2 October 2011. Back to the Future! The Central Assessment for the Metropolia in 1950 was ONE DOLLAR PER WORKING PERSON… What happened?

Look at the old chart above… someone kindly sent it on to me. There are still a lot of old-timers left who remember the Metropolia days. Of course, there’s been inflation in our money since 1950… but it sure wasn’t a 10,500 percent increase! The 105 USD per person assessment (the current OCA Central Annual Assessment (CAA)) in 2011 is considerably more money than 1.00 USD per person in 1950. Look at the following table on gold prices (that’s a good take on actual inflation):

Year	Gold Price: USD/troy ounce
1970	37
1975	140
1980	590
1985	327
1990	391
1995	387
2000	273
2005	513
2010	1,410
1970 to 2010 net change as a percentage
	+3,792

This means that 1.00 USD in 1970 is worth 38 USD in today’s baloney dollars. I’d say that the most that 1.00 USD/1950 would be worth today is 50 USD. That’s to say, the CAA has increased a little over twice as much as inflation would have it. Yet, we have to add in another factor…  in 1950, 25 percent of the CAA went for clergy pensions. Today, parishes have to pay for their priests’ pensions in addition to their per capita CAA. Thus, there hasn’t been a 10,500 percent increase in the costs covered by the CAA; there’s been a 14,000 percent increase in the CAA, when there’s been a 5,000 percent increase in the general price level, meaning that the CAA has outstripped inflation by a factor of 2.8. None dare call it legal fees and “confidential settlements!” in short, its creative accounting of the most noisome and malodorous sort… I can smell the “cooked books” from here. Valerie Ringa CAN’T explain this one away, can she?

That’s not all… the Griswold Estate in Westwood (some wits called it “Pishtey’s Folly”) wasn’t acquired by the Metropolia until 1957. Eventually, all central administrative operations went there and it became what we now know as the “OCA Chancery” (or in metonymy, “Syosset”). Don’t forget, Alexander Warnecke had his greasy hand in this, just as he did with the purchase of the old St Vincent’s ha-ha hotel (de-institutionalisation emptied most of it and the shrinks moved to Harrison) for SVS (one wonders how much of the money stuck to his greedy fingers). Now, in 2011, the OCA can’t afford to maintain Westwood, support the First Hierarch, and make the Chancery payroll… it’s simple… even with a 280 percent real increase in the CAA (adjusted for inflation).

Do notice that the vast majority of po-nashemu folk… clergy and laity alike… aren’t attending the upcoming Sobor. This is barmy… if they don’t attend… even at the last minute… they could hand over the Sobor to the konvertsy toddlers. It would be a religious version of what happened in 2010… people stayed home from voting in the mid-term election to “send Obama a message”. All that it did was that the rightwing kooks DID vote, electing extremist slimers, and our country received grievous wounds to its social safety net as a result (at a time of raging depression, no less). No doubt, things will be set partially right in the next election, but the damage’s been done. Thousands are now suffering to enrich pill-popping pigs like Rush Limbaugh (who moved to Florida because of its laxer laws regarding prescription drug abuse) and Ayn Rand worshipping extremists such as Paul Ryan and Rand Paul.

In 1950, the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America (Metropolia) was much larger than today’s Orthodox Church in America… perhaps, there was a quarter of a million people in it. It was over twice the size of the present OCA. The loss was due ENTIRELY to the lunatic and crackbrained policies put in place by Aleksandr Schmemann and Ivan von Meyendorff. Interesting… the konvertsy worship these two and won’t let anyone criticise them. The konvertsy would destroy the Church as we know it if they felt that they had a chance to implement their chuckle-headed nostrums.

Do you want a REAL Church? Are you going to let the konvertsy steal it from us? Think on that…

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Sunday 2 October 2011

Albany NY

2 October 2011. Love BT and the Tithe… He’s Right This Time…

Here’s what happens to your money once JP and Lyonyo get their hands on it… any questions?

______________________________

Here’s something that Love BT wrote today:

Tithing? Proportionate giving’s fine, but tithing? In my 1968 Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume 22, there’s a long scholarly, well-documented article on tithing/Christian giving, from its beginnings in the Middle East and in ancient Judaism and up to the Mormons of today, as well as a characterisation of most of the other means by which churches get their hands on Christians’ money. The last sentence in this thoroughly researched article goes like this:

The Orthodox Churches have never accepted the idea of tithes and the Orthodox have never paid them.

That, of course, was 1968, before the large flood of converts from (especially Southern) Protestantism into the Orthodox Church. Tithing to them was, and is, a given. I believe the article’s factual for 1968 and for the entire history of the Orthodox Church until then. So, I think it’s a little uppity of some of us to make it a “sine qua non” of being Orthodox.

When someone’s right, they’re right. Hear, hear! Note this:

I think it’s a little uppity of some of us to make it a “sine qua non” of being Orthodox.

There one has it. The konvertsy aren’t of us… they’ve never been of us… and they’re going to leave us in future. Note well that most of the konvertsy posters on the internet are punks who refuse to sign their names to their posts. Tells you something, doesn’t it?

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Sunday 2 October 2011

Albany NY

2 October 2011. Stokoe Gives Month-Old Stale News… Refuses to Name Chancellor-Designee… Endorses MC Secrecy by His Inaction

His Late Master’s Voice (Nipper)

Francis Barraud

1898

******

Of course, this is the famous RCA/HMV logo… “His Master’s Voice”. That’s what you get when you read ANYTHING by Stokoe. He’s nothing but Lyonyo’s obsequious lackey, so, when you read Mark, you read Lyonyo. It’s quite that simple. Mark’s a mindless follower… “Führer befehl, wir folgen (The Leader commands, we follow)”… do you want to be a lemming, too?

______________________________

I looked at Stokoe’s website, for the first time since Thursday. It was rather an interesting gemisch of old news, irrelevant news, and misleading news. For instance, the Blunder made his statements on a so-called “Pan-Orthodox Council” in late August… over a month ago. See here:

http://ocanews.org/news/Consensus-Alfeyev9.29.11.html

I didn’t report them then, because they didn’t say anything new (in fact, the Blunder’s been drifting, as of late)… and they weren’t newsworthy. Let’s keep it simple… there’s going to be NO Eighth Ecumenical Council, not now, not any time sooner or later, not at all, full stop. The talks regarding one have been chugging along since 1961… that’s fifty years, kids. They’ve not even decided who has the right to call it, let alone who’s going to be at it. Earth to Mark… the Greek government cut the funds to the Chambésy centre… it’s closed down, for all intents and purposes. Only disconnected pseudo-intellectual phonies like Mark and the SVS lot care about this topic. No one else does. Let’s say it slowly so that even the simple get it:

THERE IS GOING TO BE NO EIGHTH ECUMENICAL COUNCIL IN THE NEAR OR FAR FUTURE. NO ONE REALLY WANTS IT.

That’s right… no one really wants it. Bart doesn’t want it… it could revisit the status of the Ecumenical Patriarchate… and he doesn’t want that. The Church of Greece doesn’t want it… it doesn’t want to run the risk of being abolished and made part of the Phanar’s bailiwick. KMG doesn’t want it… he’s the de facto primus inter pares and he doesn’t want to mess with a good thing. The two main players in the Great Game keep Chambésy going as a venue to smooth out EP/MP problems under the pretext of discussing a putative “Council”. Mark knows this… for he once worked at the OCA Chancery, and he met REAL players like Yuvenaly Poyarkov. Why Mark wasted your time with this stale old non-news, I can’t figure out.

Then, Mark talked about Christians leaving Egypt… what does that have to do with the OCA? Case closed.

Another thing that Mark mentioned was Storheim’s reported visits to Canadian parishes and his lawyer’s denial. See here:

http://ocanews.org/news/MoreonSeraphim9.30.11.html

Mark disingenuously wrote, “One can only hope no one speaks to the Winnipeg police and courts, lest the Archbishop’s bail be revoked prior to his mid-November hearing”. Mr Stokoe knows that the Winnipeg magistrate monitors his site. This means that Lyonyo’s distancing himself from Storheim. Let’s not forget Mark’s puppeteer and master… Mark isn’t a free agent, and, if you think so, you’re in need of a long rest.

Lastly, there was Mark’s reportage on the MC meeting. See it here:

http://ocanews.org/news/AporiaContinues9.30.11.html

Note this:

In short, the overwhelming problem with the OCA is its Metropolitan, all his works, and all his ways. The OCA, as the Metropolitan Council reviewed, cannot get ahead of events because the Metropolitan himself is constantly creating new ones. Worse, he’s unwilling, or unable, to stop doing so. He won’t be shamed, nor resign, nor does the Synod seem willing to remove him, ostensibly because whatever his pathology (for Jonah refuses diagnosis) it isn’t a traditional “canonical” offence. It’s only an offence against common sense and the natural instinct for self-preservation, both of which virtues seem to be sorely lacking among our enabling higher clergy.

Remember how Mark told us that if we got rid of Herman, there’d be Nirvana and the Advent of the Millennium on the Earthly Plane? That didn’t happen then… and it won’t happen now. Lyonyo wanted Herman out… now, Lyonyo wants El Gordo out. Mark is Lyonyo’s obedient Stepin Fetchit and general organ-grinder monkey, so he disseminates Lyonyo’s viewpoint to the world. You forget Mark’s deep ties to Lyonyo and Connie Tarasar at your peril. Don’t forget… Stokoe approved of the nasty and thuggish behaviour directed at Fr John Sorochka and the Mayfield people in the ‘80s. He and Lyonyo were two of the most vociferous supporters of the attempted legal rape of the people of Mayfield. As I wrote a friend:

Stokoe’s making an ass of himself (I’m writing something on that right now). They’re always dragging in shrinkie-dinkies. JP’s not barmy… he’s incompetent, a closeted faygeler, a braggart, and childish. There… he’s not “disturbed”… he’s a “piece of work”, something different. Just like BT’s cruel… he’s not “disturbed”.

El Gordo isn’t barmy… neither is Love BT, by the way. That’s how superficial and over-educated American suburbanites deal with anyone unpleasant or inconvenient. They’re just like the late period Sovs; they use “mental illness” as a brush to tar their enemies with. Syosset’s been playing this game for a long time. Schmemann brought this particular piece of nastiness amongst us.

Mark lied about Jillions, see this:

In the only other major decision taken, the Council recommended the name of one candidate to become Chancellor of the OCA. The Lesser Synod asked that his name not be released until he could speak to his current employers, a final contract with the OCA be negotiated and he be formally elected (or not…) at next week’s full Synod meeting.

Mark’s aware that the real reason delaying action on this isn’t any “employer” or contractual problems. The OCA has to get Permanent Resident status for Jillions… and the fact that they and Stokoe weren’t honest about that fact should tell you volumes. In addition, Jillions is a radical member of Lyonyo’s faction, and Mark didn’t want to say anything to displease his employer or ruin his friend’s chances of getting the job. As I’ve always thought, it’s getting more and more confusing as the end-game progresses. I’d say that the way out is clear… the OCA must die… the sooner that we’re back in the Mother Church where we belonged in the first place, the better. Pass the jug… I know that the world’s crook… but this? I need no intellectual “proofs” of the Fall of Mankind… I think of the inscription over Sir Christopher Wren’s grave:

Lector si monumentum requiris circumspice.

Reader, if you seek his monument… look around you.

If you seek the proof of what I say… look around you. Need I say anything more?

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Sunday 2 October 2011

Albany NY

2 October 2011. They’re NOT Called the “First Families” for Nought…New OCA Chancellor Jillions is Wheeler’s Brother-in-Law

“Hey… whaddaya want… he’s my brother… literally! We’re keepin’ it all in the ‘family’, y’hear? You gotta problem wid dat?

______________________________

Well, well, well… Jillions, the new OCA Chancellor-designate is the brother-in-law of Mark Stokoe’s pal and former partner-in-crime Eric Wheeler. Often enough, “First Families” isn’t only a designation; it signifies the actual relations that exist between the “Ruling 400”. Jillions is Wheeler’s brother-in-law. That means that he’s part of the faction including Wheeler, Johnnie Hopko, Hunchak, and Stokoe. To carry this further, it means that Lyonyo prevailed over Love BT and Bobby. It explains why Love BT’s so hot and bothered about getting to the Sobor. He wants to overturn this, to put Bobby’s nominee into place.

Where’s JP? Where’s Dickie? Where’s Peterson? Where are Bobby and Lyonyo? All the main dramatis personae have gone to ground. Do note that oca.org has carried no announcement either of the reinstatement of Dickie or of the continuance of his suspension. IT’S ACTING AS THOUGH IT NEVER HAPPENED. They’re trying, desperately, to stuff it down the memory hole. When one adds to this the murky situation revolving around Raymond Velencia and the peripatetic wanderings of Seraphim Storheim (attested to by Lazar Puhalo, but denied by Storheim’s lawyer), it’s enough to make one hurl. The konvertsy DEFEND this evasiveness, secrecy, and high-handedness. That’s cultish behaviour, and it doesn’t belong in the Church. An MP priest-friend of mine said that the Anglicans probably said “good riddance to bad rubbish” about that lot, and I believe that he was right about that. What I hear is that the konvertsy are going to try to “pack” the Sobor.

What are you going to do about it?

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Sunday 2 October 2011

Albany NY