Caleb Howells Makes a How-Ler

Was Jesus Really Born on December 25?
Caleb Howells | 16 Dec. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN_92VBzu14

5:49 No Jewish Year is 52 weeks. None at all. Doesn't exist.

A normal year of 12 months is 354 days. That's 50 full weeks and 4 days. (It can vary between 353 and 355)

A leap year of 13 months is 384 days. That 54 full weeks and 6 days.

So if anyone ever told you that the division of Abia came the same two weeks year after year, that's bogus.

At the end of the month Adar, the temple checked the wheat, if it was mature, to a specified point, not sure of the exact degree, the next month was Nisan of the next year. If it wasn't, there was a Second Adar. And Nisan started after that one.

When Julian the Apostate failed to reestablish the Temple, the Sanhedrin was disbanded, there was no more anyone who had authority to make the "Hillel / II Adar" test. So, Hillel II invented an alternative method for calculating Jewish years, still used today, one in which II Adar is always 30 days long, one in which you don't watch for newmoons to see when months start.

Not very far from when Christians had got fed up with asking Jews when Nisan was, in order to have Easter the Sunday after 14 Nisan. Our alternative way of calculating Nisan was in principle outlined at the council of Nicaea and would at the time on average have coincided with a Jewish Nisan. Yes, the Roman Catholic Church actually does count Nisan, it's just that this is done among clerks and the laymen are only told "Sunday the ... is Easter"

6:12 On Yom Kippur, only ONE priest does what Zacharias did. According to the Mosaic law, that was the High Priest.

Now, Zecharias was in fact not on the list of serving High Priests that we have.

However, there is a clue in the text showing what I mean:

And it came to pass, when he executed the priestly function in the order of his course before God According to the custom of the priestly office, it was his lot to offer incense, going into the temple of the Lord
[Luke 1:8-9]

It could be a simple synonym of "according to the law of the priestly office" since liturgic laws are customs. But I think St. Luke meant a custom prevailing then and there.

Here is another clue to this custom I hypothesise:

And how our chief priests and princes delivered him to be condemned to death, and crucified him
[Luke 24:20]

Summi sacerdotes, not summus sacerdos or simply sacerdotes ... according to the Mosaic law, there is only one High Priest at a time, and he serves till he dies. However, the Romans violated this part. My hunch is, in response to Romans (already at this time, it was after Pompey de factor conquered / occupied Judea) manipulated Jewish High Priests as chess pawns, they had liturgy follow not always the nominal High Priest, but anyone could in fact (if he was a priest), at least outside Easter, do an office for which Moses required the High Priest. Any priest was a High Priest, much like in Rome any bishop, priest or deacon of an old Church is a bishop (so, the priest of Santa Sabina, being a cardinal, is usually a bishop). There you find the plural in both Luke and Mark to "summi sacerdotes", there you find someone not listed in (Antiquities? anyway) Josephus as high priest being a high priest ... and there you find a famous Christian of Asia Minor, who could be John the Gospeller, as having "worn the golden headband" (which was reserved for the High Priest).

So, this Yom Kippur, the nominal High Priest didn't officiate, he might have already done so, he might have been ritually impure, he might simply have wanted to get as many priests involved in the duties of a High Priest as possible. So the Romans couldn't have the chance of picking out a really incompetent High Priest. As, if Yom Kippur hadn't interfered with the courses, this year the course of Abia would have fallen on Yom Kippur, he drew lots for the available ones from the course of Abia. Zecharias was chosen.

6:44 Wait, are you going to count eight weeks from "the first day of the seventh month" to find the week the course of Abia was in Ezra 3:6, then apply this to every year and therefore also to the year when Zecharias served?

Sorry, doesn't work. No Jewish year is 48 weeks. Add the weeks for major festivals, no Jewish year is exactly 51 weeks either. The courses will be displaced from year to year, and more so on leap years with a leap month.

7:18 No. You DID IT!

You did misapply Ezra 3:6 to the start of the first division every year. Because, you know, the division of Abia we are talking about here is a different year from the year in which Ezra 3:6 happened. Indeed, centuries apart!

48 weeks + 3 weeks when all priests work ... that's fifty-one weeks, 357 days. So, supposing you are right about the general setup, the year after a normal one will have the courses displaced to later 2 to 4 days. A leap year 384 +/-1 day, will involve allow the third turn of it's first courses (not the first courses) to begin before the year ends.

You cannot transfer when the course of Abia was in Ezra's time to Luke 1.

Caleb Howells

@calebhowells1116

There is good evidence that the priestly divisions regularly started in the month of Tishri, the seventh month, and that this wasn’t just something that was established in the time of Ezra and then allowed to drift through the year.

We don’t have enough information to say how they accommodated the extra time in the year, but we certainly can say that they seem to have regularly started in the month of Tishri. Hence, the calculations in this video hold up.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@calebhowells1116 "good evidence" simply isn't a named source, and Biblically, there isn't.

Confer the extra quotes in a comment below my post:

https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2025/12/caleb-howells-makes-how-ler.html

@calebhowells1116 But, let's suppose you are right. St. Luke doesn't say Zacharias served in the course of Abia, he says he was of the course of Abia and served in his course.

After the exile, some of the courses had become standins for extinct lines, so he could also have been serving in a course that Abia took over.

Caleb Howells

@hglundahl The problem with that argument is that the divisions which were divided to substitute the lost divisions after the exile took the names of those lost divisions, hence why we continue to see references to them in post-exilic documents. So if Zechariah had been serving in one of those other divisions, Luke would have used its name.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@calebhowells1116 Or not, since that would anyway have been his division. His right to it being in the division of Abia.

But mainly I argue that the succession of courses was a rolling scheme, so each course had access to all feasts of the year.

I Believe in Prophecy. Doesn't Mean I Believe I'm a Prophet

As, doesn't mean it. I don't believe that I'm a prophet.

A prophet is a very specific kind of writer who specifically on the occasions writes precisely what God dictates to him. Or shows him in a vision. I'm as little that kind of writer as Gilbert Keith Chesterton was. But St. Bridget was certainly and some say Maria Valtorta was also a prophet.

What would St. John of the Cross say about Maria Valtorta's writtings?
Decrevi Determined to be Catholic @thecatholicman | 10 Dec. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLXkE9RMbu4

It can be mentioned that the basis for canonising St. Bridget of Sweden was a minute examination of all of her prophecies (they fill volumes).

1) No unconditional prophecy could have been unfulfilled.
2) No prophecy could contain doctrinal error.

My friend Stephan Borgehammar and I were a few years ago discussing the identity of St. John the Beloved. In 1968, a French priest argued:

1) he couldn't be the son of Zebedee
2) but had to be a Cohen

with one of the arguments being an Asia Minor reference ("we have known John who wore the golden head band"). This leads to it being a Cohen Gadol. I suggested Theophilus, because that makes "the disciple who Jesus loved" a pun on his name (since we admit Jesus is God). He was against it, since St. Mary had spoken to St. Bridget and one of the words was "I loved John, because he was a virgin" (and Theophilus Ben Hanan had children). I suggested, after some F-search in the document, that his virginity is not as marked as that of St. John the Baptist, "a virgin who never ejaculated", but could have been a life in the virginal style, acquired after the marriage.

I just recently found a reason why Fr. Jean Colson could have been right not to limit the options to known High Priests of Israel. Zachary did the duty of a High Priest on Yom Kippur in Luke 1, but he's not listed. So, St. John the Gospeller could have been a lifelong virgin too.

When Acts 4 mentions And Annas the high priest, and Caiphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest. — Do you think "John" means Hanan Ben Hanan, brother in law of Caiphas, killer of St. James, or do you think it means a John who later made a coming out as disciple?

Fr. Colson obviously didn't think that the Johannine corpus was written by the Son of Zebedee. As I recall, the speeches of the Virgin to St. Bridget about John the Beloved, they do not include a reference to him being among the twelve, or son of Zebedee, but that could have been the poor choice of terms in my F-search.

Did it Happen, or Is It Misanalysis of Models?

I frankly don't know, because the videast isn't disclosing the arguments of this, now pretty widespread, view among Academics.

8,000 Years Ago Women Made a Choice That Erased 90% of Men Forever
Psychryptoria | 6 Dec. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=054XkNgMsWU

Final thoughts.

Wealth accumulation isn't going away. Collectivising it will not counter an evil capital concentration, it will more likely radicalise it, into the hands of those controlling collective wealth.

And mankind won't be around 5000 years from now, with a history still ongoing, the best things we can do now is trying to allow happiness to flourish now and for the next generation, not implement drastic schemes that can destroy liberties for now but just might prove of evolutionary value in 5000 years time into the future. That future will not exist. 5000 is a little less time than between Adam and Christ, there is no way the time between First and Second coming (already at 2000 years) will outlast that.

Psychryptoria

@Psychryptoria

I appreciate your perspective! You're right that we need to focus on human flourishing now, not some distant future. The video wasn't advocating for collectivism or drastic schemes—just showing how ancient economic patterns still echo today.

Whether it's 5,000 years or 50, understanding how resource concentration shaped our past helps us see current patterns more clearly. The point isn't to impose solutions, but to recognize that these dynamics exist and influence everything from dating to opportunity.

We can acknowledge reality without sacrificing liberty or individual happiness.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@Psychryptoria Thank you.

@Psychryptoria I think the best solution, as long as it works, is, voluntary deconcentration of capital, as in promotion of small companies, small farms, small shops and workshops.

4:57 Between 8000 and 5000 years ago.

6000 to 3000 BC (carbon dated).

2327 BC (!)

63.519 pmC, dated as 6079 BC

This is between Shela's death and Sarug's birth.*

1779 BC

85.963 pmC, dated as 3029 BC

This is after Ishmael died.*

So, did this kind of thing last for 3000 years? Or for 548 of them?

I'd say the latter and in this era when being a man who has descendants now meant so much of "being chosen" ... Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were also chosen. By God.

Psychryptoria

Thanks for bringing up the dating question! You're right to note the difference between calibrated dates and the duration. The genetic studies I referenced use molecular clock models that suggest the bottleneck period itself lasted roughly 2,000-3,000 years (with peak intensity around 7,000-5,000 years ago), though dating precision at these timescales always has uncertainty ranges.

The key point isn't the exact century-by-century timeline, but the pattern: for an extended period during the Neolithic transition, we see dramatically reduced Y-chromosome diversity while mitochondrial DNA stayed stable. Whether that's 500 years or 3,000 years in specific regions, the social dynamics that created it remain worth examining.

I appreciate you engaging with the details—these conversations help refine our understanding!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Psychryptoria Oh, molecular clock ... even less accurate than carbon dating, then.

I don't mean 500 years for a specific region, but I presumed the researchers had done palaeogenetics for carbon dated 10000 YA and for 8000 YA and found a pretty normal male reproduction, and then palaeogenetics for 5000 years ago and found only 1 in 17 lineages remaining.

Those 3000 crucial years would all over earth be reduced to 548 years in my calibration.

However, if the real issue is "the genetic clock" showed such and such a timespan, that's a different story. What if Y chromosomes mutate more or less than mitochondriae and so this miscalculates what's the same lineage with mutations and what's a different lineage?

Because "10 000 years ago" or "8000 BC", that's 401 after a world wide Flood, and just after the Flood, before anyone was born, humanity was 3 men with their father, each having a wife.

9:38 This is inaccurate.

The agricultural societies of Pre-Flood times have been wiped out by the Flood. But they were the main thing for 2262 years.

A human society dominated by hunting gathering only lasted from the Flood to 401 years later. The beginning of agriculture coincides roughly with the fall of Babel (a k a Göbekli Tepe), and I mean, agriculture as dominant.

"10 000 years ago" = "8000 BC" = 2556 BC.**

Psychryptoria

My video focuses on the mainstream scientific interpretation of the genetic and archaeological evidence, which dates the Neolithic agricultural revolution to roughly 10,000 years ago and the Y-chromosome bottleneck to 8,000-5,000 years ago based on molecular clock models and multiple independent dating methods. The genetic patterns I discuss—the 17:1 female-to-male reproduction ratio and the bottleneck itself—are well-documented in peer-reviewed studies regardless of absolute dating. The key point is understanding how the shift to agriculture and resource accumulation created new social dynamics that shaped human reproduction. I appreciate you engaging with the content, even from a different interpretive angle!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Psychryptoria "My video focuses on the mainstream scientific interpretation"

I gathered as much.

"which dates the Neolithic agricultural revolution to roughly 10,000 years ago and the Y-chromosome bottleneck to 8,000-5,000 years ago based on molecular clock models and multiple independent dating methods."

Multiple meaning which ones apart from carbon?

"The genetic patterns I discuss—the 17:1 female-to-male reproduction ratio and the bottleneck itself—are well-documented in peer-reviewed studies regardless of absolute dating."

OK, which is it?

Do we find 17 times x Y-chromosome lineages in skeleta dated by carbon to 8000 years ago and 1 times x in those dated to 5000 years ago?

Or are the dates and perhaps even the assessments of what the separate lineages were just dependendent on someone assessing by "the genetical clock" that it happened?

By "documented" using my history based approach, I'd mean "documented" in primary sources, but you seem to mean a different thing, it's "documented" that scientists came to this result and you aren't presenting their methodology so I can scrutinise it for possible logical errors. Or obviously fallacious dependence on the mainstream but nevertheless false Evolutionist narrative.

16:06 "infant mortality is high"

Proven by what metric of our observations?

18:53 Christianity, by banning polygamy, equalised reproductive success for men.

Obviously, if men are free to hold harems and if children of concubines are as high status as children of a (main) wife, that's very different.

It created female hypergamy and a kind of masculinity in men that some of us, including me, find toxic. And note, this is probably far less the case with the Muslim community I am noting with some displeasure, than with the people who invented idolatry after having known the worship of one God (or of a parody of Him) in their older generations.

Because, the end of the timeline you propose equals the beginning of idol statues, Ishtar temples here and necropoles of god kings there (Newgrange) ...

---

* Citing the post Newer Tables, Flood to Joseph in Egypt. For the former date, 2361 BC is when Shelah died, 2295 BC is when Serug was born. The (!) is because the full calculation of the pmC value involved three consecutive sixes, so could be the time when Nimrod died. I calculated the pmC before the the carbon dated year.

** Here the carbon dated year, as last carbon date of Göbekli Tepe, is per se identified with the Biblical and real year when Babel ended, 401 after the Flood when Peleg was born. The pmC value was calculated from the number of extra years and is 51.766 pmC.

What About the Oral Torah?

Did Moses REALLY Give Us an Oral Torah? Reacting to Rabbi Tovia Singer
Reason & Theology | 5 Dec. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbygRTQI6vM

6:40 The oral transmission could have been preserved but dismissed?*

7:26 We know it isn't, they rejected the true Christ and so the views on what the Torah commanded were reassessed accordingly, falsifying it.

If you want the correct oral Torah, you need to get it from Apostolic Tradition, not Rabbinic.

Sts. Paul and Timothy were repositories of the oral Torah before they became Christians and became the fulfilment of that by becoming Christians.

* Mr. Lofton refers to the loss of the book of the law, recovered by IV Kings 22, arguing, the oral tradition needs to have been lost too. I argue it could have been preserved and dismissed.

Thank You Very Much Mr. Lofton

@reasonandtheology
Did Pope Benedict XVI Believe the Magisterium Has Erred?*
Mailbag: What is the Age of Consent in Catholicism?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jV0R-eCFcE4

As to consent, 1917 also sees it as puberty, and also takes the biological medium age rounded to nearest whole year.

Yes, marriage is raised to 16 for a male, 14 for a female, BUT in order to contract infamy by law, in that specific category one could equate to "pedocriminal", the limit remains 14 /12.

As you may know, the people who reject "Vatican II" and its "popes", we still hold to 1917.

16 and 14 are when c. 95 % of males and females each have gone through puberty.

* Haven't seen the whole video this is a clip from, but if he did, that's a warning flag against taking him for having been Pope.

Sharing on Abortion of Girls ...

Sex selective abortions MILLIONS of Girls being aborted where are the Feminists ??? #womensrights
Marion O'Riordan | 26 Nov. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEYeez1VQng

Christine Niles on (against) the claims of "Fake Sister Lucy"

New blog on the kid: Sharing About Sr. Lucy of Fatima · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Christine Niles on (against) the claims of "Fake Sister Lucy"

'Fake' Sister Lucy Revisited | FORWARD BOLDLY
Christine Niles | 26.XI.2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ7KAIK_CGs

I take it, your position is, Elderly Sister Lucy's angles look different because she has lost teeth?

[This is much of the content of the second half, which I have not commented on item by item.]

4:31 Dead things can swim with the stream, only living creatures can swim against it!

4:41 I don't like confrontation over people, but I love confrontation about ideas.

Yesterday, someone citing CSL considered that in the Medieval Worldview, the Primum Mobile (I think that might have been the Materia Prima) moved out of love for God.

Nope. That's one Medieval worldview, but not the Catholic one, in the Catholic one, God actively moves the Primum Mobile (God moving the Universe around us each day) and actively endows the Materia Prima with form and therefore substantiality (back at Creation or at any subsequent creation event).

At least that was the view at the university of Paris, it is possible what I spoke against may have been better regarded in the School of St. Victor, for the authors of which CSL had a great fondness.

6:37 The family could, if the theory were true, have acted under pressure (even going along so as to save her life). The community and top clergy in the province could back then have been motivated by extreme obedience and also a sense of discretion, like in 1950 the Franciscans in a part of the Netherlands, they had abused a pupil and made sure he came to first mental hospital for homosexuality and then castrated. In the Netherlands, a "community first" sentiment came from living in a Calvinist majority country. In Spain and Portugal, the Church had in living memory been persecuted.

Between 1926 and 1946, she was in Spain, in Pontevedra, which is, unlike the Carmel of Coimbra, about as far North of Fatima as the South tip of Portugal is South of Fatima. So, those years, I don't think she received all that many visits. Also, as she was at this point a Dorothean, she was busy teaching.

7:09 Conclavists also believe that "Paul VI" and "John Paul II" were no valid Popes.

But we do believe there is a valid one today, Michael II, and has been most of the time from 1990, emergency election of Michael I.

So, I came across this via the Dimond Brothers, who, yes, have promoted the thesis of Turnowski Chojnowski.

8:57 I just saw that "John Paul II" consecrated Russia and Ukraine, while the Fatima request mentioned only Russia.

Now, the Kiev Rus' to which Ukraine is heir and Muscovite Russia doubtfully heir was already consecrated to Mary, much like France by (I think) Lewis XIII.

My reading of Fatima consecration request is, a) allowing Russia to catch up with Ukraine, and b) Pope stepping in for the lacking goodwill of the sovereigns, these being most of the time concerned, including 1984, Commies, at least the de facto sovereigns.

Have you heard of the apparitions of Hrushiv (in Russian that would be Grushov)?

11:36 In Romania, the couple Ceaucescu were actually executed in a less than fully court procedures manner. I don't claim Lewis XVI and Maria Antonia, best known as Marie Antoinette, got a fair hearing, but they had more court procedure. I also don't claim the Ceaucescu couple was innocent (except they had done one good thing: banned abortion), and they didn't deserve it, but their overthrow was not fully peaceful.

Now, the promise related to the effective consecration was not just peace, but also conversion of Russia.

Today, Russia has more abortions than Ukraine, I think is the fifth leading country in Europe as continent and all top five are either Romania or former Soviet Republics (none of them Ukraine). Abortion was introduced into Romania after the Ceaucescu couple was executed.

Meanwhile Russia has obliterated the Ukrainian and Tatar communities in Crimea and the parts of Donbass they already control. Putin promotes plutocratic oligarchy and it's spreading. Putin says abortion should be fought by persuasion, not bans. Putin's best admirers tend to promote "Christianity and Evolution are not in conflict" which is an error (also spread by Wojtyla in the 1992 CCC), and "taking the Apocalypse as foresight of events is Zionism" (which is certainly not true in my case, since I take it the Knesset today is both Sodom and Egypt, considering the Pride Parades and what is done to Gaza, so, I think Apocalypse 11 is soon upcoming, with Henoch and Elias witnessing against Zionism). Putin is perfectly capable of having goodwill with total incompetence as to apprehension of facts. You recall that clip when he laughed at the idea of pork exports to Indonesia, unaware that Indonesia has Christian and Hindu minorities and that tourism also involves people who eat pork? He also promotes the idea that denying the gas chambers killed so and so many of this or that community is an agression against it.

12:38 Yugoslavia also disbanded.

This pretty quickly led to the Balkan wars. A repeat move of Assisi 1986 was done by Wojtyla in 1995 or 1994 ... and the massacre of Srebrenica followed. Former Yugoslavia, to this day, is not a peaceful area.

However, not only did Wojtyla meet Gorbatchev, he also knew exactly what Polish priest in the Vatican was a KGB agent.

If the Fall of the Wall and the disbanding of the Soviet Union were not miracles, they could have been negotiated sham victories, with Wojtyla hollowing them. Meeting a Rabbi and then the Assisi meeting before the fall of the wall were shows of "Catholicism is not exclusivist or antisemite" (in the sense that word has been applied to Catholicism) ... betraying Mgr Lefebvre, betraying converts in Sweden, betraying Fr. Mawdsley. In 1992, and around, CCC and "Interpretation of the Bible in the Church" were a payment afterwards, with the message "we don't allow people to oppose the theory of Evolution" (I had missed it, or overlooked it, since I was a Ecclesia Dei to FSSPX type trad at the time, only found out in 2001) and in the same weeks as they were praying for peace in the Balkans with Orthodox and Muslims and maybe more, there was some kind of reconciliation with psychiatry, thereby betraying any Catholic persecuted by it. This is my conspiracy theory about the apparent miracle.

12:52 Conversion of Russia, Russia is not yet converted from that Schism.

The Ukrainian Uniate Church is not legally recognised in Russia, and religious activity other than by recognised churches is an offense in Russia. As Fr. Charron mentioned, if he tried to celebrate Mass anywhere in Russia, he would go to prison. The FSSPX has a presence in the St. Petersburg region.

It has also started to pay Russia by cracking down on Creationist polemics.

Up to 1988, Revd Bryan Houghton was very good friends with Mgr Lefebvre, though in that year, like Dom Gérard, he chose Ecclesia Dei. Now this obviously means, Lefebvre saw nothing wrong in Bryan Houghton openly arguing against the Theory of Evolution (which he traces to Buddhism). At present, Father Robinson FSSPX is campaigning against Young Earth Creationism under the pretense it is some kind of bad fruit of the "bad tree" of Sola Scriptura, whereas in reality, Young Earth Creationism is the historic view of Catholics. In 1860 or so, when US Baptists split over the issue while also splitting over slavery, Catholics were in the vast majority Young Earth Creationists. But Father Robinson takes the decision of 1909 as a magisterial ban on Young Earth Creationism, which it obviously isn't.

13:14 So the supposed Sister Lucy saw those changes but didn't see the other side?

13:59 Yes, to him as to Kant (mentioned by Robert Barron), the Christian faith is something you practise ... it is not something you hold and defend as notionally true.

He's about as Orthodox as Dag Hammarsköld was Lutheran. I e, not at all insofar as the Confessions are supposed to be Christian heterodoxies rather than rituals masking apostasy.

14:27 Putin's own party, however, promotes the selected Communist tenets that Putin and Kirill still hold to.

Like "abortion must be fought with persuasion, not actual legal bans" or "Evolution is true, a Christian isn't supposed to oppose 'Science' " ...

Both of which are clearly Communist rather than Christian views, on key issues.

---

To illustrate my point:

ORTHODOX MISCELLANY- History, Ecclesiology, Spirituality, and the Struggle Against Ecumenism : Black Cloud Over Moscow (2006)
Fr. Nicholas Chernjavsky | November 27, 2006
https://orthodoxmiscellany.blogspot.com/2025/11/black-cloud-over-moscow-2006.html

The Moscow Patriarchate again finds itself with a government that does not tolerate dissent. Ever since Vladimir Putin’s election as president of Russia, nostalgia for the Soviet past has increased just as personal freedoms have been eroded. This is not a man who would let a powerful organization like the Moscow Patriarchate do as it pleases, and he has found willing accomplices in the top hierarchs who continue to trumpet Sergianism as heroic. In today’s Russia, critics of the Kremlin are dealt with swiftly and ruthlessly, but this has not affected the Patriarchate, as there seems to be not a peep of criticism coming from those quarters. It is also a curious thing that it was Putin who initiated the process to bring the Russian Church Abroad under Moscow ’s influence.