St Herman Monastery LIES and PUFFS UP Podmo’s Funeral

Podmo’s funeral at Holy Dormition parish in Santa Rosa CA… do note the lack of a proper iconostas

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A Cabinet member sent me this (hold on to your cookies… it’s off kilter and divorced from all reality)… no URL available, just copies of two e-mails:

E-mail One:

Fr Herman was buried in Sebastopol CA in the new Orthodox section of one of the cemeteries in the area. It was the decision of our Bishop Maxim to not allow his burial at the monastery. The below is a report sent out by one of the parishioners at the Holy Dormition Church. If you like, I’ll ask her permission to send you a link to the photos that were taken during the funeral and burial.

Yours in Christ,

The unworthy Hieromonk Paisius, secretary

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E-mail Two:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

As most of you know, Fr Herman reposed in the Lord on the morning of 30 June 2014 in Minneapolis MN. The funeral for Monk Herman Podmoshensky, the former Abbot of St Herman of Alaska Monastery, was served at Holy Dormition Orthodox Church in Santa Rosa CA (USA) on Thursday, 3 July 2014. His Grace Daniil, Vicar Bishop of the Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese of the USA, Canada, and Australia of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (Bulgarian Patriarchate), officiated. He was assisted by the clergy of Holy Dormition and Hieromonk Paisii of the St Herman of Alaska Monastery, and by nearly 20 priests, hieromonks, and other clergy of many canonical Orthodox jurisdictions, and by monastics and laypeople from all over America and from as far away as Mt Athos and Moscow.

The graveside burial service took place in the Orthodox section of the Pleasant Hills Memorial Park in Sebastopol CA. The address of this cemetery is 1700 Pleasant Hill Road, Sebastopol CA  95472; it’s only a 15-20 minute drive west of Santa Rosa CA, deep in the countryside. After the graveside service, those who didn’t have to leave immediately to the airport gathered under the redwoods next to the Holy Dormition Church for a memorial meal. Bishop Daniil, who became a monk in Bulgaria when converted as a young man by the writings of Fr Seraphim Rose, never met Fr Herman, so many of those present shared dozens of stories about their encounters with Fr Herman.

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An interlocutor commented on the situation:

It happened at the OCA (sic) church in Santa Rosa CA, a bit north of San Francisco. If that’s their iconostas, how strange! … Did they do his funeral in their church hall, not in their church proper, for some reason? This church in Santa Rosa belongs to the Bulgarians; it’s a bunch of HOOMies.

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Another Cabineteer opined on California Fats, and why he’d avoid going to his guru’s funeral:

He won’t go… that type forgets the past and expects us not to bring it up… he also doesn’t honour his friendships.

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Firstly, here are images of the church and of its parishioners:

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A careful headcount gives fifty people (including clergy) in this “parish”. For his miniscule conventicle, there are THREE PRIESTS and TWO DEACONS. I shit you not (click here for the proof). There’s no real iconostas in this “church”… NONE. One can tell that the funeral was in the church proper by the presence of the bema. The “About” section of the website doesn’t give the foundation date for the parish (odd… that’s one of the most important titbits on a normal parish’s site), but it does refer to the patronal feastday in 2007, so, this odd lot is at least seven years old, if not older.

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Here’s an image of the “crowd” at the funeral and of the trapeza after the burial:

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There are ten seats at each table; it looks like there are six or nine tables in all, not counting the clergy table (do note the empty seats at the tables… there may be another row of three tables out of sight). That is, at most, there could be 60 or 90 people at the funeral (but there wasn’t… the empty seats are mute testimony to that)… this tiny conventicle couldn’t fit that many, to be frank. My guess is that about 40 to 60 people, all told, attended this affair. I only counted six clergy in the images, and the largest number of laypeople in any one image was 33. There wasn’t 20 clergy present… that figure is fiction at best, a self-serving lie at worst. In short, a small bunch of groupies gathered for Podmo’s funeral. The OCA, ROCOR, MP, GOAA, Serbian, or Antiochian bishops and clergy were no-shows. None of ‘em showed up. NONE. Fatso didn’t show up, even though Podmo was his guru for years (including after his 1988 deposition… James Paffhausen went to Russia under Podmo’s auspices in that Russky Palomnik boondoggle, remember?). Note well that the Serbian bishop refused to allow the burial of Podmo at Platina. That means that he doesn’t trust the Seraphim Rose groupies. Maxim refused to come to the funeral… yet, the Platina brotherhood (and the nuns nearby) came to the affair. This means that they’re unrepentant and haven’t truly turned away from Podmo’s oddbod teachings. Actions DO speak louder than words do. Never forget, we live in a crank world where first impressions can be misleading. Have a care… there be dragons…

BMD

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10 July 2012. Interesting Titbit from Manton… If True

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A friend sent me this, purportedly from a monk at JP’s monastery in Manton CA:

I’ve moved to Patina, along with five other brothers from Manton, due to the spiritually-compromised state of the Monastery of St John.

That’s all. I won’t comment on the probability of this, as I’m not in Northern California… however, this is what’s “out there”. God willing, one of the Cabinet will be able to fill me in. Do note that JP was fond of the Imyaslavie heresy, and his monastery followed it. For now, it appears that things are falling apart, and in very short order. An MP contact told me:

I think the Centre’s keeping quiet because it doesn’t want to get stained by the OCA mess. As they say in Russian, “Don’t touch it, and it won’t stink”.

Indeed, things are getting curiouser and curiouser.

BMD

9 May 2012. Love BT Rides Again… Tries to Skewer St Nicholas the Passionbearer and VVP… Spins the HTC Story and the Payout in the Civil Suit

A Portrait of Tsar St Nikolai Aleksandrovich

Ilya Repin

1896

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Whom do you wish to emulate? The gentle Tsar St Nikolai… called “Bloody Nicholas” by Love BT… or, the all-Powerful, most-Puissant, and multi-Talented Tikhon Fitzgerald? That’s not a hard one, is it?

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Love BT entertains us yet again with some more nuggets of wisdom. Here’s the first one:

Thanks to Diogenes {most sources identify “Diogenes” as Eric Wheeler… protestations notwithstanding: editor} for pointing us to the article about the Russian President getting his blessing in Church from the First Hierarch of the Church as he begins his next period as President. As an Orthodox ruler, he shares many character traits with the Orthodox tsars of previous centuries. It’s unfortunate that he’s undergoing, probably with some justification, the same kind of protests and public indignation from large crowds as did the last Tsar, Nicholas, sometimes called “Bloody Nicholas”, for his penchant for using armed troops and especially mounted Cossacks to IMPOSE order. Some, especially the lock-step intellectual infantry of the EP, gasp in righteously expressed indignation at the APPARENT and REAL Symfonia of Church and State in Russia, which seems to eclipse the subservience of the Phanar to the Sublime Porte.

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Firstly, St Nikolai was not “Bloody Nicholas”… in this, Love BT’s repeating the bullshit spouted by ADS and the rest of the aristo zapadnik Parisian cabal. In fact, one could say that St Nikolai’s compassion led to his downfall… had he loosed a Cossack squadron or two on the Petrograd mobs, chances are he’d have kept the throne (maybe not as an absolute autocrat, but Russia would’ve remained a monarchy). Secondly, how does BT justify the phrase, “It’s unfortunate that he’s undergoing, probably with some justification, the same kind of protests and public indignation from large crowds as did the last Tsar”… he should enlighten us as to why VVP’s a legitimate target of “protests and public indignation”. I believe that the answer’s simple… BT’s a former employee of the World Bank and he parrots the generally-held opinions of the Western Goodthinker Class.

In short, BT comes from a profoundly Russophobic anti-Orthodox milieu, and his formal conversion didn’t affect him that much, as his current comments indicate. In short, if I were to choose between Love BT and Tsar St Nikolai… there’s no conundrum. Love BT is, by far, the inferior of the two. If one were to compare him with VVP, it’s the same result. When the Raspadskaya Mine in Mezhdurechensk blew up, VVP was on the scene, and he saw to it that the social welfare system treated the miners’ families right. Love BT has balked at paying his fair share of the bills at the rectory where he lives, according to publicised parish documents. Who’s the more estimable human being… why, VVP, by any standard.

Also, note how Love BT sidesteps the whole issue of the Phanar’s subservience to the US government and to Langley. After all, they orchestrated a 1948 coup to depose Patriarch Maximos Vaportzis, and replaced him with an American running-dog, Athenagoras Spyrou (it was of the most successful “black ops” of the CIA in its early years). Don’t forget, the US authorities gave Athenagoras the use of the US presidential VIP transport for his flight to Turkey. Maximos’ sins were that he wanted close cooperation with the MP and that he was a socialist politically. However, that’s too hot a potato even for Love BT… so much for his pose as a “courageous truth-teller!”

Secondly, Love BT issued a rather long apologia of the Holy Trinity Cathedral (HTC) scandal in San Francisco. Here’s what he said (WARNING: Bullshit in enormous quantities ahead… but Love BT MUST speak in his own voice… it convicts him of self-interested hypocrisy all the more):

Unlike “Centurion”, I was never ever convinced that children were molested at Holy Trinity Cathedral, as has been claimed. A parishioner there called me up once to report that children had been molested at Holy Trinity Cathedral and that the perp was in jail. I heard her out, and I opined that if that had indeed happened, we should at least be grateful to God that the perp was already in jail and we need not go through all kinds of investigations and court appearances, perhaps involving public testimony my children, to establish his identity.

An almost deafening scream of “NEVER!” was the next thing I heard. One of the mothers whose child had allegedly been molested explained that this was nothing to be thankful for because she couldn’t “get at him” in jail. I met with a group of the parents in San Francisco. I learned that the occasion of the alleged discovery of acts of abuse was one of the parents learning that a convert in the parish for whom she had developed a great antipathy, had been put in jail as a sexual criminal, a molester of children. From that point on, the alarmed group of parents who disliked Sam Allen, began to interrogate their children and send them to “professionals” from whom they “learned” that their children had been molested.

I assigned my chancellor, Fr Nicholas Soraich {later removed as OCA Bishop of Alaska and reputed by some to be a homosexual (the jury’s still out on that): editor}, to investigate and report to me. He went to San Francisco, investigated, and reported to me. He was greeted by and accepted with great enthusiasm by the parents. He even went throughout the Cathedral plant blessing everything with Holy Water. To make a long story short, no molestation of children at Holy Trinity Cathedral was ever proved in criminal court; however, a civil court did find the Cathedral to be guilty of negligence in its supervision of children in its custody, and civil fines were levied.

I admit I was distressed by the proclivity and readiness of some of the parents to magnify and publicize who their children had been “damaged”. This, it seems to me, was not evidence of putting their children’s welfare first. One of the parents was an attorney, and she gave at least one interview to a popular Bay Area newspaper a couple years later when her son was in school, reporting that he had been molested and thus was damaged. I was once a boy, and I know how boys in school act when they learn something like that about one of their number. Another mother managed to make one of her daughters into a crusader against “Clergy Sexual Abuse”. She and her mother liked to appear at either HTC in San Francisco, or at the Cathedral in Los Angeles, standing outside on the sidewalks, rather than worshipping and glorifying God in the Church, carrying placards on poles which stated “Stop Clergy Sexual Abuse!” on the Feast of the All-Holy Trinity.

I believe that Sam Allen, interviewed by an investigator in prison, did admit that he had intended to commit abuse at HTC, but never got around to it since he was arrested for offences elsewhere. I’ve always been disappointed that some of the families left off glorifying God in Church in order to devote their lives to exposing sin, to wit, “clergy” sexual abuse.” I still wish that the Pokrov ladies WOULD get a life, a life with Christ. Yes, sir; yes, indeed! Protodeacon Eros (aka Eric) Wheeler did come out to the Bay area in connection with the civil negligence suit. One attorney-parent threatened me AND HTC, AND the Diocese with utter and outright financial failure and bankruptcy. Never happened. I have no recollection whatsoever of ever having striven to have Greta Larson prevented from speaking anywhere at all, and I can’t imagine what “other bishop” I could have manipulated to attempt that.

I wonder if the clinical psychologists and social workers who made their livings “discerning” evidence of sexual abuse in children and uncovering suppressed memories and so forth around the country back then are still at it. Anybody?

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As always, ask “Cui bono?” In this case, ask yourself, “Would Love BT benefit from lying?” The answer to that is an unequivocal “yes”… he was the ruling bishop of the OCA Diocese of the West (DOW) at the time, and any sexual scandal within his jurisdiction would reflect upon his competence and fitness to hold any sort of clerical office. Next, ask, “Was there any adverse court decision regarding these allegations?” The answer to that is also “yes”… note how Love BT attempts to spin that one. A civil court judgement is an adverse court ruling… full stop. Ergo, the OCA DOW did have to pay up due to a court verdict… it didn’t matter if it was in criminal or in civil court, the fact remains that the OCA DOW was subject to an adverse court judgement whilst Tikhon Fitzgerald was ruling bishop.

Next, one asks, “Who’s related to whom, both in formal TO&E terms and in terms of personal affiliation?” One can say that Nikolai Soraich, Benjamin Peterson, and Jonas Paffhausen (and by extension, David Brum and Gerasim Eliel) are protégés of Love BT. Nikolai Soraich was BT’s Chancellor, Peterson was BT’s successor, Paffhausen was an abbot under BT’s omofor, and Brum was received and ordained (on the same day) by BT. Therefore, one can’t expect an objective evaluation of them from him. Then, there are the widely-known ties of Soraich and Peterson with Bobby K and Rock in Vegas, the ties of Paffhausen, Eliel, and Brum with the sodomite Gleb Podmoshensky (GP) in Platina, and the inconvertible fact that the cops nicked Benjamin Peterson for DUI. In short, it appears that Love BT’s protégés aren’t exactly a sterling lot.

Lastly, ask yourself, “Are there any pending situations that BT’s trying to hide or divert attention from?” That would be the still-simmering Storheim case in Canada. He’s on tenterhooks because there’s no statute of limitations on child molestation. If it doesn’t concern him personally, it could concern any one of his protégés or former subordinates (especially those having close ties to the oddbod lot in Platina… the ROCOR Holy Synod did depose GP and most of the brotherhood did leave him as a result). If there’s an adverse ruling in the Storheim trial (and the fact that the Crown offered Storheim a plea deal shows that the evidence is rather strong), it would reverberate in the DOW. Indeed, it could lead to someone opening a case.

Therefore, to conclude it all, Love BT’s using the same “bait and switch” and delaying tactics that the RCs used before their child abuse situation blew up on them. I believe that it’ll come to the same result. The OCA has no one but itself to blame. Note well that those posting on Monomakhos refused to post their names; they hid behind “usernames”. That means that Love BT approves of such craven cowardice and nasty evasiveness. Indeed, a little bird told me that Love BT doesn’t post on one Orthodox venue because the moderators told him that he’d have to follow the same rules that everyone else did. Love BT stamped away in annoyed petulance… that does speak volumes about BT’s character, doesn’t it?

Take no wooden nickels and take no BS from the likes of Love BT… then, take a hit from the jug, and cross yourself… repeat as necessary.

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Wednesday 9 May 2012

Victory Day

Albany NY