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We’ve all heard the wind from the so-called “Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America”. This group is nothing but an EP-sponsored “talk-shop”. A notional “Proposal for Canonical Administrative Restructuring” surfaced from this social networking group (for such is what it is)… the EP groups are for it, everyone else is underwhelmed and less than enthusiastic about it… even the OCA! Read this for the OCA response to it… let’s boil it down to a sentence… “No way, no how, no Bart in our Town”. I think that the real reason the Centre shitcanned Fatso (for he did lose the Mandate of Heaven, no doubt on that score) is that they weren’t sure on how he’d react in re Bart and his pretensions to being the “Orthodox Pope”. Mollard is much more malleable and controllable… as the Centre showed by its showering of awards upon his party when he made his ad limina visit (for that is what it was, kids)… something that it NEVER did for Fatso and his drooling pack of konvertsy admirers. As a Cabineteer wrote me:
Sounds like the OCA is finished…. still insisting that its autocephaly is relevant…
I quite agree, but expect the OCA to linger on life-support for at least two more years, for it suits the Centre’s purposes. I believe that the Centre is using the OCA (and the pliable Mollard) to fuck up Bart’s planned Dixie Fry in 2016. You see, the Centre, Serbia, Poland, Czechia/Slovakia, and Bulgaria will insist that the OCA receive a seat at the “all-Orthodox Sobor” as a full discrete independent voting member. Bart won’t give in on that point… that’s clear. It’s also clear that HH will use this to scupper the assembly… and probably convene a Sobor of his own, maybe, at the newly refurbished Novy Ierusalime Monastery. HH wants to force Bart to come out openly as a Vatican puppet… and the OCA is one of his “cards” to make him do so. That is, the OCA has usefulness for the Centre now, and up until 2016. After the scuttling of the “all-Orthodox Sobor”, all bets are off. None of the OCA sorts have ANY cred at the Centre. By the way, Fatso and Dickie Wood had no real cred or tread at the Centre… if they had, firstly, Fatso would still be in charge and, secondly, Dickie wouldn’t be suspended. Both were pals of Tikhon Shevkunov, quite another thing entirely. For instance, Dickie’s getting no support from any real powers like Varsonofy Sudakov or V A Chaplin. The most that he’s getting is posts on questionable sites such as Portal-Credo and posts on oligarch-friendly venues (as Tikhon Shevkunov is part of M A Gelman‘s circle at the Vanil Restoran). Fatso has no real support at the Centre at all… if he did, his petition to enter the ROCOR would’ve been a done deal, and it wasn’t.
Besides, the status quo suits most normal people in the OCA quite well… as one told me:
Mollard’s our choice… no, he isn’t competent… no, he isn’t a leader… no, he isn’t inspiring. But he’s our choice… we need peace, and that’s that, as you say. Mollard won’t rock the boat and he’ll give us peace. Nothing else matters at this point. In any case, we had to stop Dahulich. As I said, Mollard’s our guy, not because we like him, but because he’s going to leave us alone.
That says it all… however, isn’t the LACK of news refreshing? Remember the old saying, “Happy is the land that has no history”… indeed…
I’m constantly learning… boy, I’ve learned much in the past seven years… what I see doesn’t speak well for the long-term survival of the OCA… however, in the near-term, it’s a done deal, and that’s that.
BMD
Voices from Russia 
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