25 October 2011. Lazar Puhalo Issues Impassioned Defence of Fathausen on You Tube

The Most Holy Mother of God “Stand for Christ with the Martyr’s Cross”

Unknown Artist

undated

Contemporary Russian

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A friend of mine sent me a link to a video that I only watched half-way through, then, I closed it down. It was so ungrounded in reality that it was breathtaking. Puhalo posted it on 16 October, nine days ago; it’s attracted 505 hits in all. Let me repeat that… it’s only attracted 505 hits out of a million Orthodox Christians in the USA over nine days… I got 31,658 hits on VFR last week (over seven days). I seem to think that there’s a slight difference. He actually posted, “A response to the vulger (sic), vindictive internet assualts (sic) on our Metropolitan and the Holy Synod, and other subjects, by anti-Christian bloggers within the Orthodox Church”. He sure told all of us! Now, let’s ask a question… “Who IS Bishop Lazar Puhalo?” Bishops are PUBLIC figures… they aren’t ordinary rank n’ filers such as you and me. Indeed, they claim “moral authority” (which I do NOT, emphatically). Click here for a bio of Lazar Puhalo.

Mirabile dictu! He’s supposedly a “retired bishop”… yet, he NEVER served as a ruling bishop in any legit Local Church. That’s right; he never served as a properly-ordained ruling bishop in any Local Church, nor was he ever a Vicar Bishop in one of the recognised canonical Local Churches. He was a wild n’ woolly GOC, in the so-called Milan Synod, and. later, in the schismatical “Patriarchate of Kiev”. Puhalo’s hot to trot about Fathausen and the OCA because Seraphim Storheim “regularised” him in 2003, making him a “retired bishop” of the OCA… what utter fatuity! Nevertheless, that’s why Puhalo’s screaming about “vulger (sic), vindictive internet assualts (sic) on our Metropolitan and the Holy Synod”. If it wasn’t for Storheim, he’d be out in the cold… he’d still be an oddball schismatic. The article in the link mentions that Puhalo’s the Civil Liaison for the Archdiocese of Canada with the Government of Canada… that means that he’s supposed to keep the Canadian authorities abreast of where Storheim’s located. Is he? Is he flouting that responsibility because he believes his known benefactor to be innocent? These are serious questions; the Church NEVER receives vagante “bishops” as bishops… it accepts them as priests (if it accepts them as clergy at all). That meant that Storheim exceeded his mandate, and that Puhalo’s an illicitly-ordained bishop.

Mind you, I don’t believe that Lazar Puhalo’s a personally evil man. I’ve met him… I know otherwise. This is why konvertsy especially make errors in judgement. They think that if someone’s “nice” and “kind”, that they’re holy… that’s not so. I don’t believe that Lazar Puhalo’s a perv… but he did defend Gleb Podmoshensky. He’s not a man of bad habits, rather, he’s an illustration of prelest embodied. He’s always ploughed his own furrow, and he’s going to end by leaving us, I’m sure. Don’t forget… Avvakum Petrov and Arius seemed personally upright men externally… and they were opponents of Christ and His Church. I don’t find opposing Lazar Puhalo pleasant… I don’t find it easy… yet, if we’re to “Stand for Christ with the Martyr’s Cross”… that’s what you and I must do.

Not all the autocephalist fanatics are morally-compromised… Lazar Puhalo isn’t. Never confuse “morally-compromised” with “prelest”. Many people with looney notions about Our Lord Christ have no obvious personal faults. That’s a fact. You can trust most of them in secular affairs… but you must oppose them in matters of faith. I’m NOT going to give you the link to the vid. If you wish to search for it on You Tube… so be it. It’s not worth your time. As I say, after ten days of posting on this popular site, it’s only attracted a little over 500 hits. This is more sad and pathetic than anything else… and one feels bad in having to oppose such a personally-unobjectionable sort. However… the Church is WHAT IT IS… that’s a sharp lesson that I had to learn the hard way. It isn’t WHAT WE WISH IT TO BE. No, it’s not just the bishops… no, it’s not just the clergy… no, it isn’t even just the visible Church. Yet, the Church has a shape, a form, and a history that we go against at our peril.

In any case, if Lazar Puhalo doesn’t like me, he should see some of the Russian secular reporters (that’s who I model myself on). They got some justice in the Vladimir sex abuse scandal… the Bishop of Vladimir took active steps (or he faced sharp action by the authorities if he didn’t, to be sure). Reportage on the Church isn’t “religious”, nor is it “hagiography”… its journalism… in fact, it’s secular journalism, following all of its rules. That’s why I’m ending this. A good journalist gives themselves “800 words” (more or less) to make a point… if you go on and on, it proves that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Not all our opponents are ogres… don’t be disarmed by “niceness” or “kindness”… don’t be repelled by “vulgarity”. Our Lord Christ wasn’t… he chose fishermen over scholars… ponder that.

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Tuesday 25 October 2011

Albany NY

Schismatics in Sumy Oblast in the Ukraine Received into the Canonical Orthodox Church through Repentance

Bishop Iosif Maslennikov of Konotop and Glukhov (1978- ), of the canonical UOC/MP. The loudmouths in Stokoe’s comboxes are perpetually mewling about the “old and stuck in the mud” clergy in Russia… then, please, explain to me why the only clergy that I see in the MP are young men like this bishop and Archbishop Mark and Fr Vsevolod (and oldsters like Metropolitan Yuvenaly who’re “young at heart”)? Are we looking at the same Church?

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On 26 September 2011, the eve of the holyday of the Elevation of the Holy Cross, in Shostka in Sumy Oblast in the Ukraine, a parish of the schismatic “Patriarchate of Kiev”, led by their priest, returned to the fold of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church/MP. Earlier, Vladimir Skiba, known as “Hieromonk Siluan”, a former clergyman of the so-called UOC/KP’s Diocese of Konotop, petitioned Bishop Iosif Maslennikov of Konotop and Glukhov to forgive him, and to receive him, along with the members of the schismatic UOC/KP Holy Trinity parish, into ecclesiastical communion with the Diocese of Konotop of the canonical UOC/MP. Vladyki Iosif served the rite of accession to the Orthodox Church. Parishioners professed their loyalty to the Church of Christ, and they renounced all schismatic and heterodox activities and formally broke all ties with the schismatic Mikhail Antonovich Denisenko (formerly Metropolitan Philaret). At the end of the rite of accession and the reconsecration of Holy Trinity’s parish church, Bishop Iosif served Divine Liturgy. Vladyki Iosif expressed his sincere joy on the return of our brothers and sisters in the faith from the sin of schism. He said, “Schisms and divisions are wounds and sores on the Body of Christ, which is embodied by the Church. However, for Orthodox Christians, the Cross isn’t a symbol of death… it’s a symbol of life and resurrection. In ancient Jerusalem, touching the dead to the True Cross brought them back to life; when a parish returns to the salvific bosom of the Church, it breathes life into a newly-Orthodox community”. The newly-reconciled schismatics confessed and took Holy Communion together with other Orthodox Christians. Everyone received icons of the Saviour and the Most Holy Mother of God, along with an episcopal blessing.

28 September 2011

Pravoslavie.ru

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/news/48906.htm

Editor’s Note:

An MP priest sent me the link to this with the comment, “Is this the future for the OCA?” Now, it’s time to “speak the unthinkable”. With the nomination of John Jillions to be Chancellor, the OCA crossed a line. Mr Jillions is a known quasi-papist, Radical Renovationist, and indifferentist. His wife is even worse than he is. Together, they’re a force for evil… there’s no other way of putting it. I believe that portions of the OCA are going to descend into schism (that’s why Love BT must be prevented from attending the Sobor… he’ll light the match just out of spite). Interestingly enough, New Skete’s probably not going to spin off into vagante irrelevance. They need to sell their dogs and cheesecakes in order to survive, so, they have to stay “canonical”… they’ll either return to the Unia or go to the EP. SVS, too, won’t fly off into schism… they’ll go EP, just like the Paris cabal.

Here’s the saddest part… all of the loudmouth konvertsy truly think that they can “defy” world Orthodoxy. Trust me… they’d be disowned, and right smartly, too. They’d be nothing but another splinter that’s left the Church and spun into isolated and crackbrained rebellion. No one would miss them… NO ONE. Some of the saner parishes would be dragged into the whirlpool… the scenario illustrated by the above news item would play out in more than one community. As for the rest… the Church would take its traditional attitude… “If you wish to return, you know where the door is, and what the conditions are. They’re not going to change any time soon or any time later. It’s up to you”. We haven’t come to the darkest segment of the road yet. Are we at “June 1941″ (the nadir-point of the atheist persecution… only 100 churches were left in all the USSR) yet? Shall we have to drink the cup to the bitter dregs? One hopes not…

BMD

Bishop Diomid Declared Patriarch Aleksei Anathema

Bishop Diomid Dzyuban of Anadyr and Chukotka, deposed from the episcopate by the Archpastoral Council, issued a statement where he declared Patriarch Aleksei of Moscow and all the Russias anathema. In this document, released on Thursday, Bishop Diomid also declared anathema Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, the head of the MP Department of External Church Relations, his predecessor in that post, Metropolitan Philaret Vakhromeyev of Minsk and Slutsk, “and all their predecessors, those who participated in the February 1917 Revolution, and all those of like mind with them”. Bishop Diomid intends to declare the Diocese of Anadyr and Chukotka self-governing “in the resolution of dogmatic and canonical questions… we won’t be in subordination to a heretical hierarchy”. At the same time, he announced that the dioceses of Moscow, Smolensk, and Minsk, along with a number of church departments, were vacant as their heads were anathematised in his statement. In conclusion, the deposed Bishop of Chukotka “reserved to himself the duty to assume plenipotentiary powers as archpastor to lead the Orthodox flock in the vacant sees and departments”. That is, he actually declared himself the head of the Moscow Patriarchate!

Meanwhile, the MP issued a statement calling the declarations of the deposed Bishop Diomid “nonsense”, and it asked the faithful to pray that he come to his senses. “When God abandons and punishes a man, He deprives him of his reason. This is precisely what happened in this case”, Fr Vsevolod Chaplin, the deputy head of the MP DECR, said in comments on Bishop Diomid’s statement. In this case, he expressed regret that Bishop Diomid, “who began his way in the church as a sincere and believing man, abandoned church unity, a joyous church life, Christian witness, and openness to people of different faiths and persuasions in favour of the adulation of a small set of followers who suggest to him that he’s the true spiritual leader of Russia”. Turning to Bishop Diomid personally, Fr Vsevolod said, “Vladyki, this is false. You send a message to people where you deceive them and indulge the dark side of your soul”. He expressed the conviction that if Diomid entered into an open and frank discussion with his fellow bishops, it’s still possible for everything to turn out well. “The door to repentance would be open, indeed, it was opened, and it’s still open. However, unfortunately, Diomid flees ever farther from us. Today, he’s at Cape Shmidt in northern Chukotka. Tomorrow, dear God, he’ll flee to some cave”, Fr Vsevolod complained.

In his opinion, if we’re self-sufficient and believing people, with “burning conscience and zeal”, we can find a way to anywhere. “We should pray for Bishop Diomid, we shouldn’t rejoice maliciously, since the Lord makes miracles, and we should give Diomid a chance to confess, to change his mind, and come to repentance”, he said in conclusion. In his turn, Bishop Aleksandr Ishchein of Baku and the Caspian Region reminded journalists that according to the canons only the First Hierarch of a Local Church, a Holy Synod, or the Archpastoral Council can declare a person anathema. One of the main reproaches by Bishop Diomid towards the hierarchy is the participation of the MP in dialogue of the MP with other religions and other Christian confessions, which, in his opinion, besmirches the purity of Orthodoxy. Apropos of this, on Thursday, the sixth session of the Russian-Iranian commission on Islamic-Christian dialogue convened in Moscow. Turning to his fellow delegates in the course of his press conference, Bishop Aleksandr, the head of the Russian delegation, noted that both sets of clergy agree that Muslims and Christians would live together in the world without violating the law of their conscience. “It’s truly a great pity that there are those who aren’t pleased by our efforts in this direction. He doesn’t realise that we’re preventing a possible religious confrontation”, Bishop Aleksandr said, and he expressed the hope that the Lord would help Bishop Diomid “to realise his unfairness”.

17 July 2008

Interfax-Religion

http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=25521

Editor’s Note:

One can only shake one’s head in sadness and dismay. Diomid isn’t alone, unfortunately. There are those who left the ROCOR in a snit after the reconciliation in Moscow and there are those living in a dream-world at SVS and Syosset. Right-wing or left-wing, it doesn’t matter to me. Both are distortions of the Body of Christ. It’s time for all Russian Orthodox on this continent to unify, and the sadness is that there are those who prefer their own private notions to churchly unity. Again, sad in the extreme. How long must this last? By the way, this is a text-book illustration of the schismatical mindset laid out in an excellent essay, The Psychology of Schism, by Deacon Jan Veselak. It’s available here on the ROCOR official website.

BMD