Thursday, February 28, 2013

Meteors Across Russia

FOR REFLECTION: "Meteors fired across the Russian bow"

 "There are more meteors where that one came from!"
An observation on religious faith, in Russia, past and present:

http://www.clarkecountydemocrat.com/news/2013-02-27/Editorial/

Meteors fired across the Russian bow
By Gene Owens
      Heaven seems to be firing a few shots across the Russian bow. How else would you explain the series of meteor explosions or whatever they are that have rattled windows and injured hundreds over the space of a century or so.
      The latest was the explosion over Chelyabinsk, a city of a million people just east of the Urals. The area was rocked Feb. 15 by an intense shock wave following the appearance of a mysterious light.
      Russia’s Interior Ministry estimated that 1,200 people, including 200 children, were injured, as windows imploded in schools and other buildings.
      It was reminiscent of the Tunguska event of 1908, when a powerful force shattered the stillness near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia. For years, the cause of the devastation was a mystery.
      Some speculated that either a comet or an asteroid had struck the earth. Others figured that some deuterium from outer space hit with an impact great enough to create a natural thermonuclear explosion the natural H-bomb theory.
      Someone else speculated that a small black hole had passed through the earth.
      Now, it’s generally accepted that the 1908 event, like the 2013 event, was the result of a meteor’s explosion as it hit earth’s atmosphere. The meteor of 2013 appears to have been composed of hard metal, which fragmented as it entered our world, sending meteorites all over the place, like an ICBM with multiple-targeted warheads. Estimates of its diameter range from 10 feet to 50 feet, and its weight from 10 tons to 7,000 tons.
What struck me about the latest event was the reaction of many of the people. They thought it might be the end of the world.
     The idea of an end of the world in our time is a religious concept, and many are convinced that the end is at hand.
      The events at Chelyabinsk and Tunguska certainly provide evidence that the heavens contain an arsenal perfectly capable of terminating life on our planet if a supreme being were inclined to use them for that purpose.
     But what struck me was this: People nurtured on communist atheism were willing to entertain the thought that this was a god-sent catastrophe.
Atheism was drilled into Russian heads for 75 years, but a cruel and authoritarian state was unable to drum God out of their minds.
     “God forbid you should ever have to experience anything like this,” wrote one Russian blogger.
     During a trip across the old Soviet Union in 1983, I visited several Russian Orthodox churches in Siberia, and found them oases of color in a drab, monochrome landscape. I remember the shabbily-dressed babushkas “little grandmothers” who thronged the churches to absorb the beauty of the interiors and, presumably, to assure themselves that God was still there.
     During their 75 years of hegemony over Russia, the Soviet communists had reached a modus vivendi with the Orthodox church. A priest explained it to me and a group of journalistic colleagues during our visit to the monastery at Zagorsk near Moscow: The government allowed them to achieve their religious education and to practice their faith in exchange for total loyalty. During our visit, the priests lectured us on the American government’s insistence on building up its nuclear armament and threatening the peace-loving Soviet government.
     At a Baptist church in Moscow, I got another look at religion under an atheistic Marxist state. The congregation there was allowed to conduct its services in an unpretentious building that it occupied by the permission of the state.
     “We have freedom of worship,” one clergyman told me, but not true freedom of religion.  They could not educate their children in church-supported schools and they could not perish the thought proselyte.
     Both the Orthodox priests and the Baptist clergymen as well as the Moslem clerics I met in Soviet Asia acknowledged that you could not belong to a religious organization and be a member of the Communist Party.
     That meant that to hold any position of responsibility in politics and society, you had to sever your religious affiliations.
     It occurred to me that the people worshiping at that Moscow church had to be doing so for one reason: a belief in and a love for God.
     That love had survived decades of repression, and it was ready to bounce back once communism lost its hold.
     Religious freedom is still a precarious thing in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. When Soviet armies overran Eastern Europe, many worshipers were shipped off to Siberia, into the system of prison camps that Alexandr Solzhenitzyn called the Gulag Archipelago. Out of the gulags came thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses, determined to continue the proselytizing they had carried on surreptitiously under state ban. The Russian state has tried to cap their activity, and the European Court of Human Rights has delivered a number of opinions in their favor. Still the state hangs tough, and still the Witnesses proselyte.
Maybe I’m reading too much into some impromptu comments from those who experienced the latest heavenly event that came through Russian skies.
     But I’ve seen the gray and wrinkled babushkas go to their knees and rise without even touching their hands to the floor. They weren’t doing that for Yuri Andropov, the Soviet leader of their day. And I’ve seen ragged women lining the sidewalk near an Orthodox church in Novosibirsk, Siberia. An Intourist guide told me they received pensions from the state but were begging for money to buy vodka.
     Whatever their motive, they were seeking compassion from people who came to worship God, not from those seeking to expunge him.
     Putin should pay attention. There are more meteors where that one came from.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Abbess Juliana Appeal




Donating with PayPal: a kind fellow with a US PayPal account is collecting donations to be forwarded to the Orphanage. His website can be accessed by clicking here.
Please click here to learn about the various ways to donate to the Foundation


Bp. Ambrose Visits Kenya

"Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel, baptizing everyone in The
Name of +The Father, +The Son, and +The Holy Spirit"!


Bp. Ambrose's Pastoral Visit to East Africa-Kenya – report and photos

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Shocking news from Pakistan

'Shocking news from Pakistan'-(Russian original with human-improved, machine English translation)

Taken from Nun Vera's blog: http://inokinya-fakel.livejournal.com 


Another example in our faces, of just how soundly 'Orthodox' is this new unionist ROCOR/MP?...and just how 'Orthodox' is the KGB controled MP?

And, a little humour: It has long been said, by some, of the French, that: 'the French will eat..... anything.... that moves!'

Could we now also say about ROCOR/MP (as with their mother, the KGB/MP) that:  "They will ordain.... any male human, that is still breathing"!...(???)  It does seem so, more and more.

P.S. The Holy Apostles and St. John Chrysostom and the other Holy Fathers, had somewhat  higher standards, as to who is fit to be ordained or consecrated.


Священник Силуан Диньяк из РИПЦ пишет: 
Priest Silvanus Dinyak, in Argentina,  of RTOC writes: 
     "Я только что узнал очень интересную новость о человеке, который писал нам много раз из Пакистана. Он пытался присоединиться к нашей РИПЦ. Я был рад, но у нас есть некоторые стандартные процедуры, а также расследование, чтобы узнать серьезны ли намерения людей в наше время прийти к Православию или нет, и если все будет хорошо, то я или другой священник, с благословения нашего епископа, съездил бы в Пакистан и окрестил этого человека. Но в ходе моих переговоров с этим человеком я заметил, что он очень уклонялся от прохождения стандартных процедур и не имел ни малейшего представления о православной вере, а также не имел никакого понятия о нашей юрисдикции, к которой он пытался присоединиться. Но еще больше опасений у меня возникло, когда он сказал мне, что имеет власть "контролировать злых духов", и что его сестра и другие члены семьи - "целители" (я думаю, что это романо-католики, и что они соблюдают, быть может, многие суеверия, взятые из индуизма). Таким образом, я решил прекратить любые контакты с ним, потому что он несерьезно отнесся к принятию Православия и выглядел довольно сумасшедшим.
     "I just found out  very interesting news about a man who wrote to us many times from Pakistan. He tried to join our RTOC. I was happy, but we have some standard procedures, as well as an investigation to find out whether there are serious intentions of the people in our time, to come to Orthodoxy or not, and if all goes well, then I or another priest, with the blessing of the bishop, would have gone  to Pakistan and baptize the man. But in my talks with this man, I noticed that he desires  to escape standard procedures and had no idea about   the Orthodox faith, and he also had no knowledge  about our jurisdiction to which he was trying  to join. But more than that, I had a fear when he told me that he has the power to "control the evil spirits" and that his sister and other family members -are  "healers" (I think that's coming from the Roman Catholics, and that they include in their beliefs , perhaps, many superstitions, which are  taken from Hinduism.) So I decided to stop all contact with him, because clearly  he did not have a serious attitude to adopt Orthodoxy and he seemed to be, pretty unbalanced.. 

     Что ж, менее чем через год я узнал, что митрополит Иларион (Капрал) рукоположил его во священника (??!), и я был действительно потрясен этим... 
     Well, less than a year later,  I learned that the Metropolitan Hilarion (Kapral) ordained him a priest (??), And I was really shocked by this ... 
     Конечно, это показывает и доказывает, какой разрушительный курс взяла РПЦЗ-МП после унии..., которая становится все более и более ложной церковью... 
     Of course, it shows and proves how destructive a direction,  ROCOR-MP has taken after 2007 union ... which church is becoming more and more  a false church ... 




Saturday, February 23, 2013

Lefty loses favor

Leonid Kishkovsky falls from grace? 

Extra! Kishkovsky Being “Phased Out” or Fired?
February 23, 2013

     Two days ago, Metropolitan Tikhon and Fr John Jillions did the heretofore unthinkable: they began the phase out of Fr Leonid “Lefty” Kishkovsky, longtime Director of External Relations for the OCA. In addition to his other meddlesome duties as puppet-master of Syosset, Kishkovsky was champion of leftist claptrap, ecumenist, all-around scold, and darling of the National Council of Churches. In addition to these troublesome duties, it was he, probably more than anybody else, who tried to get rid of His Beatitude almost from the day of Jonah’s enthronement as Metropolitan.
     During his Reign of Error, the OCA became a laughingstock in world Orthodoxy. Even today, the repercussions are being felt: as Syosset just reported, the OCA was invited to the enthronement of John X, the new Patriarch of Antioch in Beirut. However no OCA clergyman was allowed to serve in the altar –a decided slap in the face to the OCA.
     We are uncertain as to what precipitated this long-overdue phase out, the most recent indication that Kishkovsky was told by Metropolitan Tikhon and Fr. Jillions that he would NOT accompany them to a very private meeting at the Greek Archdiocese on Friday; but we are glad that these men (of whom Monomakhos has been highly critical for quite some time) are finally doing the right thing.
     AXIOI!

OCA parish joins ROCOR/MP

OCA Virginia parish, departs from the OCA and is accepted into ROCOR/MP

Virginia OCA parish leaves OCA and is accepted by Hilarion Kapral



Question: This used to be called, 'parish stealing', but how can this happen  between two jurisdictions, both of which fully recognize the Moscow MP and it's 'patriarch', and which are in... full intercommunion with each other???   

(though both jurisdictions/'churches' are occupying the SAME territory, simultaneously, -something in itself which is totally forbidden by the canons!)

And too, aren't there other canons which forbid this? i.e. -parish/clergy/people stealing?

But then, what does the KGB care about canons, except to manipulate them for their use, or to disregard the thorny ones which don't fit their agenda?

Wake up OCA, and wake up, ROCOR/MP!!!

Moscow wants your properties, your clergy, your laity, and to better use YOU, for it's world-wide real goals,-which have zero to do with either spreading Orthodoxy, or saving souls. 
Rd. Daniel


Monomakhos
Source: ROCOR/MP Eastern American Diocese 
http://eadiocese.org/News/2013/feb/stafford.en.htm
     On Thursday, January 31, having been dissolved as a mission parish in the [OCA] Archdiocese of Washington by the Primate of the Orthodox Church in America, His Beatitude Tikhon [Mollard, OCA] Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America & Canada, and with the blessing of the First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad, [ROCOR/MP] His Eminence Hilarion [Kapral] Metropolitan of Eastern America & New York, St. Herman of Alaska Church in Stafford, VA has officially joined the Eastern American Diocese, [of ROCOR/MP]
     Archpriest Victor Potapov, [ROCOR/MP] Dean of the South, announced the new parish’s admittance with the following words: “The former [OCA] Christ the Savior Orthodox Mission in Stafford has now been fully accepted by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia as St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church in Stafford, VA.”
     The parish was led into the Russian Church Abroad [ROCOR/MP] by its rector, Archpriest Alexander Webster, and parish Deacon Alexander Laymon. More information about the parish is available on the parish website http://www.sthermanorthodox.org

14 Comments 
Monomakhos
A sign of things to come?

Friday, February 22, 2013

Ethiopian workers arrested

Saudi religious police arrest Ethiopian workers for practicing Christianity

And, tney do the same to our fellow Orthodox Christians!

Another clear example, that any real co-operation between ANY Christians and Islam, is
utterly impossible.

What if, we in our western countries, started to treat resident Moslems HERE
in this same fashion???

     FoxNews.com   February 21, 2013
Saudi Arabia’s notorious religious police, known as the mutawa, swooped in on a private gathering of at least 53 Ethiopian Christians this month, shutting down their private prayer, and arresting the peaceful group of foreign workers for merely practicing their faith, FoxNews.com has learned....

Egypt's Christians targeted by terrorists

Islam or death? Egypt's Christians targeted by new terror group

Comment: Another modern/current example in our faces, of that, 'beautiful and peaceful Islamic religion' (???)  which has been murdering, persecuting, oppressing Orthodox Christians and their countries, since Muhammad!

Islam or death? Egypt's Christians targeted by new terror group


Clergymen gather to wait for the arrival of Egypt's Coptic Christian Pope  Tawadros II, at the historic al-Muharraq Monastery, a centuries-old site some 180 miles (300 kilometers) south of Cairo in the province of Assiut, Egypt, Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2013. Egypt's Coptic Christian pope sharply criticized the country's Islamist leadership in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, saying the new constitution is discriminatory and Christians should not be treated as a minority. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra) (AP2013) 

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Photo Archive



True Orthodox Church of Greece, 
SYNOD "HRIZOSTOMOVTSEV" 


Metropolitan Gabriel Cyclades, Metropolitan Petros Astoriysky, Bishop Laurus (formerly the parishes, and then converted to MP), Metropolitan Akaki Diavleysky, Metropolitan Chrysostomos Salonikiysky. 



1.Mitropolit Paisios of Aegina. 2. (Unknown). 3.Mitropolit Chrysostom of Florina. 4.Arhimandrit Gordios (Axion Estin monastery). 5.Arhimandrit Mercurius Kaloskamnis (later Metropolitan of Knossos). 6. (Unknown)

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Kallistos Ware in St. John's Cathedral


Comment: And this!, an arch-ecumenist, EP 'Met. Kallistos'-Ware!, serving Divine Liturgy! and teaching!, in the cathedral built by St. John Maximovitch!

*Notice found on: http://www.wadiocese.com ..ROCOR/MP's Western American Diocese under archb. Kyrill Dmitrieff

Institute for Orthodox Studies to Hold Second Symposium on February 16-17

[February 10, 2013] The Saints Cyril & Athanasius Institute for Orthodox Studies will hold it's Second regional Symposium on February 16-17 at the Old Holy Virgin Cathedral (Fulton Street) in San Francisco. The theme of the symposium is "Prayer in the Church Fathers," and will feature Metropolitan Kallistos-Ware, as the main speaker. For additional information on the Institute and to register for the symposium, please visit the Institute's web page

On the Feast of the Meeting of Our Lord, Friday, February 15, Metropolitan Kallistos-Ware,  will celebrate the Divine Liturgy at the Holy Virgin Cathedral (6210 Geary Boulevard). Liturgy begins at 9:30 am.

Orthodox Pastor with his flock

VIDEO: (all in the Bulgarian language,) but we SEE, a loving Orthodox Pastor & Bishop, at home with, & one with, his flock of his beloved children


Found on: Vladimir Djambov's blog: http://pra-blah.blogspot.com 


  Here, we see Bulgarian Old Calendar Bishop Photius (Foti) in Sophia, Bulgaria, among his beloved and adoring children, as they present to him, readings and their handmade artistic greetings for the Nativity of Our Lord festivities.  Bishop Foti, seems to be...just one of the children..

  So too, did our Vladyka Metropolitan Agafangel show himself, at his Odessa Nativity celebrations with his flock of children, a child amongst children.

"Unless ye become as the little children, ye cannot enter the Kingdom of God".


Monday, February 11, 2013

Another OCA Tipping Point


Comment, This is the unofficial view (yes, his private perspectives), of his own OCA, to which this  George Michalopoulos, is indeed loyal and committed to, but whose higher administration, he is very unhappy with, as apparently also, so are a sizeable portion of other OCA members.

He is a total idolizer, (I think, a blind & unrealistic idolizer), of the OCA's recently forced-to-retire, Met. Jonah-Paffhausen, who himself has well proven his long term profound admiration for and loyalty to, the KGB run, Moscow Patriarchia.

Also, George here, also considers highly, that KGB run organization, 'The Mother Church', and which he too, expresses much and unbounded  respect for.

Such is the typical befuddled mindset, of many who are ensnared in 'World-Orthodoxy', so-called.

Is it any wonder, that this OCA is undergoing so many internal and external tribulations? indeed, perhaps it is on it's road to a total disintegration/or, it's absorption into ROCOR/MP?

Truly, the OCA's  clerical leadership, (& their laity as well), are the blind leading the blind.  Behold! what happens when trust is put in a false-church, as is the Stalin founded in 1943, & STILL!...enslaved Sergianist MP?

What sort of ...'children'?, can such a 'mother' as that, produce??? let alone, give guidance to?

The OCA is, in reality, expecting spiritual sustenance and direction, from the KGB/FSB!!!!

But such is the hopeless state of this OCA.
Rd. Daniel

Sharings



Pope Benedict XVI's Resignation Explained
POPE TO RESIGN


prominent Putin opposer Sergei Udaltsov arrested and charged
     http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21396480#story_continues_1


The 400th Anniversary of the House of Romanov
Thursday, Feb 14
Conference
The 400th Anniversary of the House of Romanov
Columbia University, Butler Library
535 W. 114th St., Rm. 203  NY NY
1-212-854-4623.  5:00PM, free
The two-day conference opens on with a keynote address by Richard Wortman, James Bryce Professor Emeritus of European Legal History, and winner of the 2006 Efim Etkind prize of the St. Petersburg European University for the best western work on Russian culture and literature.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

What about the relics?

What will the MP do with the relics of this, 'decononized' Martyr???


St. Basil Kineshma

http://inokinya-fakel.livejournal.com 
 Moscow Patriarchate dekanoniziroval 36 martyrs, of which the most famous was the Martyr Basil Kineshemsky. His relics are at the Monastery of Ivanovo. Now their fate is unknown. "Senior Specialist" on the new martyrs of the MP, Abbot Damascene (Orlovsky), which at one time under his own name gave the stolen life of St. ROCOR. Basil with cuts, arrived in Ivanovo and the bag took away the power of the saint in an unknown
direction.  We are concerned about the fate of these relics, as representatives of the MP can simply destroy.

Bp. Nestor


Old photo from Harbin, etc...that one with Bp. Nestor (Anisimov) in it...perhaps, 1939?

Something more about Bp. Nestor, etc.

Friday, February 8, 2013

Jordanville disloyal to America

Update: February 16, 2012

Was a false alarm - in Jordanville remembered as the U.S. government and army, and commemorated

Jordanville: Explanation of the erroneous article about nepominovenii in Holy Trinity Monastery of American power in Article 8 (in Russian varinat - On February 11, in English) on February news service .

http://internetsobor.org/moskovskaia-patriarkhiia/tcerkovnye-novosti/world-orthodoxy/moskovskaia-patriarkhiia/trevoga-okazalas-lozhnoi-v-dzhordanville-kak-pominali-amerikanskie-vlasti-i-voinstvo-tak-i-pominaiut



≤≥≤≥≤≥ • ≤≥≤≥≤≥ 




Another concrete example of just how disloyal to America, is Jordanville, and the ROCOR/MP! 

Comment: Of course, no Orthodox Christian, anywhere. should practice or condone the murder of  unborn human beings, i.e. 'abortion'.  In America, we and those many other sincere Christians, fight against it.

Yet, in Putin's Russian Federation it is legal, and there the MP church, (to which ROCOR/MP since 2007 is linked to and subservient to), prays/obeys  anyway... for his government and his military, etc.

But here, in America (the main enemy, as the Kremlin perceives it, to the neo-soviet KGB/FSB regime in Russia),...pious ROCOR/MP is proving, that it is a foreign enemy pseudo-religion, which is disloyal to America, refuses to pray for it, and which should be thrown out of this, MY country!

And the fact that Jordanville started to not pray FOR this country, way back when Bill Clinton was president, only goes to prove, that it and a percentage of émigrés, distained this country, preferring Russia?, then too, (yet, while LIVING HERE!)....how outrageous!

That foul 2007 '-re-union of the two parts of the Russian church', was not only a religious capitulation and a betrayal of Orthodoxy, but it was and still is, a stab to the heart of this land, & an anti-American traitorous act, aimed against this country.

In every country where the Orthodox church has ever existed, it ALWAYS prays FOR God to bless, the established government, whether or not it agrees with all of it's laws.

Once again, ROCOR/MP is proving that it is now, (perhaos always was?) a disloyal foreign-enemy  organization inside of America, working for our international mortal enemies, i.e. the KGB run Kremlin.

I vote to seize & close down all of their ROCOR/MP churches, & throw them & their fellow KGB operatives, out of MY country, and the sooner the better!

Rd. Daniel Everiss ...a loyal American, ( my sole earthly country!) & also against abortion, but loyal to my country.

P.S. And anyone who is now living in America, but who hates it, should get out!
and go to somewhere else where they might fit in better, and be happy.





The spiritual center, [i.e. Jordanville]  of the Russian diaspora [ROCOR/MP] does not pray [for] the U.S. authorities. because of [it's] position on abortion 


http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=49932 

Moscow.  February 8. 
Interfax - The Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY (USA) - the spiritual center of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad [ROCOR / MP] - does not commemorate in the liturgy, the US authorities. [Government]

This decision was made during the presidency of Bill Clinton.

 The reason - the legality of abortion in the country, said the abbot and rector of the local seminary, Archimandrite Luke (Murianka), as quoted by the press service of the movement "Warriors of life." 

 The leader of the movement, Dmitry Baranov recently made a pilgrimage to Jordanville and talked with this father Luke.

 According to the priest, they still in the liturgy proclaim: "Land of the plain, in the faith and piety of people living in it so the Lord God will bless us in His Kingdom!"

 It does not mention [the US] government and army.

Orthodox corruption?

VIDEO: "Watch People & Power - Orthodox corruption?" -about the MP, Putin, and corrupt church-related businesses 

Warning: This valuable interview and video are produced by Aljazeera, which is an Islamic owned news
network, which of course, has it's own agenda.

This video is all in English conversation, or with an English translation at the bottom of the screen, when Russian is being spoken.

It is a valuable, (no matter who produced it), on the spot, insider testimony as to some of the current massive all-encompassing corruption in the Russian Federation, involving the MP, Putin's regime, and business interests, etc.

Also, it spells out some of the neo-soviet regime's hoped for, further, on-going...USE of it's captive, Russian-Religion, (i.e. MONEY and POWER) & for the subservient MP, in it's desire to control and manipulate the very SOULS and hearts and minds, (and bodies!), of the population, to do it's  bidding, (exactly the same utility reasons that Stalin in 1943 founded his MP to accomplish).

Let the viewer see and hear this, and decide for yourselves.

And this corrupt and enslaved to the FSB, 'Moscow Patriarchia', is the 'Mother Church' that Met. Lavr-Shkurla and crew, sold out our old free ROCOR to, in 2007!!!

Rd. Daniel 

P.S. One is especially amazed, that the FSB seems so intent on building so many lavish churches, close to/connected to it's various compounds and cadet-training facilities.

Does that mean, that, maybe? they will stop doing their many immoral unChristian oppressions and torturing and murdering of people, and their international espionage?

OH! sorry!... if those patriotic activities are done 'for Russia and Orthodoxy', then they are 'OK' (apparently) ....???


This VIDEO is actually very valuable!!! 
People & Power - Orthodox corruption?
Video:
After decades of suppression, the Russian Orthodox Church appears to be back in favour with the country's leadership.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

God Bless America


Hi all, For all of us old timers here's some good remembrances from bygone days. Enjoy.
Walt
the song "God Bless America"

The link below will take you to a video showing the very first public singing of "GOD BLESS AMERICA". But before you watch, you should also know the story of the song.
The time was 1940. America was still in a terrible economic depression. Hitler was taking over Europe and Americans were afraid we'd have to go to war. It was a time of hardship and worry for most Americans.
This was the era just before TV, when radio shows were HUGE, and American families sat around their radios in the evenings, listening to their favorite entertainers, and no entertainer of that era was bigger than Kate Smith.
Kate was also large in size, and the popular phrase still used today is in deference to her, "Ain't over till the fat lady sings". Kate Smith might not have made it big in the age of TV, but with her voice coming over the radio, she was the biggest star of her time.
Kate was also very patriotic. It hurt her to see Americans so depressed and afraid of what the next day would bring. She had hope for America, and faith in her fellow Americans. She wanted to do something to cheer them up, so she went to the famous American song-writer, Irving Berlin (who also wrote "White Christmas") and asked him to write a song that would make Americans feel good again about their country.
When she described what she was looking for, he said he had just the song for her. He went to his files and found a song that he had written, but never published, 22 years before - way back in 1917. He gave it to Kate Smith and she worked on it with her studio orchestra. She and Irving Berlin were not sure how the song would be received by the public, but both agreed they would not take any profits from God Bless America. Any profits would go to the Boy Scouts of America. Over the years, the Boy Scouts have received millions and millions of dollars in royalties from this song.
This video starts out with Kate Smith coming into the radio studio with the orchestra and an audience. She introduces the new song for the very first time, and starts singing. After the first couple of verses, with her voice in the background still singing, scenes are shown from the 1940 movie, "You're In The Army Now." At the 4:20 mark of the video you see a young actor in the movie, sitting in an office, reading a paper. It is Ronald Reagan.  
Frank Sinatra considered Kate Smith the best singer of her time, and said when he and a million other guys first heard her sing "God Bless America" on the radio, they all pretended to have dust in their eyes as they wiped away a tear or two.
To this day, God Bless America stirs our patriotic feelings and pride in our country. Back in 1940, when Kate Smith went looking for a song to raise the spirits of her fellow Americans, I doubt she realized just how successful the results would be for her fellow Americans during those years of hardship and worry, and for many generations of Americans to follow. Now that you know the story of the song, I hope you will enjoy it and treasure it even more.
NOW HERE IS HOW "GOD BLESS AMERICA" SHOULD BE SUNG!

Monday, February 4, 2013

Report, Videos from Canberra

Despite a recent attack from RTOC, the SIR is alive and well.
  Attack :
     http://cyprianites.blogspot.com/2013/02/cyprianism-by-rtoc-priest-victor-melehov.html
  Alive and Well:
     http://remnantrocor.blogspot.com/2013/02/report-and-videos-from-canberra.html


Report and More Videos, from Canberra,: Hierarch Assigned to SIR Serbian Parishes in Australia

More evidence, that many traditional/True Orthodox, around the word, of many ethnic peoples, fully respect and recognize the Synod In Resistance, as both fully Orthodox, and fully trustworthy.

Perhaps, it's clever self-deceived detractors, even among the anti-MP Russian 'fragments', who shamefully manipulate and twist historical documents and events, and assume, wrongly/in a biased slant, the past motives of departed ROCOR hierarchs, are themselves, in heresy and error? or if nothing else, Church-Dissemblers?, whom the Apostle Paul warned us to flee, as they may be also, uncanonical (themselves) & snide ill-willed detractors of our canonical and fully Orthodox, ROCA under our beloved canonical & ORTHODOX! Metropolitan Agafangel? ...and/or, they only want power and high titles, for themselves?

And by so doing, these, so called, 'True Orthodox', samo-svati, ecclesiastical entities only serve the satanic goals of the KGB run MP, to divide and conquer any last hold-out REAL vestiges of the anti-MP Russian diaspora.

Just my views-
Rd. Daniel Everiss in Oregon 




Hierarch Assigned to SIR Serbian
Parishes in Australia



Dear friends,
More updated videos from St Sava Festival, Canberra.

СПАСИ ГОСПОДИ+

MP Restricts Access to Monasteries

MP Seeks to Restrict Access to Historic Monasteries


Comment: 

This sounds innocent, and may indeed be a sincere effort to preserve these Russian historical sites, where we are supposed to believe, real genuine Orthodox monastic life still is practiced and lead (?)

However, with the KGB controlled corrupt Moscow Patriarchia, one never knows what are their full motives, or their end-agenda.

Money/profits , is a constant big & over-riding  primary concern for both the Kremlin and the MP, (perhaps, all they really care about?), as it is  with these, profit producing,  tourist attracting historical sites.

If their 'quaint' & historical purity is not assured, these sites may start to loose paying-visitors, Russians and  foreign tourists.


Friday, 1 February 2013
Church Seeks to Restrict Access to Historic Monasteries
Topic: Russian Church



Access to the Solovetsky islands, home to one of Russia's most important monasteries, could be restricted in a bid to preserve the archipelago's "special way of life," a top ranking clergyman said.
Russian Orthodox Church spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin said Thursday that the Solovetsky islands in the White Sea and the Valaam islands in Lake Ladoga - both home to historic monasteries - were among several sites the church is pushing to reclassify as "religious-historical places."
"We are currently very carefully working in connection with the topic of Solovki; there is an idea to develop a full federal program. Meetings about this question are taking place practically every week, the questions under discussion are not simple," he told Interfax on Thursday.
In order to give Solovki, Valaam and other historic sites protected status, serious changes to the law are necessary, he said. The government's understanding of this is growing, he added.
"Places like Solovki, Valaam and several other monasteries are special places connected with traditional non-christian religions - it's not just the buildings and the land, it is a place where there is a special way of life, and this way of life is incompatible with mass tourism, building of entertainment and attractions, or noisy political or mass cultural events," he said.
Chaplin stressed that places like Solovki should remain open to both pilgrims and tourists, provided they "respect the internal atmosphere and special way of life - or they will simply be lost."
The monastery at Solovki, a world heritage site, was founded in the 15th century, and grew to become one of the richest and most prestigious religious centers in the Russian empire.
For 16 years in the 1920s and 1930s it served as a prison for political undesirables - becoming the model for the Gulag system of prison camps.
The monastery was restored to the Church in the early 1990s, and the islands have become and increasingly popular place of pilgrimage and secular tourism since the monastery was reopened. Today about 30,000 to 40,000 thousand tourists visit the islands each year.
© The Moscow Times and Interfax. 01 February, 2013

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Jonah now in ROCOR/MP?

(Jonah now in ROCOR/MP?): 
A scattered Email-Conversation between members of ROCOR/MP Washington DC's St. John the Baptist Cathedral- 

The essence of this email conversation:

It is announcing the annual parish meeting, of the Washington DC ROCOR/MP Cathedral, and also that OCA retired Met. Jonah-Paffhausen will preside at the Sunday Liturgy at St. John's and he may also be  present at the parish meeting.

Further it is speculated, that this means that retired-OCA Met. Jonah, is... already... effectively... IN ROCOR/MP. .....though he is still not yet officially released by the OCA.

Also, here is testimony that.... some... OCA whole parishes are leaving the OCA (such as the Stafford, Virginia OCA parish, which already has moved), and moving to ROCOR/MP,  to express their strong anger & disapproval of this (to them) dastardly OCA treatment of their (beloved) Met. Jonah.

*They are following him, fleeing their old OCA, and moving to ROCOR/MP!

No doubt too, as we already have heard, there are many unhappy OCA laity, because of the many years of long term chaos/scandals/financial miss-management mainly at the top levels of their church, which most in the local OCA levels, seem to blame on their Syosset Headquarters (rightly or wrongly), not Jonah.

While those in that leadership role, who caused/forced Jonah to 'retire', claim that HE was at the heart of a lot of the mismanagement/poor leadership, and that either he.. had to go, or their church was finished.

Now, both the OCA and ROCOR/MP, mutually spiritually dependant on the KGB run Moscow MP-'church' and 'patriarch' are moving in directions, which may put them at odds with each other (?)

Perhaps the KGB's Holy Patriarch Kyrill-Gundaev, will save them both? (!!!)

 Conversation of various members of St. John's Cathedral parish:
 =====================================================
 The way I read it is Metropolitan Jonah will preside at the liturgy.
> If he attends the meeting then it would be as a guest (which I would
> think is allowed.)
 =====================================================
> Metropolitan Jonah, for all practical purposes, is part of ROCOR now.
> Just a matter of the OCA releasing him (mostlythe  Metropolitan agreeing
> to the terms I am sure). The OCA may loose parishes if it is not
> careful. The OCA parish in Stafford, VA moved to ROCOR. I am sure
> there are others that are considering moving.
 ===================================================== 
> Metropolitan Jonah presiding..? at liturgy or at parish mtg? or
> both...? if at parish mtg, he has no place to preside as he is NOT
> assigned to the parish..he can best be called a visiting guest.. 
 =====================================================  
> From:
> Fr. John Johnson 
>  
> A friendly reminder that there will be only one Divine Liturgy
> tomorrow due to the annual general meeting of the parish, with
> Metropolitan Jonah presiding. Hours will begin at 9:40 a.m.

 There will still be two Vigils this evening, at the normally scheduled times. 
> Regarding the annual general meeting, from the February Parish Life bulletin:
> On February 3rd, after the Divine Liturgy, a general meeting of the
> parish will be convened at 12:00 noon. In the absence of a quorum, a
> second meeting will be convened at 1:30 p.m., and will constitute a
> lawful and competent meeting regardless of the number of parishioners
> in attendance. Lunch will be served by the Sisterhood before the
> meeting.
> In Christ,
> Fr. John
> Priest John Johnson
> Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist