I had those thoughts once in the GOA. It is rather difficult to help a person from the perspective of looking up at their shoe on your neck.

Ha! No. I won’t pile on, I agree it was a good choice to not show it further.

Would that constitute ‘all the laity’?

George: Question: Have you met Jonah and talked to him and, if so, on how many occasions and for how long?

Dear MR,

You and I are not that far apart on this issue. Frankly, I believe that talk about the ‘Mother Land’ largely has to do with the demographic disasters in Orthodox homelands rather and any real understanding of the local issues in America. There is a profound problem overseas with both emigration and plunging birthrates. The churches look to see where their people are going, and are hoping to keep them ‘in the church’ so to speak.

The problem is that for every immigrant we receive here, we are also receiving 2-3 non-immigrants either through direct conversion, birth, or intermarriage. So, we are definitely becoming an indigenous church here that most of the overseas hierarchs actually have very little interest in.

Frankly, I have seen lousy ‘American-born’ bishops, and I have seen good ones as well. Same is true of foreign-born. What makes them good or bad has largely to do with their love for the people and ability set up functional administrative structures. Lacking in either category means disaster.

How do we, however, get the bishops overseas to see us differently? I think by visiting them, and getting them to visit us. Invite some of the hierarchs from, let’s say, lesser-known diocese in the Old Country and give them a tour. Show them our struggles. Let them meet the people. We should visit them as well. Right now, it is the immigrants/emigrants who get to create the narrative. We could change that.

I remember years ago a bishop from Lebanon came for a visit. Our bishop present our deanery to him, and he was utterly shocked that he needed a translator to be understood by us. You could see that he had not a clue as to what the American Church is like.

We could also help our overseas brethren with their struggles. They are fighting secularism, consumerism, and invasive protestant evangelization that they are not armed to deal with. These are our daily issues here in the US and Canada. We could show them what we have learned.

These are the projects I have tried to involve myself in. I believe that we are part of the same One Body in Christ, and so we need to work together. I think that if we do so, God will bless us. However, He will not bless us if we take an adversarial position or take on the ‘victim mentality.’ We must struggle as Christians do, with love for everyone and a desire to minister.

I said I’d bow out – but I have to reply to this. Let me state. Fr. George has a very compelling line of thinking and I follow.

But why should the OCA give up a “status”? Because hypothetical – Bishop “so and so of the Former Yugoslavia” knows how to run an office better then Met. Jonah+? Serious? Really?

We could tow the party line, OR we could go with the line of thinking that Church status like autocephaly and autonomy are pretty arbitrary qualifiers, set up fairly recently in our Church’s history, more so as a hegemonistic means for so-called “mother” Churches than to be pastoral. In reality, all regional Orthodox Churches should be simultaneously autocephalous and autonomous by definition since we are simultaneously individuals and part of a community. These ‘labels’ shouldn’t be used to stigmatize a particular regional Church or as a means for a “mother” Church to hang it over the head of Orthodoxy.

If a particular Church has “problems” the way we get over these problems (including schism) is through co-celebration of the Divine Liturgy. We learn to overcome our short falls by watching each other, by following each, and by listening to each other. If anyone has any particular lead it would be our Monk-elders/elderesses.

This is why I hear a “return to the mother church” speech my eyes glaze over. Politics, Church names, Bishop temperament, or lack of office skills are absolutely not, ecclesiastically, reason enough to throw an entire regional Church in disarray. Nor is it an excuse for “mother Churches” to maneuver for power.

Fr. George. I think you’ve swayed me on this one. I’m bowing out now.

Dear MR,

We can and should always show mercy, but not at someone else’s expense. So, if you follow the argument that the entire OCA is endangered by the actions of the Holy Synod, then showing mercy would be to stand up to them and not resign. That would be the act of mercy: to sacrifice one’s sense of peace for the good of the Church.

However, if the matter is strictly between the Holy Synod and His Beatitude, then, yes, the most merciful thing to do would be to resign.

Being merciful does not mean letting a criminal go to heap more condemnation upon himself and sin against more people. This is why the canons always dispense a chastisement for sins, though such punishments are far less than what really ought to be meted out.

I think we need to have mercy on both His Beatitude and the Holy Synod: let them work things out amongst themselves and stop trying to swing the game one way or the other.

What about mercy?

Dear Mitrich,

Historically speaking, a number of bishops have resigned. St. Theophan the Recluse and St. Gregory of Nyssa are two examples. It is not ‘uncanonical’ in the sense that, while it is not the canonical norm, bishops do resign and are not subsequently deposed. St. Vladimir’s Seminary plays host to Bishop Seraphim Sigrist, former of the Diocese of Sendai. He also resigned his post.

The fact is that His Beatitude has never accused the bishops of the Holy Synod of ‘conspiracy,’ though he has the opportunity even until this point to do so. The fact that he has not means that he does not believe that they did so. However, if he had evidence that there was a violation of the canons and yet he took no action makes him a party to the sin. That would be absurd.

If you’d like a legal example, it is an ‘Accessory after the fact’… he enabled the crime to escape justice.

Unless you have evidence that His Beatitude actually believes such a violation took place, then you are second-guessing His Beatitude’s judgement by saying that there is a conspiracy when he has made no indication, as one closer to the events than you or I, that such a conspiracy took place.

I really wish that those who seek to defend His Beatitude would stop assuming that he is some kind of weakling that cannot stand up for the truth and the good of the OCA.

Dear Fr. George,

Meeting of the bishops without the Metropolitan and without his knowledge IS conspiracy. There is no way around it. And it is a grave violation of the canons, one that carries a deposition from rank as a consequence. Note that I do not defend the Metropolitan’s action here – he should not have resigned despite all the pressure. Yet one violation of the canons does not justify another.

His Beatitude took an action that was appropriate and canonical: if he was not canonically entitled to resign, then he should not have.

Frankly, I fail to see any logic here. You are saying that if he did resign, this means that his resignation is canonical? This is the same as to say that if I did exceed the speed limit when driving this morning, then I acted in accordance with the law: if the law prohibited it, I should not have done so. Absurd.

Goes to show I guess that we should let our neighbors do their own laundry!

I’ll leave the thread up by way of explanation but discussion is closed.

With all due respect, you are the one who put Monomakhos on the table: “This is an internal matter to the OCA of course and you can read more details on the Monomakhos blog. As before, I will not discuss the details about the OCA imbroglio here apart from those that impact the larger American Orthodox Church.” You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Regarding taking it up at Monomakhos, I had been waging a somewhat lone battle for years but I had to finally give it up. George, et al, have made up their minds; they have their agenda; and they started to advocate schism.

Regarding “the slander against Met. Jonah” that has spilled over to the mainstream press, I would think that the greater damage to +Jonah the person is done by his purported followers who excuse his words at the Santa Fe Retreat, the Seattle AAC and the resignation letter as having been the result of coercion or misunderstanding. There was no earthly reason for +Jonah to have broken his promise at Santa Fe and there is no excuse for having uttered or written any words that he did not believe in.

Although I was trying to make a point in a videographic way, I agree completely with Fr. George. AOI needs to maintain the high standards for which it has been and is known.