7 October 2014. Interesting… IF TRUE. Did OCA EPA Parish Vote to Join ROCOR Because of Maymon’s Shenanigans?

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I’ve heard from several reputable sources that Fr John Bohush’s parish near Philadelphia voted to leave the OCA and join the ROCOR. If true (and I stress IF, as there’s no official intel on this as yet), there may be actions short of canonical release (for such is what they seek) to put things to rights. Firstly, the OCA Synod of Bishops (SOBs) could vote to retire Maymon, on the grounds of upsetting his diocese, which has the oldest parishes of the OCA in the Lower 48 in it (I stand under correction in this, but I think that it’s true). Maymon and Moriak were shitbirds of a feather… but at least they’re open in their nutcake affectations, which makes them easy to deal with (relatively). Dahulich is another story… he had a major falling-out with Nicholas Šmisko, which doesn’t augur well for his future. Besides that, he’s an open EP partisan and encourages young clergy to wear Uniate-style vestments (Dahulich’s notions contaminated our new parish priest, as one can see in the Uniate vestments that he wears virtually all the time… he’s too young and immature to see how dangerously pro-papist Dahulich is). Dahulich is much more dangerous than Maymon is, and the SOBs know it. Dahulich has a papist PhD… he’s soft on the Unia, soft on the papists, soft on the Republicans, and soft on the EP. I believe that he’s ready to sell out part of the OCA to Bart, and I believe that most of the SOBs are aware of that, too (Mollard is too bovine and stupid to know this, but “he’s a hat-rack for the white hat”, as one priest told me).

There be reasons why the SOBs haven’t moved against Maymon up to this point, the main one being that Dahulich is the main enemy… he bears watching constantly, for one turns one’s back on him in peril. DO remember how the Sobor coalesced against him… Mollard has the white hat as the Sobor delegates wanted to deny it to Dahulich; that’s what many told me, and I believe them. The Bohush clan is one of the oldest po-nashemu families in the OCA (my late friend Denise was a Bohush, her father was Al Bohush, the choir director… my Nicky has ties to the Bohushs)… this means that Maymon is in the deep kimchi with the Rusin core of his diocese. These idiots have to stop catering to ignorant Anglo konverts. In one parish, a young Dahulich-influenced priest allowed a konvert‘s complaints to upset parish tradition… this is why people like Maymon are pissing off people like Fr John. In any case, the toddlers don’t have a say, anyway… why are we allowing them this latitude? There are many reasons, but part of it is that we have people amongst us who want to suck up to the Heterodox, and one can see that most konverts (and konvert parishes, in particular) have no clue on what Real Orthodox Tradition is.

If true… VERY interesting. If true… it may NOT result in a canonical release… but it COULD. Watch this one, kids.

BMD

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Parishioners Find Miracle After Fire at Ukrainian Orthodox Church

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Parishioners of a Philadelphia Ukrainian Orthodox church say that the four-alarm fire that destroyed millions of dollars in furniture and artefacts and left a gaping hole in the centre of the historic building also revealed a miracle. Pasha Prasko, St Mary the Protectress Ukrainian Orthodox Church treasurer and parishioner, said, “The fire was blazing, so when we saw the fire, we thought everything burned, but now that we can see inside, we looked at it and said it’s amazing so many icons are still there”. Although a large portion of the church’s roof collapsed and more than 100 firefighters doused the building in water to tame the blaze, several icons remained untouched by the flames at the historic house of worship in the East Oak Lane section of the city on Sunday. Prasko said, “It’s a holy place, you know, and it’s just not damaged the way we thought it would be. We even talked about it yesterday and said it’d be a miracle if her icon would be saved; and, here it is, saved. I think it’s a miracle”.

According to local historian Marita Krivda Poxon, Ukrainian Orthodox consider St Mary the Protectress the protector of all Ukrainian people. From the front door of the burned building, one could see a large painting of the Protectress and several other artefacts in what appeared to be good condition. Poxon said, “The church has a large icon, and in the centre of it is the Saint Mary the Protectress herself. Apparently, she was the saint in the Ukraine that protected the people of the country of the Ukraine. I think it’s a miracle that a few of the icons survived because they are mostly made of wood. I could only say that, for believers, they’ll believe that it miraculously survived the fire; I mean, the church burned, but her icon survived, and the congregation will survive. That’s what it means to me”.

Philadelphia Firefighter Arthur Davis said he’s never seen anything like it before, saying, “Not one of those pictures caught on fire; not the ones on the wall, not the ones on the stage, not one of them was damaged. What happened was it started on the roof, the fire. But it’s still amazing that with the collapse and all, this stuff isn’t burned. They could take it right off the wall; a lot of the pictures are still on the wall, the glass isn’t broken or nothing. When it comes to fires, I’ve seen it all, but I’ve never seen nothing like this before”. At one point, 125 firefighters and 33 engines were on the scene trying to get the fire under control. Officials still don’t know what caused the fire, but they believe that it was an electrical fault.

Fr Taras Naumenko, pastor of St. Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral on 5th and Independence Street, says his parish would support St Mary’s members as its leaders work to determine a plan forward, noting, “Their congregation will be holding their services at my parish until they figure out their future”. When asked what he thinks the future could hold for St Mary’s, he said, “I think it’s too soon to even think about what their future will be”. John Prasko is chairman of the parish board. He says the church is considering starting a fund to raise money, but says he’s still unsure of any exact plans for rebuilding, saying, “Tomorrow, we’ll have a meeting with the board to see what we’ll do. At that time, we’ll have to make several decisions about moving and rebuilding, but I don’t know exactly what they’ll be yet”. Poxon says any attempt to rebuild would be difficult because of the historic elements of the church, noting, “The interior could never be rebuilt the way it was. My hope is that they don’t tear it down, that they don’t bulldoze it, and, somehow, portions of it can be salvaged and rebuilt because it’s a beautiful building. There are just so few stone masons that could even do the work to rebuild here”. This afternoon, firefighters were still on the scene removing debris from the premises. Davis said that they’d allow church leaders to enter the building to retrieve artefacts and mementos sometime this evening.

28 October 2013

NBC 10 Philadelphia

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Parishioners-Find-a-Miracle-in-the-Fire-221226761.html

Editor’s Note:

These guys may have goofy politics, and they’re soft on (and collaborate overly much with) Uniates, but they’re still part of the Orthosphere (whether they want to be or not). Send ‘em a fin or two, if you can. Here’s the contact info:

Telephone: (215) 424-9692

You can also try the folks at St Vladimir Cathedral, they could steer you right. Click here for their contact page.

Give ‘em a hand. They need it. You don’t ask what someone’s ideology is when something like this happens. Either we’re all Orthodox or none of us are Orthodox. ‘Nuff said!

BMD

Getting Sick Not an Option for Many American Workers

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Like the protagonist of some cold medicine commercial, Robert said that he couldn’t afford to get sick and miss a shift at the upscale restaurant where he waits tables six nights a week in the American capital. Robert, 31, told RIA-Novosti this week, “It’s expensive to live in this city. You can’t just be missing days”. Robert, who asked that his last name not be published because his employer hasn’t authorised him to speak to the media about this job, actually has more access to paid sick leave than many Americans do. He works in Washington DC, which is one of just three American cities… along with one state, Connecticut… to guarantee paid sick leave for employees. An estimated 40 million American workers have no paid sick leave, which the US federal government defines as a “benefit” rather than a right.

A national debate over mandatory sick-pay grabbed headlines in recent weeks in the USA, which is in the grip of a flu outbreak that health authorities said has reached epidemic proportions. The USA is one of the few industrialised nations that don’t have a federal law mandating paid sick leave, a situation that critics say pressures ill employees to come to work out of fear of losing a pay-cheque .. or their jobs. They say that this results in decreased employee productivity and increased public exposure to infectious illnesses, particularly when workers like Robert and other food service employees… whose jobs involve face-to-face contact with the public… shrug off symptoms and clock in anyway.

According to a 2010 study at the University of Chicago, more than two-thirds of Americans reported going to work whilst ill. According to the study, employees without paid sick-leave are 18 percent more likely to show up at work sick and 10 percent more likely to send their sick children to school or day-care. New York City legislator Gale Brewer told WNYC radio in an interview earlier this month, “I’m sure right now as we speak kids are going to school sick. Their parents can’t take a day off”. Arguably, New York City is the current epicentre of the sick leave debate, with local lawmakers pushing for the nation’s financial capital to guarantee sick pay for workers. Brewer is backing a bill that would mandate that businesses with five employees or more must offer some sort of paid sick-leave; the legislation has received backing from a range of civic and religious groups, as well as celebrities like American feminist writer and activist Gloria Steinem.

However, New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said such that legislation would hurt business during already difficult times, a position that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed as well. New York Times columnist Michael Powell noted with irony that Bloomberg’s opposition to the bill is at odds with his reputation as a public-health activist… an image burnished by enacting public smoking bans and crackdowns on oversized sugary drinks. In October, Powell wrote, “Bloomberg worries a lot about our health; he’s banned smoking in bars and vat-size cups of soda, but suggest that a couple of women should be allowed to take off a day rather than cough bacteria into the chicken quesadillas, and his free-market spine stiffens”.

According to a 2011 study published in the American Journal of Public Health, the lack of paid sick-leave in the USA helped lead to an additional five million infections during the Swine Flu outbreak in 2009. This week, Michael Sinesky, who owns several bars and restaurants in New York City, told the AP that the bill would hurt his operations, particularly in the destructive wake left by Hurricane Sandy late last year, saying, “We’re at the point, right now, where we can’t afford additional social initiatives”. Lawmakers in several other American cities are pushing for mandatory paid sick-leave bills as well, including Portland OR and Philadelphia PA, whose mayor, Michael Nutter, vetoed a bill requiring sick pay in 2011. Joel Mathis, a columnist for Philadelphia Magazine’s website, argued this week that the city should pass paid sick leave legislation in order to protect customers as well as workers. Mathis wrote, “Want the flu with your fries? Some pertussis with your poutine? A cold with your cold beer? Because that’s what the current system is designed to provide”.

25 January 2013

Carl Schreck

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/world/20130124/179003388/Getting-Sick-Not-an-Option-for-Many-US-Workers.html

Editor’s Note:

That’s why I went to work feeling poorly this past week… I lacked sick days as part of my compensation. Of course, according to the rightwing received-wisdom, I’m a “taker”… I deserve nothing but a swift boot in the arse for laziness according to Steve Forbes, Wet Willy Romney (have you seen how quickly the Repulicants dropped their erstwhile standard-bearer?), and James Paffhausen. Then again, Steve Forbes said on 12 October 2012, “Yes, [Romney] will win this election, despite all the claptrap to the contrary”… he believes in crackbrained foolishness such as the gold standard. Romney actually believed his own propaganda (what would one expect with a youthful nappy-wearing incompetent such as Priebus at the head of the RNC (he was white, though!)?)… and Paffhausen actually thinks that he’s a victim of the OCA Holy Synod and that he deserves “compensation”. Not very good for the “makers” of this world, eh? Shitbirds of a feather flock together… never forget that. Yes, taking care of sick people is “Pro-Life”… more so than waving a placard in a bootless “March for Life“. Think on that, if you will…

We need a “new” New Deal… the sooner, the better…

BMD

Philadelphia Inquirer: OCA Exec Fired For Not Removing Rapist Priest

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Citing the sex-abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia and at Pennsylvania State University, the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) has dismissed its presiding archbishop for failing to remove a priest who had raped a woman and been jailed for other violent acts. This week, the OCA Holy Synod, with about 85,000 members in the USA and Canada, announced that Metropolitan Jonah, 52 {slight error, JP’s 54: editor}, stepped down Saturday after ignoring Church procedures for responding to sexual misconduct. In a statement, the Synod said, “Metropolitan Jonah repeatedly refused to act with prudence, in concert with his fellow bishops, in accordance with the Holy Synod’s policies. In light of the recent widely-publicised criminal cases involving sexual abuse at Penn State and in the Philadelphia Archdiocese and the Kansas City Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, the extent of the risk of liability to which Metropolitan Jonah exposed the church can’t be overstated”. Church leaders say they’re cooperating with law enforcement and investigating the rape allegation. On Tuesday, Rev Erik Possi {Eric Tosi? This has to be a garble caused by mishearing: editor}, a synod spokesman, said the church wasn’t releasing the accused priest’s name.

Born James Paffhausen in Chicago, Jonah converted to Orthodoxy from Episcopalianism at 18 and was ordained a priest in 1994. He was made a bishop in early 2008, when he took the name Jonah, and was elected primate, or presiding archbishop, later that year. He was the first convert to head the OCA, which is based on Long Island.

The Synod’s statement said, “At some time after his enthronement as our primate, Metropolitan Jonah unilaterally accepted into the OCA a priest known to him and others to be… severely abusing alcohol, which more than once was coupled with episodes of violence and threats toward women”. These episodes included the “discharge of a firearm” and the “brandishing of a knife”, which led to the man’s arrest. In 2010, he was alleged “to have committed a rape against a woman”. Although informed of the rape allegation in February, the Synod alleged that Jonah “neither investigated, nor told his brother bishops”, and didn’t report the incident to police or church lawyers. When the woman reported her alleged rape to police, however, unnamed church officials admonished her and a family member “that their salvation depended on their silence”. The Synod reported on Monday that as recently as last week Jonah was “regularly communicating” with the person who was instructing the woman to keep quiet. Furthermore, it said, Jonah first encouraged the priest to pursue a military chaplaincy “without informing the military recruiter of any of the priest’s problems”, and then allowed the man to enter another Orthodox jurisdiction whilst assuring it there were “no canonical impediments” to a transfer.

Church law calls for a new metropolitan to be elected within 90 days, but Possi said there were “many steps that must be taken” and indicated that it could be longer. The Orthodox Church in America traces its roots to the Russian Orthodox Church, whose missionaries created their first North American missions in Alaska in the late 18th century. After the Russian Revolution, in the 1920s, the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America became self-governing, and in 1970 severed itself from Russian Orthodoxy to become the OCA. There are 36 parishes in the Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania, which comprises half the state, and about 2,000 members in the Philadelphia area.

While the bishops and archbishops of many Roman Catholic dioceses have been accused of covering up clergy sex abuse, only Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston MA and the late Bishop Manuel Duran Moreno of Tucson AZ have resigned for that reason. On Tuesday, a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge is scheduled to sentence Msgr William J Lynn, former head of the archdiocesan clergy office. Last month, Lynn, 61, was found guilty of felonious child endangerment for his 12-year role in recommending the assignments of priests whom prosecutors said he knew to be child abusers.

Jonah’s resignation isn’t the first scandal to mar his church in recent years. In 2005, the OCA’s former treasurer, Protodeacon Eric Wheeler, accused the administration of spending millions of dollars in church assets for personal use, or to mask deficits in church accounts. According to some reports, Jonah was elected primate three years later because, as the newest bishop, he was untainted by financial scandal.

17 July 2012

David O’Reilly

Philadelphia Inquirer

http://articles.philly.com/2012-07-17/news/32714883_1_holy-synod-priest-allegation

Editor’s Note:

This reporter is perceptive… maybe he misheard Tosi’s name, but he could recognise arrant bullshit when he heard it spouted. He uses the blunt term “dismissal”… which is what, indeed, happened. The Holy Synod shitcanned Fathausen for lying, sneaking around, messing up relations with the Greeks and the Serbs, and mucking about with Church records to an extent that would make even a Po City pimp blush. However, let’s not kid ourselves. Beyond the removal of JP, nothing’s happened. NOTHING. The First Families are as secretive as ever, SVS is as arrogant as ever, and the archpriestly cabal that’s been running the OCA since the days of Ireney Bekish is still in the driver’s seat and the Metropolitan Council does nothing (“The records simply don’t exist”, as Tosi put it so smarmily and superciliously… of course, we can’t go after Iggy… we might find something out, and, then, we’d have to do something).

As my MP contact pointed up, the OCA Holy Synod has elected three crank First Hierarchs in a row. There is NO candidate with any cred for the white hat. Of course, the million-dollar question is, “Did Lyonyo & Co move against JP because of the upcoming London Conference? Are they scared of what’s coming out of it?” Let’s be blunt here… there are going to be changes in diaspora Russian Orthodoxy that the OCA is going to have NO input into. At the least, it’s common knowledge that the merging of the ROCOR and the MP’s dioceses outside the CIS countries is a done deal. It’ll be the first major change since the creation of the OCA in 1970. It’ll change the face of the map and the promises made by the Centre to the Schmemanndorff duo will become history.

At the same time, the OCA is dealing with a secession crisis. Some of JP’s claque (primarily in the Diocese of the South) is talking schism. Remember, these folks jumped once, they’ll jump again. For instance, take Reardon… he started out as an RC, became a Trappist hieromonk, left the monastery, converted to the Anglicans, got married, ordained again, converted to the OCA, left for the AOCANA when Feodosy wouldn’t ordain him, and he teaches at an oddbod rightwing “continuing” Anglican seminary. God alone knows where he’s going to end up. Reardon is TYPICAL of these sorts, sadly enough (and he’s not the most chequered… that dubious distinction goes to the HOOMie cultists… who were brought into the Church by JP).

We haven’t even BEGUN to muck out the byre, and the shit is encrusted thickly on our boots and it stinks to high heaven. I’d be funny if it were a Poruchik Rzhevsky joke, but it’s for real, and it’s not funny in the least. We have a period of stasis that may last until the London Conference. After all, the Centre is patient… they’ve waited this long, what’s another three months? It’s only 90 days…

BMD