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The Chicago native elected to the helm of the Orthodox Church in America resigned this weekend, saying in a letter that he has “neither the personality nor the temperament” to lead the church. Metropolitan Jonah submitted his resignation during a conference call on Saturday with other primates of the church. In his letter of resignation, he said he was leaving the post in response to the unanimous request of the primates. He wrote in his letter of resignation, “I had come to the realisation long ago that I have neither the personality nor the temperament for the position of primate, a position I never sought nor desired”. He wrote the letter Friday in his Washington DC home, witnessed by the OCA’s chancellor, according to a statement from the church.
Elected in 2008 to lead the main branch of Orthodox Christianity in the USA (sic), Metropolitan Jonah became primate under a banner of reform (sic) after his predecessor, Archbishop Herman, retired amid allegations that leaders of the 400,000-member denomination (sic) used millions of dollars from church coffers to cover personal expenses. The OCA is part of a constellation of churches separate from the Roman Catholic Church since the 11th Century. Born James Paffhausen and raised on Chicago’s Near North Side (sic… he was raised in CA: editor), he was baptised at St Chrysostom Episcopal Church. He discovered the Orthodox strand of Christianity during college at the University of California at San Diego. A book about mystical theology affirmed his concerns about the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church in 1978 and led him to convert that same year.
Metropolitan Jonah said during an interview with the Tribune in July 2009, “A church should be stable. There shouldn’t be that kind of turmoil. Intuitively, I had to become Orthodox”. His family was “horrified” by his choice, he said. While working in Russia as a doctoral candidate (sic), he fell in love with the wholesale commitment of monasticism. He eventually established monasteries and missions in California and Hawaii (sic).
He said, “I’d come to the realisation that I really didn’t care about pursuing a position of money and power. I was raised to be a corporate executive like my father and grandfather. I found it empty”. In his letter over the weekend, Metropolitan Jonah asked the primates to consider his financial situation when making another assignment, since he supports his parents and sister. “I will appreciate your consideration in this, and beg forgiveness for however I have offended you and for whatever difficulties have arisen from my own inadequacies and mistakes in judgement”.
9 July 2012
Manya Brachear
Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-american-orthodox-church-leader-resigns-unexpectedly-20120709,0,6075497.story?track=rss
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He still lies like a rug. James Paffhausen was NEVER a doctoral candidate in Russia… he never even mentions his close and intimate ties with the dreadful Gleb Podmoshensky (GP). When JP went to Russia, went there under GP’s auspices, to flog GP’s rag, Russky Palomnik. I remember getting appeals to aid it in the mail. JP NEVER worked for the MP, nor was he a novice at Valaam. There were NEVER 400,000 members in the OCA or in the Metropolia; it reached its peak of about 250,000 in 1965. It isn’t the “main branch of Orthodoxy in the USA”… the OCA is only about 10 percent of the whole. Herman didn’t siphon off millions… for there weren’t millions to siphon off in the first place. He didn’t establish a monastery; he took over an existing establishment and renamed it. In short, this article is full of the usual JP lies and exaggerations. There are too many to refute individually. God help us all. This jerk deserves deposition. If the OCA Synod of Bishops gives him a diocese to misrule, they deserve a long rest in a home for the feeble-minded.
It DOES take all kinds, but this? God do spare us!
Barbara-Marie Drezhlo
Monday 9 July 2012
Albany NY
Voices from Russia 
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