In an “Open Letter to the Clergy and Faithful of the God-Protected Diocese of Alaska”, Bishop Nikolai ordered his clergy to disobey the Metropolitan’s directive of 8 March, posted on the internet on 10 March, to cease commemorating Nikolai as the Bishop of Alaska. He wrote the following:
Let me be clear, all clergy of the Diocese should continue the current practice, maintain the commemoration of their Diocesan Bishop in the celebration of the Divine Services of our Church, and not accept as canonical or biblical recent innovations announced by Metropolitan Herman.
In the two page letter, the Bishop tells his clergy:
If you comply with the innovations presented to you by Metropolitan Herman, you will severely wound the very Church which you so highly prize.
The bishop, who on 5 March was placed on mandatory leave and ordered to physically quit the diocese while an investigation into his actions in Alaska is conducted, continues to resist.
Have no illusions about this … (it) is an ecclesiastical punishment without trial and that is nothing less than the rejection of Church discipline for some cause other than the integrity of our Lord’s Church. I have not vacated my office, and I will, by our Lord’s grace, continue to persevere.
(Read the full text of Nikolai’s letter here.)
No Links
Interestingly, the OCA website has dropped its links to the website of the Russian Orthodox Diocese of Alaska, and while Nikolai is still listed as its bishop, the words, “On Leave of Absence”, are conspicuous next to his photo. As per the Metropolitan’s directive, Rev Garklavs is now listed as the “Diocesan Administrator” on the OCA information page regarding the Russian Orthodox Diocese of Alaska.
Council Resignations Explained
Other changes to that page are in the offing. As reported by OCANews.org on 22 February, both Alaskan representatives to the Metropolitan Council have resigned. In a recent posting on the diocesan website under “Ask Vladyka”, Bishop Nikolai offered an explanation. He wrote:
A number of people have asked why my two Metropolitan Council Representatives resigned. Some conjecture if I told them to; or compelled them to do so in one way or another, when, in reality, I even tried to talk them both out of it.
Both Fr Isidore and Mina Jacobs sent me letters in late January asking to resign and both of them had very different reasons for doing so. Fr Isidore expressed a general dissatisfaction with the tone of the Metropolitan Council and questioned its right to exist canonically. He was also disgusted in the vindictive approach some members of the Metropolitan Council have taken with regard to the Protopresbyter Kondratick in internal Metropolitan Council correspondence. Mina Jacobs cited a need to devote her valuable time to something more positive and conducive to building up the Body of Christ, the Church. Both Fr Isidore and Mina Jacobs clearly indicated that their time was better spent in Alaska.
Given that the Metropolitan Council has led the way in reforming the financial practices, ethical guidelines, and charitable distribution of the OCA in the past two years after a decade of corruption, one would love to be able to ask Ms Jacobs how she envisions spending her time more “positively”. Moreover, one has to wonder if the “vindictive approach” of which Fr Isidore complains might include no longer referring to Robert Kondratick by the title of Protopresbyter, since he was deposed from all priestly ranks eight months ago. This fact seems to have escaped the bishop as well….
Another Perspective
The bishop’s attempt to reduce the issues in Alaska to procedural issues is gaining little traction. It is, however, producing some interesting writing among those most affected. In a recent e-mail to fellow priests, Fr Michael Oleksa mused:
I’ve been reflecting on what we are learning in a positive way about the very nature of the Church as we struggle to resolve the issues in Alaska.
We are re-affirming the conciliar nature of the Church. No one alone can deal with or even raise the issues, but together, at first a few and then the majority of clergy and then hundreds of laity have begun speaking ‘with one mouth and one heart.’ This was not a plot, organised or devised by some secret revolutionary cell. It was unified and determined without being self-serving or angry. The Church spoke to its leadership.
And those leaders responded, taking action in order to strengthen and heal. Presupposed in the intervention of the Holy Synod was a principle perhaps never explicitly articulated at any earlier time. Canons are precisely the expression of what is normal, expected, taken for granted, until the obvious is challenged. Then the Church finds it necessary to clarify Herself. In this sense, canons are not new, nor are they invented, nor do they develop as secular legal precedents do. The canon, so to speak, was always there, as the norm, the way the Church IS, but until a certain conflict or dispute arose, it did not require an explicit formulation.
And what is the “canon” that we have discovered, a principle that was always there, but for which the Church had no previous need to state emphatically, publicly, clearly? What is the First Alaskan Canon? It seems we have already discovered it:
“A bishop shall love his diocese as a husband is admonished to love his wife, to offer himself, to suffer and to die for her if necessary. The people of each diocese shall respond in love and respect for their bishop. If the bishop abuses, wounds, harms or scatters the flock entrusted to him, let him be removed from his seat of authority and let the Holy Synod investigate the situation. If he persists in his abuse, let him be suspended. If he defies the authority of his Synod, let him be deposed”.
Perhaps, this sort of procedure was assumed, taken for granted in times past. Perhaps, it was never necessary for the Church to affirm such an obvious principle. But, today, in Alaska, this is the norm, the canon, whether it was ever explicitly formulated before, that has arisen, has appeared as obvious from within our situation. We have learned something new, that was always there, about the Church, and about ourselves.
Clearly, the lessons will continue.
11 March 2008
Mark Stokoe
Orthodox Christians for Accountability
http://www.ocanews.org/news/NikolaiOdersClergytoDisobey31108.html (in English)
Editor’s note: It is interesting to note the dissimilarity between this case and the two other known cases of episcopal discipline in the last 10 years, that is to say, the situations in Yekaterinburg in 1999 and England in 2006.
In the first case, Bishop Nikon submitted to authority, and no incitements to disobedience were issued by him. In the second, Basil Osborne issued calls to disobey the MP Holy Synod, but, he did not do so whilst still in “authority” at Ennismore Gardens.
In this case, Nikolai has taken the gauge of the OCA Holy Synod, and he has decided that there is going to be no effort on their part to remove him forcibly, so, he is going to stay put.
Mr Stokoe’s faith in the so-called Metropolitan Council is touching, naïve, and highly illuminating. This body is not canonical; it is a Protestant innovation. None of what has happened in the past year has occurred because of that body’s actions, they have occurred because Herman Swaiko fears that Moscow is going to pull his autocephaly.
This is illuminating because it shows that many American Orthodox do not believe in Orthodoxy, they believe in post-modern Positivism, instead. Yes, we should avoid the Scylla of corruption and Roman centralism taught by Herman. At the same time, we should avoid the Charybdis of Protestant “democracy” advocated by Mr Stokoe and others.
We should follow the path that Moscow used to resolve the two other cases mentioned. There should be open meetings, preceded by vigorous publicity, to get to the root of the problem. It worked in England; it shall work here, as well. The corrupt bishop should be removed and replaced by a competent and saintly hierarch, as was the case in Yekaterinburg. There is no need to involve a semi-Protestant “Metropolitan Council” (indeed, the sooner such an innovation is dispensed with, the better). There is no need to consider a married episcopate, which is rank heresy (Mr Stokoe, on his website, has not admonished those calling for such, which leads one to wonder whether he agrees with such distortion (to use the kindest word) of Church teaching).
Above all, Rev Garklavs cannot be both Chancellor of the OCA and Administrator of the Russian Orthodox Diocese of Alaska. It is impossible to do both at once. It looks as though the native faithful and clergy are being spat upon, yet again. Syosset should attend to the fact that native peoples keep their options open… do not be fooled by their silence.
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