20 September 2011. There’s a Hole in the Bucket, Dear Liza… or… The Interesting “Holes” in the Swiss Cheese Known as OrthoWiki

There IS a REAL Church out there, konvertsy…

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A priest friend of mine in the MP calls OrthoWiki “convert rubbish”. Let’s start with a (not exhaustive) list of major figures of the past 100 years that DON’T have an OrthoWiki article:

• Archbishop Antony Bartoshevich of Geneva
• Archbishop Antony Sinkevich of Los Angeles
• Archbishop Tikhon Fitzgerald of San Francisco
• Archbishop Leonty Bartoshevich of Geneva
• Archbishop James Toombs of Manhattan
• Archbishop Leonty Filippovich of Buenos Aires
• Archbishop Serafim Dulgov of Brussels
• Archbishop Afanassy Martos of Buenos Aires (only a stub)
• Bishop Nikolai Soraich of Sitka and all Alaska (only a stub)
• Bishop Andrei Rimarenko of Novo-Diveyevo
• Bishop Nektary Kontsevich of Seattle
• Bishop Sava Sarachevich of Edmonton
• Archimandrite Kyprian Pizhov of Jordanville
• Elder Philemon of Jordanville and Valaam
• Ivan M Kontzevich
• Gleb Podmoshensky
• Panteleimon Metropoulos
• Benedict (Sam) Greene
• Ivan M Andreyev
• Hilary Madison

None of the people named were minor figures. I find the omission of Kyprian Pizhov, when combined with the inclusion of some of his students (who are of lesser talent) and the listing of lesser-lights (to put it charitably) such as Aidan Hart and Matthew Garrett (neither are in Fr Kyprian’s league at all) particularly egregious… it’s a sign of the ignorance and party-line obsequiousness of the editors (it certainly puts Love BT’s recent comments on their sagacity DEEPLY in question). Besides this, it’s obvious that the ideas of the schismatic nutter Gleb Podmoshensky (the guru to Dreher, Freddie M-G, El Gordo, and the HOOMie cultists) contaminate this website. For instance, everyone knows that I M Kontzevich was the editor of the original Russian edition of the Northern Thebaid, yet an OrthoWiki article lists Rose and Podmoshensky as the compilers. Besides this, they list 5 April as the Feast of Elder Philemon of Jordanville and Valaam… however, he’s NOT a saint on anyone’s list! The 5 April date is a phantasmal concoction ginned up by Mr Podmoshensky. It also coyly refuses to mention that the OCA removed Vasili Rodzianko as Bishop of San Francisco in ’84 because Rodzianko objected to the rather flagrant actions of the homosexual cabal. In Fr Tikhon Shevkunov’s new book Несвятые святые (Nesvyatye Svyatye: Unholy Holiness) (60,000 copies printed, 15,000 sold on the first day), it says that Vladyki Vasili got the sack by the OCA because of his “opposition to a lobby which had unacceptable practices for Orthodox”. Ah, yes, a priest in LA benefited greatly from that dismissal… Love BT (he could’ve coshed Vasili to advance his ambition… hmm… don’t forget, BT refused to do further study when it was requested of him).

The article on Pavel Florensky fails to point up that mainstream elements in the Church consider his teaching heretical, especially his vapourings in The Pillar and Ground of Truth and his notional crackpot maundering on Sophiology. Florensky is NOT a martyr… he’s simply someone who died in the GULag. I should mention that Patrick Reardon and John Matusiak consider this heretical figure a saint… there be dragons out there, kids. The konvertsy treat another related figure, Sergei Bulgakov, with kid gloves. Both the ROCOR and the MP condemned his teachings as heretical (but didn’t anathematise him personally). In addition, OrthoWiki doesn’t mention that the Paris gang’s whitewash of Bulgakov was in defiance of world Orthodoxy, and that this gibbering heretic was one of the main influences on Aleksandr Schmemann and Ivan von Meyendorff.

Am I being catty in mentioning that this source does NOT mention the DUI arrest of Benjamin Peterson? If a hierarch’s arrested by the coppers, that’s an item of note. This is a matter of public record in the State of Nevada… this is NOT hearsay. OrthoWiki also withholds the information that Pierre l’Huillier fled both New York and Paris due to substantive charges of paedophilia. In like manner, it refuses to specify that a sexual scandal brought down Antony Grabbe, not a financial one. To whitewash the facts, to falsify history, is to spit in the face of Almighty God. Reflect on this… these toddlers do so in the name of “religion!” They believe that it’s not only acceptable, but it’s laudable. That, my friends, is cult behaviour. We need to cut out this cancer; the sooner that we do it, the better off that we’ll be.

Note well that these mewling brats expect PRAISE for their work in concealing the true history of the Church. Perhaps, Mr Fitzgerald could withdraw his earlier remarks about my lack of expertise. The Solon of Michelorena Street could use his time profitably by writing a post for OrthoWiki on his own life… he certainly has access to materials that many of us don’t (don’t forget to mention that you didn’t go to Orthodox services with Fr Basil Stroyen at the air force base, Mr Fitzgerald)… by the way, what WAS your connection with Messrs Peterson, Soraich, and Brittain? Is this a case of “birds of a feather”, or, was it that Love BT was a “fag hag?”

This isn’t exhaustive… it’s journalistic, which means that I’m only covering the main points to not go over my usual word-limitation. The main Wikipedia is useful for dates, general information, and pop items… it’s less useful for controversial political, academic, or religious topics. OrthoWiki has NO links to the main Wikipedia operation. It’s nothing but a propaganda machine for the konvertsy… it’s about time that someone said that.

They cover Benjamin Peterson in more depth than they do Antony Bartoshevich or Georgi Grabbe… that shows consummate chutzpah and arrogance. We need to tell the TRUTH about the Church… both the good things and the bad things. In pre-Revolutionary Russia, there were BOTH Black Hundreds and St Ivan Sergeyev. In like manner, we’ve had the same. If we don’t tell the truth, we’ll suffer the same fate as the pre-Revolutionary Church did… God burned out the cancer… using the bezbozhniki as his instruments.

There IS a God… we should start to act in cognisance of that fact… but shall we?

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Tuesday 20 September 2011

Albany NY

26 August 2011. I Just Had to Step Away from all the Shit for a While… You Don’t “Excommunicate Yourself”… There’s a Process Involved in It

“Be careful, dear! It’s the latest hooey from oca.org! You KNOW how radioactive it is!”

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Of course, people who know both Russian and English know what I did with that caption… “hooey” is a euphemism in English, but in Russian, it’s a phonetic transliteration of one of the most powerful “mat” words. Needless to say, I meant it in both senses… doesn’t it all make you want to hurl to clear out your system? Often, goodthinkers accuse me of being “unloving”, “unforgiving”, “disrespectful”, and “confrontational”. I beg their assorted pardons! Only a person who loves Christ and His Church, who loves the Truth, would put up with the garbage that I’ve put up with from the terminally “nice”, the cynically opportunistic, and the incorrigibly ignorant (especially Canon- and Fathers-spouting konvertsy who haven’t the slightest notion about what they’re bugling).

Before I deal with my (needed) absence from posting on this site yesterday, let’s examine the topic of automatic excommunication. That’s complete and utter BS, it was one of ADS’ favourite hobby-horses (Mark Stokoe is a fan of this horrid lie… but, then again, Mark was a wild-eyed fanatical devotee of Schmemann (ADS) whilst he was at SVS). I asked several people better versed in this than I am, and they said:

A cleric can’t/doesn’t depose himself, regardless of what he’s “done”; his bishop has to suspend him in a formal manner, try him in a proper and canonically constituted Spiritual Court, and, if the Court finds him in violation of the Sacred Canons, a Synod of Bishops can canonically depose him. Until then, he’s a cleric in good standing, even if the allegations are true. Then, it’s the sin of his bishop for not acting; the cleric isn’t sinning by serving. It’s the same for an excommunication (“anathematisation” more formally, strictly speaking) of a layman. A layman does NOT excommunicate himself as falsely taught by Westernised “scholars” at SVS.

It’s interesting, virtually all of my contacts agreed, damn-near word-for-word… if that doesn’t tell you that the Holy Spirit is ALIVE and still guides our Church, nothing will. The Church has a “system”… it isn’t broken; it’s still functional. That is, NO ONE can “excommunicate themselves”. There’s a procedure involved, purposefully convoluted and difficult, to protect people from the accusations of the bloody-minded, self-serving, and self-righteous.

In fact, sometimes, the Church will anathematise an idea, but not the person who propagated it. That happened in the cases of Pavel Florensky and Sergei Bulgakov. Parenthetically, both of these heretical thinkers were faves of ADS (and ADS passed on his predilection for their noisome “thought” to his drooling acolytes… such as Stokoe, Benjamin Peterson, and Eric Wheeler). I stand under correction, but the only known anathemas in modern days (that is, after the time of Tsar Pyotr Veliki) are for setting up opposition “candy stores”… let’s see… there’s Valentin Rusantsov, Philaret Denisenko, and Aleksandr Vvedensky (ADS was fond of the last-named… he held Vvedensky up to his students as “a great homileticist”… that shows you the depth of ADS’ contempt for the Church). Hell, the Church didn’t excommunicate even Solovyov for his hallucinatory “ideas”. For that matter, in future, the Church will hold that most of what ADS wrote was pure bunkum, but it won’t posthumously condemn him… he’ll simply be noted as just another heretic who managed to stay in good odour in his lifetime (and ADS’ books will be of antiquarian interest only, known only to specialised scholars inured in dusty libraries).

There’s been much too much talk lately amongst half-baked semi-converted konvertsy circles of this one or that one “automatically excommunicating” themselves. Go soak your heads in a bucket of ice water until some good sense arrives (obviously, they have none at present). If you have a complaint against someone, do start a formal “process” against them… if you can. Most of these jabonies (in the inimitable words of Alexander Lebedeff) “don’t know an ecclesiastical court from a tennis court”.

As for stepping away from it all… I was like a shell-shocked footslogger stumbling in the mud of the trenches. It all just adds up… each incident isn’t much in and of itself, but the cumulative effect is mind-numbing and corrosive. It’s why I fight on… these people are inflicting the “death of a thousand cuts” on the believers; ergo, someone has to stand up and say “loudly and proudly” what everyone else is just whispering (they’re afraid of being treated like pariahs by the clergy… that’s one of the costs of doing business, so, one accepts it). I had to involve myself in something “positive”… therefore, I spent a very pleasurable day working on my art sites, doing some research into and posting on New Roman-style mosaics in Italy. There’s nothing like working with “good stuff” to regenerate one’s “tired blood” (and you won’t need a slug o’ Geritol, either).

Look at these… after you do… look in the “tags” in each post, and click on “Christian art”. That’ll show you what I’ve been working on the last two days. Some is new; some is old (updated, or with new “better” images). To say the least, inspiring stuff… here are the links:

http://03varvara.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/unknown-artist-christ-the-warrior-sacellum-archiepiscopale-archiepiscopal-chapel-ravenna-italy-6th-century/ (get a load of “Christ the Warrior”… now, that’s cookin’ with gas!)

http://01varvara.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/another-instalment-in-the-series-of-12th-century-new-roman-mosaics-of-the-cathedral-of-the-nativity-of-the-most-holy-mother-of-god-in-monreale-in-sicily/

Now, I think that I can go back to the Church news “salt mine”… see ya there!

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

26 August 2011

Albany NY

If This Be True…

I’ve received word from several sources that Herman Swaiko and Feodosy Lazor concelebrated with Paffhausen at the Memorial Day Pilgrimage at St Tikhon’s. This was done without any prior announcement, of course, and my sources told me that it caused quite a flutter. If one adds this to the recent news of the payoff to Bobby K, one must come to an obvious conclusion. If this is true (for I wasn’t there), it tells even the slow learners that Jonas Paffhausen is a secretive and arrogant SOB… that means that he’s evil to the core. He’s nothing but a Diomid Dzyuban, an Aleksandr Vvedensky, a Pavel Florensky, or a Sergei Bulgakov… all of whom were enemies of Christ’s Church. He’s a worthy son of Kirill Terlecky, Avvakum Petrov, and Arius. It means that anyone who supports him is an enemy of Christ and His Church (that’s particularly true of Mark Stokoe, I fear). I’m NOT glad to hear this news. It’s not edifying and it means that the crisis is upon us. God help us all.

Paffhausen delenda est.*

*In our litigious times, the above is meant rhetorically… but I assure you that it is quite sincere and heartfelt.

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Tuesday 1 June 2010

Albany NY