Metropolitan Jonah is speaking in Texas this weekend on Orthodox unity. Despite all the troubles he has faced in the last months, his vision of a vibrant, evangelical oriented Church is the one embraced by priests and laity who will carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ as it understood in our Orthodox tradition to this great nation.
AXIOS! to Met. Jonah, Mother Gabriella, Fr. Nick Triantafilou, Fr. Meletios Webber, Fr. David Moretti and the other speakers, organizers, benefactors and attendees of this symposium. You understand the vision and are acting on it. You offer hope and direction for the rest of us.
Symposiums like the one below should be received with joy and supported by anyone who understands that the Orthodox do indeed have something to offer America. It should also compel us even more to get our own house in order so we can be faithful to that commission. HT: AOI.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem Orthodox Christian Church
P. O. Box 133234
The Woodlands, TX 77393-3234
Driving directions to St. Cyril Orthodox Church.
8:00 am – 8:45 am Continental Breakfast
8:45 am – 9:00 am Morning Prayers & Welcome
9:00 am – 9:15 am Opening Remarks
His Beatitude Metropolitan JONAH +
9:15 am – 9:45 am Foundation for Unified Local Orthodox Church According to John 17
Protopresbyter Nicholas Triantafilou
(President Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology)
9:45 am – 10:15 am Ecclesiology and The Local Church
Cynthia Kostas
10:15 am – 10:45 am Update of Episcopal Assembly
His Beatitude Metropolitan JONAH +
10:45 am – 11:00 am Break & Refreshments
11:00 am – 11:45 am Update of AAC
His Beatitude Metropolitan JONAH +
11:45 am – 12:30 pm Challenges: Canonicity ~ Autonomy and Autocephaly
His Beatitude Metropolitan JONAH +
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm Lunch
1:30 pm – 2:15 pm Challenges: Canonicity ~ Mother Church and Ecumenical Patriarch
Father David Moretti
(Interim Pastor of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, The Woodlands, TX)
2:15 pm – 3:00 pm Liturgical Challenges ~ Language
Archimandrite Meletios Weber
(Abbot of St. John’s Monastery, Manton, CA)
3:00 pm – 3:45 pm Liturgical Challenges ~ Ethnic Traditions
Mother Gabriella
(Abbess of Holy Dormition Monastery, Rives Junction, MI)
His Beatitude Metropolitan JONAH +
4:30 pm – 4:45 pm Break & Refreshments
4:45 pm – 5:30 pm Orthodox Youth & the Future of American Orthodoxy
Father Anthony Baba
(Pastor of Saint Anthony, Spring, TX)
5:30 pm – 6:15 pm Orthodox Women & the Future of American Orthodoxy
Mother Gabriella
(Abbess of Holy Dormition Monastery, Rives Junction, MI)
6:30 pm Vespers
8:00 am – 8:45 am Continental Breakfast
8:45 am – 9:00 am Morning Prayers & Welcome
9:00 am – 9:30 am Summary Day 1
His Beatitude Metropolitan JONAH +
9:30 am – 10:45 am Conclusions, Summary & Next Steps:
The Role of the Hierarchy
His Beatitude Metropolitan JONAH +
10:45 am – 11:00 am Break & Refreshments
11:00 am – 12:15 pm Conclusions, Summary & Next Steps:
The Role of the Laity
Archimandrite Meletios Weber
(Abbot of St. John’s Monastery, Manton, CA)
12:15 pm – 1:15 pm Lunch
1:15 pm – 2:30 pm Conclusions, Summary & Next Steps:
Sustaining the Vision
Protopresbyter Nicholas Triantafilou
(President Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology)
2:30 pm – 3:30 pm Houston as a Role Model:
3:30 pm – 4:30 pm Houston as a Role Model:
Houston Orthodox Laity
Subdeacon Constantin Ardeleanu & Mark Hunter
4:30 pm – 4:45 pm Break & Refreshments
4:45 pm – 6:15 pm Round Table for Houston Vision for Toward An American Orthodox Church:
* Pan Orthodox Services
* Pan Orthodox Laity Association
* Pan Orthodox Youth Association
* Pan Orthodox Women’s Association
* Pan Orthodox Monastic Community
***** Above session to be a round table forum with the purpose of outlining constructive action plan for Greater Houston Clergy Association and its’ laity to use as a tool toward Unity!*****
6:15 pm – 6:45 pm Closing Remarks
His Beatitude Metropolitan JONAH +
6:45 pm – 7:00 pm Break: Prepare for Vespers
7:00 Great Vespers
How I wish I could be there!
Will Ancient Faith Radio broadcast this for us? I hope so!
It’ll be on AFR!
With all due respect, this is essentially a non-event for Orthodoxy in Houston, Texas. I am very familiar with the mission parish hosting the symposium and it consists of approximately 10 families. This parish has had several priests that generally stay about 2-3 years and then move on. The current priest is filling in until a permanent priest is selected.
Houston is the fourth largest city in the USA and has 4 Antiochian, 3 GOA, 1 ROCOR, 2 Serbian, and 1 ROC parishes in the greater metropolitan vicinity (a radius of approximately 40 miles). To date, not one of these parishes has even made mention of this symposium on their respective websites. Orthodox unity in this country is a pipe dream at best. Don’t look for it to happen for at least another 200 years.
A giant iak tree starts with an acorn. I do not share your pessimism nor your timeline. I also wish that I were there.
LOL! Iak!
It will with THAT attitude.
With all due respect, it’s time to stop being an Eeyore.
Eeyore! Instant flashback to popped birthday balloons and empty honey jars.
You can’t be an Orthodox Priest.
“With all due respect”?
I don’t think so. I see no respect.
Thank the Lord, Met Jonah has never felt that way about 10 families.
Shame on you!
This is an important, vibrant conversation, so you had better leave it to those who can help create a stronger,
Orthodox Church in this country.
You might concern yourself in returning to Christianity.
If it is a “non event” maybe CNN is more your life style.
Really, this makes me sick.
I wish we had had 10 families when we started our mission. Of course, the old joke about the Venerable +Dmitri was that he could start a mission with “two old ladies and a hat.”
Well, if there’s that many Orthodox parishes in Houston, they should all get together and elect a bishop. That’d be a radical idea, wouldn’t it?
With all due respect, the whole Pentecost thing was a non-event for Orthodoxy in Palestine. I am very familiar with the rabble rousing bunch in the upper room, consisting of 12 guys (oops! 11 now). The Gospel in this part of the world is a pipe dream at best. Don’t look for anything significant to happen for at least another 200 years. 🙂
Oh, nevermind, those 11 guys turned the world upside down within a few years (Acts 17), and when given 200 years, they just about took over the world. I think we’ll be fine.
Look a little closer at Acts 1:15-26, Jamey. By Pentecost morning, their number was back up to 12.
I agree with your point, nonetheless.
This”Blues” fellow needs to get to Confession for this sour attitude, and then get out for a bit of fresh air.
“With all due respect usually precedes the expression of something insulting.
“Father Blues” says this Houston event is a non-event for most Orthodox. I’m pretty certain he’s quite wrong in his prediction. Why in the world would he say something like that? Is he given to predicting unhappiness and failure?
He must be very very young to make such a categorical declaration about something that is in the future. In the future, we will be able to learn how the advertised event was attended.
I personally think the event will be attended by all those people in all the parishes who go to that sort of thing: they find out about in from the grapevine..there friends and so forth. I can’t imagine that posting it on any parish’s website by itself would produce even one participant.l Do the members of some parishes actually consult their parish website for anything but the schedule of services….very occasionally?
Father must be a devotee of advertising.
The Christian Church had its period of most dramatic growth when it was a secretive religion that did not advertise at all, save through the preaching of guests from out of town in local synagogues, poorly advertised, and through the appearance of some of them in the most popular theaters of the day, the coliseums and arenas.in animal acts and gladiatorial reality shows.
Well I can see this is a receptive forum for exchanging ideas and opinions.
To faceit: No I am not an Orthodox priest and never claimed to be. Your ad hominem rebuttal to my simple comments is quite revelatory. You must be a Fox News worshipping Neo Con still swearing there are weapons on mass destruction in Iraq! The icing on the cake though is your statement that I should concern myself with returning to Christianity; I was never aware I had left it.
I can see now why people leave the Church and never return if they are treated with your style of brotherly love.
Mr. Blues, it’s a much more receptive forum when you don’t just walk in to tear everyone else down.
Perhaps this mission, whose size you hold in disdain, is holding this symposium in hopes of growing larger than ten families, by attracting more people to Orthodoxy. Thank God Met. Jonah and the other speakers didn’t spurn the invitation. I look forward to hearing all the speeches.
Fr Blues, I’m very happy to hear that your are not an Orthodox priest. With that kind of an attitude, then Orthodoxy is definately headed for the scrap-heap of history on this continent. I don’t know whether you evince triumphalism or envy regarding this mission and this symposium they’re holding. Why don’t you go? You might learn something.
You might be interested to know that there was a church that started out with only a dozen or so people awhile back. It was centered in and around Jerusalem but their leader had been executed as a criminal. Ever heard of them?
George, your sarcasm is totally uncalled for and your inference that I should go and learn something I don’t already know is both condescending and patronizing.
That same leader you mentioned who was executed as a criminal was condemned by the status quo religious leaders of the day because they didn’t like the message he brought them. It appears the OCA members on this blog continue the same pharisaical tradition.
No wonder the OCA is in decline.
I bid you adieu.
And your point regarding the “status quo religious leaders” is…?
Fr. Blues says:
December 1, 2011 at 7:50 am
“George, your sarcasm is totally uncalled for”
Wow! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
Fr. Blues says:
November 30, 2011 at 9:33 pm
“You must be a Fox News worshipping Neo Con still swearing there are weapons on mass destruction in Iraq!”
Well, we don’t have guess “where he is coming from.”
for the record, I only worship the Triune God, am not a neo-con (getting more paleo as I get older) and yes, I do watch FOX News. Me and everybody else. (Pssst, don’t say anything but it’s got such rabid Conservatives like Geraldo Rivera and Greta Van Susteren on it.)
Ok, since the “cult of Met. Jonah” obviously is on the defensive about anyone that doesn’t share their enthusiasm, let me rephrase my original comment so no one here can possibly miss the original point.
First of all, I do not hold St. Cyril’s parish in disdain. I merely mentioned their size to put a perspective in terms of the significance of this gathering. No one seemed to pay attention to the next paragraph in my original comment. Houston is a very large city by any standard. The Woodlands is a bedroom community that borders Houston.
The Orthodox population of the greater Houston area is at least 4000 plus, counting all the Eastern Orthodox parishes of the various jurisdictions. Two of the speakers (Fr. Anthony Baba & Fr, Nicholas Triantafilou) are from this geographical location, yet not even their respective parishes make mention of this symposium on their websites. That being the case, it does not appear that Orthodox unity in this country is of major importance to the existing parishes.
Two of the existing parishes, St. Jonah and St. Anthony the Great are within 15 miles of St. Cyril yet there is no mention of this event on their sites either and the symposium begins tomorrow. What does that say about the desire for Orthodox unity? Not much as far as I can tell.
The one thing that continues to amaze me about Orthodoxy in this part of the country is the number of different ethnic churches which are within a few miles of each other and yet have nothing to do with each other. They struggle to pay the bills and build separate facilities instead of joining together and sharing their resources to make a greater impact in the community. Until there is a fundamental change in this attitude no amount of speeches and symposiums will change the status quo.
Fr Blues, first of all, there is no “cult of Jonah.” Fr Nick no longer lives in Houston (and hasn’t for about 15 years) so your criticism falls a little flat here. As for your other points, they are spot-on. We can chalk that up to the fruits of our disunity, ethno-tribalism, xenophobia, and ortho-triumphalism, what have you. The question is: what are you, as an Orthodox Christian going to do about it? Skulk in the corner lamenting the fact? Are you going to continue cursing the darkness or shining the light which has been given to you?
If you’re serious about the condition of Orthodoxy in America, then cowboy up.
Or it could just be a case of bad website updating. I can’t tell you how many parish’ websites I’ve been to that were still showing that the latest thing that church did was in 2008. The fact is that most local advertising is probably done from a announcements board, by the priest after liturgy, an internal email to all parishoners, or by simple word of mouth. It doesn’t necessarily speak of Orthodoxy at all, just the fact that Orthodox webmasters don’t typically keep up with the times or technology as well as we should do (Mr. Michalopulos being the wonderful exception to this rule of course 🙂
Don’t read too much into the failure to mention the symposium on websites. My parish updates our website a week or two behind events. Neighboring parishes seem never to update their websites. The question to ask is: Is the symposium being promoted during announcements following Liturgy?
I just read an AP article that appeared in USA Today 30Nov11 titled “More Americans Join OrthodoxChurches” which related that, quote: “The Rev. John Matusiak, paster of St. Joseph Church in Wheaton,Ill., part of The Orthodox Church in America, said his parish has grown from 20 people in the early 1990s to more than 600 today, with the overwhelming majority of new members younger than 40.”
(I believe Wheaton, Ill. is in the Chicago Metro. area and that that church was started In a location where no other Orthodox church existed before.)
So, Fr. Blues, does that change your thinking about some of the things you posted above?
That particular article is dated 2007, so I was really puzzled when it recently resurfaced. Why is this 2007 article being circulated now?
Here’s the link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2007-01-11-orthodox_x.htm
The article was just brought to my attention by a friend. Looking more closely at the dates of it, I find that you are correct about it.
Just as info: There already were other Orthodox parishes among the western suburbs of Chicago when the Wheaton parish was founded. I don’t remember how many, nor to which jurisdictions they belonged; however, I did attend services at a couple of them because sometimes I was sent to Chicago on business trips, and we have friends who have lived in Wheaton for decades.
I have a particular perspective on Houston, having served as the priest-in-charge (and founding pastor) at St. Cyril from 2005-2009. Houston is certainly a large city and metropolitan area. FWIW, the Woodlands is no longer a mere bedroom community, but rather a community of nearly 100,000 people (and larger than 100,000 if you include the surrounding unincorporated areas) with its own residential, commercial, and religious base. One can live, work, pray, and play without going south of where I-45 meets the Hardy Toll Road or north of I-45/SH-242.
From the perspective of unity, though, the Orthodox clergy in Houston already have a functioning clergy association that meets regularly and works through issues of interest to the entire group. The relationships are congenial and even familial most of the time. My involvement in the clergy association was a tremendous blessing during my time there. In view of these relationships, it’s perhaps odd that, to my understanding, the clergy association was not even informed of this event until early November, much less invited to participate in it. (There are several local clergymen who would make excellent additions to the schedule and would likely be willing to do so, so long as their own bishops blessed that participation.) Orthodox Christian Laity did a similar thing around 2007 or thereabouts, by arranging a unity conference, with Fr Peter Gillquist of the Antiochian Archdiocese presenting, without even telling, much less consulting or coordinating with, the clergy association. The OCL conference was a bust.
Worse, in an amazing show of interest in Orthodox unity, the program is scheduled to run up until early evening on Saturday, December 3, the eve of the feast of the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple on the Old Calendar. This will, of course, discourage participation from those Orthodox who celebrate the feasts on the Old Calendar, which includes the nearby St. Jonah ROCOR parish along with the St. Sava Serbian parish in Cypress plus some others.
Having His Beatitude as the dominant speaker on the agenda introduces issues also. On the one hand, there are the existing problems between His Beatitude and the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Greek Archdiocese (to say nothing of the other “foreign” jurisdictions mentioned in his (in)famous Sunday of Orthodoxy homily). On the other hand, there are his words concerning the meaning and significance of “autocephaly” that have aggrieved many in his own OCA.
Finally, to respond to the suggestion that churches in a given area need to work together, there were steps being taken in the months before I left St. Cyril to coordinate programs between some of the parishes on the far north side of metro Houston (to include The Woodlands and Spring). I don’t know the status of this now, but the relationships were growing, and this effort was taking root. The disunity we experience as Orthodox Christians has been decades in the making. It will take concerted effort from all sides — to include bringing others into the planning process for a conference such as this one — to begin to tear down these walls that give the lie to our “communion” with each other.
Well, Fr., all I can say is that, if I could, I would be there “cheering them on” in spite of all the possibly negative factors you envision above. But I will definitely listen to every presentation of it offered over AFR.
PS: I’ve participated in a couple of Clergy associations in the past and found that the topic of Church Unity could never be formally discussed by non-OCA clergy. But maybe things have changed in the last couple of years when I have been unable to participate in them.
You don’t need formal discussions of church unity to work together, which is far more than what most multi-jurisdictional situations do.
I agree, from personal experience; but also, from personal experience, I believe that formal discussions such as subject conference are much more needed to get to us to raise above the current situation of just “working together” and up onto the road to real and full church unity in the USA. I don’t think that the EA operating under foreign authorities can get it done by itself without the backing and encouragement of an enlightened and informed laity.
Fr, with all due respect, you do. I understand your point and you are right in the abstract, but when the rubber hits the road, there will always come a time in which one priest/parish/bishop/whatever will throw a spanner in the works. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen way too many times in way too many cities to way too many people.
Please forgive if my words offend as I meant none. It’s just the nature of Orthodox disunity. Any initiative, no matter how lovie-dovie initially will always come grinding to a halt. We’re seeing this with FOCUS right now. I’m sure others reading here have their own experiences.
What’s up with FOCUS?
Nothing I said is “in the abstract”. In fact, it is these formal talks that end up being “in the abstract,” for they spend years and years holding dialogues, presenting papers, and taking the obligatory long recesses that transform even simple acts into multi-year “accomplishments.” In contrast, a group of local parishes working together can hold joint services, offer shared vacation Bible schools, pool resources to care for the poor or otherwise needy, volunteer at pregnancy clinics, regularly exchange clergy, establish working personal relationships between clergy and laity both, and build the practical bridges that take our communion at the chalice to a real communion outside the walls of our parishes. That’s emphatically concrete, not abstract.
It’s already happening in Houston. The odd thing about this conference — and like Fr John Whiteford (see below), whom I had the pleasure of working with in Houston, I wish it all the best — is that it’s a conference dedicated to exploring Orthodox unity but apparently omitted the involvement of one of the best examples of pan-Orthodox cooperation I’ve yet encountered. No, it’s not perfect. Yes, they could do more. The Houston clergy association made real inroads toward working together, with an overall reduction of animosity and distrust and a great increase of love. Yet they were (apparently) ignored for the purposes of planning this conference. That’s just plain hard for me to understand. Worse, it makes it hard to take such a conference seriously, in that they’re ignoring the progress that’s being made in the very locale hosting the event.
Gee whiz George, you’re starting to sound like me. Considering your response to my previous posts, this particular statement of yours is extremely hypocritical. How is this any different from what I said earlier?
The intent. You started out minimizing its importance. I did not nor do not. That my prognosis is parallel to yours is beside the point.
Mr. Michalopulos,
There is no grinding halt to FOCUS. Where do you get that from? Just because we have a change of leadership? I can tell you first hand that the FOCUS Center I direct is actually doubling in budget, support and involvement each year. I believe we just added a national board member from Houston 🙂
I think Metropolitan Jonah is the perfect speaker to have at this conference BECAUSE of his provocative homily on the Sunday of Orthodoxy. He sent a strong message that ethno-phyletism, this having one foot in the old world and the other on the neck of Orthodox unity in America, is destructive and anti-Christian.
Another message was that the bishops of the old world, wherever they happen to be, cannot presume to stroke their beards and rule us as their diaspora. For one thing, there is no single foreign jurisdiction that dominates Orthodoxy in America. The simple majority may be under the EP through the GOA/UOCUSA/ACROD – the GOA alone is bigger than all other jurisdictions combined. But the minority of OCA/AOCANA and other jurisdictions is collectively too big to ignore. Apart from Orthodoxy, the only thing we all have in common is being American (whether it is individually acknowledged or not). “[W]e are one church, we are one local Church, and I might add, we are one indigenous Church,” said His Beatitude. Anyone who denies that basic fact is either ignorant or a deluded phyletist. Metropolitan Elpidoforos is one or the other.
Considering the EP’s pretensions regarding Canon 28, it’s little wonder that Met. Jonah’s words went over like a lead balloon. If the EP can’t get past having his widdle feewings hurt and can’t actually listen to what Metropolitan Jonah said, he is not worth trying to negotiate with.
It’s important that we truly be who we are, where we are, and when we are.
Old european claims on North America and South America are just as useless for ecclesial governments as they are for civil governments, and with considerably less force.
The Church in the western hemisphere is strong enough now to work out its own structures and relationships with the churches of the ‘old world’.
Our churches here will best relate to the churches of Europe as equals, not as subordinates.
Constantinople, Moscow: Take note!
By the way, Fr. Basil, take a look at this shindig in support of the EP that Metropolitan Jonah attended.
N. B.: John Sarbanes’ father, Paul Sarbanes, is a retired senator and an Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. (John himself appears to have at least a distant relationship with a Greek church in Baltimore, but his official biography notes that he also attends a synagogue with his wife and children.) Yet he invited Metropolitan Jonah of all people. I can’t find any evidence that anyone from GOA was invited. Head-scratcher!
Yep. John Sarbanes, that model of Orthodox piety and faithfulness to Christian teaching. Like his father, Paul Sarbanes, who served the MD-3 district in the 70s and then in the Senate for a good 30 years, there’s apparently no good reason to stop a taxpayer-funded abortion of any type for any reason. It is my sincere hope that His Beatitude gave Rep. Sarbanes a stern rebuke calling for sackcloth and ashes.
It’s possible he doesn’t screen every politician he meets, especially ones who are very likely not in good standing with the Church anyway. It is my earnest hope that Met. Jonah will be able to directly address Orthodox politicians who do not hold to Orthodox teaching.
My point is that whatever waves Met. Jonah made through that homily, he has not been universally shunned by the EP or his allies. In 2009, Met. Jonah was at the GOA cathedral in NYC, obviously an invited guest, with the EP.
People think it was somehow an insult for the OCA bishops to be seated in last place at the Episcopal Assembly meetings, but the OCA is at the bottom of the diptychs even among churches that do recognize the autocephaly, so they would have been sitting there no matter what.
Priest Basil, like you, I have been aghast at the career of the elder Sarbanes. The difference here is that whereas the GOA slavishly bestowed hollow honors upon him and the equally apalling Sen Snowe of Maine, Sarbanes the Younger invited His Beatitude to this event. Being a Christian gentleman –and also because this was not some ghastly secularist affair celebrating Lady Gaga or something like that–+Jonah graciously accepted Rep Sarbanes’ invitation. As would have I. The difference is vast.
In fact, the program moderator was from a GOAA parish. There were also a number of GOAA priests in attendance and a number of people who attend Greek Churches as well as other Orthodox Churches in the audience. Invitations went out to many of the local Orthodox Churches, There were others in the audience whose career or passion is focused on human rights, who were not Orthodox. The film presented as the main part of the program was in fact produced by the GOAA.
The event itself was structured to highlight the fight for human rights undertaken by the Ecumenical Patriarch. In that sense, this was a political event. Which is what happens and is normal course for Washington, DC. Metropolitan Jonah, as having established his office here, is part of the DC environment, and participated in that sense. Which is what would be expected and proper.
All that is true, DC Indexman, but I find it interesting that no GOA bishops put in an appearance, yet Met. Jonah was invited.
This not only demonstrates Met. Jonah’s wisdom in wanting to centralize the OCA in Washington, DC, it also helps bring to bear the tragedy of Met. Jonah’s treatment from his brother bishops. He should be able to attend more events like this, instead of defending himself against the absurd accusations about his mental health. Met. Jonah should be hitting the bricks to demand action not just to free the Ecumenical Patriarch, but to also return Kosovo to Serbia, to protect the Copts in Egypt, and for the government to protect the lives of children instead of paying to kill them.
The whole scandal involving Garklavs, Kishkovsky, Stokoe, and Leonova has obviously been orchestrated to undermine Met. Jonah’s authority and credibility. But all of these people that Met. Jonah could be helping will also be paying the price.
As usual, you are correct Helga. +Jonah’s decision to actually be the bishop of the capital city proves that he takes seriously the evangelical mission to this country. This is just Orthodoxy 101. He is also going to be speaking to the American Enterprise Institute on Dec 6th (I believe) on the perils of consumerism.
I want to agree with Fr. Basil on his comments about the Houston Clergy Association. We have very good interaction generally. Unfortunately, it is true that word was not generally shared about this conference. This is certainly not the fault of Fr. David Moretti, who just arrived days before our last clergy association meeting.
We have a clergy association website, which you can see here:
http://www.orthodoxhouston.org/index.php
Personally, I would have liked to have attended at least some of the conference, but the notice was too short for me to fit it in, and the fact that the second day would be ending about the time I will be nearing the end of the Vigil I will be serving for a Great Feast is a complicating factor.
I hope it goes well though.
It would be good for all of us to be on the same liturgical calendar, preferably the calendar which is based on accurate astronomy.
The calendar is NOT a theological issue, merely a matter of custom, and the typikon is NOT on the same level as the Bible.
The Typikon can be revised, and is actually in need of some repair, since its foundational assumptions are no longer in place.
But, unlike local cooperation, discussions concerning the calendar CAN’T be addressed by a clergy association. Nor does Fr John Whiteford (or I, for that matter) have any discretion in this matter, even if he were to think the new calendar advisable (which I doubt he does). Why should this be a source of dispute here?
Here is my response to Fr. James comments on astronomical accuracy:
http://youtu.be/yROA7rO6Wq4
YEAH! Thanks, Fr. John! It’s morning and here I am suddenly waking up to the band Chicago….
The first Ecumenical Council also thought it was good that we all celebrate Pascha together. It would be good if we ALL are on the same liturgical calendar.
Father,
I take no issue with a majority of your post. Indeed it is just most factual from your experience. However, i would like to take issue with the following comment:
“Having His Beatitude as the dominant speaker on the agenda introduces issues also. On the one hand, there are the existing problems between His Beatitude and the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Greek Archdiocese (to say nothing of the other “foreign” jurisdictions mentioned in his (in)famous Sunday of Orthodoxy homily). On the other hand, there are his words concerning the meaning and significance of “autocephaly” that have aggrieved many in his own OCA.”
This is so old and tired. His Beatitude may have made a mistake back in 2009. Some of his comments regarding Autocephaly may have been misconstrued, especially those made to foreign press. But I do believe that since the spring of 2009 His Beatitude has proven that he is not willing or interested in giving up our autocephaly and the relationship between the OCA and the rest of the Orthodox world is simply too complex to take up here, and most likely impossible because there is so much politicing and back-room dealing in present day world Orthodox that we can’t possibly speak intelligently about the matter.
However, we can see that since Spring 2009 His Beatitude has met, been hosted by, has hosted and served with Primates and Senior Hierarchs of a number of the foreign patriarchates, and the jurisdictions represented here in the United States:
let’s count them since 2009:
Invited to and visited Moscow
Invited to and visited Georgia
Invited to Czech and Slovak Church (visit canceled due to passing of Archbishop Dmitri)
Hosted Metropolitan Christoph of the Czech Lands and Slovakia
Met with Patriarch Ireney in February 2011
Consistent concelebration with Archbishop Justinian of Moscow Patriarchate
Concelebrated with Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) a senior Hierarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate
Concelebrated with Metropolitan Hilarion of ROCOR
Consistently invited to and in attendance at events of the GOA
Officiated at the Funeral Service of Metropolitan Christopher (SOC) – serving in front of Hierarchal Representatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
and I am sure the list can go on.
Now to be sure there are some events that we have not been invited to, some churches/patriarchs that either have not invited the OCA, or have invited but have rescinded the invitation. Of course cheif, and soley in this category is His All Holiness. The rescinding of the invitation to the Phanar was unfortunate to be sure. And there is no doubt that we should desire, as with all sister churches, to maintain a good and working relationship with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. But I fail to see the disaster or the irreparable harm done to the OCA. Does anyone really think that if +Jonah went to the Phanar that there would have been some real dialouge on any of the issues, much less autocephaly? Is there anyone who thinks that a visit by +Jonah to the Phanar would be anything more than a perfunctory, status quo visit where everyone would have played nice and no hard questions would have been asked or entertained?
Again, it would have been nice to visit the Phanar, but there really was nothing lost in this. Now to be sure His Beatitude has had to work to rebuild some relationships with the GOA, but I think events over the years since the Spring of 2009 show that our relationships are getting back on track, at least as well as that can be at the moment.
Further, it is embarrassing to the OCA that we were not invited to send any sort of representative to the 65th Birthday Celebration of HIs Holiness, Patriarch Kirill, at which a meeting of Head’s of Churches and representatives of a majority of Patriarchates took place. But I would say this “dis” was not toward Metropolitan Jonah personally, but rather to the OCA in general. And if I had to guess, I would posit that we were not invited because of the way some of our bishops, and other senior clergy are presently treating the OCA itself and the Office of the Metropolitan. If the “dis” was because of +Jonah himself, the OCA would have at least been asked to send a lesser representative.
Anyway….Father I think you get my point. Things are not perfect, but rehashing things from three years ago is just not helpful.
So, Fr Basil, I ask that you leave this alone and move on.
Finally father, I pray that your comment “His OCA” was a simple mistake in your writing. Are you not also apart of the OCA? How is it that it is “His”?
jB
I’m short on time, so only a brief response.
The infamous homily was indeed nearly 3 years ago. However, the injury was not only to the “foreign” jurisdictions that he so excoriated, but also to the visiting clergy serving with him. I’ve made it a point to greet bishops of all jurisdictions whenever I have the opportunity to do so. All of them have treated me graciously at all times and warmly most of the time. (Several of them even remember my name, having met me only once or twice.) I was the lone non-ROCOR clergyman (to my knowledge) invited by Abp Kyrill to participate in the re-vesting of the relics of St. John Maximovitch in San Francisco in late October, and it was an honor and a blessing, especially in view of the historical conflict between the OCA/Metropolia and ROCOR.
Compare my experiences to that of the serving priests and deacons standing around Metropolitan Jonah while he delivered that homily. There are many Orthodox who are in their present jurisdictions by choice: whether because of their upbringing, or the pastoral sensitivities of the priest, or the circumstances of the parish, or even because their jurisdiction was the only one that would, for whatever reason, talk to them at some point. Speaking ill of “their guys” is matter of personal importance for many.
Thus, if I were a clergyman in one of these other jurisdictions, I’d consider carefully whether to mention this conference, in view of the risk of local scandal or confusion. Parish clergy are, after all, on the front lines, dealing with the practical aspects of what hierarchs say. Were there a broader spectrum of speakers, particularly bishops from other jurisdictions, this risk would be greatly mitigated.
As for “His OCA,” don’t read more into that than is there. I’m referring to the fact that his own jurisdiction (which is mine as well) has had some internal disagreement about the content of His Beatitude’s comments regarding autocephaly.
Fr. Basil wrote:
Please tell us more about this event. What was it like and what did they do? Cool.
A description of the service with link to photos. Yours truly is only visible in the last photo, looking rather fatigued thanks to three hours of jet lag and lack of sleep in the preceding days. I assisted with the belt, and other tasks as requested.
Truly a blessing to participate. Can you share the circumstances for the invitation by Ab. Kirill?
Fr Basil, what an honor! Were any priests from the DOW invited? How about the other dioceses (GOA, Serb, AOCNA) on the West Coast?
Father Basil, it was great looking at the photos and reading about St. John Maximovitch’s relics.I have wonderful memories of that Cathedral. Thanks.
Father Basil keeps on about that speech. Take your eyes off the sparrow and look up at the vultures circling overhead. Jeez.
Jane Rachel, like you, I have found criticisms of His Beatitude’s “speech” tiresome. In fact, the more people talk about this speech in such tsk-tsk tones, the more I detect that the critics “doth protest too much.” Nobody gives a rat’s behind about “American” bishops who’s feelings get hurt at the drop of a hat.
Let me give you an example from 2 years ago in which I almost went beserk. We were meeting in Houston at the OCL conference. The GOA sent one of their luminaries to meet and greet, answer any questions, etc. They wanted to show that all the hard feelings were in the past and the Episcopal Assembly was for keeps. (BTW, I’ve written about this extensively, it’s archived on the OCL website.)
Anyway, this priest was a very good speaker, charismatic, general all-around good guy. Hale fellow well-met and all that. What ruined it for many of us was how was describing what needed to be done as far as the bishops were concerned, what we should expect, and what we should not expect. A lot of words like “sensitivity” were thrown about, how we had to be “sensitive” about each others’ culture, history, linguistics, liturgices, etc. After all, this was an “important first step,” etc., etc., etc. He used the analogy of imagining that all 55 of these bishops were in swimming trunks and being unsure of the water’s temperature, who would go in first, etc.
Well, leaving aside the mental image that this evoked, I was deeply offended by the concept of grown men (some of whom had been in the military and probably in combat), being concerned about their “feelings.” Think of it: there are Christian pastors facing execution in Iran and Afghanistan right now but our well-paid, pampered arch-pastors, some of whom have never experienced a day’s hunger, tried to raise a family on a laboror’s wages, or heard a shot fired in anger, had to be molly-coddled lest their feelings be hurt or someone was insensitive to protocols and made a hash of the seating arrangements at the Ritz-Carlton.
What would the likes of Ss Ignatius, Ambrose, Cyprian, Maximus and Chrysostom have said to this priest had he talked about “sensitivity”? Men who died in the arena or who were exiled, or who were tortured and mutilated?
You know, we ain’t ready for what’s coming down the pike.
This is what he said:
What did he say?
Nothing! 🙂
It’s probably just a leftover line, like George may have thought of quoting the priest directly and instead decided to just sum up what that priest said about bishops and feelings.
Helga’s got the jist of it. A lot of talk about “sensitivity” and not stepping on the bishops toes. Making sure that their feelings weren’t going to be hurt and that chocolates would be left on their pillows every morning when the maids tidied up the rooms.
It makes me think of Steve Urkel with his accordion, wailing “Feelings, whoa-oa-oa, feelings, whoa-oa-oa!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixSKGBZkKtU
For what it’s worth, today is St Barbara’s Day. Let’s all wish “many years” to a certain *ahem* Barbara who regularly reads this blog.
Yes, many years to our old pal Stan. May he find healing and use the rest of his years for godly purposes.
Happy Name’s Day!
No.
The feast of St Barbara on 4 December is not Stanley Drezhlo’s nameday.
Please, let’s not participate in this madness even in jest. Transsexualism is a demonic delusion, so let’s pray for him rather than congratulate him in his delusion.
Anyone can have a saint of the opposite sex as a patron, Fr. James, so I think that’s actually not an issue. The issue is his choosing the feminine form of her name (although I don’t know if there’s a guy version of Barbara/Varvara) in an attempt to legitimize his delusion that he is a woman.
Also, there is no Saint Stan that I know of.
Dear Father James–The more I read your posts of late (this one and the one on the Garklavs-Tikhvin matter, the more I think I should give more credence to all of your postings. In Christ, Carl
I know that. My comment was not in jest, Monk James, and I don’t jest when I think about Stan Drezhlo. I just have this kind of loopy, Celtic (kind of) personality that reaches out to people in different ways, and a smile at that moment, connected to Saint Barbara, seemed the right way to say hello to Stan. His legal name is Barbara Marie Drezhlo. Saint Barbara pray for him, and all of us, and I mean that. I hope Stan Drezhlo reads this blog and this note, and want him to know I care about him. So, that’s it, then.
Carl wrote:
And that, Carl, is the precise difference between you and me. I have always given credence to Monk James’ postings. I had no reason not to, you see. I know where he’s coming from, it’s not hard to know because he’s straightforward and honest. I’ve never been able to figure out where you are coming from.
Monk James, thank you for rebuking me. Like Jane Rachel, I too have a “loopy” personality at time (actually, it’s my evil twin Skippy who influences me at times to write these things). Maybe because Stan doesn’t listen to reason that a little humor might go a long way? Maybe I should just pray for him.
TO STAN: It’s odd, but really, it makes sense. Over the months I’ve been reading his blog, I’ve tried to think of Stan the way he wants to be seen in the world, that is, as a woman. But he writes like a man. The cartoons he posts of women, as if he is the one in the cartoon, are actually insults to womanhood. We don’t see ourselves that way. Here’s a woman at the phone with lots of makeup and funny boobs, here are little pink teddy bears and fluff, and at the same time, he is slamming people and stating what he thinks is important news, but really it is nothing. Stan, stop insulting womanhood. You are not feminine at all. Women are not like that. You may be attracted to these things, but we women are not. Our strength is in our femaleness and true words about womanhood can be found in Proverbs 30. Stan, Barbara Marie, whatever. You write like a man because that’s how you were born, male. I’m just saying it how I see it.
It would not be my business, except that you keep on ragging on and on about people. You’re intelligent. Relax, have a cup of coffee, take a deep breath, sit back and think, will you?
There are multiple Slavic names which contain the root of ‘slava’ (glory), and Stanislav is the common Polish version (I believe other Slavic countries use it too). There are Slavic Orthodox saints Vyacheslav, Rostislav, Vladislav, etc…
Jane Rachel’s comments on Stan’s apparent masculinity reminded me of comedian John Mulaney’s take on drag queens. Enjoy.
As a relative new comer to this blog as well as Voices from Russia, I find those of you seemingly obsessed with a male to female transgendered individual rather interesting.
Mentioning her name on her alleged feast day, and continuing to berate the person in several posts.
Resurrecting the old canard (The Dallas Sermon) as the focal point of poor relations between the OCA and the GOA/EP is pure Kishkovsky talk. He has blathered this around the world to anyone who would listen, which is becoming a small circle since Santa Fe. If Jonah survives he should sack Kishkovsky and replace him with a bishop.
Relations with the EP actually took a major hit when Metropolitan Herman confronted the EP in Constantinople and asked him when the EP would recognize the OCA autocephaly? Anyone with half a brain knows that you don’t ask a question when you know the answer and Herman knew the answer, “Never.” Knowing that, why would he ask the question which only damaged a very cool but polite relationship? The moment the EP said, “Never” that nice boat ride on the Bosphorus turned into a trip on the Titanic for the OCA.
Jonah said what he said in Dallas and he also publicly apologized and that apology was accepted by the EP/GOA. People like Kishkovsky only bring up the speech in an effort to discredit Jonah. However the truth is that the OCA’s relationship with the GOA and the EP can improve dramatically (and the MP) with one action. If people are really concerned with improving the OCA’s working relationship with the EP/GOA/MP, then it would take one decision by the synod. Until that time, the EP and GOA will be cool if not cold toward the OCA and it does not matter to the Greeks who the OCA Metropolitan is.
Moscow is taking a “look and see” attitude toward the OCA. They have sent enough signals since Sante Fe that they are fed up with us. Sending Garklavs to Moscow to smoke out Archimandrite Zacchaeus was another dumb move since Garklavs is largely persona-non-gratis in Russia after he and his family took full advantage of the MP for the return of the Tikvin Icon.
Different day, same old problems for the OCA. Quite a legacy!
Can you tell us what that “one action” is?
What did he and his family do?
Well, lets put it this way, it wasn’t returned for nothing!
Come on, Jacob, don’t be coy.
Helga,
Not trying to be coy. The return of the Tikhvin Icon is a story that will be told someday. Just mark it down, “to be continued.”
Jacob, it’s not fair to the accused or to your audience to drop hints like that.
The Garklavs family would have a hard time defending against a vague insinuation. Also, my fond personal memories of the icon are now a little tainted by the thought of something untoward having brought that icon before me.
Monk James pointed to one of the “benefits” the Garklavs family received from the ROC for the return of the Tikhvin Icon, a dacha. Was that dacha given simply out of the kindness of the hearts of the Russian people?
Monk James did not mention the special OCA Appeal for the return of the Icon, monies that were never accounted for by the OCA. Why? Because the Garklavs family, in particular Alexander Garklavs insisted that the funds go directly to the Garklavs family. Thus there was no accounting for the funds.
How much was raised? What was the money used for? Well we know that the money was not used for transporting the entire Garklavs family over to Russia for the return of the Icon because the Russian government provided a private jet for the family to fly to Russia with the Icon. We also know they did not have to pay for anything once they were there, housing, meals, other gifts, including an automobile.
We also know that the fired and discredited Garklavs is still on the OCA payroll. Pretty good deal all around for the Garklavs family. Kudos, and thankfully the Wonderworking Icon of our Lady of Tikhvin is back where it belongs. Thanks be to God.
Thanks for posting that, Jacob. So basically they made an undetermined amount of money off of people donating to help them return the icon? And badgered the Russian church into giving them a nice trip and a summer house to stay in so that Tikhvin could have their own icon back?
This is why I get a little touchy sometimes.
Jacob says:
December 8, 2011 at 7:31 am
‘Monk James pointed to one of the “benefits” the Garklavs family received from the ROC for the return of the Tikhvin Icon, a dacha. Was that dacha given simply out of the kindness of the hearts of the Russian people?’
It’s my understanding that the house was a gift not from the church, but from the people/town of Tikhvin to Fr Sergey Garklavs. After all, it was the mayor who gave him the keys, not the bishop. And it was an act of kindness motivated by gratitude. Is that somehow thought to be a bad thing? How cynical!
I don’t know the details of the rest of the points raised by ‘Jacob’, but it seems reasonable that the Garklavs family would not have to bear the costs associated with the US pilgrimage of the ikon, its journey to and through Russia, and their personal expenses, even including the loan of a car.
Believe it or not, there really isn’t always a thief behind every bush waiting to steal money from the churches. Why can’t we put a positive spin on things once in a while?
Fr. James, the issue is not in the money, but in the failure to account for how much was taken, and how much was spent schlepping the icon around. This business of taking up funds and not accounting for them has caused no small amount of trouble for the OCA these past several years, if you remember.
Fr. Sergei Garklavs was an orphaned teenager in Germany after WWII whom Bishop John (Garklavs) adopted. Bishop John (Garklavs) exiled Bishop of Riga, Latvia, was entrusted (AS the Bishop of Riga) with the custody of the Tikhvin Icon. When he migrated with his son to the U.S. he carried the Icon with him. He became a member of the Great Sobor of Bishops of the Russian Metropolia, and for a while he permitted the Icon to abide at their Protection Pro-Cathedral in New York City. When he was named Bishop of Chicago and Cleveland, he took the Icon from New York to “his” Cathedral in Chicago. When Archbishop John reposed, the icon SOMEHOW did not pass on to any Bishop or to the Greater Sobor of Bishops, but to the ever-memorable Archbishop’s adopted SON. From that moment it became crystal clear, and still is crystal clear, that the Holy Icon of Tikhvin was completely, utterly, entirely, and absolutely possessed in every imaginable sense, by Father Sergei Garklavs. During ever-memorable Archbishop Job’s incumbency, this became painfully clear. The Icon was not even kept in a Church, let alone the Holy Trinity Cathedral, any more. It remained at home, usually in the kitchen, with the Garklavs family who decided when and for what purposes it could be let out of their custody, conditionally and temporarily. When it became clear that the conditions upon which Archbishop John’s custody of the icon were based, the reign of Bolshevik Communism over Russia had ended, the icon should have been returned to Russia. However, the Garklavs family did not want under any circumstances whatsoever the impression to be given that the Church, i.e., the OCA was returning the Icon to the Russian Church. The only way they would condescend to release the icon from their possession was if they would be the ones, and be acknowledged as such, who were doing this good deed, NOT the OCA, and NOT the Metropolitan. It’s not important how much money was received or earned by the Garklavs family or how they travelled and how they were received and recompensed: the important point is that all that “stuff” was CONDITIONS WHICH HAD TO BE MET BEFORE THE ICON COULD BE TRANSFERRED FROM THE GARKLAVS FAMILY TO THE CHURCH OF RUSSIA.
I’ve found this particular thread fascinating. Having pondered the shenanigans leading to the return of the Tikhvin Icon, I’ve created the following image titled “Ransomed” and which may be viewed here: http://s1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff436/Heracleides/
Now, really, I really hate it when I have to play mind-reading games. Such games never really pan out well except to cause more frustration. I get particularly exasperated when Hubby points at someone on tv and asks me, “do you know who that is”. Well, of course, I don’t recognize that actor and he keeps me hanging while I miss crucial moments of the show trying to figure out who the heck that person is.
That’s what I’m feeling here. Just speak up and give us the fact, please. Thank you!
Lola, I am picturing that. It’s like being in a room where everyone is speaking a different language and not taking the time to interpret for you. Arrgggh! I remember that so well from the time I spent in South Africa and everyone was speaking Afrikaans. I knew just enough Dutch and had learned just enough Afrikaans to make it truly frustrating. All they had to do was turn around and interpret, but they got caught up in the moment. Others didn’t do that but were careful to remember to interpret. Those with the ability to know what is going on sometimes neglect to remember that they are interacting with others who don’t have the ability to know. Know what I mean?
Jacob, you made two interesting statements, and I’m sure you write carefully.
You haven’t told us what the action or decision by the Holy Synod is, but it would be nice if this “action” were that the members of the Holy Synod actually decide to be holy. It’s not that hard. You just do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God. Seems to me that would make a difference.
I wonder whether the icon’s reposed guardian, Bishop John Garklavs, would be disappointed in his family if he knew the icon was returned “not for nothing” as you say, Jacob. If I had something that precious in my safekeeping, which had been given over to my care by my own father under similar circumstances, I would not think of disappointing him. He would have wanted it to be returned to its original owners with absolute integrity and not one ounce of a self-seeking motive. I don’t know, it’s such special story, very moving and inspiring. Why did you bring it up? As I was reading online about its return, the first question I had was, why did they wait until 2004? One of the conditions it seems was the restoration of the Tikhvin Monastery. Was that the reason they waited?
oh, it just occurred to me that the “something” which is “not for nothing” might be connected to one or more of the members of the Holy Synod’s (at the time) skeletons. I can’t help but wonder, because, you know, that icon is so important. If so, that is really sad.
Abp John Garklavs was my spiritual father. It was he who sent me to the monastery in 1977, knowing me better than I knew myself.
My monastery was dedicated to the Mother of God under her Tikhvin title, and for many years I was the only monk in the world tonsured under her protection. Things are better now in the town of Tikhvin, and there are many more monks there now.
It was always AbpJG’s intention that the Tikhvin ikon would return to Russia ‘when the time is right’.
While he lived, he never felt that such a time had come, but he had ideas.
Although I haven’t had a conversation with anyone in the Garklavs family about the details and arrangements for the ikon’s return to the city from which its name is derived, I suspect that its return was mostly conditioned by the fall of sovyet atheistic communism, and nothing more.
Now, after almost a century of persecution, people can come freely to ask the prayers of the Theotokos at the Tikhvin monastery, and I have no doubt that this is at least an aspect of what AbpJG had in mind.
It’s insulting to suggest that the Garklavs family was somehow bribed or financially motivated to bring the ikon back to Russia, although it’s true that the town of Tikhvin gave a house to the Garklavs family so that they’d always have a place there, near the ikon so dear to them.
Well, let’s let Jacob speak to that issue, then.
Here we have the same problem that always crops up in this OCA mess. People write something, we have to weigh what they say against what we know, and make judgments, but we don’t have any information in front of us. All we have is what people say. We are finding out that even documents are not believable. Jacob, you brought it up. Are you writing the truth?
And, now that I’ve had time to have a cup of coffee and relax and think in a quiet room, I apologize. Especially to the Theotokos.
In memory of Andy Rooney, “Did you wonder why the SIC never bothered to track down an OCA appeal for the Tikhvin Icon?”
Your Grace,
Master bless!
You are indeed correct regarding the conditions that the Garklavs family and them alone were to be the focus of the return of the Icon. Not the OCA, not the Metropolitan. This was also quite distasteful to the ROC, but they went along with it.
Yesterday Metropolitan Savas was enthroned as the new Metropolitan of the Greek Metropolis of Pittsburgh. Not one OCA bishop was present. How far the OCA has fallen since 2006. A clear signal appears to have been sent by the GOA/EP.
Stokoe/Wheeler sure knew how to tear things down but not how to rebuild. Benjamin is still gunning for Jonah as if that is the most important thing in the world and John Jillions is going to save the OCA? Amazing.
Oh, well, Jacob. I have an idea that questions asked and discussed here and everywhere else will become moot. I think the puppet-master(s?) will successfully implement a gsme plan wherein Metropolitan Jonah would agree to relinquishing the leadership of the Holy Synod in return for being elected Bishop of Dallas and the South.
What will Archimandrite Zacchaes be doing in California, as he returns from his Russian episode? A tour of duty at the psychotherapeutic monastery at Manton with Frs. Strikis, Rymer, Lisenko, etc.? Vicar of the Western Diocese? Won’t 2012 be a kick?
I have no idea if this is even considered but, if it is, it would mean riding roughshod over the OCA Statute unless Metropolitan Jonah agrees to be a candidate, along other candidates, to be considered by the DOS Assembly. I think this eventuality is remote. However, since the Holy Synod can change diocesan boundaries and assign bishops to new dioceses, it may be possible for DOS to be split into two: DOS will still be centered in Dallas, but a new one could be established for example for the Southeast. It would be this new diocese to which the Metropolitan could be transferred. Again, I am just speculating and only putting forth a scenario that is in accordance with the OCA Statute. You may call me Sergeant Shultz.
The neo-diocese would still have to be able to nominate its own bishop. This ain’t Antioch, pardner. The most the Synod could give them is a locum tenens.
Met. Jonah would be an absolute fool to trade the metropolitanate for any other position in the OCA. If he’s smart, he’ll either hang on, or else trade it for a release to ROCOR or MP.
If the current Holy Synod doesn’t want Met. Jonah as first hierarch, why would they want him as a hierarch at all?
Not to mention that transfering bishops is an enormous exception to the canons.
This is probably going to be an all-or-nothing experience for MetJ. If he stands, our OCA will stand. But if he falls, then I fear that this is the last chapter of OCA history.
BTW: Considering all the bad feelings among the bishops, and the outright hostility of a few of them toward MetJ, I’m distressed to know that they all plan to serve together tomorrow and receive Holy Communion from the same Loaf and Cup. I know MetJ forgave and forgives those who oppose him, but it must be mutual for us to approach the altar. Our Lord and St Paul are very clear on this point.
Maybe it would be better if Bp Benjamin and Bp Melchizedek, and Fr Leonid and Fr Alexander just went for a photo op, and let just MetJ serve with the russian bishops.
“This ain’t Antioch, pardner.”
Now that’s funny!
“Not to mention that transfering bishops is an enormous exception to the canons.”
No, Helga, it certainly ain’t. Canons Schmanons!
“As the Stomach Churns.”
If the Lady is weeping, I can understand why.
Bishop Melchisedek had to be in New York for today’s Lesser Synod meeting and tomorrow’s Big Fat Awesome Hierarchical Hoopla at the ROCOR cathedral. Why is he there for the LS meeting, considering he’s not even on the LS? Maybe he’s filling in for Bishop Nikon again.
I think this may be a lesser Synod meeting with the entire Synod in attendance. I don’t know what you call that.
Depending on what they do, we might be calling it a disgrace.
Helga, BP wasn’t invited to Savva’s installation. Huge slap in the face. Even if we accept the premise that he was to be at the LS (of which he’s not a member), somebody from his chancery should have been invited. Once again, the OCA screwed up, just like not being invited to +Kirill’s 65th birthday. Thank you Fr Leonid. Any other successes under your belt?
George, it looks to me like the only time other jurisdictions invite the OCA to their parties is when Met. Jonah is available to lead the delegation. (Remember when Met. Nicholas of ACROD reposed, and Bp. Melchisedek tried to use that for underhanded dealings with GOA?) It’s really unfortunate that nobody from the OCA was invited to Met. Savas’ enthronement, and I hope it’s exactly what it looks like, a snub against the backbiters in the OCA.
Yes. What we’re dealing with in the OCA is basically an abusive family situation in which all that is known is abuse. There are many factions, including the MC, Syosset, the HS, and even SVS. Here comes somebody new who was never a party to any of this and it throws the abusers into disarray. They don’t know what to do.
Will they keep on being abusive? Yes. Will it continue to be effective? Increasingly no. For one thing, the Potemkin village that is Syosset/OCA/Old Way was laid bare for all to see in Seattle. For another, the internet has exposed the corruption of the old Stokovite power structure. Plus, there is just enough sanity left in some of the abusers for them to know that others are watching. For this we can be grateful to His Holiness +Kirill and the GOA for not inviting the OCA to the recent events, and to ROCOR for inviting +Jonah.
It’s a shame that everybody else sees +Jonah for the jewel that he is but the Stokovites can’t. It kind of makes you wonder about the rationality of people who would make HB go for an “evaluation” when anybody with half a brain can look at the AEI video and see a perfectly sane man who is a true monk and has a wonderful vision. This is especially true whenever HB speaks extemporaneously, as he did at Seattle and after his prepared remarks at AEI.
The reason? Because the demographic core of the OCA doesn’t understand anything other than its dysfunction. It’s not much different than the GOA which cannot rise above the most base village mentality of the Greek people. The only difference is that with the Greeks at least there is a residual glow from a truly fantastic civilization. You see this in the ROC and ROCOR as well which were closely allied with the Russian Empire. That’s why I hold out hopes that eventually the GOA will get it together (and why ROCOR pretty much has). The fact that HB was cultivated in Russia is pretty much the only hope the OCA has to somehow grow out of its dysfunctional chrysalis.
George, I can only think of how the religious establishment of another day rejected the Lord they should have recognized, while the Gentiles embraced Him.
“’Hearing you will hear, and shall not understand; and seeing you will see, and not perceive; for the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.’ Therefore let it be known to you that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear it!” – Acts 28
(Sorry, hit the post button too quickly.)
Also, his live webcast is yet another nail in the coffin of the “Crazy Jonah” narrative. Let’s face it, Metropolitan Jonah is obviously quite healthy and rational. He spoke off-the-cuff; he cracked jokes; he answered challenging questions. He didn’t choke one bit.
So I want to know, for what reason did this man have to waste a week of his life getting “evaluated”?
He should have made Bishops Benjamin and Melchisedek promise that if he (Jonah) came out with a clean evaluation, the two of them would have to endure the same evaluation.
God grant our Metropolitan many years, and the strength and courage to carry his burdens.
You know Helga, re the “evaluation,” I still can’t wrap my head around the injustice of it all, not just for HB, but the Synod and its brain trust (Kiskhovsky, Bradley) perpetrated a fraud. I’m not kidding, I’m in the healthcare business and you don’t waste valuable and diminishing resources on someone that doesn’t need them. I look at it this way: If Donald Trump was thrown out of his house because he and his wife had an argument he could conceivably go sleep at a homeless shelter. This would be a rank inustice though because he has any number of apartments that he could go hole himself up in. Or dozens of friends that would put him up for the night. But any bed that he occupied at the homeless shelter would mean that a beggar would sleep out in the cold. Or a sober man could check into the Betty Ford Clinic, whatever.
And I see your point about the other two bishops being compelled to go. But you know what? Unless they’re a danger to themselves and others I would not want them to go either. It’s wrong to compell a man to do something against his will for no good reason other than you don’t like his management style.
While I’m on this rant I’d go even further. I’m against the whole concept of rehab centers for clergymen in general. It’s best if they went on yearly retreats to monasteries and confessed regularly to their spiritual fathers. Then they wouldn’t need rehab because their chances for falling would decrease dramatically. The reason most priests fall is because they’re caught in a pressure-cooker between a jerkified parish council, uncaring parish, and an unsympathetic bishop. There’s no support system in many parts of the country for priests, they literally are on their own.
George, I see your point about the fraudulent nature of the demand for the evaluation. Met. Jonah obviously was not in need of help.
Evaluation is sort of a grey area in terms of health care fraud since it was simply that, not an attempt to treat him for an illness he doesn’t have. On the other hand, this evaluation was totally unwarranted and unnecessary, which puts the needle back over towards “fraud”.
I think of it as similar to a scenario in which they would have decided he had colon cancer and forced him to get an unnecessary colonoscopy. It’s humiliating and time-consuming, but on the bright side, at least we now have evidence that the subject is not sick, that the accusations of colon cancer are not true.
As for the other bishops, I don’t suggest that evaluation as a retaliation against them. But there is something seriously wrong with the level of scapegoating going on here. It makes me wonder if one or both of them is suffering from mental illness. It’s been suggested here before that there’s a possibility that these accusations are a result of others projecting their own issues on Met. Jonah. If that’s the case, it would have been a major coup if Met. Jonah had been able to leverage their stupid accusations into a way to get *them* help.
I’m not against having counseling available for clergy (like the Orthodox retreat center somewhere in the South, I forgot where, that specializes in helping troubled clergy), but more widely-available spiritual care and rest are definitely necessary. Parishes in particular need to arrange to give their poor priest a few weeks off in a year. They don’t necessarily need to get a substitute priest. He can go away during a week and be back for Sunday, or he can leave presanctified gifts for a deacon to distribute, or entrust a layman to pray a Typika, or tell everyone to go to neighboring parishes one week. He needs regular confession with a spiritual father, along with conversations with his bishop if he’s not the spiritual father. When a clergyman’s problems extend beyond spiritual issues, he should be able to have counseling in a place that won’t mistake spiritual behavior for mental illness, as Stokoe did with Met. Jonah’s “staring blankly off into space”.
very well put, Helga. I still think we would have less “troubled” clergy if two things happened: 1) they had the support of their bishops, and 2) they went on regular spiritual retreats. You outlined several scenarios which show how it can be done without the church being closed for more than a week at a time.
I like the topic of the meeting in Houston. I might’ve made arrangements to go had I been given more than a one day notice but, it seems that even Houston clergy were left out so I don’t feel so bad living way out here in the middle of no where.
Much as TX isn’t my cup of oil, this looks like a seminar I’d like to have attended even if I were only one of 10 or 12.
In other news: Seeking a sign of Orthodox growth and unity?
Yesterday in Riverside, CA, the temple of St. Andrew Orthodox Church (Antiochian) was consecrated. Orthodox Christians from every jurisdiction in the region came to celebrate, including the Dread Bishop Benjamin of the OCA, and more than 40 clergy.
FYI: Riverside is a “bedroom community” outside of Los Angeles. Can anything good come from a bedroom community?
Helga and George,
I am adding this to your comments so that a new thread can be started, if necessary.
This is going to sound harsh, but the truth often is harsh. The problem with the OCA synod is not Jonah it is Benjamin and Melchizedek. Benjamin is consumed with hatred for three people: Herman, Kondratick and Jonah. He stabbed all three in the back; the most ruthless act was against Herman. He confided in Herman that he would take over the SIC from Job and would make sure that Herman would stay as Metropolitan. He then promptly did everything he could to tie Herman to the Kondratick. Herman tried to save himself by cutting Kondratick loose, and then Herman got his when he was forced to retire.
Now, Jonah is the latest in the Benjamin scorched earth policy. When Seraphim dropped out of contention for Metropolitan in 2008, Benjamin was ready to step in. His only contender, he thought was Job. Benjamin knew that Job did not want to be Metropolitan, and as it turned out when the choice was between Job and Jonah, Job stepped aside when the synod was voting making Jonah the choice. Benjamin was upset thinking that he was the better choice.
This is the mentality of the synod now, to rid the OCA of Jonah because he is not like “the rest of us.” He is not an alley fighter he actually is a monk. Instead of surrounding him with people who can shore up his weak administrative skills (if they really exist) they surround him with people who work to expose his weak points and belittle him, even to the point of making him look like he is crazy. This is a sin and it is wrong.
Because Jonah has been painted into so many corners, forced to change his mind, some in high places have called him a liar – “he says one thing then does another.” One could say that it appears his yes sometimes is a no and his no sometimes becomes a yes, but to make an entire pathology out of this is a stretch but that is exactly what people like Stokoe and Hopko with Benjamin barking at synod meetings have projected. And the result of all of this is an OCA that is so weakened and embarrassing that the OCA bishop of Pittsburgh is ignored and not invited to the installation of Met. Savas. Not invited to the 65th birthday of Pat. Kirill. These are very serious signals and will only further marginalize the OCA when it comes to the local Episcopal Assemblies.
The OCA is now seen as a jurisdiction motivated by jealousy and backbiting, led by a Primate who is clueless and a synod that is totally dysfunctional. A dry drunk Benjamin, a bishop of Pittsburgh with a known impediment in how he was released in Greece to come back to the OCA, a bishop in Canada under suspension, two former Carpatho-Russian bishops who were told they would never succeed Met. Nicholas (not that they are bad guys) a bishop of Baltimore who lives in Florida who is trying to con the synod and the DOS into accepting him as their bishop, a former representative to the ROC who is now suspended, the former dean of the DC Cathedral and DOS chancellor who was hounded out of the OCA because he was a friend of Kondratick and called two bishops turds and worms, an OCA chancellor who was fired but is still getting paid $140K a year, and worst of all, a leadership that won’t let the First Hierarch lead.
This First Hierarch wants to take the OCA into the future, build upon her strengths, expand her monastic ranks and witness, minister more aggressively to youth and college students, draw moral lines in the sand so that our youth can have social standards guided by what our Lord and the Church defend, and be willing to try new things even at the risk of failing but not willing to let the status quo rule. And, for this, he is seen, as a threat, “gravely troubled” and the attempt to hound him out of office will continue.
For all of this, I mourn. I mourn the loss of the OCA’s vitality and vision. I mourn because there is still so much that is good in the OCA but if her leaders can’t set the example of love and forgiveness, or to be more precise, won’t follow the example of her First Hierarch who has consistently since his first day as Primate offered a model of love and forgiveness, the OCA suffers and continues to be led by agendas of power (Kishkovsky), settling scores (Benjamin and Melchizedek), all in a futile attempt to control outcomes to their own benefit.
The shadow of Stokoe is still casting a mournful fog over the OCA and I don’t think it can be lifted until Jonah is allowed to truly lead the OCA, to do what he think is right and supported by those who are called to work with him and thus for the entire Church. Lest we forget, the Church spoke in Seattle that it was not happy with how Jonah has been treated and how the Church has been run since 2006. Godly change can only come to the OCA, change that can be blessed by God when we are reconciled to one another, forgiving all by the Resurrection, coming together and working as one people. Jonah is the man who can bring us together because he has no desire to neither play silly Syosset games nor devise selfish agendas.
The question is, will he have a chance? Will the many who support his vision be allowed to forge it now so that the OCA has a chance to play a role for the mission of the Orthodox Faith in the future?
Monomahkos serves a purpose in the exchange of ideas and points of view. It is a dialogue not a monologue of one “Voice”. It presents to those behind the Byzantine walls of intrigue in the synod and Syosset an opportunity on a daily basis to catch an unfiltered and unmanufactured glimpse of what people yearn for in the OCA and how we as Orthodox Christians encounter our culture. We agree, we disagree, we get angry, we ask for forgiveness, we try not to lose hope, we persevere because we love Christ, the Orthodox Faith and for those of us in the OCA, our jurisdiction. But we also want to be full partners with our sister Orthodox Churches here in the USA and around the world and not an embarrassing obstacle. Co-workers and friends; brothers and sisters in the pews and in high places, led by our Metropolitan who is supported by his brothers on the synod and a staff in Syosset. That will now take a great deal more effort because of our recent history but it can only have a chance if Jonah has a chance to be the person the Holy Spirit blessed him to be as our First Hierarch.
Today many of the OCA bishops communed of the same Body and Blood of Christ at the Liturgy in New York City. May it be for their and our salvation and not unto condemnation.
I cannot for the life of me (I mean that) figure out why the Midwest priests who threw all their support behind Mark Stokoe and what he was doing have not spoken out on this site. I just cannot figure that out. It baffles me. How can they not speak out? They could be anonymous. They certainly spoke out then, why not now? And I keep on asking them to speak, to apologize, and they are silent. They continue to serve as if nothing has happened, as if none of this truth they so adamantly denied was true, is now being proven against their will to be true. Is it because it is impossible for these priests to be wrong? They don’t want to lose face? They go on week after week, being priests, letting their parishioners go on believing they were right all along, and say not one word about what really happened. I CAN’T STAND IT!!!! I really trusted them. They told us they were honest and true priests but their silence, at least to me, belies that they are good men. I’m confused. What is the matter with me? Why should I expect anything from them? Because I trusted them. Seems like I am the fool.
P.S. Please do not give me advice. I am not the one who needs it.
I cannot speak for the priests, Jane; but I can tell you that I was at the 100th anniversary of a parish in the Midwest at which His Grace MATHIAS presided, as well as the celebration dinner that followed during which he spoke. I do not have a transcript, so I cannot quote him directly, but his words were very close to these:
“You may not always agree with the decisions I make. Not all of my decisions will be perfect, but please know that I always have the best interests of the Church and her welfare at heart.”
This was a mere few weeks into his episcopacy, and since the only major decision he had made was that of removing Mr. Stokoe from the MC the reference was clear. My wife and I had the opportunity to greet him and ask his blessing afterward. She, being a highly sensitive and spiritually intuitive soul, tends to hold politically powerful, maneuvering hierarchs in disdain; but she sensed a warmth of genuine love and faith from him (as did I) that was undeniable. And I say this while noting that there was otherwise nothing particularly ‘charismatic’ about his personality or his speech – which is to say that he’s not the type that ‘gets a crowd going’, so this was definitely not a purely emotional response on our part.
As far as the priests of the Midwest, it is important to remember that it is possible to be right and wrong at the same time. I would even venture to say that in the midst of our dysfunctional (sinful) state it is well nigh impossible that any of us are ever fully “right” about much of anything. Certainly some hearts are purer than others, some more full of guile than others, and some more gullible than others; but precious few of us ever do the right thing or believe the right things for all the right reasons.
I cannot speak for the others, but I can say with confidence that the priest of the parish mentioned above signed that statement (“Are the allegations true?”) in good conscience, believing that financial malfeasance in the Church of the Living God is unacceptable – and for no other reason.
Brian, your comments are much appreciated.
I realize the priests believed they were doing the right thing in supporting Mark Stokoe, Eric Wheeler, and Archbishop Job. They gathered around their archbishop, and asked the question, demanding financial accountability. I know they believed what they were doing was right. That doesn’t get them off the hook for their part in the destruction of the OCA.
All I had to go on back in 2006 was what I had experienced first hand and what I was reading online. Either Monk James and Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) were outright liars, or they were telling the truth. The vicious attacks on them during that time served to strengthen my growing belief that they were not lying, and that people wanted to discredit them.
It wasn’t only that, several actions by Archbishop Job that I myself witnessed when he would visit our parish; his words and actions raised the hair on the back of my neck and told me down deep not to trust him no matter what I heard or how much I wanted to trust him. Also, I googled Mark Stokoe and realized immediately he was probably gay. Well, he is. The pieces of the neat little puzzle kept popping out of place.
These priests led every parishioner in the Midwest. There is no limit to the damage their support of Mark Stokoe and Archbishop Job caused. It goes far deeper than, “Are the allegations true or are they false?”
Based on what I knew and what I had read, i would not have signed that letter. The whole thing doesn’t feel right to me even now as I think about that scene. The priests believed they were doing the right thing, but it has been proven now that they were bamboozled. They did not want to know if the allegations were true or false. They KNEW the allegations were TRUE. They knew one hundred percent that they were TRUE. Well, they were not true. They were false. Archbishop Job was a …. well, you’ve read it, too. Read what Jacob just wrote.
If I had signed the letter, I would come forward now and apologize for not questioning my unquestioning support of Archbishop Job, Mark Stokoe, and Eric Wheeler. There was enough doubt to have had a shadow of a doubt. This means I would have to look inside my soul and see what motivated me, call myself to account for my actions, and begin to make amends for the damage my (willful) inability to see the truth caused. Even now, they can at least address my concerns, but no one is responding. I would like to know why.
I am offended. My life was deeply affected by all this. I need closure.
AGAIN: Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) wrote in 2006: “The allegations are false.” Either he was lying or he was telling the truth. Monk James testified “Father Robert Kondratick is innocent.” Here was testimony from two witnesses. Not madmen, not liars. Witnesses. Even if you don’t like them, you have to listen. You can’t just discount everything they say. Er, you can, but in a court of law, you would have to look at their testimony. The two witnesses presented a shadow of a doubt.
The priests did not listen to the testimony of those two witnesses. They ignored it. I didn’t, they did. Hmmm…
Enough. I have to get going.
Dear Jane Rachel–The only thing that has been proved is irregularities in the way monies were expended during the metropolinates of +Theodosius and +Herman. In the words of Metropolitan Jonah, “Yes, we were betrayed. Yes, we were raped.” I am echoing +Jonah when I say that something bad happened when +Herman and Theodosius were primates and Mr. Bob Kondratick was Chancellor. The SIC and the Holy Synod put the blame mainly on these three people. Metropolitan Jonah apparently did the same. On the other side of the coin, we have +Tikhon (Retired) ad Monk James. Whom we choose to believe is an individual decision. Objectively, however, missing monies are just that: missing monies. They may have been stolen, not accounted for properly, or spent on perfectly good but not reportable (sensitive) purposes. The fact remains that common accounting rules were not followed and many accountability principles were not observed. To again quote Metropolitan Jonah, it is simply true that “Authority is responsibility. Authority is accountability, it is not power.”
The remedy to how to proceed was also suggested by +Jonah when he said on the eve of his election:
“We need to give them (the Synod) a chance, with the full complete voluntary, willful support of the church. Let them and help them bear their responsibility, so that you can bear your responsibility.
Hierarchy is only about responsibility. It’s not all this imperial nonsense.
Thank God, we are Americans and we have cast that off. We don’t need foreign despots. We are the only non-state Orthodox Church. In other words, we are the only Orthodox Church that does not exist under the thumb of a State, either friendly or hostile.
So the Church is our responsibility, personally and collectively, individually and corporately.”
All of +Jonah’s quotes may be found at http://www.ocanews.org/news/JonahsSpeechAtPitt11.18.08.html
“And by forgiving we are not excusing the action, we are not saying that Kondratick was right to loot the Church. We are not saying that Metropolitan Theodosius was right to advocate all of his responsibility to the bottle or whatever.”
The above is a quote from Met.Jonahs speech in Pittsburgh at the AAC.
I believe that as long as the discipline remains on Kondratick, the OCA will suffer. Just from objective observation, we have suffered and declined since 2006.
It is time, over 5 years, for his discipline to be lifted and for him to be returned to the priesthood. he should be retired and maybe even sent to another jurisdiction.
He has asked forgiveness of the synod. Why is Benjamin holding the entire Church hostage from healing and finally closing the door on this sad chapter in the OCA. Why is it more important to him to continue the sentence? Time served. Lessons learned. Forgiveness offered and accepted. We will be a better people and Church for it.
Metropolitan Herman wants the discipline lifted. The late Archbishop Dmitri wanted the discipline lifted. Metropolitan Jonah wants the discipline lifted. Pat. Kirill wants the discipline lifted. Pat. Bartholomew wants the discipline lifted. Metropolitan Hilarion wants the discipline lifted.
What do we gain by keeping Kondratick under discipline? What do we prove?
Metropolitan Jonah also said, “We do not want God’s judgement. We want His mercy.” That goes for all of us.
Here, ‘Amos’ pretty much reflects my own position on these matters except for two important details.
First, we have to remind ourselves and the Holy Synod that Fr Robert Kondratick’s ‘discipline’ was the contrived result of an unjust, unfair, illegal and immoral process.
Second, FrRK should be reinstated as a priest of the OCA, and all those people who perpetrated The Big Lie should be held accountable under the canonical principle of lex talionis:People who bring false charges are themselves subject to the penalties which would have been imposed on the subject of their lies had the subject actually been guilty.
And everyone who believed The Big Lie should apologize to FrRK and his family and ask their forgiveness.
Effectively, this would deprive Abp Nathaniel and Bp Benjamin of their episcopate and so make life considerably easier for the other bishops, especially Met. Jonah, and for our OCA altogether.
Monk James,
Although you are correct in stating what the penalties are for bearing false witness adn bringing false charges in a spiritual court and the benefit of not having the two bishops you name on the Synod, it may be that because these penalties loom that those two bishops have been so vocal in keeping Kondratick under discipline.
Forgiveness cuts both ways here and I think it is better to lift the discipline and provide then the opportunity for people to be reconciled away from the glare of the court of public opinion and before God and neighbor.
I think there has been enough judgement. It is time for mercy and reconciliation. Without the latter, the OCA will continue to wither and souls lost.
Amos, there has been no judgment.
Amos says:
December 11, 2011 at 2:46 pm
‘Monk James,
Although you are correct in stating what the penalties are for bearing false witness adn bringing false charges in a spiritual court and the benefit of not having the two bishops you name on the Synod, it may be that because these penalties loom that those two bishops have been so vocal in keeping Kondratick under discipline.’
No doubt. And this is what I keep describing in my ‘copyrighted’ [[;-)33 phrase as ‘the culture of mutual embarrassment’ which has crippled our OCA’s Holy Synod for at least the last thirty-forty years.
BASTA!
Really? Met. Theodosius ‘advocated’ his responsibilities?! Hmmmmm….
Well, anyway, it’s a good thing that ‘we are not saying that Kondratick was right to loot the Church’, since he didn’t, and today’s section from St Paul’s letter to the Colossians reminds us not to lie to each other.
Let’s get to the bottom of this, then, and get on with things. What is true, what isn’t.?You say it’s up to the person hearing to believe Monk James and Bishop Tikhon, or not to believe them. So? But the alternative to them telling the truth is that they were lying. If I decide not to believe them, then I decide they are lying. My brain won’t let me believe they are lying. We also have the fact that a judge threw the case out. I can read your words, but I can’t make them fit into anything that makes sense. If Metropolitan Jonah says that Kondratick looted the Church, I would have to conclude based on my understanding that he did not know at the time he said that, that Kondratick did not loot the Church. Truth is truth whether you decide it is true or not.
Just because you are convinced something is true does not make it true. (Again, not a well-phrased sentence. It’s still true.)
Oops. My mistake. Correction: Change “Kondratick” to “Father Robert Kondratick” two times.
I know he is not guilty of those charges and don’t want to be part of having his good name stripped from him. (I know what it is like. My good name was also stripped from me, and I am innocent of those charges, too.)The patterns don’t change with humans overall, and the tactics used against Fr. Robert Kondratick are the same as those used against me. I have other reasons besides foolishness and misplaced trust to stand on what I believe and know to be true.
P.S. I wrote the above statement about my own awful experience with injustice not because I haven’t forgiven (I have as much as I can without their reciprocation, and by God’s grace I’m healing), but, I wrote it because I post here a lot, and wanted to give a reason for my own bull-headedness. I cannot let go until I see vindication for those falsely accused and hung out to dry, and a real call to accountability for those who must be called to account. We are talking about salvation of souls here. It’s possible this side of Judgment Day, and it has to happen.
Please get this: There are no ‘missing monies’ except as were unaccountably expended by Met. Theodosius from the ADM funds, and MetT can’t now be held accountable beacuse of the way (wrongly, in my opinion) in which Dwayne Andreas donated that money. That’s it. Period.
It was Adn Eric Wheeler’s (and my own, among other people’s) objections to this which started this whole ball rolling back in 1999.
What happened to the 9/11 and Beslan monies then?
Of course. And Fr Robert Kondratick already forgave those who hurt him — not that they reciprocate in any way.
But we also must acknowledge that these two bishops have other problems which will undoubtedly result in their deposition no matter what we do about normalizing the Kondratick affair.
If Bp Benjamin and Abp Nathaniel are not held accountable, the two of them will remain in peril for their salvation, and the OCA won’t be any better, either.
No bishop in the OCA will ever be deposed for anything, unless he is convicted and put behind bars first. But even then, I’m not convinced. If things get way, way out of hand, then off to a nice retirement he goes. In fact, when was the last time an Orthodox bishop anywhere in the world was deposed for anything?
It would be too much of an embarrassment for any of the others.
The former Patriarch of Jerusalem was deposed, as was a Serbian bishop who was once a potential successor to Patriarch Pavle. These are both within the past ten years.
The OCA’s real problem has always been finding enough bishops to sign off on a deposition, but perhaps that’s getting to be less of a problem.
The 9/11 monies — like almost all ‘nonrestricted’ funds, appear to have been moved around to cover operating expenses, an OCA Central practice going back several decades. Eventually, the accounts were straightened out and the funds properly disbursed. I don’t know who to blame for this confusion, but I can say that it wasn’t malicious on anyone’s part.
Fr Robert Kondratick gave the $90k (as I recall) Beslan money, all of it, to Fr Zacchaeus Wood. After that, we don’t know for sure where it went.
I am surprised and dismayed that the 9/11 funds were not treated as restricted funds. This was not merely bad accounting practice and immoral, it constituted malfeasance in my opinion.
Exactly, Carl.
An offense to be deposed? There was a clear paper trail of all monies collected and not yet distributed. No coverup no intent to say the funds were given when they were not. Should they have been distributed sooner, yes.
But here is what is given a pass in the OCA. You have a deacon who ran off and married another man and he is still serving. A bishop who was arrested and resisted arrest, soiled himself in the backseat of the police car, and other events while he was in Alaska, and he is still serving. A cleric in the Romanian diocese who divorced his wife after she found out of his secret lifestyle, yet he still serves. Or a cleric who announced to the world he is gay, divorced his wife, but he still serves. A bishop who took personal emails of a priest, yet he still serves.
Bishop Tikhon is spot on. The synod invited Kondratick to come and answer any question of him without counsel and the synod backed out. Why? This is the legacy of the OCA and the Orthodox world sees it on full display.
Jacob, exactly.
That statement sure went by the wayside in a hurry. I have a question:
Monk James, why did Fr Robert Kondratick give the money to Fr. Zaccheus Wood?
FrRK didn’t actually hand the money to FrZ — he directed Fr Stavros Strikis to wire it to him, which he did.
As I recall, it was FrRK’s suggestion that both he and FrZ take the money to Beslan so that it would be clear that not only was our representation church involved, but OCA central as well. FrZ would have none of it and insisted on distributing those funds himself.
For all that, FrZ tried to make it look like FrRK intended to take at least half the money for himself. This wasn’t true, of course. Just another aspect of The Big Lie.
I’ve always wondered whether the money was “moved around” a lot because people don’t tithe. And lest we go down the tithing rabbit hole, just change the word “tithe” to “give enough.”
Monk James is correct about the Beslan Fund transfer and I am glad that he corrected his previous statement before I did. Kondratick never touched the Beslan money. What is important to recall is that Strikis (who is now banned from holding any OCA church office) and Garklavs (who was fired as the OCA Chancellor) both testified to the SIC that Kondratick stole OCA monies. However when both were deposed in the Kondratick civil case against the OCA and under oath and the threat of perjury, they changed their testimony and said there was NO evidence that Kondratick stole any OCA funds. That they had no knowledge of him stealing any OCA funds. The excuse Strikis gave for the Beslan fund transfer to the SIC was that he “lost” the records. Well, that is entirely possible since he would take financial records home with him, totally improper, but Wheeler did the same thing, copying records and taking them off site in his “courageous” campaign to rid the Church of Kondratick. But Wheeler is now safe behind the wall of silence with his brother-in-law now the new OCA Chancellor. A mere coincidence?
Now Garklavs has not accounted for any of the tens of thousands of dollars, maybe hundreds of thousands, that went directly to him as a result of the Tikhvin Icon’s return to Russia. Not one person except the Garklavs family knows how that money was used. There was no independent audit of those funds made public. It was indeed stupid for the OCA to give in to the demands of Garklavs to have those Appeal funds go directly to the family and not through the OCA, but the pressure to return the Icon was such that Garklavs had the OCA over the proverbial barrel and he knew it.
So the Big Lie continues and now Jonah has been compromised by it because he knows the truth and is powerless to do anything about it. He knew the truth about the DC nuns and did nothing. He knew that truth about Fester and did nothing. He knows the truth about Benjamin and Melchesedek and does nothing. He knows the truth about Maymon and does nothing. He knows the truth about Forsberg and Burke and does nothing. The synod now has him over a barrel and he is just as weak and compromised as Theodosius was. There are many ways to be compromised in the OCA and the bishops know well how to use such information to their advantage.
It is rather disgusting how corrupt this OCA synod is and as I have said before no good will come the way of the OCA until the house is swept clean and those who have things to hide come forward and repent. That includes Bp Michael who sat on the not so spiritual court that deposed Kondratick or Nathaniel who was the judge. No, Michael is now part of the what Monk James has stated very well, the synod’s “culture of mutual embarrassment.” Tikhon too knows the truth about Met. Herman and Klimechev and what really happened at STS. Why now is the synod willing to lift the suspension of Dn.Klimechev? Maybe because he didn’t do anything wrong? Why is Herman saying in writing to the synod that he regrets his role in the deposition of Kondratick and that it should be lifted at once? Why does the synod continue to table the request of Kondratick to listen to his appeal, as is his canonical right?
Folks, whether you like Kondratick or now, think he is guilty or not, the facts remain that this synod has played fast and loose with canonical order and is jeopardizing the very legitimacy of the OCA in the eyes of Orthodox Churches around the world.
And, when the story of what the Synod imposed on Jonah at the AAC comes out and the details about his stay at SLI, it will further alienate people and Orthodox Churches in the world. But if Jonah does not stand up and take on this corruption, he will be no better than those who are using the OCA for their own selfish purposes. He will be part of the problem and not part of the solution.
Jacob: Does this mean that we will soon be seeing Archdeacon Alexi Klimechev back on the traveling road circuit attending and serving with Bishops during Divine Hierarchical Liturgies — I have to say he was not the easiest person to understand – his diction and pronunciation was never clear. Maybe he has improved?
Is there a leader who is not compromised anywhere in the OCA or the Orthodox world, who will help right these wrongs, or are we stuck in this muck forever? I think we are stuck in the muck. It’s like The Tar Baby. Every time they punch it, they just get stuck worse.
Without Metropolitan Jonah leading us out of this, what else can be done? The AAC is over. 2012 is approaching. Has a date been set for Father Robert Kondratick to appear before the Synod?
I think Carl is right at least in the main here about the missing money. There was a very fundamentally corrupt culture in Syosset. Unfortunately, it’s still there. Metropolitan Jonah thought it had been removed, and he was wrong.
For instance, we had a ton of money disappear under the former administration, and now we have things like an ex-employee still garnering an unaccounted-for salary for “consultation”.
We elected a Metropolitan who for once is actually a good, humble, and morally uncompromised Vladyka, yet he gets disrespected and undermined by the people who are supposed to support him and work with him.
What has changed? I think that the previous scandal was not a struggle between a good side and an evil side, but a struggle between competing factions for control of the OCA. The Stokoe/Wheeler side won. Bishop Jonah was chosen by the Holy Spirit to be our Metropolitan, and the Stokoe/Wheeler faction didn’t argue with this at first because nobody really knew what to expect, apart from the honesty and kindness he showed everyone. They might have thought he’d be easy to deceive and manipulate, like Met. Theodosius.
Met. Jonah may be naive and forgiving, but he’s not stupid, and he certainly can think for himself. He may have bought the Stokoe line when he was a new bishop, but it seems to me he knows now he made some mistakes in doing that. He knows the breakdown was not entirely the fault of the bad Metropolitans. He knows there was more than one hand in the cookie jar. Were any of those hands Kondratick’s? I cannot say for sure, and Met. Jonah may not know either. But if he truly supports lifting Kondratick’s deposition and releasing him to another jurisdiction, I won’t stand in his way.
Please address these two points:
1) The judge threw the case out.
2) Two witnesses state that they know for certain he did not “have his hand in the cookie jar.”
The judge looked at the entire case and all the testimony and documents.
Assume the two witnesses are not lying. Or, alternatively, since you have presented an alternative, that is, that they might be lying since you don’t know if he is guilty or not, go ahead and face them right here on this forum, and tell them that you believe they might be lying.
Two witnesses, JR? How many witnesses testified before the SIC?
What “judge” threw the case out?. I have not summarily declared Kondratick guilty, only said that I’m not prepared to exonerate him and that I’d accept him being released.
I have certainly not declared Monk James and Bishop Tikhon liars. They may be right, they may be wrong but acting in good faith, or they may be wrong and lying – I do not know. Frankly, neither do you. You put a tremendous amount of trust in those people. Giving people the benefit of the doubt does not mean taking every word they say as the Lord’s Gospel truth.
What?
Bishop Tikhon just a couple of hours ago stated directly to you on this blog,
“Archbishop Job’s question: are the charges true or false has an answer; “False.””
And you just said this afternoon, “Just because you are convinced something is true does not make it true.”
Helga, if I had reason to doubt their character or their intelligence, I would show them more courtesy than you have done here. I would not call them “Father James” and “Your Grace” when talking to them directly and then turn right around and, in a sideways comment to someone else, open my mouth and say they might be lying. When you say they might be lying, you are attacking their integrity. But, enough. I’m not trying to convince you. They can speak for themselves.
Lest you concentrate on the word “attack,” protesting you are not attacking them, let me change that word “attack” to “question.” When you say they might be lying, you question their integrity. Is that more to the mark?
To all, and to Helga too:
When a person lies, he has the character of a liar. He does not speak like these monks testifying to Father Kondratick’s innocence speak. Why I even have to say this is beyond me.
I am cut-and-pasting one of the most important statements Monk James Silver has made so far. It’s important because in it he talks about the court case where FrRSK was exonerated and the judge determined the case had no merit. He talks about the witnesses – several witnesses including a priest and a bishop – who lied, and explains and answers what happened. Begin with this, and if you still have questions, ask him.
Here is what Monk James Silver wrote last November 3 on this blog:
MONK JAMES WROTE:
“It would be unhelpful for us here to go through the SIC’s false accusations against Fr Robert Kondratick.
Thank Heaven, FrRK’s attorney did just that. When he and the OCA’s attorney went through all that material in the process of discovery and disclosure and ascertained just exactly what the allegations were based on and what they meant, they then, as officers of the court, went on together to depose principal witnesses and other well informed people.
In the course of the depositions, it became clear that several of the witnesses interviewed by the SIC — including at least one priest and one bishop — had lied to the SIC. They were advised that they were under oath and subject to penalties in law if they perjured themselves again in their depositions or in court, should the matter come to trial. so they cleared the air and told the truth.
This exhaustive process pretty much demolished the SIC’s accusations and led both the prosecutor and the judge to determine that the OCA had no case against FrRK. The judge then directed an omnibus settlement which was paid to FrRK.
Clearly, he was exonerated. And that should be enough to motivate the Holy Synod to rescind their decision to depose FrRK from the priesthood, and reinstate him as a priest of the OCA.
Naturally, this leaves us wondering: What about the missing money?
The answer is: There really ISN’T any money missing — it’s just poorly accounted for. This came out in the pretrial depositions to such an extent that the competent legal authorities awarded a settlement sum to FrRK.
The OCA lost this case because of lies and cowardice on the part of churchmen trying to save their own hides no matter how much human wreckage they left in their wake.
While I don’t blame the four priests who served as judges in that farce of a spiritual court (they were just as deceived by The Big Lie as were most other people), it’s my personal opinion that Faith Skordinski, Alexandra Makoski, Met. Theodosius, Met. Herman, Abp Nathaniel and Bp Benjamin ought to be held accountable for this saga of terrible sins and crimes.
I have some thoughts on the matter which I won’t share here, but I’m confident that, once the bishops actually make sense of this whole mess, they’ll man up and do the right thing. I’m seeing some signs of hope in the words and actions of some of the bishops even now during AAC 16.
It bears repeating: our OCA will not be healed unless and until we repudiate this travesty of justice and correct it, and FrRK is reinstated as a priest of the OCA.”
» Posted By Monk James On November 3, 2011 @ 11:29 am
My question is:
Why isn’t something being done to get this man reinstated as a priest of the OCA?
Nope, the money paid to the consultant Father Garklavs was and is properly accounted for. You may not like that he was so employed after the Holy Synod accepted his resignation as Chancellor. You may not like the salary and benefits paid to him. But, you are not entitled to your own facts.
Where’s the line item, Carl? Where’s the money coming from?
I think that the following facts are established;
1. Father Garklav’s function is clear, as shown in the following OCA official report.
September 29, 2011
Metropolitan Council concludes meeting
SYOSSET, NY [OCA]
Metropolitan Council Meeting
The meeting of the Orthodox Church in America’s Metropolitan Council was held at the Chancery here Wednesday and Thursday, September 28-29, 2011. In addition to members of the Metropolitan Council, members of the Lesser Synod of Bishops also participated.
A number of guests — including Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko, advisor; Archpriest Matthew Tate, consultant on finance; Archpriest Alexander Garklavs, consultant to the Interim Chancellor; and Thaddeus Wojcik, General Counsel, were also present.”
http://oca.org/news/headline-news/metropolitan-council-concludes-meeting
2. He is paid a certain amount to function as a “Consultant to the Interim Chancellor.” I am not going to offer proof for this fact as I believe everyone acknowledges here that he is paid.
3. Th Internal Auditors did not find any reportable problems. “Finally, according to Father Eric, a written report from the internal auditors, detailing their work during the past six months, was presented. There were no issues found.”
http://oca.org/news/headline-news/metropolitan-council-concludes-meeting
4. The External Auditor likewise did not find a problem with Father Garklav’s employment or compensation. (The following link also has the letter from the Internal Audit Committee).
http://oca.org/cdn/PDFs/metropolitancouncil/2011/fall-metcouncil/fall-11-mc-other-reports.pdf
5. The Treasurers Report presented to the 16th AAC contains two line items where Fr G’s compensation may be: Executive Officers or Outside Consultants. I suggest you ask Melanie Ringa which line item covered Fr G’s services. Please note that only functions and not individuals have line items (as it should be).
http://oca.org/PDF/16thAAC/16aacfinancefinal.pdf
Then why didn’t they have a line item for him in the first place? And another one for 2012 since he was going to be a “counsellor” indefinately (until another spot with comparable pay was found for him)?
Very Mickey Mouse. Melanie Ringa was given the unenviable position of having to give a dog and pony show in Seattle and people saw right through it.
It would have worked too. That’s the way the Syosset Crew always worked, CYA.
Carl, your fifth bullet is demonstrably false. At the AAC in Seattle I raised the question from the floor concerning a missing line item in the proposed budget for Fr. Alexander Garklavs as “consultant” or de facto second chancellor. After some hemming and hawing by Treasurer Ringa, she finally acknowledged that Fr. Garklavs’ compensation (at least the four-month severance pay at his full former salary) ought to have been included in the budget. As they often say in my region of the country (Washington, D.C.), “Mistakes were made.”
Fr Alexander, I’ve always loved the locution “mistakes were made.” It’s so passive, so non-judgmental. Like “the wind blew the leaves across the pavement.”
The chancellor’s salary is two or three times what most priests get paid in the OCA. Is Met. Jonah planning on opening an OCA chapel inside Tiffany & Co.?
Helga says:
December 12, 2011 at 5:55 pm
‘The chancellor’s salary is two or three times what most priests get paid in the OCA. Is Met. Jonah planning on opening an OCA chapel inside Tiffany & Co.?’
Maybe ‘Helga’ shouldn’t be such a snot.
Met. Jonah had less than nothing to do with those outrageous salaries approved by the OCA’s Metropolitan Council.
In fact, when acknowledging the difficulty with which our OCA would pay $100k + benefits to our chancellor, secretary, treasurer and first hierarch, MetJ voluntarily took a 50% paycut — not that anyone acknowledges his humility and love for our OCA.
No. People misled by Bp Benjamin & Co. just keep heaping indignities on MetJ. Be assured that, as Shakespeare wrote: ‘The truth will out.’
Then, despite the fact that none of our parish priests on Long Island have ever been so richly compensated, none of the other officers of the OCA have followed MetJ’s blessed example. So, please, let’s not assert that living on Long Island justifies those outrageous salaries. All of the clergy and most of the laity live there on considerably less.
This is especially disgusting since the OCA’s officers (other than the metropolitan) are doing next to nothing. Basically, they have part-time jobs. Those priests who accepted appointments to OCA Central should have kept their parishes and accepted only a token honorarium for their service at Central.
This is very different from the years when Fr Robert Kondratick was chancellor. He actually worked, and worked hard, and accomplished a lot for us here and abroad.
Hello, Fr. James, nice to meet you, I’m Helga. Apparently we’ve never met before, because I’m the Helga who has been here on Monomakhos for nine straight months defending Metropolitan Jonah at every turn. I am totally, 100% on Team Jonah. I can’t even sum up my feelings about his situation without crying or swearing. You should not read that post as a snarky comment directed at Met. Jonah, but as an expression of frustration at the expectation that he find a parish for Fr. Garklavs that can pay him an equivalent salary.
Met. Jonah did *make* that promise, but it’s kind of like promising a pony to your sick child. On the one hand, you can’t break a promise like that, but on the other hand, keeping it means you’re going to be shoveling a LOT of poop.
The Met’s best bet is to interpret what he said as finding Fr. Garklavs a position that gives him an equivalent standard of living, and stick him somewhere in the South. Otherwise, he’s going to have to commit to evangelizing the Rockefellers and hoping they like to tithe.
Fr James, Helga, et al: let’s take a bit of a breather on this. We’re all on the same side but in the heat of the moment, it’s easy to make a mistake or misinterpret something.
In reply to Father Webster:
The 2011 financial report should have included the salary and benefits paid to Father Garklavs in either of the two proper line items that I saw on the report. The fact that it did not have a lined item titled “Father Garklavs” is not important. What is important from an accounting POV is to account for the expenditure and for the expenditure to have been incurred in a proper manner.
The budget for 2012 is another matter as any budget is an estimate of future receipts and expenditures. And, Father Webster may well have caught an error made in the 2012 budget. However, will the four months severance pay come out of 2011 of 2012? It depends on the accounting principle that Ms Ringa uses. What Father Webster’s observation does not tell us is whether Father Garklav’s compensation to date had been properly accounted for. What is important from an accountability perspective is that his employment as a contractor was approved by the Metropolitan Council and the Holy Synod. What is important from a “openness” perspective is that his employment was not hidden from the Church at large.
I think that some folks here are conflating Father Garklavs no longer being the Chancellor with his employment as a consultant to the Interim Chancellor. Some folks here consider that Father Garklavs was fired as Chancellor, but that did not happen; he was allowed to resign by the Holy Synod. Some people here think that Father Garklavs should not have stayed on to help the Interim Chancellor, Bishop Melchisedek, but what happened was exactly was required for continuity and his premature departure would have hurt the Church. Now some folks are carping on his salary!!?? So, I plead with y’all; get over the hurt you felt when Metropolitan Jonah could not fire him outright, and the animosity that you feel against this man of God who butted heads with your hero. Please remember that your hero has publicly praised father Garklavs’ service, echoing the nearly unanimous accolades that was given to this outstanding servant of the Church.
Carl, you state that “The 2011 financial report should have included the salary and benefits paid to Fr Gaklavs…”
Yes. You are 100% correct. However it didn’t. And it’s crap like that ticks people off and diminishes the credibility and moral authority of +Jonah’s detractors to curb-side levels. Anything you wrote beyond that point is tedentious and smacks of good-ole-boy smarminess. Nobody believes it. People at Seattle just looked at Ringa and at best felt sorry for her, probably believing that she was put forward to cover the sins of Syosset. (It’s never a good thing to see grown men cowering behind a woman’s skirts.)
Here’s a hint: when institutions practice these kinds of accounting techniques, we can be sure that they are at the point where they exist for themselves.
And how do you know that the financial report did not include such expenditures George? From the exchange during the AAC about the budget for 2012? Prove to me that Father Garklavs’ compensation was not included in the financial report. Hint: Lack of a separate, by-name line item means nothing, nada, zilch.
It seems to me that y’all are straining too hard to fault any and all perceived enemies of your hero, the saviour of Orthodoxy, your beloved Deal Leader. Y’all have written extensively that Father Garklavs was employed by Syossett. No cover up there. Y’all wrote extensively that Father Garklavs was paid for his role. No cover up there. Not one of y’all has said that secret or diverted funds were used to pay him. The only thing that I have seen is that there was not a separate line item for him in the 2011 financial report and that the 2012 Budget did not show the severance pay.
Where is the cover up here George? May be you don’t like the fact that the OCA did not personally call you to tell you of all these details? How often are personnel and salary details shouted from the rooftop George? Would you do that if you had a company or headed an organization?
I am relieved beyond words to hear this. I hope it’s true.
I apologize, I read Carl’s words too quickly and didn’t reread them. I thought he was saying that the money paid to Father Garklavs for the return of the Tikhvin icon was and is properly accounted for, or somehow glossed over what he was really saying and thought, “Oh good, everything about the money paid to Father Garklavs is above board” and immediately went to the fact that Carl Kraeff has not established a real credibility here,and then wrote my comment, so I hope he’s right that Father Garklavs is after all just another good guy. However, I would have to be convinced of that.
What you giveth with one hand, you taketh away with the other. I almost want to shout “make up your mind!” but only in amusement.
You’re right, Carl. I don’t like any of the nonsense associated with Garklavs, especially how he proved to be a backstabber. The Synod had the good sense to fire him but then lacked the testicular fortitude to stand up to BMel when he said “never mind.”
Helga. You have been misled if you believe “we had a ton of money disappear under the former administration.”
Mr. Andreas donated “a ton of money” to Metropolitan Theodosius. When resentful people like Protodeacon Eric Wheeler, one or two bishops, and an office boy got wind of this and that it was being spent without Protodeacon Wheeler’s oversight, the Metropolitan Soviet’s oversight, etc.., they were upset. Mr. Andreas heard that his gift to Metropolitan Theodosius was causing almost as much trouble as the good he wanted to accomplish thereby, he wrote out a letter, specifying that he gave money to Metropolitan Theodosius with the intent it would be used totally at Metropolitan Theodosius’s discretion, and, especially, without reference to any bureaucratic pressure from church offices. He signed it, and copies were given to every member of the Holy Synod. I have a copy myself.
When I asked a Priest close to Bishop Benjamin why Mr. Andreas’s letter was not even included in an appendix to his SIC report, he relayed to me that “the thinking is that the letter was written “ex post facto” and therefor it’s irrelevant.”
Isn’t that one of the most stupid things you’ve ever heard? ALL depositions given in evidence in trials, civil and criminal are “ex post facto” without exception!
The Holy Synod agreed that the money had to be disbursed at Metropolitan Theodosius’s personal discretion, per the donor’s requirements; however, they, that is WE, made a big mistake in that we used the words “discretionary fund.” Since “discretionary funds” for anyone are supplied by the organization in which an individual functions, that organization should and even must have oversight and control. In this case, however the funds, the “ton of money”, did NOT come from the treasury of the OCA, but from Metropolitan Theodosius well-financed POCKET. It was the expenditure of THOSE funds that Wheeler et al jealously demanded “accountability.”
Yes, Metropolitan Jonah really did not know what he was talking about at the AAC when he referred to “raping” the church or Metropolitan Theodosius’s devotion to the bottle. He was just trusting what he had been told by members of the Synod which consecrated him a bishop.
NOT one of the charges specified in the letter from Protodeacon Eros Wheeler to every individual member of the Holy Synod has been proven. Not One. Archbishop Job’s question: are the charges true or false has an answer; “False.”
People who have never ever seen that letter, speak importantly and condescendingly about it.
It was a piece of scurrilous Rubbish. Do you know it archly asserted that money had mysteriously been spent to pay blackmail of Metropolitan Theodosius for homosexuality? Look in the infamous SIC report. Where is the payment of blackmail documented or otherwise proved? Answer: Nowhere. One of the last things Metropolitan Herman was permitted to do was announced the Wheeler’s charge relative to the funds of St. Sergius Chapel at Syosset was false and could not be supported. That’s the last time ANY specific charge in Wheeler’s notorious letter was mentioned.
And please remember, as far as Protopresbyter Rodion S. Kondratick’s case goes, he voluntarily presented himself to be interrogated by the Holy Synod WITHOUT COUNSEL (HIS LAWYER) being present, but this was openly and brazenly scuttled and prevented by Metropolitan Herman, Archbishop Job, Archbishop Seraphim, Archbishop Nathaniel, Bishop Nikon in spite of my open protests (You know, “there goes Tikhon again”). He was prepared to appear but he was specifically notified by Bishop Seraphim, per Metropolitan Herman’s specific instructions; “Do NOT appear before us to answer questions as we originally agreed you could do.”
Helga graciously announces that if Metropolitan Jonah ‘supports lifing Kondratick’s (sic) deposition nd releasing him to another jurisdiction, “I won’t stand in his way.” Wow. What a relief. I wonder if Metropolitan Jonah knows this. Why, the thought that Helga might stand in his way might have been the only thing holding him back from proceeding justly!
Who thinks the Metropolitan and the rest of the Holy Synod have the balls to ask Protopresbyter Rodion S. Kondratick to appear before them and answer their questions in closed session?
Here’s a question to which I know the answer and will never reveal it: “What important Orthodox Patriarch asked Protopresbyter Rodion S. Kondratick to leave his position as OCA Chancellor and come to work on his staff?
The glass on the jealousy barometer shattered when word of that offer was heard.
Regarding the statement “Here’s a question to which I know the answer and will never reveal it: “What important Orthodox Patriarch asked Protopresbyter Rodion S. Kondratick to leave his position as OCA Chancellor and come to work on his staff?”
Reply deleted by C. Kraeff
All to easy isn’t it? Would His Holiness Alexi II, Patriarch of Moscow and all the Rus be correct?
NO
Your Grace, if what you say is true, you have the means to disembowel the SIC report if you wanted. Why don’t you do so by showing the evidence instead of taking this approach? As you like to append to some of your messages, “Noise proves nothing: often a hen after laying an egg will cackle as if she had laid an asteroid!” – Mark Twain
I don’t presume to have Metropolitan Jonah run all of his actions by me before doing them. All I said is that if he chose to rehabilitate Kondratick and send him to another jurisdiction, I would not protest it, in that I wouldn’t consider it a betrayal of the faith or the good order of the Church.
That is simply not true, Your Grace. The then-priest Kondratick did appear before the Holy Synod in March 2007, they did ask him questions, he gave answers, and they found his answers to be “neither credible nor persuasive”.
Where is this alleged open and brazen scuttling? They did what you claim they did not. The bishops’ gonads or lack of which don’t really have much bearing on the situation, as there is no link between the presence of male genitalia and moral fortitude.
Helga says:
December 12, 2011 at 10:26 am
‘(quoting Bp Tikhon Fitzgerald):
“And please remember, as far as Protopresbyter Rodion S. Kondratick’s case goes, he voluntarily presented himself to be interrogated by the Holy Synod WITHOUT COUNSEL (HIS LAWYER) being present, but this was openly and brazenly scuttled and prevented by Metropolitan Herman, Archbishop Job, Archbishop Seraphim, Archbishop Nathaniel, Bishop Nikon in spite of my open protests (You know, “there goes Tikhon again”). He was prepared to appear but he was specifically notified by Bishop Seraphim, per Metropolitan Herman’s specific instructions; “Do NOT appear before us to answer questions as we originally agreed you could do.” ”
(To which ‘Helga’ replies):
‘That is simply not true, Your Grace. The then-priest Kondratick did appear before the Holy Synod in March 2007, they did ask him questions, he gave answers, and they found his answers to be “neither credible nor persuasive”. ‘
*************************
Here, ‘Helga’ has conflated two separate events. The March 2007 appearance of Fr Robert Kondratick before the Holy Synod was scheduled so that he could present his detailed request to be heard on appeal. That request was denied, and his appeal was never presented.
The HS’s offer to allow FrRK to explain himself was later retracted, much to the frustration of Bp Tikhon Fitzgerald, as he has often stated. The HS’s refusal to allow FrRK to speak to the assembled bishops freely and without counsel present was motivated by the need of some of the bishops to avoid being confronted by their own culpability. It was CYA all the way, folks.
Because he is a christian gentleman and will not now undo all the good work he accomplished in his years as chancellor, FrRK will keep his silence in public.
But I have a strong suspicion that having him meet with the bishops now to spill it all would be cathartic for everyone concerned and could lead to a properly assigned measure of responsibility and even guilt for all parties, and might also be a necessary aspect of FrRK’s formal reinstatement as a priest of the OCA.
Without undoing that grave injustice, our OCA will never be healed. And it’s of no little importance that the same people, bishops and priests and laity, who are persecuting FrRK are also persecuting Met. Jonah.
This unchristian, unchristlike, unloving blood feud among us must cease or else the OCA will cease.
Fr. James, it says explicitly that they asked him questions, and then-Fr. Kondratick was able to give answers. That is exactly what Bishop Tikhon claimed Kondratick wasn’t allowed to do.
Now, it’s true that some of the people who have been involved in the conspiracy to undermine Metropolitan Jonah were also involved in the previous scandal. But it doesn’t automatically follow that the allegations were false. If you want to help Kondratick, PROVE HIS INNOCENCE. Don’t just tie him to Metropolitan Jonah and expect that to work. That’s the same as the guilt-by-association trick that Stokoe and company tried to pull, and there’s no such thing as innocence-by-association.
Helga says:
December 12, 2011 at 1:30 pm
‘Fr. James, it says explicitly that they asked him questions, and then-Fr. Kondratick was able to give answers. That is exactly what Bishop Tikhon claimed Kondratick wasn’t allowed to do.’
That report is false. Whoever wrote it is lying. Just another aspect of The Big Lie.
Fr Robert Kondratick was merely allowed to read his letter requesting to be heard on appeal.
You can’t believe that report, but you can believe me: I was there, and no questions followed, no discussion of any kind.
Although I accompanied FrRK to that meeting and was supposed to attend it, Met. Herman threw me out before the bishops heard FrRK read his letter, but he and I spoke about it immediately afterwards.
In hindsight, I probably should have balked longer and louder at MetH, but I’m conditioned to be obedient. Most of the time, that works for me….
Anyway, then I had to oppose MetH publicly and the rest, as they say, is history.
Oh, Helga. You said, “I will not stand in his way.” Where I went to school, Helga, that phrase means to prevent, block, or stop someone’s progress toward a goal or end. Instead of modestly admitting that you misspoke, you now claim falsely that you said something else, to wit: ‘I would not protest it, in that I wouldn’t consider it a betrayal of the faith or the good order of the Church. I repeat, standing in someone’s way and protesting are not equivalent in sane discourse.
I am willing to repeat my account of the Holy Synod meeting where Protopresbyter Rodion S. Kondratick was prevented from voluntariy appearing, as I stand before the Gospels, the Precious Cross, the Icon of Our Savour Not Made with Hands.
WHO, Helga, wrote the bizarre and probably lying account that you now proffer? Did you pick it up on Mrs. Steve Brown’s blog, perhaps signed anonymously? Or was it once sent up anonymously like a kite on the OCA’s own site, but now has disappeared in fear of being sued for libel?
Your report of something that did not happen is, I’m sure, the sort of thing to which Mark Twain referred as “noise.”
Is there ANY hierarch in today’s Holy Synod who is willing to quote even ONE question he asked Protopresbyter Rodion S. Kondratick, the answer to which was “neither credible nor persuasive.” Who, Helga, is being quoted as having said “neither credible nor persuasive.” I think someone made that up out of whole cloth.
Finally, Helga, you are imitating the hounds barking at Metropolitan Jonah’s heels when you refer to a need that Protopresbyter Rodion S. Kondratick “prove his INNOCENCE.” How could you? Were you brought up in a land where Anglo-saxon legality and American jurisprudence are unheard-of. To demand someone prove his or her innocence is, to me, beneath contempt. That’s like saying, “Whoever is accused is guilty, especially if he keeps his mouth shut.” Prove his innocence!!!! Please don’t answer, “All I said was that he should publish his side of the story.” Christ failed to “prove His innocence,” before his accusers and interrogators.
I repeat, Helga, my account of the Holy Synod meeting you declare to be untrue is, in fact, true. Were you there, Helga (I think I just heard a horse whinney!) .
Your Grace, it appears you’re unfamiliar with overstatement for effect. I might as well have said, “If he does X, I’m not going to throw him in prison forever.” It does not mean I would actually do that under whatever circumstance. What I said is just a fanciful way of saying “I don’t take issue with the proposed action”.
I do apologize for having mistakenly inserted a space in the URL I included above for the statement. The document I cited is the archpastoral statement issued and signed by Metropolitan Herman, Archbishop Kyrill of blessed memory, Archbishop Dmitri of blessed memory, Archbishop Nathaniel, Archbishop Job of blessed memory, Archbishop Seraphim, Bishop Nikon, Bishop Tikhon (Mollard), Bishop Benjamin, Bishop Alejo, and Bishop Irineu. At the time, Bishop Benjamin was bishop-elect of the Diocese of the West, so it appears that this took place after your retirement. It does not appear that you were in attendance.
Nevertheless, you and Monk James contend that this statement is a lie. Where are you planning on going with this?
As for Mr. Kondratick proving his innocence, the charges of the spiritual court and the SIC need to be disproven for people to start thinking he is innocent. You need to explain and prove where the court and SIC went wrong.
Helga, the best possible spin I could put on that statement signed by members of the Holy Synod is that it is full of holes and motivated by a desire to (1) paint over the arbitrary hiring of Proskauer & Rose, a downtown Manhattan law firm specializing in criminal defense, called colloquially, shysters, by Metropolitan Herman on his own and behind the backs of the Metropolitan Council and the Holy Synod and (2) to prevent being embarrassed by proof of incompetence. Anybody who doubts that should consult Alice Woog or Judge Kalinas. Madame Sarah Rose, who summoned Protopresbyter Rodiion S. Kondratick to a meeting in the chancery library, after he had been summarily locked out of the Chancery in order to grant access to the files to various entities, such as former treasurers and office boys, wouldn’t allow the meeting she conducted to be opened with “O heavenly King,” so the Protopresbyter left. Metropolitan Herman’s main concern at that time was to be exculpated from all culpability in any irregularity that happened when he was in charge and when he was Treasurer, after Protodeacon E. Wheeler was let go.
Helga, I guess you must be “overstating things” again? (It would be called hyperbole, if it were respectable). You accuse Monk Herman and me of contending that the Holy Synod’s statement is a lie. No, Helga, we did not and do not. It is obvious to both of us that the Holy Synod members at that time signed a statement containing falsehoods and untruths. However, falsehoods and untruths are not AUTOMATICALLY EQUAL TO LIES. To qualify as ‘a lie” a falsehood or untruth must be spoken with the intent to deceive. It’s my conviction that SOME members of the Holy Synod did intend to deceive through the untruths in it. Others, obviously, were pure of heart, and one or two were simply gullible or too tired to pay attention. One member was already given to nodding off and drooling into his beard even when i was not yet retired. Proskauer and Rose were hired by Metropolitan Herman personally with money from some Pennsylvania bank. Members of the Metropolitan Council were outraged at the time. It appears that in order to preserve peace in the Church and “make all this go away, doing whatever it takes”, the Holy
Synod allowed it to look as if they and the Metropolitan Council had engaged Proskauer and Rose an accept their, in my opinion, biased, but lawyerly, opinions. It’s interesting to me that that law firm (prestigious law firm?) did not produce one shred of evidence of wrong-doing that was adequate to bring charges in a court of law,
I agree that it is the actions of the Holy Synod and the uncanonically constituted “spiritual court” that need to be exposed for what they were. even at the risk of making present members of the administration be proved stupid.
Protopresbyter Rodion S. Kondratick IS innocent. There is no proof that he is guilty of any of the crimes attributed to him.
You know, after the Chancellor was locked out of the Chancery, suddenly and arbitrarily, all the files were immediately available to instances from the same sort of nest that prepared the Santa Fe debacle. But you know, even though files could be removed, thus “demonstrating” incompetence and mismanagement, they were unable to find OR insert any evidence of criminal action, such as violations of the criminal, civil or Tax codes.
And let’s not forget the addiction of so many to “guilt by association.” Horrors! If the Protopresbyter were to be exonerated, perhaps some might feel they could easily prove wrongful termination: for example, such as that of Mrs. Kondratick from her long term and proven virtuous stewardship of the Pension Plan.
Yes, the charges of the “spiritual court” and the SIC were never PROVED, they were only accepted by “wishing will make it so” people who would rather deal with condemning one person than accept that over 70 senior Priests and a Holy
Synod are incompetents.
“Proskauer Rose” + “Shysters” makes for an interesting google experience.
His Grace Bishop Tikhon wrote,
Well, you yourself wrote, “WHO, Helga, wrote the bizarre and probably lying account that you now proffer?” and later “I think someone made that [account] up out of whole cloth.” Fr. James went further and called the account a lie, saying “That report is false. Whoever wrote it is lying.”
The document under examination is authored by the Holy Synod, so I guess that it was probably the secretary at the time (Archbishop Seraphim) who wrote it. It was signed by all members of the Holy Synod at that time, as well as the auxiliary bishops.
Helga–In all fairness to His Grace, he has backtracked somewhat. Now he is claiming that a falsehood is not necessarily a lie (and I agree with that) and that some but not all of the bishops lied. So, did the Holy Synod lie? I cannot figure it out. (a) if some bishops lied, what the Holy Synod produced was based on a lie and therefore a lie. But, (b) since some of them did not know what they were doing (drooling into their beards in a semi-stupor) and some went along to go along, and some backed the statement out of a pure but misled heart, it may well be that the Holy Synod did not lie. Why don’t we just toss a coin?
His Grace is still claiming that the account is false. However, he has not offered one bit of evidence to back up his claim that the Holy Synod never gave Mr. Kondratick an opportunity to present his case. We do have an official record and folks who were not in the room are claiming that what the official communique says is false. In this instance, I am not going suggest flipping a coin.
Down the rabbit hole they go!
Some silly fool inadvertently provoked all this discussion by suggesting that…
“it is important to remember that it is possible to be right and wrong at the same time. I would even venture to say that in the midst of our dysfunctional (sinful) state it is well nigh impossible that any of us are ever fully “right” about much of anything. Certainly some hearts are purer than others, some more full of guile than others, and some more gullible than others; but precious few of us ever do the right thing or believe the right things for all the right reasons.”
Someone else suggested a need for closure which, in my experience of this veil of tears, is unlikely to be found this side of Judgment Day.
Knowing far less than most who post here about the historical details (which themselves seem to be questioned incessantly on all sides), I found it interesting just how ‘right’ and yet also ‘wrong’ good men on all sides can apparently be.
It seems to this fool that the words of the Apostle befit the mess in which many of us find ourselves:
“I also forgive…in the presence of Christ, lest Satan should take advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices.”
There is no need to justify anything, no need to call evil good, not even a need to deny what we believe to be true in terms of what happened. What is needed is forgiveness.
How many times I have found myself in the part of one of the (perhaps misunderstood, perhaps unjustly maligned, or perhaps absolutely guilty) characters in this tragedy! At such times I had a deep desire for mercy, and mercy was granted to me. And how many times I refused to extend that mercy to others, finding myself unwittingly delivered over to the tormentors by my own hand.
Someone may rightly reply that there can be no love without truth, yet it is also true that there can be no truth without love. It may make for less exiting internet dialog, but forgiveness is the only way forward… and it begins with me.
Forgive me.
I forgive.
God forgives all.
Thank you, Your Grace, for continuing to provide important details in the historical narrative.
Historians are forever indebted to His Grace for recounting his fellow bishops’ sexual escapades, gluttony, drinking, and, the icing on the cake, drooling into their beards. May we all have such friends and colleagues, not to say “brothers and sisters” in Christ. You know I just don’t see myself or many other folks that I know lining up to have our confessions heard by His Grace.
I think I just got forty lashes from a wet noodle.
Carl, His Grace is just correcting the historical record (as opposed to the hysterical record proferred up til now by OCAN). The OCA will never come to correction until it admits that collectively it had a problem. Just like the alcoholic who won’t go to AA because “he can handle it.”
Do I want to know about the moral weaknesses of Bishop X? Not at all. But if Bishop X and his partisans (i.e. Arb Job and Stokoe/Wheeler/Brown/Kishkovsky/etc.) are driving the OCA in a particular direction (in this case, the ground), and we have been saved from complete implosion because of the election of a neophyte bishop as Metropolitan, and this same cabal is doing everything within its power to derail actual reform –yeah, I wanna know about it. I deserve to know about it. You know, in the name of Accountability and Transparency.
It’d be different if this same cabal left things alone, decided that the jig was up, just go along to get along but they acted uncanonically when they tried to depose a duly-consecrated bishop. It’s too late to now say “let bygones be bygones.” Now what needs to happen are canonical courts, and I mean real canonical courts, not hastily convened, ad hoc kangaroo courts with no due process, records being kept, etc.
The people who acted nefariously in the past –people like Garklavs and even bishops who tried to derail the process and/or have canonical/moral impediments–need to be brought to account. If not to the bar of spiritual court then to the bar of history. For this we can thank His Grace for enlightening us and pulling back the veil of secrecy by which immoral and unethical men have heretofore governed the OCA. Nothing wrong with that.
This bears repeating: I would have been perfectly willing to let bygones be bygones, but it was they which could not let go of the past. If nothing else, a sign of spiritual and ethical immaturity.
I agree with you wholeheartedly.
Thank you Jacob, for the insight you bring to these comment boxes. I think your assessment is pretty accurate, and that is a sobering, if not depressing thing. But this dialogue is valuable. It also takes the dirty laundry of the OCA and displays it for all to see. I pray that, paying that price, we get some healing and help for our leadership and our faithful.
George, I must respectfully take issue with your statement,
My issue is specifically with the idea of rehab not being necessary for priests. While you have outlined some very real issues that create stress for our priests, that is a very different problem than the one that is addressed by rehab centers. The major example I’ll use is alcoholism, but the logic applies to other disorders, too.
About 10% -20% of the population at large is alcoholic/chemically dependent. This is a problem that is not a respecter of persons, and most importantly, the disorder is not a moral issue. Now, please note that nowhere did I say that persons are not responsible for their actions because they suffer from the disease of alcoholism. ( a bumper sticker read, “Alcoholism is a disease. Drunk driving is a crime.”) So people do terrible things while in the throes of this disease. They are accountable for these things. Repentance and amends are the methods that make it possible to live with the consequences of one’s actions, alcoholic or not. But, given the statistics, it stands to reason that some percentage of our priests may fall to this disease. Those priests will need rehab. Not retreats. Not a caring parish council. They will need treatment.
I would suggest that while all of your suggestions are good ones for dealing with the stress and isolation which are the crosses borne by many priests, NONE of these things will help someone who has crossed a line into alcoholism/chemical dependency. There are a number of methods of treatment, but alcoholism can be arrested but not cured. Treatment followed by AA attendance is the method that seems to work best for most, but even in AA, there are those who don’t get it.
The outrage of this entire charade played out by the OCA Synod is that psychiatric tools were used punitively in this situation with +Jonah. If the problem was administrative in nature, there are many B-schools and leadership institutes that deal with developing those skill sets. Inferring that lack of administrative skills equals insanity or other illness is libelous and destructive in the extreme. If there’s an example of administrative failure within the Synod, it is applying a psychiatric solution to an administrative problem. And that’s assuming no malice, a questionable assumption.
When tools like these are wielded politically, (and Jacob’s earlier posts regarding trotting out the “strategy used to unseat Bishop Basil” indicate use of this as a bludgeon) they blunt the tool and destroy its usefulness in addressing real live problems we might have among the clergy. One might even posit that this Synod was in part responsible for the demise of Bishop Job, because they offered no such help to him, when obviously he so needed it. But if these tools are considered political weapons rather than methods to help other suffering human persons, then you end up with the scenario we now have. We let people who would benefit from help die, and squander help on those who do not need it in order to neutralize or discredit political rivals. These treatments/evaluations are then rendered useless within the organization, because they are perceived, correctly, as weapons.
And the OCA is the scandal of the other jurisdictions as a result of their inappropriate use.
By the way, a little spiritual discernment with respect to our seminary candidates would go a long way in helping even with the stress problems for which you offer solutions above, George. When I see numbers of seminarians from my parish who enter the seminary with alcohol problems, with problems holding a job, with problems raising their children, then it is not all that surprising when they crumble under the weight of parish responsibilities. That discernment is squarely the job of the bishops – and it is not being done.
The candidate for priesthood must be a well formed Orthodox Christian before the additional pressure of seminary, parish, etc. is applied. Those seeking to hide from failure in the secular world will find that the demands of the priesthood will be even more daunting.
So, George, all the support you discuss should be available to our priests, and our priests should be vetted pre-seminary to be whole enough to take on the cross and blessing of the priesthood. But where it is clear that rehab is called for, it should be made available. And these helps should not have their effectiveness destroyed by using them in political games.
While Helga’s suggestion might uncover some pathology, there are some organizational dynamics solutions that should be applied to this Synod. Given the abusive and polarizing patterns that have characterized that body for a very long time, the Synod needs to engage (for some set time period) an outside facilitator, skilled in such things, to help them move into productive interactions that can move the OCA forward. There have been many boards of directors and executive teams that have gotten themselves into similar situations, and there are many consulting firms that address exactly this issue. The solution does not require labeling anyone’s psychiatric problems, although some may exist. But this group has been dysfunctional for so long, it is unlikely that they will be able to climb out of this hole without some outside perspective. They have tried scapegoating, and blaming it all on Metropolitan Jonah, and we see how well that has worked.
Maybe if they quit flinging excrement, and get some help in working together, we as a church can not only survive, but even thrive going forward.
I totaly disagree that alcohol abuse is not a moral abuse. It really doesn’t matter if a person has a genetic predisposition toward alcoholism any more than it matters whether someone has a genetic predisposition toward homosexual attraction. If God had left us to our own devices, and made available only “nature” but not “grace”, then you might have a point. However, in the laver of baptism, we are made “new creations” and we have the opportunity to cooperate with grace every day. I do not believe for one minute that if a priest spends hours a day in earnest mournful recitation of the Jesus prayer that they could not be healed of alcoholim. I don’t believe for a minute that if they spend hours a day meditating on the scriptures and meticulously following “The Ladder of Divine Ascent” that God would not give them the grace to overcome alcoholism. +Jonah has spoken in his book and some of his lectures about substance abuse. It is not a new observation, but it is true – substance abuse is an attempt to dull our minds from pain. What is the source of that pain? In some cases it comes from the wrongs of others and sometimes from our own moral failings and conscience. The fathers speak of one “shortcut” that can rapidly take us to the heights of dispassion and healing, and that is humility. Whether our pain is from others or ourselves or a combination, it really doesn’t matter. Following the way of humility, we have compassion on those who wrong us, we rejoice when the Lord blesses us with the opportuity to suffer for him, and we overcome our egos which is the needless source of much of our pain (how much of our pain is the result of feeling hurt and wronged in our egos). In 99% of the cases, troubled priests need time in a monastery with a strict Abbott, not therapy!
That said, I am not against substance abuse centers. If a priest has a substance abuse centers, they ought to go to rehab to detox, even thought theoretically they could overcome it by prayer and meditation. However, all the other psychoanalysis is not nearly as valuable as simply following strictly the spiritual disciplines that God has given us to overcome our spiritual sickness.
Alcoholism is a disease. In addition to prayer there has to be an intervention and rehab. We should look after our alcoholic members as we look after those with any other chronic disease. Christ did not come for the healthy (Luke 5:31).
As with any addiction, there is both a biological and a moral component. Of course, rehab and medical care should be taken full advantage of. However, even modern addiction programs such as AA or the twelve steps acknowledge a moral component. Healing starts with acknowledging that one has a problem. The fathers used the metaphor of the church being a hospital for the spiritually sick, but the “medicine” they required of all who come to this hospital for spiritual healing is repentance. To completely remove culpability and reduce alcoholism strictly to a physical disease is counterproductive to repentance and therefore counterproductive to true spiritual healing. I absolutely believe that everyone with the problem need our support, understanding, and encouragement; however, we do a brother or sister in Christ a disservice if we allow them to continue in this problem for years without taking the steps necessary to overcome it, and this is especially true of bishops and priests. The best thing we can do is show tough love and get such persons checked into rehab. Having said that, I don’t think there is any addiction that cannot be overcome by long and laborious prayer, but since not many have the discipline to spend the hours per day for a period of years in earnest prayer, rehab can give quicker results.
Ken,
While I have no quarrel with your characterization of alcohol abuse as a moral issue, alcoholism is another kettle of fish entirely. Inasmuch as one of the symptoms of the disease is a terrible distortion of perceptions, without some help to clear those distortions, one has little chance of recovery from the disease.
From the introduction of Fr. Meletios Webber’s book, Steps of Transformation:
There’s a passage talking about going off to a monastery not helping as well, but I can’t find it right now.
The point is this. Many clergy have attempted to treat this disease with all the activites you describe. And many alcohlics have died drunk, and unrepentant, because those priests didn’t know what to do about alcoholism when they were presented with it. I thank God for the priests and others with the humility to get someone from AA/NA involved, or help the family seek treatment, rather than take it on themselves.
Now, that said, AA can and often does lead one back to a life of faith and communion with God. In fact it is central, although as Fr. Webber says, God so loved these people that He was willing to remain anonymous within “God as we understand Him.”
This is a pretty complex area where all the help you want to proffer intuitively help fuel the disease, and does not help the person at all.
Trey, I’m not sure I buy the sharp distinction between “alcoholism” and “alcohol abuse”. No one would call someone an alcoholic unless he had abused alcohol on multiple occasions. No one would check a person’s genetics and say they have all the risk factors so they are an alcholic even if they have never touched alcohol in their life.
That said, we agree that alcohol abuse is a moral issue, and we agree that everyone with substance abuse problems should absolutely go to rehab. We also agree that AA is an excellent program.
In addition to that, we have in Orthodoxy a prayer tradition that is little known in the west, so it is hard to believe that any western author would have enough scientific evidence to know whether it works. Indeed, it is not subject to scientific analysis because how can you measure whether someone has entered into the heart in prayer? How do you measure the earnestness of prayer? How do you measure the level of distraction during prayer? All of these things have a profound impact on the efficacy of prayer. My point is, in addition to AA, the Orthodox christian should start training their mind through mental prayer. Actually, we should all do that in order to combat all the demons that afflict us.
Research has shown that the following routes, singly or in combination with others, have been successful in addressing substance use disorders (SUD):
– General Faith-based programs like AA/NA
– SUD treatment (American Society of Addiction Medicine levels of care)
– Medication-assisted SUD (currently good results are obtained with drugs such as Vivitrol)
– Specific faith-based treatment programs, such as Victorious Overcomers or the Orthodox program in South Carolina
– On one’s own
Most experts (with very few exceptions) are in agreement that there is no single best route. Indeed, most hold that a combination of faith-based and SUD treatment (preferably medication-assisted) work best for most people.
Ken,
Fr. Meletios Webber is currently the abbot of the Manton CA monastery founded by Met. Jonah. He is a credentialed counselor and an Orthodox priest of many years, and tonsured as a monk on Mt Athos, I believe. His book on Step of Transformation is one I would recommend to you, as it gives the Orthodox perspective on the Twelve Steps of AA, and on addiction, from someone who has been in the trenches, ministering to these unfortunates .
While I don’t know about his scientific evidence, I tend to trust his clinical experience with regard to this subject. While I most often agree with your posts, Ken, in this case I have been horrified by the “counseling” I have witnessed, given by well meaning Orthodox parish priests who do not have a clue what they are doing, and as a result provide guidance that destroys families and sentences sufferers to a slow painful death, both physically and spiritually.
They generally are prescribing just the things that your post of December 11, 2011 at 7:29 am outlines.
That said, I think we generally agree in subsequent posts. I particularly agree, (and I suspect most AA members would as well) with your comments on the importance of prayer.
Trey, I agree that my first post was somewhat one sided. I think we are in agreement that alcoholics and substance abusers should be in a clinical program that addresses both the biological and the spiritual aspects of the abuse/addiction, and that Orthodoxy in particular has much to offer regarding the power and practice of prayer. Thank you for giving me the background on Fr Webber. I do have confidence that his book is a trustworthy and valuable resource on the subject.
Fr. Meletios Webber has written a good book on 12 Steps and Orthodoxy, Steps of Transformation. The 12 steps were developed by two Episcopal Christians seeking to apply biblical principles to their need to overcome alcoholism. If followed, the 12 steps also foster humility, requiring the one seeking recovery to acknowledge their need for God (or Higher Power), their own helplessness (apart from grace), their need for confession and to make restitution (repentance), their need for a sponsor/mentor, etc. There is a lot of overlap between this approach to healing from addictions and that of the Orthodox Fathers–they both spring from Christian Tradition. Both can lead effectively, if applied faithfully, to a life of sobriety.
Pictures from the ROCOR/OCA Concelebration.Met.Jonah was “First -Hierarch ” because he is the leader of an autocephalous Church
http://oca.org/media/photos/concelebration-of-oca-and-rocor-primates-and-holy-synods
Thanks for the link, Stephen. It looks like it was a very (pleasantly) crowded service.
Jane, et. al,
The only one who can lead the OCA out of its current Time of Troubles, caused in no small part by Stokoe and Wheeler, is Metropolitan Jonah, however I am not sure that he is capable to stand up and lead. His inability to stand up to the synod and tell them NO to going for that humiliating and unjustified evaluation is disturbing. It not only embarrassed the OCA it embarrassed the OCA’s biggest defender, Moscow. It is like a parent having to explain the bad decisions of their child to other parents. They are not pleased, nor should they be. They too see a Church being led by a decent person but unable to defend himself and thus the Church he is called to represent.
As for the Kondratick appeal, all the synod is doing, and here again Jonah is not leading, is kicking the can down the road. They are just tabling his appeal. They have done this several times already. Benjamin, Nathaniel and Michael have no intention of hearing his appeal because they would all be exposed, i.e. the “culture of mutual embarrassment.”
As for Klimechev, I do not think we will see him on the road with the Metropolitan or any OCA bishop. He serves quite well except for his thick accent which at times made him unintelligible.
As for the OCA muck, it is our muck and no other Church really wants it on them, hence the non-invite to Metropolitan Sava’s installation, no invite to Pat. Kirill’s 65th birthday. Yes, ROCOR is serving with us, but that has just as much to do with the abundant kindness of Met. Hilarion, truly a kind and decent man, in many ways like Jonah. It is good that the historic tensions between the ROCOR and the OCA have ended. Now will ROCOR actually stay close to the OCA now that this historic celebration took place?
For now, the OCA synod is paralyzed. They want to get rid of Jonah and made their strongest attempt, and maybe their last attempt in Seattle. It has been confirmed by two sources that on the Sunday on the eve of the Council, after the synod had met in session without Jonah (a canonical infraction), they gave Jonah three choices:
1. Read the speech prepared for him by the synod (Kishkovsky)
2. Read the synod’s insert about taking blame and getting an evaluation.
3. Read his own speech and be put on a Leave of Absence.
We know now that Jonah took option two. But what is also true is that he did not have to take any the options and could have said “nuts” to you. However what this does reveal is the depth of the dysfunction inside the synod and the total loss of focus this synod now embraces.
The synod also forced Jonah to release his “evaluation” to the synod, however he came to his senses and said they do not have a right to its contents, which they do not. However it has also been confirmed that this hack place St. Luke’s Institute came to one conclusion about Jonah, that he suffers from OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Yep, Jonah has OCD, but how did they come to this conclusion? This sage evaluation center concluded because Jonah says THE JESUS PRAYER all the time, he suffers from OCD. So folks, the ranks of people suffering from OCD in the world exploded and places like Mount Athos are totally OCD centers according to the standards of SLI. I kid you not! Nice try Bradley and Kishkovsky but your efforts have been exposed.
I have said it before and I will say it again, the OCA is broken. Maybe in Jonah’s wisdom going through that useless evaluation finally exposed how sick people like Benjamin really are and how immoral a bishop like Nathaniel is. Mutual compromise is not something someone imposed on the synod back in the Kondratick days or now, it is something these bishops did to themselves by their personal choices. This group is quick to blame others but slow to accept their own misdeeds.
Jonah will remain as Metropolitan, largely because Moscow still holds a gun to the synod’s head with the clear threat that if Jonah is removed for anything other than a canonical infraction, Moscow will not recognize such a move and will recognize Jonah as Primate of the OCA, thus a schism. Nonetheless, Jonah will have tough decisions ahead, like keeping Maymon away from the DOS and any other OCA diocese, standing up to Benjamin and Nathaniel and hopefully in the not too distant future bid farewell to Nathaniel from the synod. Jonah should stand up and surround himself with people who will help him become the leader of the OCA he was graced by the Holy Spirit to be and not dragged down by handlers who exploit his weaknesses.
It is time for an OCA Reconciliation Commission to come to grips with our past and present scars heal them, scar tissue and all, be reconciled to each other so that we can move forward together. Without such an effort our future efforts will not be blessed by God. If our leaders are truly interested in leading and setting a Godly example, they will take the first step. Will they?
I maintain that Met. Jonah did no wrong in accepting the evaluation, because he has nothing to fear from the truth. If he was in fact diagnosed with OCD and this was in fact based on his practice of hesychasm, any idiot with a passing familiarity with hesychasm can see the diagnosis is garbage.
Even if he really had OCD, many people who have that live normal lives and can minimize the impact of their obsessions. Thanks to pop culture and prominent, outspoken sufferers like David Beckham and Howie Mandel, people are not generally inclined to fear someone with an OCD diagnosis.
I would have thought the point of the evaluation was to get a diagnosis that could be passed off as “medically-certified incapacity” so they could declare the Metropolitan See vacant. If that’s the case, the “evaluation” battle is a failure for the bad guys, and a victory in the Jonah column.
God bless our Metropolitan Jonah.
good points, Helga. I still think it was a fraud perpetrated by bad-faith actors. If provable, then it’s actionable in court. Kind of like going to an orthopaedic surgeon and complaining about back pain so you can get on Oxycontin. Fraud. Jail time if convicted.
Leaving that aside, what’s delicious about this is that the rump faction of Stokovites can’t use this “diagnosis” in the secular, administrative, New-York-state-corporation-commision-way-of-going-after-+Jonah. Like, “one of our major executives won’t show us his medical records” type of thing. Have these people never heard of HIPAA? Do they not realize the civil liability that they’ve exposed the OCA to? Given their track record with the court system, we have a right to ask who in heaven’s name is their legal counsel?
Jacob, it looks like Metropolitan Jonah tried but he can’t get anywhere. He did try to:
1) expose/fire Fr. Garklavs
2) get Fr. Zacchaeus Wood back from Russia to get the truth out of him;
3) start an investigation into Bishop Benjamin;
4) and more, no doubt.
this is just for starters, and he was stopped cold every time.
excellent distillation of the reality on the ground JR. It’s not possible to argue with them. Maybe that’s one reason the Stokovites are so spitting mad.
Also, on another note, is it just me or does anybody else think that OCAN was shut down because it was becoming too much of a liability? I’m beginning to think that it would be easier for the anti-+Jonah forces to pursue their agenda under the radar but that he kept unwittingly revealing it.
I mean, think about it: thanks to readers (like Helga) we were able to bring to light certain rash and audacious statements made by MS over the months and years which helped us build the case that he was a propagandist and provocateur; that he represented the old Syosset Set and its insular management style.
George did you say a while back that Stokoe and Brown are no longer attending Fr. Ted Bobosh’s church? Not for gossip, just wanting to know what’s up with those two. I think it’s important. Also, are the parish priests still communing active homosexuals in the OCA, and especially in the Midwest, especially after Bishop Matthias wrote his letter several months ago? Also, are any priests in the Midwest who supported Stokoe and Archbishop Job now questioning themselves and their part in what happened? If you only had good in mind, are you not still responsible for being unable to see something was wrong? If you didn’t, aren’t you concerned about it now that the truth is coming out? And if you still don’t believe it, why aren’t you posting that you don’t believe it and give your reasons? Why are you silent? Don’t you want to speak out, join together with your bishops, and get this Reconciliation Commission organized to help get your OCA turned around before it gets so bad you lose your OCA?
Sorry, I get carried away.
(I tried to get my former (Midwest) priest to listen to those who were speaking out six years ago, telling the real truth, and he verbally slapped me upside the head more than once, so yes, I’m kind of aggravated with him. He can’t be wrong, you see, and no one can question him. It took a lot of “bravery” to stand with Stokoe, now where is your bravery?)
Jane R, that’s what I heard. I don’t know about the other particulars. I would hope that the priests in question would listen to their bishop.
Jane, re: your third point. Didn’t either Fr. Garklavs or Fr. Kishkovsky recently bring Archimandrite Zaccgaeus back from Russia? And isn’t the MP Priest on St. Catherine’s staff in charge of the place according to the OCA’s own web site? I’d heard that the was being sent to the DOW, but not why. His mother lives in Las Vegas and is usually on the Diocesan Council of the DOW. So he could be going to visit her. Or he might be appointed to join the monastics Strikis, Lisenko, and Michael Rymer at the Manton therapeutic monastery. Let’s just hope no one’s planning to make him a vicar bishop somewhere or other. He’s not on the OCA clergy list, as far as I can tell.
Your Grace, I truly was speculating and have NO IDEA what I was talking about.
Neatness and organization are a couple of the characteristics of OCD. No disrespect to anyone with OCD
And they want to characterize Jonah with OCD come on who are they trying to kid. If he has OCD, he has well hidden hallmarks of the disorder.
Wow. There’s a lot there Jacob. Personally, as abhorent as I think the forced evaluation was, the fact that +Jonah still wears the white hat –given the fact that the Stokovites threw everything AND the kitchen sink at him–means that they have effectively lost. Now it’s just a war of attrition. From a church’s point of view not a good thing but given the circumstances, not a bad thing either.
I’ve always believed that if you’re only ruling paradigm is to throw excrement then ultimately you’ll fail. Even a victory would be pyrrhic because that’s not an effective executive paradigm. It also lasts so long before the excrement is used up. As an old Sunday School teacher told me a long time ago: “Any jackass can kick down a barn, the question is, what’s gonna replace it?”
The Stokovite paradigm of a corrupt group of insiders running the show can only work as long as the funds keep rolling in and the people being kept ignorant. It also helps to have some geographical focal point as well. With the national chancery being exposed as a Potemkin village in Seattle and fund-raising at an all-time low, then the rats will eventually scatter. It’s only a matter of time before the bishops start falling in love with the New York Plan and thus acruing more power to themselves. And then comes the selling of Syosset.
George, I think you’re right about this turning into a war of attrition. Now that Stokoe has stopped posting their battle plans, they can work in secret to torment Met. Jonah further.
Well, not to worry. Perfect love casts out fear. If we find ways to draw closer to Christ in our own lives, I think we will see the OCA transform into something that the Stokovites cannot handle. They will either be transformed or sent away empty. The OCA will only crash and burn if we let them drive it to hell. I think that will be the best way to honor Met. Jonah’s patience and long-suffering.
Couple of points. First, congratulations to “Jacob” who is better positioned than the Holy Synod and is privy to an evaluation that is known only to Metropolitan Jonah. Second, I believe that OCD can be controlled by medication, so, if Jacob is correct (and we have no grounds to disbelieve him), the Metropolitan should be the great leader that he can be–as long as he is compliant of course.
And, as an aside to +Jonah’s defenders, aren’t you ashamed and sorry for having claimed that this evaluation was for nothing? It turns out, of course, that he does have a disease–nothing to be afraid or ashamed of. I think y’all should fall on your knees and beg the forgiveness of the real heroes who saved +Jonah:
Mark Stokoe
Father Garklavs
Bishop Mark
Father Kishovsky
Bishop Benjamin
Bishop Melchisedek
Bishop Michael
Archbishop Nathaniel
Bishop Matthias
Bishop Nikon
Bishop Tikhon
etc.
You have no right to jump to such a conclusion. You are in a feeding frenzy at someone’s expense and should be ashamed of yourself.
Jane, don’t let the man-child rile you. Carl is simply engaging in what he does best: being a caricature of himself. Mrs. Stokoe-Brown may have departed the public stage, but his #1 fan-dance boy remains… (that brings an intriguing image to mind. You happen to have any photographs online Carl? I’ll have to look). 😛
Okay, I’m going to indulge myself: MRS. STOKOE-BROWN. How do I feel now? A bit better. Thanks, Herc!
Heracleides, i’m not sure that’s Mrs. Brown behind the fans/bubbles. The style is a lot more of the Puerile Protodeacon ilk, in my estimation. I’ve been waiting for him to come out with “delusional”, which would clinch it, but so far he’s eschewed that pothole. Note, he didn’t include “Protodeacon Eric Wheeler” on this list…..Surely Karl would have to name him a hero, unless he’s somehow modest or overly secretive.
In actuality Bishop, Carl is some mid-level government desk-jockey for the State of South Carolina I believe it is. Like you though, I also have to wonder why Carl omitted “Protodeacon Eric Wheeler” – one of the shining stars of the Stokovite pantheon – from his list of knaves. Care to amend your list, Carl?
But, I have every right to agree with Jacob. Quite a few regulars have done so with amazing consistency in the past. Why do you begrudge me the same privilege?
PS: Dear JR, that was no feeding frenzy, just a little nibble.
Carl, that’s not agreeing with Jacob; that’s demonstrating a refusal to understand what he wrote.
(And, yes, funny as it seems, Carl is right here: he went into a feeding frenzy over a little nibble.)
Don’t call me dear. I know a feeding frenzy and you are a tiny shark.
Carl: that sounds like a character assassination attempt on +Jonah to me.
(Maybe you should add your name to the list of “heroes” who “saved” +Jonah?)
Father Deacon Nicholas–Why don’t you say that to Jacob? I merely took him literally.
I wish I could be as sure as Carl Kraeff is of the benevolence of the men he listed here.
To my taste, there’s far too much behavior to the contrary.
Let’s face it: Met. Jonah’s style is NOT to everyone’s taste, but that’s mostly because people are used to being poisoned by false shepherds and healthy fresh fodder is so strange to them that they can’t get it down.
This is especially ironic since (probably the same) people were clamoring for years to have REAL monks for bishops. Well, now they have one, and they don’t know whether to &%#! or go blind, as we Irish say.
May the Lord guide MetJ to share with us all the results of his ‘evaluation’ in the context of his continued good health, and make known his intention to remain in office.
After that, a great many good things can happen.
Until now, though, our OCA is still experiencing an Эпоха Застоя (‘Era of Stagnation’) such as Russia endured after Stalin’s death: All the standards which held them together until recently were gone, and nobody knew how to behave.
For us, this has been true since the blessed Met. Leontiy’s death, or at least since the death of Met. Ireney. Who? said: ‘I’m running and running just as fast as I can just to stay in place.’
Holy archangel Michael, intercede for us with God, and protect our OCA.
Carl, are you SERIOUS? Even if the *ahem* “evaluation” was OCD, all that means is that we’re in a world of hurt. Have you ever heard of the Jesus Prayer? Don’t you know that we’re supposed to pray it non-stop? Especially if you’re a monk? Do you think I give a rat’s tukhus about what some worldly “clinicians” at a “Catholic” institution who know nothing about hesychasm think?
As for SLI, are you aware that they “cured” Fr John Geoghan, who later went on to continue his pederasty and brought the Archdiocese of Boston to the point of bankruptcy? Do you think we are idiots? Just because the Stokovites and their acolyte Fr Denis Bradley thought SLI would be the place tells me all I need to know about them.
Lord have mercy.
George–Are you telling me that +Jonah wais praying the Jesus Prayer all of the time when he was being evaluated–that is the evaluation that he had agreed to? You say you are in the health field; wouldn’t you love to have such a client, who comes to you for an evaluation and instead he prays the Jesus Prayer all of the time. I find it amazing that you believed Jacob’s fabrication. Why am I saying that it is a fabrication? Jacob himself said that +Jonah refused to share the results of the evaluation with anyone. So, unless Jacob=+Jonah, it must be a fabrication. OTH, if Jacob did not fabricate this tall tale, then +Jonah comes across as an unserious person, at the very least.
Carl,
Sadly your ignorance of the practice of the Jesus Prayer is rather startling. You might wish to do some study of it before you make a bigger arse of yourself here. I will give you a clue, again, it is called the Prayer of the Heart.
You stated previously:
Fabrication? Let me write this in BIG LETTERS for you, dear Carl; Jonah can share the results of his “evaluation” with who ever he wishes. That is his right. What is not a right is for anyone, including members of the synod, to demand that he share those results.They may have forced Jonah into SLI but that does not give them the right to demand the results. Now, Carl, you didn’t quite get that before so I hope you do now.
Whether you believe me or not Carl is of no matter to me but your attempt to play a game of misdirection with the facts falls flat. You’ve struck out on this one. Go grab some bench.
And yes Anna, enough talk about this ugly chapter perpetrated by members of the OCA synod on Jonah. It is time for Reconciliation not more attacks on a man who is being persecuted because he tries to pray without ceasing.
OK Jjacob, enlighten me how a person who is sitting together with a doctor, psychiatrist or counselor can be saying the Prayer of the Heart at the same time as listening, understanding, responding to the professional who is interacting with him? It seems to me that if one is able to do both at the same time, without doing injustice to either, then the diagnosis of OCD based on the practice of the Jesus Prayer, as YOU intimated, is not possible. It would be possible, however, if +Jonah was doing justice to the Jesus Prayer and not to his interaction with the Institute professionals. Y’all cannot have your cake and eat it too. I have no idea what your game is but you are not helping +Jonah. Indeed, in your past few postings you have called him “compromised” and basically accused him of being a gutless wonder.
Carl, you don’t know how Met. Jonah was interacting with the evaluators. They may have been observing him while he was told he was waiting for something, to see how he behaves when he thinks he’s not being watched. Perhaps they observed him appearing to play with a weird little knotted rope, possibly moving his lips, and decided his behavior was a compulsion of some kind without asking what it was. Perhaps they *did* ask what it was, and the Metropolitan’s explanation was misinterpreted. Roman Catholics are more familiar with the rosary which has mysteries to consciously visualise, whereas in Hesychastic practice, that sort of thing is not encouraged.
That is a possibility. However, I doubt very much that (a) the staff would not have asked for clarification before jumping to such a conclusion (besides, weren’t there two other bishops with him?) and (b) Jacob’s presentation does not lend itself to such an interpretation. He explicitly claimed that “This sage evaluation center concluded because Jonah says THE JESUS PRAYER all the time, he suffers from OCD.” I found that to be highly unlikely for two reasons. First, I doubt that a bishop or a metropolitan who necessarily lives in the world has that gift. Second, I just cannot believe that the Institute’s evaluation report actually contained those words. Regarding my first reason, I acknowledge that I am being presumptuous in going from the general to the specific, perhaps as much as those who claim that +Jonah has that gift. I really do not want to explain my position any further as I am afraid I may say things that will upset the usual (excitable) suspects on this forum.
In any case, from the “conversation” so far, it appears that
a. As the referral organization and in accordance with the Institute policy, the Holy Synod had expected to see the evaluation results. (Jacob’s first post)
b. In line with the expectation, +Jonah signed a release form authorizing the disclosure of the evaluation results to the Holy Synod. However, he later reconsidered and withdrew his consent. (jacob’s first post)
c. Apparently, +Jonah shared at least the core finding of the evaluation with some folks. Could have been a particular member of the Holy Synod, as Jacob intimated in his subsequent posts, or even to Jacob himself for he has not answered your specific question whether he obtained the information from +Jonah himself.
e. What we know so far about the evaluation is that +Jonah has been diagnosed with OCD. Since this is his second psychological evaluation and this finding was not present in the first one, it seems to me that +Jonah could ask for a third evaluation if he wished. I certainly would because, although OCD is controlled by medications (with or without talk therapy), I would not want to be on medications for the rest of my life unless it is absolutely necessary.
f. What we do not know is the source of Jacob’s information. Did he see the actual evaluation report or was he told (first or second or even third hand) what he relayed to us? Either way, there is the possibility for personal misinterpretations and slants. As it is, the reader is faced with the words of an unknown poster (at least to me) whose claims cannot be verified and whose take on this matter is beclouded by his previous postings.
g. To follow up on my last point, I cannot figure out if Jacob is for or against +Jonah. He has been very critical of him and has characterized him in very negative ways. I am not going to cite chapter and verse as anyone here can check this out.
kraeff, you sure are duplicitous!
You want to plant this idea:
You really want everyone to believe +Jonah is a nut job. All the rest is sweet-smelling garbage to hide your intention.
Ian–I merely took what everybody has said so far on this forum and laid it out. I did not say that +Jonah has been diagnosed with OCD; Jacob did. Now, it is true that Jacob also hinted that it is a misdiagnosis. I do in fact hope that +Jonah has another evaluation done on him by a third facility because compliance issues are quite severe in any life-long disease.
BTW, I resent your use of the term “nut job.” Ignorant and prejudiced folks like you have been the major reason why there is so much social stigma attache to mental illness. Please educated yourself about mental illness by visiting National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) site at http://www.nami.org/
Thank you, Carl. I have decades of life experience with many people who have bipolar disorder, OCD, ADD/ADHD, major depression, Asperger’s, math disabilities, and other conditions. John Q. Public is irresponsibly and inexcusably “out to lunch” about these disparate conditions, often lumping all such things into the same blob of his personal ignorance. (I deliberately listed an assortment of mental, emotional, and educational conditions to illustrate my point.) They are quite varied and nuanced.
I also shall repeat my firm opposition to anybody, no matter who it is, divulging (if knowledgeable of true information) OR speculating regarding the private matters of another individual, without express permission from that individual. Sometimes I wonder if Met. Jonah suffers just as much from his supporters as he does from his detractors.
Antonia, I agree with you, but your outrage should be directed at those persons (Denis Bradley being one of them) who are NOT qualified to make diagnoses and force a person (in this case +Jonah) to check into a mental institution based on no basis other than they don’t like the way he runs the OCA. This is nothing short of repellant.
Don’t resent the term “nut job” Kraeff. It’s how you want people to think. You want to debilitate +Jonah, have people think if him as unstable and unfit. Why else write:
When confronted, you back track:
and recommend that he gets a third evaluation!
No, there’s no real compassion for people suffering from mental or emotional issues here. Instead its the worst sort of duplicitous pandering to prejudice.
Are you a lawyer?
I appreciated Carl’s post. Jacob can answer if he wants to.
Antonia and Carl are RIGHT.
P.S. wrote that quickly but I’m back long enough to say I believe Jacob and have no problem believing that he has permission from Metropolitan Jonah to write what he writes. But I do appreciate Carl’s post because it was easier to read and understand what he’s saying this time.
I saw a cartoon on facebook the other day. A squirrel is lying on the psychiatrist’s couch. He says, “Someone told me you are what you eat, and suddenly I realized I was NUTS!”
Metropolitan Jonah or any monk or nun could be misunderstood in a mental health institution. Think about their every day lives, their rule of prayer, chanting psalms, praying before candles, icons, praying to saints, doing prostrations, saying the Jesus Prayer, using a prayer rope, being silent, and not being conformed to the world, but being transformed by a continuous renewal of the mind, of knowing about the nous. His Beatitude Metropolitan JONAH is ORTHODOX. There is East – who is Jesus Christ, the Orient from on high . There is West – Freud, the western mindset, and western humanism on which mental health institutions and all their perceptions of reality are based, and the twain can never meet. It took two seconds to realize Jacob was telling the truth. I see no reason for him to speak unless he wants to. So I’m not asking, because he says where he comes from there is no foisting. Yeah.
JR, you’ve summed it up very well.
Carl, frankly, this whole thread of conversation makes me uncomfortable. I have trouble believing Met. Jonah would want his medical information, skewed as it may be, poured out by an anonymous source on an internet blog. Surely Met. Jonah is capable of releasing the results himself if he wishes them to be known.
Also, it’s a little suspicious to me that this is so precisely what some of us worried would happen. I am old enough to know not to take things that conform to my preconceived notions at face value.
I am also feeling uncomfortable, particularly because we are the final stretch before the Feast of Nativity and what we are talking about pales into insignificance as we contemplate the awesome Incarnation and all that means for the human race. I am starting to feel that I am cheapening God’s gift to us by indulging in relative frivolities. So, I will take my leave. I greet you all with:
Christ is born, glorify Him, alleluia!
Amen, Helga. I don’t know how Jacob got a hold of that information –and we are assuming here that it is correct (but it may not be)–regardless, we can now see the folly of this entire affair –including HB’s acquiescences. (He should have said “no.” It’s a complete sentence. “Hell no,” is a paragraph.) Anyway, given that two other bishops accompanied him to this “evaluation,” and given the fact that Fr Denis Bradley is well acquainted with this facility, the alleged diagnosis (OCD) may have slipped out from others than HB. Indeed, +Jonah is such a man of integrity that he is constitutionally incapable of playing such games.
Let’s ask him yet again. Jacob, did Metropolitan Jonah give his permission for you to write about his evaluation on Monomakhos?
P.S. Did he tell you to keep silent if asked? Why are you silent about it, and what are you doing here?
George, I think the critical thing is that Metropolitan Jonah wasn’t taken into residential treatment, meaning that SLI found nothing wrong to the point where he couldn’t or shouldn’t function as Metropolitan. That’s what the Metropolitan’s enemies were looking for, and precisely what they were denied by SLI.
I’d bet the two bishops were there when he was given the results at the end of the week. If SLI had given any indication that Metropolitan Jonah should stay for treatment, his enemies would have tied it like a rope around his neck and hanged him by it.
Provided Jacob’s report is accurate, both in the results and his interpretation of them, the Metropolitan’s best bet is probably to get a more specified evaluation from someone more familiar with Orthodox spirituality. This can confirm that he prays the Jesus Prayer because he’s really praying, and not because he has a pathological compulsion to do so.
I know that you don’t agree with the Metropolitan’s decision to go through with the evaluation, but even if he didn’t write this part of his speech, I think he truly did go through with it out of love for us, his flock. There’s more courage and humility in one Metropolitan Jonah sitting in a shrink’s office, than in a hundred screaming Nikons or conniving Melchisedeks.
I think Jacob’s intentions were probably innocent, but we got into this in part because of the level of cruelty and disrespect directed towards the Metropolitan. It’s especially important for “our side” to offer him the love and respect he’s due.
Jacob, I have to ask, did you have Metropolitan Jonah’s permission to divulge these results? I appreciate that your apparent motives in revealing them were not malicious, but the poor man has had his life dissected by those cacodemons on Orthodox Forum as well as by Stan and Stokoe. Not to mention those totally uncool posers on the Synod now have what they wanted (although it’s not what they were hoping for). I would like your assurance that the Metropolitan would not have a problem with your revelation about his evaluation results.
Now that the genie’s out of the bottle, it’s good to know that Met. Jonah has a medical certification that he has no personal health issues serious enough to preclude him from remaining as Metropolitan. This should finally lay this “gravely troubled” nonsense to rest.
Helga,
I will not give up my sources for this information. Asking me is not appropriate. I will say again, I know what I reported is true and sources confirmed the story.
Don’t lose sight of the main point, the synod got a “diagnosis”, that is what they wanted, however, they can’t do anything with it because who cares, SLI was compromised the moment that Kishkovsky and Bradley angled for the synod to place Jonah there and the synod was further compromised when they gave Jonah three choices in Seattle. They exposed their desperate hand, they played it and Jonah in the end exposed them for the compromised and self-centered group they have become. Folks, Jonah won this round.
However, as George stated before, the OCA is in a stalemate. That is why the synod is paralyzed. They know they can’t rid themselves of Jonah. The OCA is weakened beyond measure by all this nonsense since OCAN launched its assault on Jonah.
The real genie that is out of the bottle is that the synod lost and Jonah won. What the future holds is anyone’s guess. I am not positive about the OCA future, I think Jonah is a flawed and weakened leader. I think he is compromised by his lack of support on the synod. Can he gain their trust and support? With a couple of retirements on the synod things can get better. Can Jonah forge a strong working relationship with his new chancellor? That is up to both Jonah and Jillions, but yes it could happen. Are there dragons still lurking that would further damage the OCA? You bet, Maymon is one of the biggest and Melchesedik still has his canonical issues.
Like Carl, I am going to take my leave of this issue as we get ready for Christmas. I wish all of you a joyous holiday.
Jacob, I did not ask whether it was true or who your sources were. I asked if you had Metropolitan Jonah’s permission to divulge this information, which should come from him directly. Do you?
I’m thinking he says, “Asking me is not appropriate” for a good reason. Since I can’t picture Jacob, I’m seeing Church Lady saying, “Wouldn’t be prudent!’
Again, JR, I don’t care who his sources are. I am not asking him to divulge that. I just want his assurance that he has Metropolitan Jonah’s permission to give out this information.
Jacob wrote:
I’ll betcha Metropolitan Jonah would agree with you. In fact if he answered, “I am not! I am not flawed and I am not weakened!” there would be reason to worry. I’m thinking of the Prophet MOSES. We used to sing a song years ago in YWAM based on St. Paul’s words that goes like this: “He is strong in my weakness, He is long in my shortness. The more I lose, the more I gain. The more I give up the more I obtain.”
Carl, in all seriousness, you really are displaying a startling amount of ignorance in this matter for all the world to see. If you truly find it strange for a real monk to pray the Jesus Prayer all times during waking hours then I suggest you not visit an Ephraimite monastery. I’ve personally witnessed the monks at St. Anthony praying the prayer of the heart non-stop even as they transplant trees, use a leaf-blower in the garden, harvest oranges in the orchard, or while repairing one of the many churches and chapels just after a monsoon rain. On second thought, since you are east-coast OCA, perhaps you should visit a real Orthodox monastery in order to broaden your apparent myopic spiritual horizons.
He is also ignorant of the fact that, as I understand it, according to the worthiness of the practishioner (which I believe +Jonah undoubtably is), and only by the favor and Grace of God, the prayer decends into one’s “heart” there to repeat itself silently but consciously without personal effort no matter what one is ingaged in.
Carl is just being silly or dramatic–that is the only explanation.
Its well known that monks say the Jesus prayer–we even seen it on 60 minutes–the monk being interviewed basically says “even now, while im talking with you, im saying the prayer”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F7-J_qdepM
This is clearly what happened. Jacob, what you say makes sense. And you write with the kind of voice familiar to me, where I can recognize truth is being said and not lies.
Carl, if you would care to look at the track records of those you have supported in the past? Father Robert Kondratick is not guilty of the charges. You support those who condemned him. Metropolitan Jonah is not guilty of the charges, and you support those who condemn him. Yet you yourself said to Monk James that you are beginning to believe him. So you are capable of changing your mind. It would be nice if you would change your mind here, because Monk James, Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) and Jacob are all telling the truth about what they know first hand. They are not lying. Say it to yourself a few times. On the other hand, you could say the Jesus Prayer instead and see if your heart begins to soften towards those who have been so terribly wronged. Yesterday you jumped on more than one innocent man. It would not hurt if you changed your way of thinking to, “Maybe these people are telling the truth” and start from there, instead of, “I will begin with the presupposition that they are lying” and go from there. Logical reasoning only works when you start with reality. Turn around.
Carl wrote:
No. You are wrong. You messed with what Jacob wrote and you have done that before. That is your track record, messing with what people say, not reading carefully, turning and twisting what you read to fit into your world view. You were wrong, Carl. Can’t you see what we are saying? Your logic is flawed because you read everything Jacob writes with the preconceived notion that he is lying. Jacob is telling the truth:
Duh. Carl. Wake up.
Yes Carl, that’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s called the Jesus Prayer. The prayer of the heart. Hesychasm, you might want to look into it Carl. It’s part of our religion.
Is Carl an Orthodox Christian? If so, which “jrisdiction” does he belong to?
No need to be ugly Deacon Nicholas. My entry into OCA was with the Bulgarian Diocese with which I believe you are familiar. After some other excursions, I am back with the OCA. This is of course something that I have communicated to all on this blog, multiple times. I really hope that it is a case of advanced age in your case that prompted yo to ask your question, rather than spite.
Better “watch your step,” Carl. I believe there’s a federal law that prohibits the advertisement of a person’s name on the www without having expressed consent to do so.
Regardless of the existence of a law, it appears that I have hit a raw nerve and I apologize for that. As for your name, I have no idea what it is; I just guessed that NJ were your initials. Based ion that assumption, I though you MIGHT be called Nicholas.
George–You should know that I am not unfamiliar with the Jesus Prayer, the prayer of the heart in hesychasmic parlance. Indeed, my familiarity is such that I suspect that very few bishops, let alone heads of churches, are capable of practicing it 24/7. The following snippet from Wiki is close to what I understand hesychasm to be. Please correct me, Deacon Nicholas and all of the other experts on this subject. The bottom line for me is, having read either primary or secondary works, that it would be very hard for a person in +Jonah’s position to be a hesychast. Again, I expect to be corrected.I do not appreciate, however, knee jerk reactions such as those expressed by yourself, the esteemed Deacon Nicholas and the funny man.
“Hesychastic practice involves acquiring an inner focus and blocking of the physical senses.
The Hesychast interprets Christ’s injunction in the Gospel of Matthew to “go into your closet to pray” to mean that one should ignore the senses and withdraw inward. Saint John of Sinai writes: “Hesychasm is the enclosing of the bodiless primary Cognitive faculty of the soul (Orthodoxy teaches of two cognitive faculties, the nous and logos) in the bodily house of the body.” (Ladder, Step 27, 5, (Step 27, 6 in the Holy Transfiguration edition).)
n solitude and retirement the Hesychast repeats the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The Hesychast prays the Jesus Prayer ‘with the heart’—with meaning, with intent, ‘for real’ (see ontic). He never treats the Jesus Prayer as a string of syllables whose ‘surface’ or overt verbal meaning is secondary or unimportant. He considers bare repetition of the Jesus Prayer as a mere string of syllables, perhaps with a ‘mystical’ inner meaning beyond the overt verbal meaning, to be worthless or even dangerous. This emphasis on the actual, real invocation of Jesus Christ mirrors an Eastern understanding of mantra in that physical action/voice and meaning are utterly inseparable.
While he maintains his practice of the Jesus Prayer, which becomes automatic and continues twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the Hesychast cultivates watchful attention (Gr. nepsis). Sobriety contributes to this mental askesis described above that rejects tempting thoughts; it puts a great emphasis on focus and attention. The Hesychast is to pay extreme attention to the consciousness of his inner world and to the words of the Jesus Prayer, not letting his mind wander in any way at all.
The Hesychast is to attach Eros (Gr. eros), that is, “yearning”, to his practice of sobriety so as to overcome the temptation to acedia (sloth). He is also to use an extremely directed and controlled anger against the tempting thoughts, although to obliterate them entirely he is to invoke Jesus Christ via the Jesus Prayer.
The Hesychast is to bring his mind (Gr. nous) into his heart so as to practise both the Jesus Prayer and sobriety with his mind in his heart. The descent of the mind into the heart is taken quite literally by the practitioners of Hesychasm and is not at all considered to be a metaphorical expression. Some of the psychophysical techniques described in the texts are to assist the descent of the mind into the heart at those times that only with difficulty it descends on its own.
The goal at this stage is a practice of the Jesus Prayer with the mind in the heart, which practice is free of images (see Pros Theodoulon). What this means is that by the exercise of sobriety (the mental ascesis against tempting thoughts), the Hesychast arrives at a continual practice of the Jesus Prayer with his mind in his heart and where his consciousness is no longer encumbered by the spontaneous inception of images: his mind has a certain stillness and emptiness that is pun
This stage is called the guard of the mind. This is a very advanced stage of ascetical and spiritual practice, and attempting to accomplish this prematurely, especially with psychophysical techniques, can cause very serious spiritual and emotional harm to the would-be Hesychast. St Theophan the Recluse once remarked that bodily postures and breathing techniques were virtually forbidden in his youth, since, instead of gaining the Spirit of God, people succeeded only “in ruining their lungs.”
The guard of the mind is the practical goal of the Hesychast. It is the condition in which he remains as a matter of course throughout his day, every day until he dies. It is from the guard of the mind that he is raised to contemplation by the Grace of God.”
A lot of good “book learning” there, Carl, but you still seem to have missed the most important fact that true, unceasing, Prayer of The Heart comes only as a Gift of the Holy Spirit and only to those who are proficent in living the commandments of Christ “at all times and in all places.”
Dang, Carl must be off of his Meds again!
This is the most absurd diagnosis I’ve ever heard of.
are you discussing fr denis Bradley from DC?
Carl,
You missed my less than subtle point. Just because a man says the Jesus Prayer as it is supposed to be practiced does not mean he suffers from OCD. A so-called diagnosis by someone looking for anything makes not prayer without ceasing an affliction. Are we all clear on this now? To be even more clear, the Metropolitan does not suffer from OCD because he practices the Prayer of the Heart. He practices the Prayer because he prays it without ceasing. No diagnosis required and no legitimate SLI was therefore made.
Carl, those whom you quote are the ones who should be on bended knees before Jonah, a modern day Joseph, asking him for forgiveness as a first public step in an OCA reconciliation process.
It is an absolute fact that diagnoses of mental conditions by “mental professionals” are not always correct. Mental professionals cannot always be trusted. They will contradict each other over one patient. They who don’t know him and know nothing about him put him in a monkey house, watch him for a few days, can’t figure out where he is coming from because it’s not in their books, have to come up with something, some words to write on a diagnosis page to justify their jobs. I am sure Metropolitan Jonah could have been given a false diagnosis given the fact that he is an Orthodox monk. The fact that he would remain silent while he was there, and pray before icons he brought there, and use his prayer rope, would confuse them. If he was washing his hands obsessively or exhibiting compulsive behavior or admitting to having compulsive thoughts, then maybe. Does he exhibit behavior like that?
Jacob, you seem to know him. Are you sure that he does NOT have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?The reason you give for that diagnosis, saying the Jesus Prayer, doesn’t fit OCD, that’s for sure, but it would definitely confuse the Western-minded psychiatrists.
No.
Lord God, give Metropolitan Jonah peace, give him confidence, give him strength.
Amen.
And let’s all ask the holy archangel Michael to protect Met. Jonah and our OCA from the attacks of the demons who beset us.
I pray talk and speculation like this about Metropolitan Jonah stops. It is disrepectful and none of us know anything and it’s not our business. It’s our business to pray for him. Name the source or stop gossiping about our Metropolitan.
I did not miss you point, which was rather far fetched and not at all subtle. I did not think that you are privy to the information and I think you made up the whole thing to discredit the Institute just in case they had found something. I just played along to see what sort of a manipulator you are.
ADDED: Not so good as it turns out. Perhaps now folks will start wondering just what other manipulations you have tried to foist upon us.
PPS: Why is it that those who are calling for reconciliation and healing are picking on the scabs? It seems to me that you are not looking to reconcile, but to avenge yourself; not to heal, but to wound, to ruin the enemies.
Let’s see. let’s ask. Jacob, did you make the whole thing up?
Picking on scabs like when we were six and scraped our knees when we fell down on the sidewalk with our roller skates?
I want to see some apologies and admittance of wrongdoing. As God says, “vengeance is mine, I will repay.” You may not realize how scary God can be when He is angry. I’ve seen it. WOW. SCARY is putting it mildly. Millstones. Necks. Bottom of the sea.
There has to be truth told to the extent it is necessary, justice for the crimes and destruction, a reversal of the actions taken to destroy the innocent, and then there will be reconciliation if those who have been called to account are willing to reconcile. You can’t force reconciliation with a committee. But you can call these people to account for their evil deeds. Then healing will happen naturally because the wounds will have been cleansed and not just bandaged.
Again, JR, no. Didn’t make it up. I live in a no foisting zone!
Here I would smile, so…. 🙂
I have read so many speculations about the reality (or non-reality) of Mr. Kraeff, I finally have decided to address the topic. I personally knew Carl and his family in the early 1980s. (He has no reason to remember me, as I was naught but a lowly graduate student.) We attended the same parish. What jurisdiction that was, and where that was, is immaterial. I suppose the readership now may speculate on whether or not I am imaginary.
Changing subject now to Met. Jonah and whatever is the true substance of his evaluation. IT IS PRIVATE INFORMATION AND NONE OF OUR BUSINESS. The Holy Synod maybe possesses a legitimate need to know some elements of the results. Nobody else does.
For many people, OCD is no big deal. It has neither warped my life, precluded successful jobs, nor prevented a happy marriage of nearly thirty years. I insist that all hangers on my side of the closet be spaced equidistant from each other. BIG DEAL !
My mother was successfully medicated for OCD and bipolar syndrome. So, THERE!
Do you address me so strongly? Or do you address somebody else? If addressing me, I don’t see any connection to what I wrote. My intent was to note that OCD is a condition that responds well to treatment, and which very often does not impair daily life. I am glad that your mother received successful treatment for her health conditions.
Antionia, I think he is agreeing with you and not addressing you negatively or critically.
I wasn’t addressing anybody — merely pointing out that OCD, like several other mental illnesses, can be treated pharmacologically with or without behavior modification training.
I’m glad for you and your mother, Monk James. Yes, it’s true for sure. When there is a correct diagnosis and when the medication works, lives change for the better.
I was genuinely unclear about Fr. James’ post. There is so much vitriol on this blog — (and I was reluctant to attribute any to a hieromonk) — that I wanted only to clear up any misunderstanding before it grew. I posted my initial observation as an “independent remark”, rather than as a reply to someone, with hopes of preventing such “chains” of replies as occur and escalate to inappropriate degrees and content. I’m glad, then, that this is not the current direction taken. At any rate, I am a full-blown champion of battling the misperceptions and lies rampant about mental health conditions, emotional health [conditions], and learning disabilities.
Monk James is not a hieromonk. He is a monk. I am a fierce proponent of battling misconceptions about monastics! 😉
Thank you, Jacob. I am not acquainted with the man, and from somewhere had picked up that he was a hieromonk. I appreciate the correction.
Mea culpa: I am guilty of calling him Father James.
I was once instructed that any tonsured monk is still addressed as “Father”. Novices are addressed as “Brother”. Much the same with female monastics, except that I believe they are all called “Sister’ except for Schemanuns, and particularly abbesses, who are called “Mother”. If I am wrong here, perhaps Bp. Tikhon can clarify this.
Tonsured monks are called Father; tonsured nuns are called Mother. Novices are called Brother or Sister. I believe that sometimes rassophores will still be called Brother/Sister; sometimes they are called Father/Mother at that point. I don’t think the difference is between monks and nuns, I think it’s just a variance between monastic traditions.
Although it is right to refer to hieromonks as “Father”, to keep down confusion, hieromonks will often be referred to as “the Hieromonk Firstname (Surname)”.
You are welcome.
This link to an article titled, “Are Psychiatrists Inventing Mental Illnesses to Feed Americans More Pills?” was posted on my Facebook page, so I thought I’d post it here for people to read who are interested in the subject.
Looks like something a Scientologist would write.
StephenD–You may want to reread the article. Quite a few professionals have come out against some of the changes proposed for DSM 5. Now, the title may have been writen by a Scientologist, but the article itself is thought provoking.
I work with a woman who is on the DSM-V Committee on Children’s Disorders and she has a few issues with how DSM-V is evolving. This article however is a little over the top..
Jane Rachel, the short answer: yes.
That 60 Minutes show about Mt. Athos will be rebroadcast as follows:
CBS News “60 Minutes” will rebroadcast their The Monks of Mount Athos segment 25 December 2011 at 7:00pm. “The Monks of Mount Athos recounts 60 Minutes Correspondent Bob Simon’s journey to the remote peninsula in North Greece that millions of Orthodox Christians consider the most sacred place on earth, Mount Athos.”
http://www.goarch.org/news/mountathosrebroadcast-12162011
Why wait? You can watch it right here, right now:
“60 Minutes” and “Behind the Scenes” Video of Mt. Athos [VIDEO]
But . . . it’s not close-captioned. The broadcast version is.
Speaking of Orthodox unity, the “DC Nuns” seem to be fitting into ROCOR quite nicely. They recently hosted a hierarchical visit at their temporary from ROCOR’s Met. Hilarion who tonsured another sister into their ranks and ordained more clergy to serve their growing needs. At their feastal meal afterwards they were joined by OCA’s Met. Jonah who released them to ROCOR earlier in the year.
http://entranceofthetheotokos.org/
http://www.eadiocese.org/News/2011/dec/dccnvt.en.htm
While it’s not quite Athos, both links mention that the sisters are still planning to move to a permananent home in rural Maryland and are seeking support.
Praise the Lord! And when we think about how the Stokovites wanted to deport them back to Greece, I suffer bouts of sadness. If what OCAN reported was true, that Bp Mel was behind it, then shame on him.
I smile when I read the word “deport” and remember Stokoe describing them as the “Greek nuns”. For as we now know, all but one sister was born here in America. They now belong to us, and are back where they are sorely needed. I’ve since heard that one of the newly ordained fathers is an attorney, so it seems they will be well counseled spiritually and temporally.
The first link is worth following if only to read the Abbess’s personal story. I remember the Kansas City Hyatt tragedy, and was surprised to learn of her connection and severe injuries. I’m also awed by the spiritual connection to the Athonite elder whose prayers protected her. So, indeed, prayer can be very powerful. Praise the Lord, and may He bless and protect all the sisters, and let their ministry grow.
Pravoslavnie, what a sweet post. Their constant prayers are helping us! We desperately need them here in the U.S., praying for us. Thank God for monasteries.
Thanks so much for those links. I had heard an interview with Sr. Aemiliane a few years ago and didn’t realize she was the Abbess for this group of nuns. Wonderful they are here! God be praised!
Most psychological evaluations are several pages long. Jacob gave us two small snippets from Metropolitan Jonah’s. Did Jacob’s own passionate agenda determine his selections from that document? If we read it in full, would we select the same two pieces of information? Would we come away with a different interpretation? What did the rest of the evaluation include?
Jacob gives the impression that the psychologist(s) diagnosed OCD based on the Metropolitan’s practice of the Jesus Prayer. That would be like a psychologist concluding OCD based on a person keeping a tidy house. Not very likely. Mental health professionals do not base a diagnosis on one piece of evidence but on a convergence of evidence. What other evidence did the evaluation offer for the OCD diagnosis?
Some have speculated that the Jesus Prayer and the life of a monk might be strange to the evaluators, and so they misread the Metropolitan’s behavior. But the website of the St. Luke’s Institute describes their staff in these terms: “many are professed religious and priests who bring a lived understanding of Religious life to their professional roles.” Did anyone notice that the Chief Operating Officer of the Institute is a Benedictine nun? Moreover, in the last several decades, Catholic spiritual writers have written articles and books as well as given retreats and workshops not only on the use of icons but also on the Jesus Prayer. If the evaluators were Catholic religious, the idea of them considering the Jesus Prayer as a bizarre and strange practice seems unlikely. I suspect Jacob’s account is not the whole story.
May the wrath of HIPPA law fall with a resounding crash upon anybody who wittingly releases information from somebody else’s medical information without the express permission of that somebody. The laws include protection of psychological and psychiatric information. All I have observed on this webpage is a feeble bleating, “Don’t ask me for my sources.”
Meanwhile, my prayers for a blessed Feast of the Holy Nativity for everybody here and throughout the world, on both calendars of observance.
You “suspect”?
Mathes, all your questions are open ended, you offer no facts, your allusions are vague (“some have speculated…”), and your endorsement of St. Luke’s is taken from their website. This is as duplicitous as Kraeff. Why not say what you really mean?
Here’s the suggestion you want to plant: Jacob’s analysis cannot be trusted, the evaluators at St. Luke’s are top-notch professionals, so how can we be sure that +Jonah is not mentally ill?
+Jonah should never have agreed to the second evaluation (Kraeff just suggested he go for a third!). It gives dishonest men like you more grit to wear him down. You use the people here to do it.
Ian, please let me clear up some misunderstandings. I am not anti-Jonah. Furthermore, I have seen nothing that would constitute a reason for the Holy Synod to remove Metropolitan Jonah. From my standpoint, the most challenging critique of MJ comes from Jacob.If I undersant him correctly, Jacob sees the Metropolitan as a holy man but has doubts about whether MJ has the strength of character, the firmness of resolve needed to save the OCA. But Jacob does not see this as a reason for removal, nor do I. Even if the OCD diagnosis is true, it would not be cause since as Carl Kraeff and others have pointed out, it is quite treatable and manageable.
My point was not about Metropolitan Jonah, but about Jacob’s account of the psychological evaluation (not even about Jacob’s integrity). When a person with a strong agenda is the only source for information about a document that I cannot access, I believe that I am reasonable to be suspicious. If we have more than one source and they have competing agendas, we can at least compare the similarities and differences to form a better judgment about the document. Even then I would advise caution.
Ian, contrary to your claims, my questions are based on facts: Psychological evaluations are several pages, a mental health diagnosis is based on the convergence of different pieces of information, St. Luke’s Institute does employ the Catholic counterpart of Orthodox monastics as professional staff, and for several decades Catholic teachers have written and spoken about the spirituality of the Jesus Prayer and icons.
Also, I never claimed nor implied that SLI are “top notch professionals.” But they do have graduate degrees and so know how to write psychological evaluations. That allows me to infer that MJ’s psychological evaluation is several pages and that the OCD diagnosis was based on several pieces of evidence. Hence, I reasoned that Jacob’s account only gives us two snipets of a much larger document, and the diagnosis is based on more than the Jesus Prayer. I have no idea whether I would consider their evaluation “top notch” or even reasonable.
Furthermore, I did not quote the SLI website to endorse them or their evaluation, but to bring up a relevant fact about the background of SLI staff: many belong to Catholic religious orders. That has relevance for their interpretion of MJ’s spiritual practices, not for the accuracy of their diagnosis.
My words “some have speculated” referred to the contributors to this blog. In accepting Jacob’s account about an OCD diagnosis based on the Jesus Prayer, several offered possible scenarios that required an ignorance of monastic life and the Jesus Prayer. I raised questions about those scenarios based on facts about the composition of the SLI staff and the presence of the Jesus Prayer in Catholic spiritual circles since at least the 1970s.
As for your charge that I am “dishonest,” do you have some fact other than I am a descendant of Adam and Eve? I did not really see how I was “dishonest” in my post.
Thomas, SLI’s website details what goes into their evaluations, and from the sound of things, this is what Metropolitan Jonah went through. Loosely translated, they checked him for all kinds of problems. I don’t think Jacob necessarily needs to go through the whole exhaustive list to be telling the truth. Jacob may not have seen those parts of the evaluation, and/or they may not contain anything of note. If, for example, they found Met. Jonah has at least average intelligence, who cares? Anybody can tell that by talking to him for five minutes. We don’t need to know how he scored on an IQ test.
What has concerned me was Jacob refusing to answer my question about whether or not the Metropolitan would be okay with what he posted about the evaluation here. Whether it’s a legit diagnosis or not, Met. Jonah should have the right to control the release of his medical information. His dignity has to be worth something, right?
Thomas, your concerns are reasonable to this reader.
First, I do know for certain that there are times when mental health professionals, unable to make a diagnosis they can be sure of, will make one anyway, whether they are sure of it or not. I also know they can be dead wrong. The client might not quite fit the diagnosis, but he must be made to fit, so that when they chart at the end of the day something can be written down and drugs can be prescribed. It is not hard for me to picture Metropolitan Jonah saying the Jesus Prayer all the time, and from that, getting an OCD diagnosis. If there was more to it than the Jesus Prayer, well, it’s none of my business/beeswax.
Second, as to whether the person who calls himself “Jacob” had permission to post the information he posted, I understand that it would not be appropriate for him to tell us. The fact that he won’t reassure us just because we ask does not make me want to doubt that he tells the truth, knows the laws concerning disclosure of information, and is not breaking the law or being unethical in revealing it.
I don’t want to see this charade continue in the Holy Synod. If discussion on this blog makes any difference at all in helping the OCA to survive and the people to be helped, then let’s talk about that. Christmas is almost here! Renewal and hope are coming!
Reposting this seems appropriate at this point: