Previously, I’ve covered four major deaths amongst the Orthodox hierarchy… Metropolitan Laurus Škurla, Patriarch Aleksei Rediger, Patriarch Pavle Stojčević, and Metropolitan Nicholas Smisko. All of these men were positive influences on our Church… I was happy to suspend everything to cover the news of their passing and to publicise what I could of their life’s work.
I’m not covering the death of Dmitri Royster, nor am I going to give the hagiographical nonsense being put out by the OCA wider circulation (it’s not only slanted towards untruth, it’s poorly done and written). Dmitri Royster was a figure that all future historians of the Church in these parts will study, but he wasn’t a “positive influence”. Therefore, I’ll not post any further on this man until after his burial. It’s indecent to upset mourners… that’s why Fred Phelps and his merry crew of funeral disruptors deserve a Cossack horse-whipping (reflect on the fact that Terrence Mattingly approves of the court decision allowing Phelps and his scurvy crew to continue to disrupt funerals). Objective history books in future will list Dmitri Royster along with Feodosy Lazor, Pierre l’Huillier, Aleksandr Schmemann, Panteleimon Metropoulos, Vitaly Ustinov, and Herman Swaiko. That’s why it’s unseemly to post any critique now.
Let his supporters mourn, and let them be undisturbed at it. That’s what decent people do. I’ll have PLENTY to say, the day after the burial… for now, one keeps one’s peace… and that’s that.
Barbara-Marie Drezhlo
Tuesday 30 August 2011
Albany NY
Voices from Russia 
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