Metropolitan Leonty Turkevich (1876-1965), the last solid First Hierarch of the Metropolia/OCA
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Here’s something from my correspondence:
Everyone on the right is praising Jonah for being anti-gay (how Christian!), but we have all heard the rumours about him… how can we expose this hypocrisy?
Scary is right; make a point of watching the film Waiting for Armageddon to see just how these people think:
They’re absolutely nuts.
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I was at sixes and sevens for a while… how would I approach this… there is MUCH more to it than just what has occurred since the ’08 Sobor in Pittsburgh. Do settle in for a bit, dear… the story isn’t short, and it’ll take a bit longer than usual to give you all the detail that you need. For instance, lately, one of the most eye-opening events was when JP, Hilarion Kapral, Dickie Wood, and Seraphim Gan had a cosy confab in New York at the Synodal Cathedral on 92nd and Park. I’ll tell you… if you had told people in the late ‘70s or early ‘80s that Hilarion Kapral (and one of the Gan clan) would be defending a Renovationist bishop of the OCA (and one who had morals questions hanging over his head)… why, they’d laugh out loud and tell you to go home and “sleep it off”… why would someone suggest anything so ridiculous? In short, there’s a concerted effort to “airbrush” the past, and “modify” history… for instance, Jordanville was “always” in favour of reconciliation with the MP (but had to “hide” it, you see). Let’s scroll back to the beginning…
Before the ’08 Sobor in Pittsburgh, there was NO talk whatsoever of making Jonas Paffhausen the First Hierarch of the OCA. He was a total unknown… a young convert vicar bishop of no known convictions or history. As for most people, they assumed that Job Osacky was going to come out of the Sobor as the new First Hierarch. Dmitri Royster wasn’t only too old… there were old morals questions. Tikhon Fitzgerald was dotty… most saw Tikhon Mollard as too young… Nikon Liolin was seen as a “yes man”…, Benjamin Peterson was a known drunkard (arrested for DUI in Nevada), and Sobor delegates raised morals questions concerning him. Supposedly, JP wowed the delegates with his speech. I have spoken with people who were at the Sobor, and they’ve told me that he mostly moved the konvertsy. You see, parishes don’t receive votes based on their membership levels, that is, small convert coteries receive the same vote as larger grounded and established parishes. Ergo, JP had a support of a minority of the people, but a majority of the parishes.
Furthermore, several sources assure me that no one vetted Paffhausen properly. Not a single person brought up his questionable past with Gleb Podmoshensky. NO ONE. Soon afterwards, the lie that JP went to Russia under the auspices of the MP appeared in print. Furthermore, according to these sources, he’d been part of the monastic brotherhood in Valaam and Bishop Pankraty had blessed him to become a monastic. Earlier, I wrote the following:
The story given about Valaam is pure fantasy. In an earlier article, JP claimed that he embraced monasticism due to the influence of Bishop Pankraty Zherdev… note this quote:
In the late 1980′s, he spent some time in the USSR, where he studied the Russian language, cooperated (сотрудничал) with the Publications Department of the Moscow Patriarchate {a lie, but that’s in the original source document: editor}, became familiar with church life in the MP, and showed particular interest in monastic matters. Archimandrite Pankraty Zherdev (later, a bishop), the Abbot of Valaam Monastery, was reputed to be the spiritual father of James Paffhausen.
http://www.pravoslavie.ru/guest/33155.htm (my translation)
Firstly, this article gets the dates wrong; James Paffhausen went to Russia in 1993, after the fall of the USSR. I don’t blame the author… he only knew what JP told them. However, note that JP claimed that Archimandrite Pankraty was his “spiritual father” in this conversation. Also, observe that he avoided any mention of his ties with Podmoshensky… Russki Palomnik wasn’t a project of the MP… it was a brainchild of GP, who’d been deposed by the ROCOR Holy Synod (a fact well-known to Mr Paffhausen). Now, he’s claiming that Archimandrite Kirill Pavlov was his advisor… there’s only one problem with that… Fr Kirill wasn’t at Valaam; he was a famous monk at the St Sergei-Troitsky Lavra in Sergeyev Posad. Oh… he’s safely dead, too… Bishop Pankraty’s alive n’ kicking… I see why JP changed his story, don’t you? Do notice that the Post article doesn’t mention his links to Russki Palomnik or repeat the lie about working for the MP. There’s also no mention of the Guatemala fiasco, where a group went over to the EP in preference to the OCA, mainly because Benjamin Peterson demanded that they sign over all their property to the OCA… JP pumped that up big-time when he was first in Russia… why the silence now?
This raises morals questions. It’s not only the question, “Is Jonas Paffhausen a practising homosexual”… it’s, “Why does Jonas Paffhausen associate with so many known and reputed homosexuals?” Look at the photo posted below:
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In this image, one sees Paffhausen and Benjamin Peterson serving with Isidore Brittain, a man who many sources name as the homosexual lover of “retired” Bishop Nikolai Soraich. JP isn’t ignorant of this… nor is he unaware of the fact that Herman Swaiko wanted to nail Peterson to the wall after the DUI arrest in Nevada (nor is JP uninformed of the moral questions raised against BP at the Pittsburgh Sobor). The OCA Holy Synod suspended Brittain… yet, you can see that he’s vested in this image, and BP and JP spat in the Synod’s face by serving with him openly and publicly. In addition, letters have surfaced purporting to be personal correspondence between Nikolai Soraich and Paffhausen. Already, we see that JP has close and friendly contact with three clergymen reputed to be homosexuals… then, one has to reflect on his close and intimate relationship with Gleb Podmoshensky.
The ROCOR Holy Synod deposed GP in a very public and messy manner. No one is unaware that the real reason behind the action was morals questions. To be sure, Jonas Paffhausen was NEVER ignorant of that accusation against GP. If we can call anyone the “elder” of JP, it’s GP. JP had connections with GP all through the ‘80s… many ignorant konvertsy did. GP pandered to them and stroked their egos… for instance, it’s known that Freddie M-G and Rod Dreher were some of the Stepford Wives followers of GP. Gerasim Eliel went up to Alaska under GP’s auspices, and the Native Corporation kicked his butt out. The fact that JP hangs around reputed homosexuals, and is chummy with them, doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s homosexual himself. Yet… it’s strong circumstantial evidence of it. By the way, no one believes the story about a “girlfriend”… one of my sources was particularly derisive on that score. However, not a single person raised any of these questions at the Sobor…
My view is simple. On two previous occasions, the Holy Synod overruled the “democratic” floor vote at the Sobor concerning the choice of the Metropolitan. They had chosen Feodosy Lazor in preference to Dmitri Royster, and they had picked Herman Swaiko over Seraphim Storheim. Perhaps, they felt that they couldn’t oppose the floor vote this time, and they feared a noisy rebellion, especially amongst the childish konvertsy. The only viable candidate for First Hierarch was Job Osacky… but they didn’t have the stones to oppose the rabble. JP had NO prior experience as a bishop… not even as a vicar bishop. I don’t believe that Bobby or Lyonyo engineered JP’s election… that’s “black helicopter” conspiracy nutter thinking. I DO believe that both of them used the opportunities and openings given to them by such a turn of events, but that doesn’t mean that they planned it that way.
Let me take a slight digression… you can’t compare JP with Mark Stokoe. Firstly, Mark isn’t clergy… he’s a layman, and the rules for lay members of the Church are much more lenient than they are for the clergy. Secondly, Mark isn’t in a position of authority… he’s not a clergyman or lay official of the Church (he’s just a member of the toothless “Metropolitan Council”). Thirdly, Bishop Job was well-aware of the pastoral oikonomia exercised by Fr Ted Bobosh… everybody knew it (and probably knew it well before I did, no doubt). JP, on the other hand, pretends to be the dictatorial “ruler” of the OCA (according to the so-called Brum Doctrine, written by one of his old pals from his BTU days). If he’s a homosexual… we should run him out of office, as the Church doesn’t allow homosexual clergy. So far, the OCA has had two homosexual First Hierarchs… Feodosy Lazor and Herman Swaiko. Is JP the third one of that sort? It certainly raises questions about that Eliel character that he’s trying to foist on the Church in Alaska, and not just that.
Lastly, why is the ROCOR defending such a questionable figure? It gives the impression that Hilarion Kapral is a boob… which he’s not. Are they being pressured by the Blunder? Already, Alfeyev put them into an embarrassing position with his shameless sucking up to the Galician Uniates during his latest trip… ergo, it wouldn’t surprise me that he’d pressure Hilarion to hobnob with such an unsavoury interlocutor. It gives the impression that the ROCOR approves of the shenanigans current in the OCA… does it? Is the survival of the current institutional forms so important to them? I don’t know enough to say, yet…
There’s much more, of course, but let’s cut it short. This is quite enough to mull over at present. Whither thou goest, American Orthodoxy? Yes, where are we going?
Barbara-Marie Drezhlo
Wednesday 18 May 2011
Albany NY
