The Present Task

Everyone seems to make this entire mess too complicated. As in any organization where there is wrong doing, ALL the culprits are purged immediately, new leaders are elected and the organization moves on. Those dismissed are dealt with outside the organization usually in civil courts. Our CURRENT problem is that no one has removed + Herman. He's as guilty as RSK and + Theodosius and there he still sits as head of the OCA. Is it any wonder that the OCA can't recover? How can an organization regain health when the cancer hasn't been removed? What does it take?

Its not just the Bishops. Priests like RSK, Kucynda, Oselinsky (all three officers at the same time when a lot of this rubbish went on) know what the score is and what went on .... While the Synod is a worthless bunch .... there are others that can match them quality for quality and deserve as much blame for this continuing on as long as it has and for its further continuance. Don't let these three off the hook.

By next Pascha?????

If this baloney continues one day past the AAC, EVERYONE should leave the OCA. Stop going to church, stop paying any money, ignore all priests and bishops. Go to the Greeks, the Antiochians, etc.

You are absolutely correct! Union with the Antiochians is the way out of this. Going back to the original outline of SCOBA in 1961, all the Orthodox Churches were supposed to merge together as ONE church called, The Orthodox Church in America (in the original minutes of one of the early meetings). When autocephaly took place in 1970, Frs. Schmemann & Meyendorff pushed very hard for SCOBA to fulfill itself. The Greeks reneged and Constantinople began pushing its authority based on Chalcedon (4th Ecumenical Council) Canon 28. Absolutely ridiculous argument which holds no water. (Listen to Met. Philips presentation on this from the SVS Conference on Mother Churches held 2 weeks ago. All the lectures are available at Ancient Faith Radio along with + Ware and others). After autocephaly in 1970, Met. Philip also resisted joining the OCA stating that the Russians should solve their internal unity problems first - another stall tactic. Reading the OCA newspapers from 1970 - 1980, Fr. Meyendorff asked Met. Philip and others, "What are you waiting for? The OCA is what SCOBA wanted. Why are you waiting?" It all fell on deaf ears.

The OCA still remains the ONLY autocephalous, indigenous, Orthodox Church in North America and under canon law, all Orthodox should come under her. Going back to ANY foreign mother church only sets a church backward 50-100 years in growth and development.

So, the OCA & Antiochians should merge with Bishop Basil Essey as the Metropolitan. He is the ONLY one who understands the Greek, Antiochian and Russian mentalities and has the charisma to make this a reality.

Will it happen? Met. Philip says its his life-long dream, but he's been saying that since the 1960's - where's the action? The OCA is stagnated with bad leaders and via it's current leadership, DYING. We need to get rid of + Herman IMMEDIATELY and move the OCA forward with SERIOUS endeavors with the Antiochians. Nothing else should be more serious at this time than moving this agenda forward. All else is stagnation and stop-gap measures. FOLKS, IT'S BEEN 38 YEARS SINCE AUTOCEPHALY and 47 YEARS SINCE SCOBA'S FORMATION - WHAT ARE THE HIERARCHS WAITING FOR - THE PAROUSIA?????????

How can Kucynda preach to us truth when he knowingly, to a civil authority, perjured himself with that number. Under NO liberal counting could there be a number that hits 2,000,000. Look at all those zeroes! If Kucynda's number was correct there would be no need for him to perjure himself because we would be bringing in about $200,000,000 a year in assessments and $1,700,000 would be a drop in the bucket. How he made it sound is the yearly assessment, based on a budget of about $3,000,000 is about a buck fifty! We all know THAT'S not the case.

Again, I ask, how can he sign his name, under penalty of perjury, say that statement and then hold the Body of Christ in his hand with a clean concscience. We are told that if we are not clean, not worth, we should not approach the chalice. But when you’re a priest involved in the corruption of the leadership of the Church what are you supposed to do? Act guilty? There is a serious disconnect that not he alone, in the clergy, possesses. Its like a charade in which whatever needs to be done to save their duffs has to be done then they go vest up and look like good priests and fool most of the people all of the time. ENOUGH ALREADY! What is it about serving two masters?

But, we must remember, he said this back when they mistakingly thought that this entire mess was just about the money and that if they refilled the charity coffers and tossed out RSK that everything would be well and good and life would go on. How sorely mistaken they were then and how sorely mistaken they are now. The money is the least of the problems as it can be restored by the generosity of the laity after we’ve cleaned shop. The problem is with the morals of those that we have in positions of leadership and the incongruence of their actions and their preaching. Herman is just the topmost and the most visible – he’s the lightening rod. The face of corruption and every thing diametrically opposed to what a bishop should stand for. But, Herman is allowed to go on because he has a significant base of comrades in whom he knows he’s safe. A cohort that works actively to keep down dessension under fear and intimidation and warnings of the truth will be too painful. Herman would have been gone already if it wasn’t for that support structure. If it wasn’t for those influential clergy who were at the center who keep mum and allow the Church to die. You want to get Herman out, go after the support structures. You have a priest who’s implicated and keeps quiet, withhold the salary! Remove the fear that many clergy keep quiet under. We have clergy who would speak, but they live under the Orthodox Christian fear of the bishops, who justify their oppression with a mangling of the canons that renders them unrecognizable, and those clergy in leadership positions who’s own faith puts their trust in princes of men, in whom there is no salvation, rather than the Lord who’s Resurrection and triumph over the evil one that they so joyfully, it appears, proclaim! Which is it, boys, which is it? God or the forces of darkness?

Just look at the priests deposed in Alaska under Nikolai. He sent them to the ecclesiastical firing squad because he could. He couldn’t have done that without the active involvement not of priests in his down diocese, but Kondratick and Brum brought up from New York. What they will go through to get back at a priest because they can. And because it’s a warning to the others. We’ve not only taken the Russian Church tradition, but we operate like the darkest of Soviet governance. Bishops and clergy who reward the very opposite of that which they tell us in their letters are how we should live. They tell us at the Resurrection that we have been freed and are no longer in the grip of death! But then they go out and make sure that the good, God loving clergy, who are pained by the state of this Church make sure they say nothing under fear of retribution. We’ve been freed from the grip of death? Which is it that these priests who oppress and support the forces of corruption really believe? What they preach or how they act? When walking down Morality Avenue, if you see one of these priests coming at you on the sidewalk, are you going to go to the other side of the street? This, my friends, is what the Lord intended when He created this Church? Think about it. Really think about it.

This problem is not going to go away with the removal of Herman, sadly to say, because we have members of the clergy who knew what was going on and have participated, condoned, or actively participated to cover it up. These are the men (and I use that word just in the biological sense) that will still be around preaching to us about morals and go around singing Christ is Risen when their actions show to us no sincerity long after Herman is no longer around. The problem doesn’t get resolved with his departure, just a significant part of the cancer is removed while the rest laying dormant.

And what is the responsibility of the MC in this 2,000,000 person lie when he had to have had the authority from the MC to make that statement and obtain the loan.

How many people are we going to have to lie we have in order to pay off the Velencia suit?

At least someone else recognizes the fact that calls for resignation, pleas, etc., is not going to result in this guy resigning. He's got too much too lose, all those that have been blissfully concealed by him staying in office, have too much to lose. Last person on earth that wants him to resign is Kondratick - well, at least until the statute of limitations runs out. Herman's purpose at this point is delay and obstruction. Whatever he can do to prolong his tenure so that the statute runs out and he's able to put into the files of lawyers so that its privileged information, is what he will do.

The only way this guy is going to get removed is by proactive action on the part of people that have the power to remove him. Get off of your lofty ideas that any amount of pleading or petitions is going to whack him in the head with rationality and he's going to resign. It long ago stopped by for the good of the Church and turned into what's good for the miscreants.

Unless the MC gets off its duff and realizes it can't reason with Swaiko and the Synod realizes they are going to be completely ineffective even when he's gone beacuse they've lost all credibility by toeing his line, nothing's going to change.

You can surely count on none of the faithful priests who've helped him get to this point, like Kondratick, Kucynda, and Oselinsky doing anything of any Godly nature to get him out either.

The way forward, as I see it, and as someone mentioned a while ago as well, is that the OCA needs to have a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) when it comes to financials, management, investigations, etc. On the OCA website you can find the new Sexual Misconduct policy and a few other policies for canonical matters, but nothing nitty gritty or day to day on how one is to respond to certain situations, deal with money, pay for things, etc. I worked as a manager at McDonald's for quite a few years, nothing glamorous, but there is a reason they are the #1 restaurant in the world - they have a set of well researched SOP which govern their restaurants from Alamo, TX to Luxor, Egypt (been there, bought the ice cream cone). Yes, the teenager taking your order may be completely incompetent, but they are operating in a system which makes sure that payment is transacted properly 99.9% of the time and you usually get what you paid for, if you don't, there's Operating Procedures on how to properly fix that too. When I look at how the OCA functions I don't see a bit of this, from the tiny parish level up to Syosset. Each parish figures out their own procedures on their own, for better or for worse, and each bishop does too. I have a simple question, when a bishop gets new vestments who pays for them, himself out of his own salary or does the diocese have a fund for this? I don't know, and I can't even begin to figure out how to find out short of calling up each of the bishops themselves. When a bishop takes guests out to eat, does this come out of his personal funds or the diocese? Does the OCA have any policy at all for these issues? Having a SOP for issues like these would go a long way towards solving the problems we've been having. A place to start would be the following principles:

1. An awareness of, and the commitment to follow, the civil laws. Sad to say, I've seen many OCA clergy and administrators knowingly disregard civil employment, non-discrimination, and disclosure laws. This is not just those in Syosset, but Seminary administrators and heads of monasteries, as well as parish priests (as the recent 5 million dollar lawsuit makes evident). As a manager at McDonald's I was legally responsible to make sure that the minor workers DID NOT work one minute over their legal limit (which varied based upon how old they were, whether it was a school night, how many hours they had already worked that week, etc.) whether we were "slammed" with customers or not, I had to send them home, even if they meant a loss of bussiness and revenue. Why? Because it was the law. The OCA has yet to learn this regard for civil law, and it is time the administration takes steps to 1) inform every clergyman of their civil rights and responsibilities and 2) have a zero-tolerance policy towards clergymen who actively disregard or try to circumvent the civil laws. This would include taking large amounts of undisclosed cash to Russia.

2) Turn over the bucket of gray areas and sort out in written form who pays for what and when. At McDonald's there are set procedures on how much food employees can eat for free and how much they can buy at a discount. Like I mentioned above, I don't see the OCA having anything resembling this SOP. Who pays for vestments or dinners? Is the procedure for this the same for a mission priest as it is for Metropolitan? It seems to me that these things are now decided based solely upon the integrity of each priest or bishop. It is now clear that we can't simply rely on the bishop's "honor" anymore, nor should we. It should be decided which procedure is best for the Church, educate the clergy on that procedure, and expect them to follow it.

3) There should be a SOP for taking complaints and concerns seriously. There should be a way to properly file such things, with someone watching these files who is then able to proactively solve imminent problems. Again, at McDonald's anyone could be "written up" for making a poor decision or failure to follow the SOP, from the lowest crew member to the head manager. These "write ups" had to be signed off by two managers, and they would be looked at when the employee came up for review. If there was a consistent problem, intervention procedures where taken. If there were a number of "write ups" over a short amount of time, the employee would be terminated. In our parishes we need a way for the people to lodge a complaint against a clergyman for infractions against the SOP or civil law. In a parish, if the teenage girls (or boys) confide in one of the council members that the priest makes them feel very uncomfortable in confession, though he hasn't actually done anything wrong, there should be a way to file their complaint with the bishop. The bishop can consider this complaint, and any related complaints, and if he has concerns he can make an intervention, before anyone is actually hurt. This is different, of course, from an actual grievance, the point of such a system is to keep grievances from happening.

These SOP's aren't rocket science, and I'm not saying we should run the OCA like it's McDonald's. What I'm saying is that the OCA needs to take itself seriously and figure out how best to do things which are both legal and full of integrity, and expect everyone who works in the OCA to keep to these procedures. I really don't think that this is too much to ask.

And I guarantee you there will not be the level of discussion at the AAC, if anyone goes, that you have here.

The point is, that at every level, there is intimidation. There is retribution. There is vindictiveness. Bishops to priests, priests to laity. People say something about this and the bishop is going to get on the priest to silence his parishioners. Its happened already and it'll happen again. When people feel they are free from retribution from our God loving Orthodox Chriistan bishops and their henchmen will people gladly give their names. The church is littered with the bodies of people in the past 3 years who have been targeted for speaking out and nothing has improved. As a result many have left the OCA, some the Church. Do we need that to happen to save the church? People just don't get it through their heads that we are dealing with bad people here, some very bad. Look at what the retributions were in Alaska, it goes on elsewhere too.

We have been through this a million times already and people just don't get the arguments in favor of anonymity that far outweigh the curiosity of readers to know who has written what here. The ideas should stand on their own and do that when you don't taint the ideas with the identity of those who write them. An idea should not be merited more because a Hopko wrote it and given a shrug cause some guy wrote it who sits at the back of the church in some town no one has heard of in Western PA and makes no sentiments known at his parish.

Live with the anonymity and appreciate the participation, its going to be here at least as long as this cancer is allowed to live and kill its host.

They don't hold the keys to heaven, true! Hell, they can't even show you how to get there, but they can make your spiritual life a living nightmare. Just look at what happened when someone crossed Ray Velencia. Look at others who have quit their parish or diocesan or national roles because of what has happened. Not many people want to be subjected to the level of piety in many of the priests and bishops who are caught up in this scandal.

Again, this is more of a desire to see who's saying what, to provide grist for the gossip mill rather than wanting people to have pride in their arguments. Let's face it, that's the point of the non anonymity argument.

Hey, Mark, disallow anonymity on a couple of threads, you need the rest.

Who really cares who/what is on SCOBA? What has SCOBA done for you lately? It’s a social organization more than anything else. If they had any real desire to do anything they would make a statement to the unGodly behavior undertaken by some of their members who are on the OCA Synod, then we might believe that this is an organization that is interested in Orthodoxy in America. Until the members of SCOBA, either individually or corporately, make a statement either way on the situation in the OCA then this ceremonial super Synod means nothing. They want to talk unity, they want to have study groups, for, as Mark said, something that can be done in 10 minutes if these people had any interest in promoting and growing Orthodoxy in America. Is the membership of a Russian representative bishop something worth getting our britches in a knot? If we got our ship in order and did the missionary work that only a truly American church can, then we’d render the SCOBA idea completely meaningless. Til that happens, forget about them and keep your eye on the problems at hand…

Mark,

Congratulations. You hit the nail once again on the head with your insightful and thoughtful commentary.

"Financial impropriety", "misconduct", "lack of moral consciousness", "exploitation" - all words that cry opposite - love, hope, faith and charity.

One need not go to Memorial Day at St. Tikhon's to see how the lack of leadership at the national level has dissolved the majority of educated faithful. I remember on this day traveling that dirt road and counting hundreds of buses. I was so demoralized this year.

Sadly, the scandal has trickled to the local level. Services are "sloppy" and less frequent in my home parish. Sermons here and elsewhere are lacking. Priests are just "going through the motions" in many cases. Financial mismanagement and lack of understanding of financial obligations at these levels are prevalent.

And, what can be said of a Metropolitan who will not schedule a town hall meeting in his own diocese?

Our bishops should be scared of God's judgement, and first seek reconciliation among the faithful as they preach.

I have not and will not pay my OCA assessment, and for the first time this summer have begun exploring other Orthodox churches. For here, it seems hopeless, and to me, that is contrary to Christ and the Bible and the course of my own salvation.

Your note reminded me of the Ray Velencia saga and how its an example of the deep inbred corruption which would cause Him not to allow this Church to exist. The Ray Velencia situation is troubling to a great magnitude. First of all the sheer stupidity of Fr. Ray in sending his mail to the number of people he did. This stupidity cannot be understated, but what is really telling in this, is that the entire Synod and the MC received it, it was VERY well hidden for 6 months, and nothing happened to Fr. Ray, other than he received an award by the Metropolitan himself who is also named in the suit. We expect Herman to award behavior unbecoming of a clergyman because he feels it a great honor when his priests follow in his path. Fr. Ray might be receiving the Mitre in short order! We’re not even surprised with the Synod, afterall, they have no problem with the behavior of its chairman. In fact, they choose to sweep it under the rug and hope it goes away. They can’t deal properly with people who steal from the very Church they took an oath to protect! You expect them to deal with a person who breaks his priestly confidences with such audacity?! Hell no! So, no surprise there. They, too, reward people of behavior unbecoming an Orthodox Christian let alone a brother bishop and therefore felt no need to do anything with Fr. Ray. If he was eligible, they would love to have him join them in fact! But the biggest disappointment is the MC and the biggest surprise is how they all hid it, every last one of them, until it finally broke with a $6,000,000 lawsuit. I wrote it out so everyone sees how many zero’s that is – it’s a number that a person earning $60,000 a year would have to work 100 years to earn (or 20 years for an adept priest to steal). When we start, if ever, to send in our assessments, its going to take a while to pay off that settlement, provided a jury doesn’t award more. AND we still have that Honesdale loan. We’re mortgaging our future as a Church paying off the misdeeds of people receiving AWARDS!

I ask, how much else is there of this kind that 40 people in positions of authority keep so well hidden and, better yet, do NOTHING ABOUT! Six months after the unheard of disclosing of one’s person problems to a group of 40 people by her spiritual father, the whole of which is responsible for the well being of this church both spiritually and administratively and NOTHING. FORTY people, SIX months and Fr. Ray received no sanctions after breaking sacred trusts in so blatant, pompous, and audacious a manner. Nothing, but an award – how truly telling of the state we find ourselves in. It makes you wonder, it truly does, if there are any good people in positions of responsibility in this Church. It makes you wonder what else is there, what else is there, and if the MC chose to sit on such a powderkeg, what else are they sitting on? The $6,000,000 lawsuit was filed wrongly in one respect. She should have named each member of the Synod and MC individually and held each one individually liable for failing to provide for the good of the Church. Maybe THAT would kick them in the behinds and make them realize that they are there to do more than travel to New York and meet each other socially at the appointed times.

Yes, Lizzie, maybe God is keeping this going because there are none that are holy here, none that care, and why should He allow all of these people to soil His name and His Church? So he continues this scandal til the last of the diehards give up and then He’ll take care of it himself. Of course, though, Lizzie, the problem is that none of them fear God, He’s an abstraction that has no bearing on our lives. Only thing that matters is avoiding the long arm of the law, that’s the only thing that matters, friends, the only thing. As for God, He’s just a buzz word to make the laity feel guilty into sending more money into a corrupt Church. All of His creation goes through a life cycle leading from birth to death, it would be no surprise that He figured the life cycle of this experiment with so unGodly a bunch should die. Dark days, these days, dark indeed.

That's where you're dead wrong. They themselves demand that they are CPA's, CEO's, etc., because they do not want to work with or trust laity. There is very much the problem. We do not demand that they take on every role and micro manage and control every facet of parish life. There are many well qualified laity that can do the jobs, but the priests up to the bishops want to be the master of all. Don't come crying to us if you can't do it all, super-priest!

+ Job wants to retire and can't wait for that event. The next metropolitan will be a transitional one. If it is not + Seraphim who received the majority vote at the last AAC, then let the OCA merge with the Antiochians and "BEG" that Bishop Basil Essey step up and lead!