The Metropolitan's Opening Address

Those who resigned can not be on the SIC because they were trying to do the job they were apparently given. That is, get to the bottom of this mess. It's all spelled out in the letter that Swaiko sent to JOB. JOB was expected to be a unifying force rather than an investigative force, but when he did the latter the commission was repeatedly suspended.

What Swaiko wants, is for this committee to meet and issue a report that exonerates him as quickly as possible, hopefully before the Nativity so he can go on and say, "See, I'm innocent, you were all wrong. Now, because I'm a great and holy man and I'm innocent according to this commission (which is stacked with people from areas friendly to me) you are obligated to send money, and please, don't leave out the stuff you were withholding and on that, I expect THAT with interest (preferably at the rate that the promissory note was stacked at)."

Swaiko’s holiday wishlist is the SIC quickly exonerates him and the Synod overturns the defrocking of Bob Kondratick. That way both of the conspirators get off the hook and, from an official standpoint, the entire thing comes to a close. Delusional, but definitely what he's thinking. Joe Swaiko then lives out his days preaching the good word and living the bad living high off the hog on things that you helped buy him. He will live in glee knowing that he's overcome, outlasted, and prevailed over all the people who banded together to battle against his anti-Christian behavior. Who says good always wins out? The First shall be last, and the last shall be first, but being first now feels so good, doesn't it Joe? And, afterall, is there REALLY anything after death? Why risk it? Now’s the time to be first!

For Joe, the good word is only good to get money, other than that, he doesn't believe an ounce of it for a second. He likes the good word, like any television evangelist, because people give because they feel that giving money to any one who preaches the word of God is doing a good thing and furthering that word and making me feel good and the world a better place. He says such good things, he dresses the part, he walks slowly in his vestments as if moving slowly was some characteristic of the ultra holy! He walks with a stick, surely that makes him holy! So, we must give, because he’s a holy man. When he preaches, he leans upon his staff like he needs support because he’s carrying all the woes of the world on his little shoulders. Surely, this is a man of God, no? Pharisees are fictional characters we only hear about in the Gospel, they don’t exist in real life! People are gullible, as we’ve seen many times with the evangelists. Other’s good conscience and desire to do good is taken advantage of and results in feeding the power and money monster. Unfortunately we see gullibility is not limited to TV audiences.

We, ourselves, a good number of us, think that yes, we need to send him money because it’s good to send it to the Church. It’s cleansing for the soul and the conscience and I get a tax deduction! The Church does the work of God, no? The Church IS God, no? Then it’s good to send money to God, no? Do you need to send money to the Church because you think it’s the right thing to do and those that manage it will do so in a manner worthy of a Church figure? Do you feel the wrath of God will come down upon you if you don’t? If you do, there are alternatives. Alternatives, which those that cannot bear to see money burned if it was sent to Syosset send to. We have two truly wonderful Orthodox charities, the OCMC (www.ocmc.org) and the IOCC (www.iocc.org), which really DO good works and use the bulk of the money they receive not on themselves, but on doing the work of the Church. Sending to these two organizations not only fulfills doing the Lord’s work, it also cleanses your soul and clears your conscience. And you get a tax deduction! The only thing is that you have to make a little, very minor effort, to give, rather than drop an envelope or check into your collection basket. These two organizations do more good in a year than FOS ever did!

Let’s look at it this way. In a good year, the OCA spent about 10% of its income on doing “works of the Church”. This means works that were directly related to the mission of the Church. In a good year, we didn’t have enough money to support our Chaplains in Iraq and it wasn’t due to, like the administration tells you, because you didn’t send enough, it’s because they took too big a chunk out. The remaining 90% went to stuff like salaries, benefits, and travel of the administration that was not directly related to any of these good works. And this is of the money that was accounted for – imagine what happened with the money that “fell off the table” when it was being counted. Of the 10% that went to good works, most of that was on salaries, leaving a very meager amount in which to help show the faith in action outside of the Chancery building.

Good charities, those that are the highest rated, use less than 10% of the money they receive for administrative purposes. We are talking a complete reversal of the OCA administration. The IOCC uses 8% on administration. That means that for every dollar used on administration, nearly 14 dollars go to doing their mission in the field and when we say “field”, we mean in the trenches, we don’t mean the Marriott Marquis. In addition, according to their site, for every dollar you send, more than 6.5 times comes in addition to that. In the OCA, for every 10 dollars you give, one is used for work on the Church’s mission and of that 1 dollar, most of that on administrative purposes for a particular department. And yet people feel the central Church is a necessary and good way to use their hard earned money – is it just because it’s easier to give? Even when its learned that 0% of the money for charities like beslan, etc., went anywhere until this was uncovered.

There are many more local Orthodox based charities that exist. Thomas O’Neill, former speaker of the House used to say that all politics is local. Well, we can modify that a little and say that all good is local and we can do the most good when we use our money on needs that are in our own local area. Give to your local charities, start a food bank, feed the homeless, that’s a good use of money in an Orthodox manner – it gives more witness to our Orthodox faith than anything the administration ever did. Give to the IOCC and OCMC to help on a larger scale and evangelize where people are eager and anxious to take in the good Orthodox word - and its good, it’s even better when those speaking it follow it. In short, do you need to waste your money on keeping this scandal going when you can use it in an Orthodox context in ways that are highly effective and meaningful? Giving money to the OCA is feeding a monster. A monster for whom good works and mission are merely marketing phrases to part you and your money. We can do good in this scandal for all those that we felt were being helped with what was being misappropriated by our top officials. In light of the intransigence of the bishops and those that enable them, it’s time for us to review what it means to do the Church’s work when we give money and give to that which uses it in a manner that allows us to sleep at night knowing it’s doing what we intended it to do. In a manner that is well pleasing to God, not the powers that be in Syosset.

At one of the AAC's, I believe, maybe in Florida, the FOS funds were ok'ed to be directed to be used in the general checking account. What this means is that money that you thought was going into Stewardship activities was going into funding day to day operations, stuff like travel to an event in warm Los Angeles in February or Swaiko spreading the good word, in, say, Georgia (the country, not the state obviously). It didn't go to youth projects or to Chaplains or whatever else the brochures said. That was all a cover to get money to cover what they really deemed important.

So, since that was ok'ed, the general operations are a FOS project! This is one of the things that if people don't read the reports from the AAC, MC, etc. and are not active in what is going on, they will assume that when you send to FOS it goes to Stewardship. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is how the scam was permitted to go on. People thought they were sending to FOS, but it was a free will donation for whatever the administration wanted to do and not necessarily any of the things that was advertised in the flyers and sales pitches. Demand to know from the FOS directors in the past where all the funds were used. Demand to know! Demand to know what stewardship they accomplished! But don’t hold your breath.

It’s not your fault. You were truly being good stewards and giving money you had the best of intentions that it would be used right and had no reason to think that what you were being told wasn’t the case. After all, if you can’t trust the men in the riassas in Syosset to handle your money with integrity, who else can you trust?

People have to get over the hurdle of that fallacy that if you withhold assessments that you are preventing the good works of the Church from happening. Nothing, my friends, could be further from the truth. Just take a look at the numbers they, themselves, have published and you see that money is not used where you think it is. It’s just very representative of the people running the joint. Where you put your money therein is your heart and we know where their hearts are. The heart is with lawyers, not our chaplains.

At this point in time, the OCA administration has shown that it can’t be trusted with any money so the risk of sending money to them thinking it will be used for good purposes is unwarranted and too high and will remain too high as long as those that in power are still there. They were inept at raising funds and corrupt at using what funds they did raise. They still can’t tell us where the remaining 9/11 money that was replenished from the Honesdale loan and wasn’t all distributed afterwards went! Even after they profess to be doing better and put us in the hole to replenish the missing charity money, money still disappears! Why do people send them more? Why do people send them any ? How can they do good works when they can’t even tell the difference between good and bad?

Earmarks are not the answer. We earmarked the 9/11 money, we earmarked the Beslan money, we earmarked Seminary monies, and Charity monies, etc., etc. etc. What happened with those earmarks? They were misappropriated and used for stuff such as tanning salons! Earmarks are useless both in them being adhered to with this bunch and shouldn’t have to be necessary when people give money to, say, the 9/11 fund. It’s explicitly earmarked for a purpose, but that doesn’t prevent the plunder! Earmarks work if the people handling the money have integrity and are of good, solid moral character. That was not, and is not, the case. If we had that kind of people we would know that our FOS money would be used for Stewardship, not so that they could be served by stewardesses! If we had that kind of people we wouldn’t be where we are today.

Bottom line is that with other ORTHODOX charitable organizations that exist that handle a lot of money and are professional charitable organizations with solid and impeccable reputations, why are you sending anything to the OCA? You want to help youth, send to the OCF (www.ocf.net). You want to help with education, SCOBA has a group for that (http://www.orthodoxed.org/). You want to help evangelize and really help with disasters, send to the OCMC (www.ocmc.org) and the IOCC (ww.iocc.org). We don’t’ need a bloated, corrupt operation in Syosset in order to do good works. In fact, we can do more if we don’t go through them and we can get real value on our charitable dollars maximizing how it’s used for good effect to those that need and value it.