Here is the image posted on oca.org in its original size and resolution.
______________________________
Firstly, read this:
http://www.oca.org/news/2230
Do note how tightly focused the top image is. It’s a technique used to make a small group look like a larger one. It’s often used by Western TV cameramen in Moscow to make the small groups attracted by pro-American bum-kissers like Kasparov look like large assemblages. The purpose here (and in the case of the TV broadcasts too) is to deliberately mislead and misinform… in short, it’s a lie any way you look at it. This is an extremely poor attempt at dezinformatsiya. It’s so bad that it’s pathetic, in its humble little way, isn’t it? If this is the BEST that JP can do…
Here is a picture from the website of St Catherine (the OCA Representation in Moscow). Take a good look. There are only about seventy individuals in this image. This is the largest number of people in any of the images available for this “event” (I apologise for the image… it’s very poor… obviously taken with an el cheapo camera with next to nil pixels):
“The hierarchs and clergy were accompanied by hundreds of pilgrims from across North America, who travelled to Spruce Island by boat”. This is utter bullshit and rubbish, and if you believe it, you are a candidate for a brain transplant. If there were that many people present, trust me, there would’ve have been an image showing such. The only people who were there were the seventy individuals in the above image, no more. In any case, friends from Alaska inform me that you can’t bring “hundreds of pilgrims” to Spruce Island, it’s simply impossible, as the only access is via a tiny anchorage that one can only reach by small boat.
By the way, THIS is “hundreds of pilgrims”… the above image doesn’t even come close (“One of these things is NOT like the other… one of these things ain’t even the same”):
NO hierarch of the EP showed up for this shindig. NONE. Yustinian showed up because the Boy Blunder built a fire under him. Bishop Maksim Vasiljević of the SPC was there on his own nickel, he’s a rabid Renovationist and fanatical Schmemannite (don’t forget, Irinej Gavrilović became Patriarch because the Renovationist Nutters and the Grounded Orthodox couldn’t agree, so, they named a moderate placeholder). Of course, Maksim defends Platina, just as JP defends New Skete. Birds of a feather, I’d say. It’s interesting to note that the OCA wasted a wad of cash to fly Zacchaeus Wood from Moscow to Alaska (or did the Boy Wonder front the cash from DECR coffers?)… he’s a nobody with no real influence over anything… why was he given top billing? There was no mention of Gerasim Eliel in the article, another lacuna, no?
In short, JP attracts less than a hundred people, yet again. THIS IS IN ALASKA, A THOROUGHLY ORTHODOX REGION. If there had been images of crowds of native faithful greeting JP, they would have been posted, and prominently, trust me. Every “event” that JP is associated with, save for festal liturgies, attracts less than a hundred participants, including clergy. That smells like Old Catholic Vagante crapola to me… and rather strongly, too.
Oh, by the way, a friend of mine in the Ukraine remarked in an e-mail that JP is going to show up for the opening of the “Glory to the Ukraine” exhibition in DC… “He’s a vainglorious SOB. He didn’t want to share the billing with Vladyki Aleksandr in New York. Besides, he’s fat and lazy…” I didn’t think of that myself, but she’s right… JP always tries to hog centre stage (as do all the konvertsy, by the way).
This is more pathetic and sad than anything else. Well, we know one thing now… the MP did NOT force the EP to recognise the OCA whilst Bart was at the Centre (the lack of EP participation in this spoke volumes). It truly does take all kinds, kids…
Barbara-Marie Drezhlo
Wednesday 11 August 2010
Albany NY
Editor’s Postscript:
This was only posted today… with modern technology, it could have posted from a laptop on Monday night. Do you need any more evidence of the bone-idle laziness of Matusiak and those around him? The Centre had high-res images of His Holiness in the Ukraine up on the website on the very day that they were taken… it’s not only possible… it’s done. This was a hutsky-klutsky mess; it deserves both an Order of the Big Green Weenie and a Golden Evil George Weigel Award.
I despise all attempts at deliberate misrepresentation… and I have NO respect whatsoever for those who attempt to pull such shenanigans.
THAT’S EVIL.
BMD
A Further Postscript:
A friend of mine wrote me to inform me that I had missed the fact that there was no Antiochian official representation at this Dixie Fry. Indeed, it was “my bad”… and it’s not unimportant. Philip Saliba is a politician to his fingertips. I think that he senses that JP is a “dead man walking”. After all, this event was sparsely attended. Another friend of mine pointed up that Benjamin Peterson was MIA at Spruce Island. Why? He WAS in Alaska, in Kodiak, in fact.
You can’t say that covering Orthodoxy is BORING.
BMD
