Stokoe lobbies for a faction of the Metropolitan Council. We know that from the leaked emails. He’s not a journalist. He’s trying to shape public opinion while posing as a “journalist.” His credentials aren’t any better than the guy with an internet degree from Billy Bob’s Bible Institute who wants to be the head preacher.
+Stokoe is out to get +Jonah. OCAT was set up to counter Stokoe. One reason Stokoe was so threatening was that many people believed him. I was one of them. That’s why I wrote a letter in support of +Mark a few weeks back urging his appointment as Bishop. Once the veil was cracked however (and what cracked it was all the reports coming out of Dallas), did I realize my only source of information about +Mark’s character was Stokoe, Now we know Stokoe’s only source of information when he was hammering +Phillip was +Mark.
The emails stolen from OCAT has revealed the identity of the writers, but what outrage is there really besides the fact that the writers kept their identity hidden? There could be good reasons for this (there may have been professional considerations) but even if there aren’t, anonymity is the only real complaint. But OCAT isn’t out to unseat a sitting metropolitan. OCAT exists to counter OCANews. OCANews exists to blacken and remove +Jonah.
The onus is still on Stokoe. Why is his name on emails that reveal a plan to unseat +Jonah that predate his “reporting”? Why is he unable to provide a canonical justification for +Jonah’s removal? Why do his reports follow the plans outlined in the leaked emails? Why is a member of the Metropolitan Council undermining a sitting bishop? Why are there only a handful of members of the MC on board with this? Why hasn’t Stokoe been called in to explain himself?
Now here’s the hard part and why people are so upset with OCAN. If Stokoe can’t really be trusted, then what about all his previous reporting? How much is fact, how much is spin? How much was driven by Stokoe’s ambition to be back on the inside? Why was he fired? Why was his filed purged? For all his talk about transparency, he’s very quiet about his own history at Syosset.
Were we blind men being led by a manipulator? Yes, it looks like we were. I trusted him until he started pounding +Jonah so hard. My first clue was when a friend mentioned that the “breaking news” announcing +Jonah’s “retirement” appeared pre-written. (Have a look here. Compare the first two paragraphs against the ones that follow. The first two are hasty, the third onward were crafted earlier.) Now I think that the trust I gave him was misplaced. I don’t believe he tells the whole truth and the stories I believed about +Herman, +Phillip, Kondratick, and everyone he has attacked needs independent corroboration. I don’t take his word for anything anymore.
If all this sounds too personal, it’s because we want to believe that what Stokoe provides is objective reporting. But how can a guy who was on the inside, then fired, then went after the guy who fired him, then got elected to the Metropolitan Council, then was revealed to be conspiring with a handful of others to remove +Jonah, then wrote stories that fit the narrative the conspirators cooked up, be objective? He’s not a journalist. He’s a PR flak working for himself.
The guys at OCAT saw this. Put aside the concern about the anonymity for a moment and read the substance of the stolen emails. They understand Stokoe. They understand what OCANews is all about. Stokoe is not who he pretends to be, and I have come to see that trusting OCANews was a foolish thing to do.
I guess this is where I’m at: if Stokoe said that the sun was going to rise in the east tomorrow, I’d have to first check the Almanac.
More to follow…
I would like to know whom MS has in his pocket. What is the dirt he has on them. I am ashamed to belong to a church where hierarchs can be blackmailed, one man with an agenda and a computer can create havoc, the clerical bureaucrats follow their own drummer and the dirty laundry of all is washed in public.
I said it before, I say it again, I pray that +Jonah and with him the real bishops will clean out this Augean stable. They have my prayers and support……
George you stated:
Question – Why did you and others ever believe him?
As a lawyer people constantly complain to me as to why our courts have Rules of Evidence, Rules of Procedure, Burdens of Proof and Persuasion. All these “Rules” get in the way of the truth. Well, quite the opposite. The rules exist to protect people’s reputations and to vet the merit and truth of information as it is accumulated and comes in.
One man and his cadre of malcontents sifted and formed people’s opinions against them, and no one, and I mean no one raised any questions as to his motives, as to why he, Mark Stoke, was so hell bent on getting Kondratick that it led to Kondratick’s defrockment when a state Court pursuant to a jury trial found not guilty. Did that not register with People? Do people not understand the magnitude of bringing and failing to prove a financial fraud/stealing case? Well, its big and if you do not have the good you lose and you lose big.
Then the OCA paid Kondratick $250K on a promissory note breach of contract. Again, if Kondratick did not have enough to prove his case, and prove it big he would never have been able to pressure the HS to settle for $250K. Do people not ask questions?
Kondratick fired Stoke for a reason, and its probably the same reason that touches greatly upon the Metropolitan’s stance on certain issues, that are evidenced by the Manhattan Declaration.
Now ask yourself another question – Why is the OCA attacking Fr. Fester? Remember the letter issued by the formed dean of SVS? It was short, sweet and directly vindictive. Hopko knew that Fr. Fester was a threat, just like Metropolitan Jonah. Hopko is establishment, and establishment protects it own.
So here we come to it again and over the same issues. The GOA was on the verge of schism under Spyridon, and now the OCA is on the verge of Schism as well. Its the old battle between the Christians and the Modernists. The Modernists won in the GOA, they will also win in the OCA.
Now ask a final question – where will we Orthodox Christians go when another Orthodox Church falls to the Modernists? The GOA fell, The AOAA fell, and now the OCA will fall. Will the ROCOR be that far behind?
This same rot that ate up the Anglican/Episcopal Church, is now going to eat us up. Fr. Reardon is right.
This is why we have Courts, with rules, with lawyers that ask questions, and why we are all presumed innocent uless and until proven guilty in a court (spiritual or civil) and not in the press or internet.
Being that I am hear in Chicago many of us in the GOA Metropolis of Chicago will be paying attention to our OCA brothers and sisters and praying that the Modernists do not swallow up another Orthodox Church. May God save us all.
Peter
Peter, fair questions all. I can only answer for myself, so here goes: I grew up in the GOA and was completely unaware of Kondratick, Stokoe, +Theodosius, etc. I’ve only been in the DoS of the OCA for about 8 years and was blissfully immune from the Stupidity of Syosset.
As I was becoming more involved in pan-Orthodox affairs, I kept on hearing this refrain: “Did you read Stokoe today?” (I had already bought his book on Orthodox American history and used it as a source for my own book.) Like the book, OCANews seemed straight-up. Nothing snarky, nefarious, or overtly left-wing. Plus, I had a day-job, a growing family, this, that, and the other. OCANews seemed like a decent enough news-site.
Also, to heighten its street-cred, there was no other alternative site for Orthodox news. There are reasons as to why this is but I thought it was because there was nothing objectionable about Stokoe’s reportage. It must have been somewhere in the sensible center as they say.
Short answer: I was bamboozled.
Now as far as the “modernists” are concerned, I don’t believe they “won” in the GOA. I think they always had the upper hand. That’s what happens when you have Archons and Leadership 100 running the show. But more seriously, the growth of Athonite monasticism thanks to the visionary leadership of Elder Ephraim, is a great counter-weight. I believe that they will prevail.
George and Peter
You have raised my curiosity about historical accuracy of the +Herman scandal. I wanted to read the SIC report which is supposed to be on the OCA.Org website. I can’t find it there. Does anyone have the link to it?
Thanks in advance for your help
I agree with you George. I have hope, but our hope must be coupled to our vigilance. As for “Bamboozled”, yeah, I’ve been there too. Too many times to say. May God have mercy on us all.
Peter
Talk about being “bamboozled”:
I remember it (Hopko’s “Forgiveness Sunday” letter to OCAN) and I still would like for him to tell me which of his two AncientFaith Radio Podcast series I should file it under, “Speacking the Truth in Love” or “Worship in Spirit and Truth.”
Now ask a final question – where will we Orthodox Christians go when another Orthodox Church falls to the Modernists? The GOA fell, The AOAA fell, and now the OCA will fall. Will the ROCOR be that far behind?
I don’t even want to think about that possibility…. God will save His church. I pray….
I have just read Stokoe’s latest entry. It makes Father Joseph Fester look terrible, no doubt about that. Stokoe ends with a promise: “Next: +Jonah in his own words.”
I can hardly believe that this man is going to use stolen e-mails from the Metropolitan to destroy the man. But that’s what’s coming, he promises.
If these Modernists win because of Stokoe’s stolen e-mails, I cannot see remaining in the OCA. This is demonic. As much as I could not stand Metropolitan Herman, and as happy as I was to see him forced out, I would rather have had him stay permanently than get him overthrown by stealing private e-mails he had written. That is evil. If the OCA falls for this, and allows itself to be run by this kind of behavior, then may God’s judgment on it be swift and unsparing.
DBB, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I read the leaked e-mails between +Nikolai and Fester, not much there, just two guys doing and saying what you and I and everybody else does on the Internet. If I had to guess, I would imagine that +Mark got ahold of his laptop while he was still in Dallas and monkeyed around with it. Again, nothing illegal, immoral, or uncanonical (as far as Fester and +Nikolai are concerned). As for “+Jonah in his own words,” what? Complaining about being railroaded?
The guy who really looks bad is BB. Now that the +Nikolai angle comes into view, if I were BB I’d tell Stokoe to shut the hell up. The last thing the Bishop of San Franci–I mean Los Angeles wants is to bring back +Nikolai into the picture.
The issue is how he got the emails. Personally, I don’t really care how he did, he can tell it to the judge. (How much do laywers charge nowadays?)
There’s another big elephant in that email room, George. A very, very, big, dark elephant sits in the corner of the room hoping nobody will notice him, or having noticed, start putting two and two together, or worse yet, say to all, “Look at that elephant over there!” …. what was written (privately, remember) by His Grace Bishop Nikolai about the other bishop who died alone in his car should first make you want to cry, and then make your hair stand on end and then make you want to scream for justice.
Rachel, the LAST person in the world who wants to revisit the pre-+Jonah years is BB. Oh well…
Forgive me, but I’m not discerning what you mean by the ‘elephant’. Was Archbishop Job also an alleged homosexual? I’ve heard rumors to that effect about Bp. Benjamin.
Helga, do a search and find for the word “convicted” here. If you were around five years ago when this all began, it was a real nightmare. People were falsely accused and the accusers were falsely adored. Apparently.
Rachel,
Christ is Risen!
I recall what you speak of quite vividly.
The Charge brought against Abp. Job, as one could tell at the time, had to do with un-canonically interfering in the Diocese of AK. I really do not want to evaluate the deeds of a man who has gone before the all-just Judge, before Whom we shall all appear, except to state that an objective analysis seems to me to indicate that this was a rather minor episode in Bp. Nikolai’s removal.
In no way is it even a small pygmy elephant in the room. At this juncture in our history it is of very little importance.
However there is a lesson to be learned of great importance to the moment. Don’t try to engineer things, let them happen and seek God’s will, obeying His commandments with integrity.
Let us assume that Abp. Job was guilty of the initiating the phone calls to one clergyman in the diocese of AK as charged. his attempt to engineer the removal of Bp. Nikolai blew up in his face, with very little support for the un-canonical action and engineering. Abp. Job apologized asked forgiveness, and Bp. Nikolai gave it, (though he seems now to have taken it back). Yet Bp. Nikolai was eventually removed. Not thanks to that action of Abp. Job, but in spite of it. Bp Nikolai lost the trust of his own diocese and Synod, and he did it to himself. Abp Job’s meddling onll muddied the waters, briefly (again, since Abp. Job is dead, I am assuming his guilt only for the purpose of argumentation).
Now it seems Mark Stokoe wants to engineer this, Fester, Rod, and Co want to engineer that. All of their plottings just make everything worse. For instance, since this blog is largely for Pro-OCATruthers, I shall take them to task.
Fester, Rod, & Co have now done everything that they accuse mark Stokoe of and justify themselves, O so feebly, by saying Stokoe’s Ruthlessness forced them to use the same (evil) methods. It did not. How could any Christian imagine trying that one to Jesus’ Face on the great Day?!?
They pulled up a retired deacon as a total red herring to give substance to their “it’s all about gays” story line. And now it is almost impossible to deal with that deacon case with out every other political issue in the OCA interfering. And it was Fester, ROd, & Co and no one elsewho made that Deacon part of the current politics. Period.
Likewise, Whatever real mistakes and errors Bp. Mark has made in Dallas, the situation is entirely muddied by the documented threats and conspiracy for political reasons of Fester, Rod, & Co. It was Rod-Muzhik who threatened Bp. Mark on march 24th on OCATruth. It was Fester/Southern Comfort (high alcohol fruity-spicy whisky?) who issued “volleys” against Bp. Mark right here on Monomakhos.
And no George, the anonymity of the above stunts, while reprehensible in itself is not the only thing objectionable in such dirty actions. Far from it. But even taking a moment for you to imagine what besides anonymity might be objectionable will be too disastrous for your narrative, and you might have to re-consider your positions. Better to just post a lot about how those who oppose OCATruth’s deceits are only objecting to anonymity and maybe at least some people will believe it. Just keep repeating “You are only mad at the anonymity”, and toss in an gratuitous accusations of being “pro-stokoe”, just keep repeating it and some will be convinced.
Fr. Yousuf,
OCANews wants to blacken and remove +Jonah, OCAT was established to counter OCANews. Big difference.
You may not like OCAT, but spare us the implied innocence of Stokoe, +Mark, and the others. Anonymity is not “deceit.” If it were, all of Stokoe’s “sources” would be liars. We could dismiss Stokoe without engaging him as your line of reasoning implicitly urges us to do with OCAT.
Besides, now that OCAT authors been exposed, the “deceit” charge has been nullified anyway. Let’s see if they stand by their statements. My bet is that they will. Then you will have to deal with substance instead of pieties.
Ian,
Christ is Risen!
Would you like to re-read what I actually wrote, and respond to what I actually said instead of fig-newtons of your own imagination?
I’m betting not.
(HINT not one of your “implied innocence” statements has anything to do with what I wrote or what I think.)
Your “side”, like you and George Michalopoulos are always so damn sure you know “what’s really the case” and you are so very, very wrong in those cases where I am most certain. (and I do mean damn, as in your certainty creates spiritual peril for yourselves and others).
One thing which you are always so certain of is that those who disapprove of your story-line production is some how a Stokoe defender or sycophant, as George, with a lake of courtesy and southern (or any) hospitality called someone when he couldn’t make a reasoned statement.
Well I happen to know what I think, shocking as that may be to you, and I do not desire that Met. Jonah should resign or retire or be otherwise removed, nor do I think that in normal circumstances the Met Council has the right to even imagine arrogating to itself the taking of a “no confidence vote” in any hierarch, primate or otherwise. (The unfortunately extraordinary circumstances of 2006-2008 should not become normative). Nor do I want most everything that you and George and Rod say you think Stokoe wants. Not at all. However, Y’all present an alternative which is not viable, appealing, and most importantly is not one tiny bit more Christian or preferable to your opponents.
Rod’s awful self justification : “those guys” are so evil and ruthless I just had to be evil and ruthless too is beneath any Christian ethic, but appears to be accepted as axiomatic by you and George and others here. Maybe you have enough fellow travelers to make that fly on this blog, but it won’t fly in the Church at large, and don’t think of trying it on the last day.
By the way the anonymity is simply not the only deceit. If you cared about truth you would know that already, if you only care about “us good- stokoe bad” no explanation is likely to persuade.
PS: Your first sentence about the “big difference” ought to tell you and anyone else how you analyze truth. It says nothing about the method or truthfulness of the parties only what “side” they are on. For you that is all you seem to need or want to know. I will never look at any party in the Church or hierarch or personality and say “mine-right or wrong”
Father, take it elsewhere. I don’t believe I was evil or ruthless, and I stand by everything I said, and will stand by it, unless I am shown to have been factually incorrect, in which case I will retract and apologize, if necessary.
There is no “threat” at all to Bp Mark in my March 24 post. Where on earth do you get that?
If you think posting anonymously is “evil” and “ruthless” in essence, how on earth do you manage do do your job? Seriously, are you really that sensitive? I am perfectly prepared to accept criticism for posting anonymously, or anything else I wrote on OCAT. I wrote everything with the idea that I could be exposed one day, or would choose to go public. I would suggest that you repair to your fainting couch with a cool washcloth and think about whether or not “evil” really applies here.
I cannot speak for Father Fester, who was not posting on OCAT, but I can tell you that we three who posted there did not want to “engineer” anything, only to protect HB and to make sure he got a fair shake. If you’re saying I’m guilty of supporting him and fighting for him online, well, yeah, you got that right. But please, spare me the moral equivalence. You did not find us stealing e-mails or posting e-mails we had reason to believe were stolen on our site. I was leaked a copy of the SMPAC report, and could have posted it online and critiqued the heck out of it, but Father Fester told me it was only supposed to be in the hands of the bishops, and that I shouldn’t use it. I agreed.
I don’t want to get into a tit for tat over us and Stokoe. Most of what Father Fester was apparently doing behind the scenes with Nikolai Soraich and others was completely unknown to me, and probably to my colleagues as well. The only thing I know about Soraich is that he was widely hated in Alaska, and I know that from two trips I made there myself, on other business. Father Fester is a friend and I did consult with him about OCAT stuff. But I didn’t pay close attention to OCA church politics prior to the Santa Fe ambush, and I will be happy to quit thinking about it, when and if the conspiratorial threats to the good man who is our primate go away. Anybody who read my stuff on OCAT will know that I do not think he is perfect, and that I criticized him there (I think he got a raw deal in the SMPAC report, but I think there are some legitimate criticisms made of his mishandling of these cases — but the errors are not only his, despite what it says in the SMPAC. I privately remonstrated with him over his management failure in these cases mentioned in the report– and I praised Stokoe when I agreed with him). But I am confident that Jonah is a good man, and precisely the man the OCA needs at this moment. If it is not God’s will that he continue in that role, then may God’s will be done. But I could not stand idly by while those people railroaded him out because he wasn’t part of their prisspot network.
Had Jonah known I was working on OCAT, he might have asked me to stop. And I would have done so. I didn’t want to take that risk. I really do believe that he is so kind and trusting that he doesn’t know the kind of people he’s dealing with.
Well said Rod. I am still waiting for your detractors to state one thing that y’all said in defense of +Jonah that was factually incorrect. I will retract anything wrong that I wrote as well. I doubt we’d ever get MSNBC to do the same thing. He’s too sanctimonious for that.
I totally agree with this. I jumped into the fray for much the same reasons.
However, I have to disagree with your conjecture that Metropolitan Jonah doesn’t know who he’s working with or how far they’re willing to go. He may not have known even two months ago, but I’m willing to bet he does now. Just look at these photos from a few days after Santa Fe, and check them against the photos from Saturday’s consecration that show Met. Jonah with his head uncovered, and a pretty sizable bald spot that wasn’t there two months ago. To me it looks like half of Met. Jonah’s hair has fallen out since Santa Fe.
And I have to say, Rod, that you being on Metropolitan Jonah’s side, despite having the “damning” SMCAP report, while Mark Stokoe only has what his sources have fed him, tells me a lot.
Dear Rod,
Christ is Risen!
The word “ruthless” comes from your own defense of your anonymity on the “Unbearable Lightness of Stokoe” thread. I don’t think that it is a stretch to say that you and George M and and many others here think Mark Stokoe is evil. The thing is, you have now done many of the specific things that you and others have accused Mark Stokoe of, some of them at the same time as you were making the accusations. So if he is ruthless and evil for those reasons, then so are you – and it is in that sense that I wrote.
But I regret using those words since they got more attention than the specific problems that I cited, and I’m glad to retract them and say that any reader who so wishes is invited to choose their own adjectives for specific actions and apply them consistently whenever the act comes up.
Despite the occasion and the sharpness of exchange I am glad to be speaking with you. I often wanted to speak to Muzhik, to have a real exchange, and lo, it is you. I read this post https://www.monomakhos.com/2011/05/the-unbearable-lightness-of-stokoe/#comment-4420
with great interest, and my estimation is that it is about right. That is I think that OCATruth was motivated by love and zeal, misapplied and gone horribly wrong. I often found the earnestness of you and Jesse admirable, (and if i may say so, in a way, endearing) even while finding your activities very frustrating.
In the interest of brevity, I am going to address the things you question. You asked about the threat on March 24th: When you set up a catch 22 for any possible bishop candidates for the DoS in that post, and it was clear that the main target of that comment was Bp. Mark. My eyes popped out, not only because it seemed a bit menacing, not only because the writer arrogated to himself the right to speak for the whole diocese, but because I thought it was heedless of the long term harm to the diocese of the South in compromising in advance any bishop. I now classify it as a threat because the possibly implied threat has been delivered on by Fr. Joseph Fester in a way that makes it nearly impossible to distinguish between the bishop’s pastoral failures and “loyalty failures”.
You say that you didn’t use stolen emails, but you accepted the leak of confidential files both of Synod minutes and correspondence, and a published them yourself, including a pastor to penitent communication, and you did it at the end of Clean Week. Who leaked that correspondence to you? Did Fr. Fester? (At this point one would naturally assume it was him). Why did you even read it, let alone publish it? You asked Fr. Joseph Fester about how to use the leaked SMPAC report. Did you ask his blessing or approval to publish that correspondence?
No one seems to care much how the emails of Stokoe, Skordinski or Solodow were leaked, (ironically, Stokoe himself doesn’t seem to much care). Indeed, just a month ago you wrote “the cabal members have resorted to communicating by phone. Smart. Never put in e-mail something you would not want to see posted on a website.”
You write “If you think posting anonymously is “evil” and “ruthless” in essence, how on earth do you manage do do your job? Seriously, are you really that sensitive? I am perfectly prepared to accept criticism for posting anonymously, or anything else I wrote on OCAT. I wrote everything with the idea that I could be exposed one day, or would choose to go public. I would suggest that you repair to your fainting couch with a cool washcloth and think about whether or not “evil” really applies here”.
Huh? What part of my job requires anonymous blog posting? Do you mean to equate posting anonymously with keeping confessions confidential? It’s confusing.
I have already said why I used those words, but where did I write that your anonymity was my major gripe or concern? I thought I gave the opposite impression. In fact I think the anonymity issue can be a diversion.
And what part of the Santa Fe meeting would you, with all the evidence we have now, still call an ambush?
I agree with you that the Metropolitan is a good man. I also agree with this statement, “I really do believe that he is so kind and trusting that he doesn’t know the kind of people he’s dealing with.”
Well before the beginning of the public scandal in late 2005, I perceived that the OCA had a great strength, in that no other “jurisdiction” in America had quite such a Synodal governance of a Metropolitan district as described in the Canons. But what should have been a strength was a weakness, because the Synod was not functioning well. At the start of the public scandal I thought that the Synodal structure would have to begin working more effectively for the OCA to overcome that challenge, which made that crisis an opportunity. Despite the current troubles, I believe that that situation has actually improved greatly, and has the potential for the OCA to better fulfill her mission. I believe that Met. Jonah is called by God to be a leader in that process. It is most unhelpful to call the canonical oaths which bind our bishops together in Synod being part of a “prisspot network”. Nor did/does it help the Metropolitan to try to save him by trying to destroy the Synod around him.
I would sincerely welcome a discussion with you, very much so. Perhaps it would be good to take this elsewhere as you suggest.
Fr. Y, please show us where you have taken Stokoe to task with the same vehemence? I must have missed it.
I did read what you wrote. I reread it too. You like to take the temperature of both the Stokoe and Michalopulos sites, determine that they both are hot, find the real faults that exist in both, and then draw an implied moral equivalence between them. This allows you to wax eloquent about moral certainties laced with priest-talk. For example:
I don’t really care about your reproof because it isn’t accurate. I don’t want to spend the time refuting it so I just let you believe it. The “spiritual peril” I chalk up to your inexperience so I don’t take that seriously either. (I let someone older in the faith advise me about those matters.)
You are reading things wrong. I can see it by the way you mischaracterize Rod Dreher (Dreher properly rejects your assessment) and misuse very serious words like “evil” and “ruthless.” You don’t use them in ways that offer any insight. They only serve to add an appearance of moral weight to your assertions.
That’s why I reminded you:
That should be your starting point. The attempt to remove a sitting Metropolitan is a very serious offense. That Stokoe has not been able to offer one canonical reason justifying +Jonah’s removal raises questions about Stokoe’s purposes and goals. That evidence has been uncovered that shows Stokoe’s behind the scenes manipulation justifies the raising of those questions. That you draw a moral equivalence between anonymity on OCAT with Stokoe’s maneuverings shows your discernment is off.
That’s why I am reminding you again of what the real issue is.
Have people made mistakes here? Sure. Has Stokoe been correct on occasion? Yes. It doesn’t nullify the main issue however.
Father Yousef,
I don’t know anything at all except what I’ve read, and don’t want to go down a road that no one else wants to go down, nor speak further about it. Let’s keep it where it stands and let the chips fall where they may. It may have been only about Archbishop Job interfering in another diocese, and in that case, I should have shut up. For some reason the words have flown out of my fingers lately. I am so looking forward to resolution and so glad that things are finally happening. Thanks for the reply.
-Rachel
Fr Yousef, the difference between the OCAT’s defending +Jonah by telling the truth (or at least pointing out OCAN’s “inconsistencies”) is not in the same ball park with what is OCAN’s staock in trade. You might as well compare the Boy Scouts to Hamas.
I’ve been away and offline for five peaceful and beautiful days of prayer and relaxation (and awesomely good music and food) and Christ is Risen!
In fairness, reviewing five days of postings on OCANews and OCATruth, to me there’s little difference between the two of them.
The purveyors of OCA pornography are hard at work embarrassing and being embarrassed, striving to display each other’s naughty bits in public, while their respective defenders get huffy about how wrong (even possibly illegal!) it is to have their favorite’s shortcomings aired.
One wonders if any of them caught the Resurrection, or Bright Week, so busy were all with flinging muck, mostly at each other.
And the excuse for the displaying of so many private parts in such graphic detail? Why, it’s the manly work that needs to be done to keep the OCA pure and holy, of course!
I know what you mean, George. There are a few more on the list of lasts, though, I’ll wager.
That big boy is too large to hide under the rug any longer, living or dead (speaking of elephants hiding under rugs and ostriches with their heads in the sand, for some reason I’m reminded of Sisera, the enemy of Israel,who hid under Jael’s rug and there met his demise. This is a cool passage. Judges 4:17-24.). Might as well get him out of there. He’s in the way.
I want to make sure I’m understanding you correctly Rachel. I went to the Stokoe site and read the Nikolai Soraich letter, and it appears to indicate that Archbishop Job died possibly of suicide. It doesn’t come out and say it, but that is the implication, if I’m reading it correctly. I wonder if Job was grieved over the Vasile Susan situation, and homosexuality in the church. Pokrov posted Fr. Vasile’s summary of his conversation with +Job, signed by Job, and in which Job said that he is convinced the OCA is covering up for gay clergymen.
Is that what you mean Rachel? Forgive me if I have misread you.
Christ is Risen!
Why would anybody imagine that Bp. Nikolai had any insight into Abp Job’s state of mind at that time?
No, I’m not saying anything like that. I wasn’t there. I’m not going down this road and don’t want to take another step down it.
Stonybrook, the only thing I know about the late +Job is that both he and +Jonah tried to broker a peace with Fr Susan or at least tried to rectify his appalling situation. Has anybody else heard something to this effect (or different for that matter)?
George writes:
“Now we know Stokoe’s only source of information when he was hammering +Phillip was +Mark.”
No, George.
As it happens, I was in contact with both of them in those days, and I know they had no direct converse with one another until very late in the development of that crisis.
Well, Fr Patrick,
Have you seen enough yet?
If you believe Father Fester, Bishop Mark told him personally that he had been Stokoe’s source during the Antiochian scandal.
We don’t know that Bp Mark was his ONLY source of information, but if Fr. Fester is telling the truth, Bp Mark was A source of information for Stokoe.
Seraphimista,
Lots of folks have been a source of information for all sorts of informational outlets. Personally, I can’t stand the liberal media, but I wouldn’t hesitate to use the only outlet available to get an important message to as many people as possible. Stokoe was reporting on the issues in the AOANA for many years prior to the time that certain parties triumphed and +MARK was “transferred.” Are we to conclude that he know the outcome all along, that it was all a big plot to sucker +JONAH into accepting him?
I do not know how much information was, or was not, provided by +MARK. What I do know is that what was reported about the AOANA was accurate and truthful. If you doubt this, I would refer you or anyone else to the reams of documentation presented here:
http://www.orthodoxattorneys.org
To quote Peter’s comment #2 above,
This guilt by association theme keeps reeling its ugly head. Everyone, please calm the passions a bit. They all-too-easily lead us into snares. You are free to dislike +MARK, but the slander and innuendo should cease.
Brian you are misunderstanding what I’m saying. I am disagreeing with people who think Bishop Mark was the only source for Stokoe on the Antiochian situation. I don’t know how we could know that he was the ONLY source. If Fester is right, then Mark said that he was A source, which is important here because it establishes that Mark and Stokoe have a past relationship in which Mark passed information on to a man who was trying to bring down his Metropolitan. The information Mark passed to Stokoe might have been true and accurate, but that is beside the point. Let’s say for the sake of argument that Bishop Mark was part of making Fester’s e-mails available to Mark (I am NOT SAYING THAT HE DID, just saying for argument’s sake), then we could say that the information Mark helped pass on was true and accurate, but doing it says something about his character. I think that is the point people are trying to make here.
It’s true too that Bishop Mark’s complete screw-up of St. Seraphim cathedral doesn’t make Met. Philip right in their dispute.
Seraphimista, you are correct. I myself became a supporter of Mark mainly based on the way that he was treated by +Philip. I still think that re-jiggering the entire AOCNA just to get rid of one guy was canonically egregious. That’s using the ends to justify the means.
Having said that, if +Mark’s management style in Detroit was 1/2 as egregious as it is in Dallas, then I think he would have been thrown out by his own people there. Which is probably what is going to happen to him in Dallas, regardless of what the Holy Synod decides.
Fr Patrick, I stand corrected.