest, dare to criticize them, although there was no personal criticism intended in the letter. There was only a description of how the sacrament of Baptism and the rite of making catechumens should be performed.

At the same time a second petition signed by various priests concerning the amoral behavior and uncanonical activity of Archbishop Theodosius was placed before the Synod. Only when this petition was sent to each member of the Synod did a reaction take place. A commission headed by Metropolitan Gideon of Novosibirsk and Barnaulsk and Archbishop John of Kiubishevsk was sent to us by the Synod. At the time I was on leave, in September of last year. The special commission summoned my colleagues who had signed the petition. They interrogated not only the priests, but also everyone who had been offended by the bishop, including women. I did not take part in this investigation. Both orally and in writing I only raised questions concerning baptism and violation of canons. The obvious violation of canons by the bishop in regard to ordination was the ordination of a man who was married three times, one of the wives still being alive. Nonetheless, the man was tonsured a monk and ordained. I expressed my opinion only orally and was still accused of attempting to teach the bishop. They wanted to enforce a canon which would defrock me, the one which reads, “If anyone attacks a bishop.” As if I had really attacked the bishop!

I was absent when the commission was in session. When I became aware of the meeting I called from Novosibirsk. I went to Omsk where the commission was in session. Archbishop John received me at the hotel. We spoke and again I only brought up the question of sacraments and canons. In general he supported me. The next day there was a conference at the cathedral with the diocesan deans and cathedral clergy in attendance. I was not invited to attend the conference but went anyway. There were other clerics present from parishes. The commission was called in order to defend the Archbishop and prove that what was written about him was a lie. It did not turn out as planned. Most of the attention was centered around my letter. We discussed the matter for more than two hours. I defended myself. The main argument centered around the accepted practice of baptism. Neither the Scriptures, nor canons, nor resolutions of councils were cited in defense of the common practice, only, “this is the way it is done now,” “such and such a priest did it like this before me and now I do it this way.” Other accusations were hurled against me but had no bases and therefore dissipated. Out of all the clergy only one defended me, the Archbishop’s secretary, Father Alexis Sidorenko. He stated that Father Joachim raises a serious question and has raised it before, for three years we have not been able to discuss this question as he has. I had in fact asked the Archbishop to meet and speak about this problem. There were only promises about next time. As a matter of fact, a month before the commission the Archbishop and the diocesan council met with me and threateningly said that it would benefit me to quietly leave, or else things would get worse. The bishop, the authorities and clergy were all against me. I thought it over, sought advice, and decided to seek a release, seeing that an open battle with them would be dangerous. One could expect anything from them. They are capable of treachery. I immediately wrote up a petition and they signed it on the spot. Besides the petition for a release I also asked for permission for a leave of absence, asking the favor in order to look for a position in another diocese. I had already been thinking about this at the time.

They summoned Father Michael, the elder priest, after me and demanded threateningly that he also ask for a release. He was told that if he did not write a petition now they would never release him, reminding him of his family and making other threats. He also wrote a petition for release. Thus we both found ourselves released from our duties. Other clergy were sent to our parish of All Saints in Tumen. The elder clergy at the cathedral took up arms against us more avidly out of jealousy, since baptisms were done like mass production. The main thing demanded was the fee of five rubles. The priest comes up to you and asks, “Did you pay?” “Fine, stand in line.” The business begins. The batiushka reads something over them, the people mumble something, then they go up to him, he wets their head a little, and thus the baptism is over.

When Father Michael and I began to baptize by full immersion in our church people of course took notice. The city was small and the people began to question, “Are you of another faith?” “What is this?” “I baptized my first infant in the cathedral or it might have been my friend who baptized her, and even as an infant they did not disrobe her, and here you wash them completely.” We attempted to explain why it was necessary to baptize thus by full immersion. “Why did they do it differently in the cathedral?” “Because of certain circumstances there.” In other words we tried to avoid open confrontation. They were very zealous in these matters and accused us of stirring up the people and our parishioners against the cathedral. I was told that I had ambitions of becoming the head of the cathedral and therefore instigated others and the parishioners of the cathedral against their priest.

QUESTION: Did you find that your parishioners understood the necessity of baptism by immersion according to the canons?

ANSWER: Of course. Before we instituted the practice of immersion at our parish we discussed it with the church council. Here we should probably mention that church councils in Russia are headed by a warden who is the authorities’ right-hand man. Frequently the warden is not a believer, sometimes even a militant atheist. Nonetheless he is appointed by the authorities. No one can be appointed without the authorities. Sometime the church committee chooses a warden and the authorities inform them that they can choose whom they wish but he will not be confirmed by the authorities. Choose another.

In our parish the warden was a believer, a God-fearing, good woman. Still, like everywhere, the committee fights for income. When we started to baptize in the proper way, the church council became fearful that no one would come to us for baptism, we would lose income. Father Michael and I remained firm. We repeated in every sermon how the mystery of Baptism was to be performed. We explained that it was not our fantasy but the practice of the Church, based on the Scriptures and the resolutions of the Councils, that it was always done in this manner from the first centuries and only due to our carelessness had it changed. The great Mystery of Baptism had been simplified. Gradually the church council began to understand us. In the beginning Father Michael and I did everything ourselves. We made a font, dug a pit lined it with tile, put in hot water, made a drain into a special pit, outside where the baptismal water could empty. Everything worked out very well. When we began to baptize, the candidates actually increased and the income as well. Then the church council settled down and began to support us completely.

QUESTION: Did those who were baptized understand the necessity of your so-called new institution?

ANSWER: Of course. No one ever refused to be baptized the proper way, although there was always the possibility that it might happen. It should be pointed out that the majority of people who come for baptism are not firm believers. They usually know only that it is necessary to believe. Generally they are not prepared. Although we prepare them for two or three months they never reach the level they should. They see the way baptisms are conducted in the cathedral and how in our parish and the majority of them say: “If my friend or someone else is to be baptized, I will tell them to come only here to the parish, since it is obvious that you baptize completely, ‘the real way.’ Thus even people far from a complete understanding of the faith like our attitude towards the Sacraments. They like the mysteries to be done zealously, properly, the way they should be done. There has never been a protest. Actually there was once, when the people wanted to be baptized, although they were not prepared. They went to the cathedral and were promptly baptized.

QUESTION: I would like to again raise the question of godparents. Is it true that godparents are chosen who are not only foreign to the church but sometimes unbelievers?

ANSWER: Yes, there are many such incidents.

QUESTION: Are you careful about such things?

ANSWER: Of course we take care. It sometimes happens that the sponsors are unbelievers. We ask if they believe in something. We look for even a spark of faith. If the person denies God completely then we do not accept him. But if a person says that he believes but knows little about the faith, about church matters, then we are condescending and do not reject him. We give him a New Testament and some other literature. We explain why a sponsor is necessary, what he represents to the newly-baptized. Imagine sending your son to a school where the student knows more than the teacher! Would you be satisfied that such a teacher should teach your child? Of course not, but what are we doing here? The godfather must instruct his godson in the faith, how to live like a Christian, how to enter the heavenly kingdom. If he himself does not know the way, how can he show your son? It all becomes just a formality. They came to baptism as to some sort of business deal. They think that if they baptize the infant he will grow up healthy and be lucky. A girl came to us and said, “Babushka says that if I am baptized then my husband will not be a drunkard, he will not beat me and I will be happy”. There are many examples of such thinking. First we explain to the candidate the meaning of the mystery, and do not baptize them the same day. They come to our lessons a few times, and all receive a New Testament, so that those who come to Baptism will have read at least one time the New Testament. They should at least be acquainted with who Jesus Christ is, understand that He is the Son of God, their Savior, but certainly not some sort of outer space man as some actually imagine. What is a confession of faith? We explain it in lessons on every section of the Creed.

QUESTION: Is it your opinion, according to your experience as a priest, that the general level of knowledge of the people coming to receive baptism in your parish and in general all over Russia is very low?

ANSWER: One cannot speak about general statistics. This is why I insist on catechism. Some feel I am too strict, that they will not come back to be baptized, but I say “Fine, so he does not come back.” If he does return I will insist that he is baptized in the proper manner. They must first be examined before I will allow a baptism to take place. Even in the secular world one is not initiated into a secret society before he passes a test, in order to prove that one is able to keep a secret. Baptism is a great mystery where someone has just been united to Christ; the union with Christ takes place but the soul remains totally ignorant of Him. In this case the fault lies with the spiritual father for not instructing the soul. Right from the baptismal font the soul again falls into fornication. The person has not yet learned the Christian way.

I would like to compare this situation with an example from daily life. What would you say if a new bride was unfaithful to her bridegroom on her very wedding night? In a similar manner we have a soul which has just been wedded to Christ through baptism, and immediately returns to its former way of life. This is spiritual fornication and it is terrible; before baptism one was free from this mortal sin (spiritual fornication), but now the transgression is committed.

QUESTION: Has there been a change in the last two or three years regarding the number of adult baptisms?

ANSWER: Certainly. We are recording a growing number of adult baptisms, and also noticing a change in the spiritual level of those coming to be baptized. Many now do not perceive baptism as only some sort of a lucky charm, but seek it because they are disappointed with the ideology with which they have been fed all these years. They are searching for something different and look to the Church for a certain renewal in their lives, for a spiritual foundation which they have been unable to find elsewhere. The people now realize that everything they were taught in school was only lies, and now their thirsty souls search. Therefore, many people come to the Church now asking the questions: What shall we do? How should we live? These are the types of questions we priests hear most often. We somehow try to reveal Christ to these people. Nonetheless I consider what we require of a candidate for baptism is still insufficient. We need to be much more serious about catechism. Presently, more importance is given to the quantity rather than the quality of the baptisms. In other words its better to attract as many baptismal candidates as possible in order to collect the five ruble fee; worry first about income. This will lead to ruin! We have to be concerned about quality first. A person must be prepared for his baptism, he must already be a Christian. Unfortunately, catechism is used little and we are beginning to see the consequences.

QUESTION: In the beginning of your priestly activity were you aware of a definite neglect of canonical rules, for example, when you were in seminary? Is it true that these distortions of the baptismal ritual have almost become the standard in modern Russian church life?

ANSWER: I completed the theological seminary through correspondence, and was already a priest when I was accepted into the course. Of course I posed such questions in the seminary. In regard to baptism, the lecturer in this area told me that the way baptism is practiced today, by wetting the forehead, is not known in the Orthodox Church. He said if something like this happens it would be a profanation of the sacrament of Baptism. He answered in a similar manner concerning the other sacraments, saying that they must be carried out according to the canonical requirements. To do otherwise is not Orthodox and therefore, unacceptable. He did add though that this is only theory.

In reality the rules are not kept anywhere. When Father Michael and I began in our parishes to baptize in the correct manner (by immersion) we were opposed by the older clergy first, and then by the bishop himself. They argued that we were provoking a schism, because we were the only ones to baptize in this manner, that it was done like this nowhere else.

QUESTION: Is it really done incorrectly everywhere in the Soviet Union?

ANSWER: It is done correctly only in certain places. For example in some churches in Moscow—I name only Peredelkino, but there are other places. In Siberia I know for sure about the town of Yeniseysk in the district of Krasnoyarsk. The priest there is Fr. Gennady; he is the only priest there and has a very large parish. He performs baptisms once or twice a month in the correct way, without being persecuted. It is when a town has two or more churches and they follow different practices for baptism that conflicts and jealousy arise.

Currently we are offering lectures in our church in the evenings, and many people from the Cathedral parish come because rarely does anyone preach there. We hold services daily and accompany each of our services with a sermon. Of course this aroused jealousy and ill will in others because they were afraid it would reduce their income. A typical case occurred in the town of Frunse in Kirgisien. The two priests there, Fr. Vladimir Svetkov and Hieromonk Leonid, built a baptismal font and performed adult baptisms with full immersion. However, within two years they were suspended by the ruling hierarch, Bishop Lev, for this practice. Eventually their suspensions were lifted and one of them was dismissed and transferred to the Novgorod diocese, I believe; the other priest was banished to Krasnovodsk in Turkmenistan, a desert near the Caspian Sea. The priest that replaced these two in Frunse closed the baptistry and did not perform baptisms by full immersion. Later they had the baptismal font destroyed.

Many try to do positive work, but cannot endure the pressure from their diocesan bishop and give in. Of course, eventually their conscience troubles and condemns them because they do not follow the correct practice of the Church. But where can they go? If you are rebellious they “get rid of you.” Very often a priest has a family with four or five children, so where can he go? These material problems present a great obstacle: if you rebel you will be thrown out of the parish house, and you have no home of your own to go to. Our priests do not have an easy lot; few even own a car.

QUESTION: Are you saying that even the bishops oppose baptism by full immersion as the Church requires?

ANSWER: Yes indeed. This is the problem. We looked to the Synod in Moscow for support, thinking they might do something to stop a disintegration of the Church by the bishops. We soon realized that the Synod was aware of these uncanonical actions. For example they were informed of the immoral behavior of Archbishop Theodosius, his sin is obvious to everyone and publicly ridiculed, yet they continue to support this archpastor and he is protected. News of his transfer was not even mentioned. Realizing that people in the Synod were of no help either, we had to find another way out. We had already thought earlier about the Russian Church Abroad, but had no possibility of making contact.

Originally there were three of us and then three more priests joined us, and we wrote a petition to the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad asking to be received. This was in November of last year. In April they informed us that they had accepted our petition. We then wished to be united to the Church Abroad but it seemed impossible to find a way to practically realize this goal. If they had rejected us, I personally would have stopped celebrating services as a priest, though I would still pray and go to churches of the Moscow Patriarchate. When I stopped serving I still hoped to move to another diocese, but I soon realized that they would not let me celebrate the way I had resolved to serve. I decided to refrain from active service in the Church until it was possible to celebrate the way I should. When we received a positive answer from the bishops abroad, the priests of like mind with me, two who were co-serving in a large parish and a priest of another parish, informed their communities about the possibility of uniting with the Church Abroad and received full support from the people. Of course, misunderstandings arose, mostly out of ignorance. People asked, “What is this—the Russian Church Abroad?” Here in the Soviet Union the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad is referred to as “the Karlovtsy Church.” Obviously it was difficult to explain the whole history to the old babushkas, and so one of the priests, Fr. Theophan, a villager himself said, “How can I explain this to you? Well, you know, it is that church which is faithful to the Tsar!” The babushkas then replied, “Yes, if it is the church faithful to the Tsar—then we are for it!” That was the solution. When the Patriarchal bishop sent his representative to our people they simply did not receive him and explained clearly that they did not need anyone, since they already have a priest.

QUESTION: Where are you going to serve now?

ANSWER: Right now Fr. Michael and I are without a parish, though all of our parishioners are willing to follow us, most of them being our spiritual children. Besides, they are very unhappy with the priests who were sent to replace us. The parish director is only interested in money. A parish not accustomed to this becomes dissatisfied. We could practically start to serve today, we do not have a bad parish, but we want to abide by the law and do everything in an official manner.

QUESTION: Does that mean that you are going to petition for the opening of a new church?

ANSWER: Exactly. Fr. Michael already handed in the official registration of the church parish to the authorities in Tiumen over a month ago. I have not been informed about the current situation, but I assume the official decision will be positive. Whether permission is granted or not, at least we have informed the authorities of our intentions.

* * *

QUESTION: If I understand you correctly, your parish did not know about the existence of the Russian Church Abroad? Most likely they are also not informed about the Russian Church situation as it developed after 1927. How familiar are people with the history of the Church during Soviet times?

ANSWER: It is true that the simple people do not know the whole history of the Russian Church Abroad. I myself learned about it only six years ago, after receiving several publications from the West. I only heard the term “Church Abroad” here and there and did not pay much attention to it. I even thought that “Church Abroad” referred to that part of the Moscow Patriarchate abroad. I had no idea that it was really referring to something else entirely. Villagers of course knew nothing. There are some Orthodox that call themselves “Josephites” (followers of Metropolitan Joseph of Petrograd) or “Tikhonites” (followers of Patriarch Tikhon), but they lead a completely separate existence. They do not celebrate in churches of the Moscow Patriarchate, and I do not think they know much about the Russian Church Abroad. They do know that the Church existing in Russia today is the Soviet Church, which works hand in hand with the authorities, and therefore does not possess any grace. If the church is with the Soviet government they consider it an abomination in the holy place.

QUESTION: Are they connected with Bishop Lazarus?

ANSWER: Of course not. In the 1960’s their last priests died and they are now left without the sacraments. Of course I can speak only of the situation in Siberia. I do know that some continue to receive Holy Communion in the following manner: the reserved Communion that was remaining after a priest died was broken into small pieces and mixed into freshly prepared dough, and from this mixture a new prosphora bread would be baked, and sent to others to receive Communion.

There are also another group of believers called the “True Orthodox Christians.” These people possess an even greater zeal for the faith, refusing to accept a Soviet passport and viewing any form of work for a Soviet sponsored firm to be a sin.

Ed. note. We have printed Father Iakim’s words exactly as he spoke them and in no way desire to cast a disparaging light on these elements of the Catacomb Church. The desire of the Church Abroad would be to regularize the position of all parts of the Catacomb Church and unite them together with the churches we have opened in Russia. The means to accomplish this are complex due to the various opinions among the diverse parts of the Catacomb Church and to some degree due to a lack of understanding of their position on our part.

QUESTION: During your stay in Germany you were able to observe the life in a monastery and in several of the parishes of the Russian Church Abroad. Did you find what you had expected?

ANSWER: To tell the truth I was disturbed at many aspects of parish life.

QUESTION: What are you referring to? Did you see any canonical errors?

ANSWER: Baptism is performed here the way it should be. I attended an adult baptism that Fr. Nikolai served and I liked it. I also appreciated the way he served, not simply from the Trebnik (priest’s service book) but from the whole heart. His was an example worthy to be imitated.

With respect to Confession, I saw only Vladika Mark himself hearing confessions, and once Fr. Alexander heard them when I was serving. Your parishes are not very large and usually only two or three people came for confession which was held in a special room. It was all done properly. But the outer appearance... the way the parishioners dress, their behavior in church—here I noticed different things. In your churches even older women stand without head coverings. Of course, I understand that the living conditions of people are quite different here, but the priest still must discuss this problem. Perhaps he should not be as strict as we are in Russia, but he should at least mention it. And, I believe those who are truly concerned for their salvation will understand this seemingly unimportant aspect of Christian life. In the Holy Scriptures it is written about how one should dress—dress yourselves as the saints. Was a woman saint ever depicted in trousers and without a kerchief? Those that come to church only out of tradition should not be an example to us. St. John Chrysostom used to be challenged: “John, you are too strict. Many will fall away into different sects.” He only replied, “Whoever wants to may go, but I will not stop speaking out, because God put me in this position and He commanded me: ‘Proclaim it to the whole world.’”