THE MP IN THE ROAC

Protopriest Michael Makeev (Moscow, ROAC)
Priest Roman Pavlov (Moscow, ROAC)

“He who controls the present controls the past.
He who controls the past controls the future…”

Motto of the Ministry of Truth from GeorgeOrwell’s “1984”

   Olga Mitrenina (an active Loureite and “comrade-in-arms” of Hieromonk
Gregory Lourie, who with his band are trying to destroy the True Orthodox Church
in Russia) has been writing strange things on the internet forum
“Paradosis”. So strange that it has elicited a vast number of letters with questions.

   What Mitrenina writes is, perhaps, not so much strange as comical. [But]
it is necessary to reply to the perplexity expressed in the letters. We were
witnesses, and to some degree participants, in those ever-memorable events.

   The prehistory is as follows: some time ago there appeared a document on
the “official” site www.roac.ru entitled”


   “Address of the Hierarchical Synod, clergy, monastics and laity of the
Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church to the State leadership of the Russian
Federation, the organs of the international community and the governments oft he
world.”

   Vladyka Metropolitan Valentine blessed the chief editor of the
information-analysis site “Romanitas” Anton Ter-Grigorian, who was at that time still
in the ROAC, to publish this document. But some openly sergianist ideas were
apparent in the draft of the “Appeal”


   With the blessing of Vladyka Metropolitan the “Appeal” was edited by
various people, among them Protopriest Michael Makeev, who supported that printed
variant of the “Appeal” that contained no departures from the faith ofthe
New Martyrs.

   After agreeing the text with Vladyka Metropolitan Valentine, several
hundred copies of the “Appeal” were printed. The “Appeal” was distributed in
this printed version, both among the members of the ROAC and among those outside.


   However, on the official site of the ROAC www.roac.ru there appeared the
document in another version which was strikingly different in content both
from the text published by Anton Ter-Grigorian with the blessing of Vladyka
Metropolitan Valentine, and from the original draft version. Moreover, in the text
of the “Appeal” placed on the “official” site ofthe ROAC www.roac.ru there
were signatures of bishops and clergy who physically could not have signed it.
Many clergy were amazed to discover their names under this document since,
apparently, nobody had presented the internet version for the members of the ROAC
to sign.

   The internet variant of the “Appeal” contained passages that were
absolutely inadmissible for True Orthodox Christians. For example, there is this
paragraph, which was not in the original printed version distributed among the
clergy, laity and outsiders:

“As in the case of the Christiansof Ancient Rome or the Soviet era, the
increase of persecutions against our Church will not lead to our civil
disobedience, still less to a rebellion against the powers that be. We are ready humbly to
bear any persecutions and, to the extent of our strength, defend our lawful
rights…”

Here the Loureite authors of the “Appeal” have gone much further than the
Moscow Patriarchate, which nevertheless reserved to itself the right to call to
civil disobedience if the state encroached on the faith of patriarchal
parishioners.

After the “Appeal” containing this completely sergianist paragraph was
translated into English and published on the internet-forum “Paradosis”, Olga
Mitrenina said the following (her exact words):

“As in the case of the Christians of Ancient Rome or the Soviet era, the
increase of persecutions against our Church will not lead to our civil
disobedience (but it was precisely the Christians of Ancient Rome, and the New Martyrs of
Russia, who reproached the persecutors of the Faith of Christ. It was only
Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky who did not “reproach” or “call” on them.)”

There are no such words in theA ppeal.

That is, Mitrenina asserts that these words did not exist in the “Appeal” at
all…. One can only laugh! Loureite ingenuousness has become an object of
popular creativity.

Some time after the declaration by Mitrenina on “Paradosis” this paragraph
disappeared from the site www.roac.ru and we can now see a new variant of the
“Appeal” which, even more, nobody had ever signed. All these manipulations
could elicit only a sad smile, since the sergianist document was placed on
the“official” site of the ROAC for quite a long time, was received by those who have
subscribed to the “Vertograd” stolen by the Loureites, while the former chief
editor of “Vertograd” took an active part in the creation of the sergianist
“Appeal”. But the lawful question arises: whose official site is the site www.roac.ru?

Priest Roman Pavlove can witness that Vladyka Metropolitan Valentine, at the
ever-memorable Session of the Synod of the ROAC, with regard to the
accusations hurled at Hieromonk Gregory (Lourie),expressed the desire to close this
site. And if this site remains, nevertheless, official, are such dishonourable
manipulations on the official resources of the ROAC admissible? And with whose
knowledge and on whose instructions are such falsifications perpetrated?

That is not all. If the site www.roac.ru was not the official site of the
ROAC, then, at a minimum, everybody, including Vladyka Metropolitan Valentine and
the other hierarchs, whose names have been so shamelessly manipulated, have
the right to expect an official disavowal of the materials on www.roac.ru and

there must be an official declaration about this. Unfortunately, since the
infamous internet version of this “Appeal” was displayed for general examination
for quite a long time, many Orthodox Christians left the ROAC. Their
departure, therefore, totally and completely rests on the conscience of the people
controlling the site www.roac.ru - Hieromonk Gregory Lourie and his female novices.

We, like many other clergy of the ROACwhose signatures were put on the
Loureite document on the site www.roac.ru are impatient to see the true signatures
on the original internet version of the “Appeal” and on its new edition put
out by Olga Mitrenina “to the State leadership of the Russian Federation, the
organs of the international community and the governments oft he world” as an
object of mockery. If these signatures in fact existed….

This is not the first case of a forgery linked with the activity of the
Loureites in the mass media. According to the witness of the clerics and laity of
the ROAC, instead of the genuine issue of “Church News” by A.G. Shatilova, the
Loureites released a parallel version of“Church News”, which was
distributed, not in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but inthe catacomb parishes and in the
communities in the deep fastnesses of Russia.

It would be interesting to know what A.G.Shatilova, who sincerely believed
that here issue was reaching the Russian reader in an incorrupted form and was
of benefit to the Church, thinks of this.It turns out that the Loureites were
using her name in their activity that is destroying the ROAC, spreading
disinformation amidst, mainly, those catacombniks living lives isolated from the
external world.

Perhaps the ROAC now has its own“Ministry of Truth”, which is trying not
only to carry out forgeries of current information, but, as far as they are able,
change past publications. The hour is not far distant when on photographs of
various events they will begin to remove the faces of those not pleasing to
the “Ministry of Truth”, while “their heads are replaced by the heads of those
pleasing to them”.

As a result it will turn out that the face of Hieromonk Gregory (Lourie) will
appear on photographs dating to, say, 1992, while the faces of ROAC activists
of those years will disappear without trace because they have “evaporated”.
And it will be said that these people never existed, including Vladyka
Metropolitan Valentine. This perspective completely accords with the activity of the
Loureites in the ROAC.