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Love BT issued yet another one of his patented rants. Here it is in all of its glory (with the passages I want you to notice in boldface):
Bishops don’t resign their sees. Metropolitan Jonah [Paffhausen] is certainly literate and well-read enough to realise that, but he resigned anyway. What bishops (and priests and deacons) MAY and certainly do, is request to be deposed (or “laicised’). Bishops often retire due to age and infirmity, but they don’t resign. Recently, Bishop Basil Osborne, once a hierarch of the Church of Russia, vicar of ever-memorable Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, who upon seeing the see vacated by the falling asleep of Metropolitan Anthony and given to another hierarch and not himself, ran with some of his faithful to the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch’s Russian division in France, and, then, just last year, requested to be deposed in order to marry his lady love. When I was in active service, we considered once or twice the request of this or that deacon to be “laicised”, and we kindly acquiesced by granting canonical deposition.
However, resigning without being deposed? Unheard of. It’s a mystery to me how Metropolitan Jonah, with both Divinity and Theology degrees, as well as hierarchs having Divinity degrees, members of the Holy Synod of the OCA, could just accept a resignation without canonical RESULTS!
- On what basis did they elect a novice and untested bishop as their [First Hierarch]?
- How were they then bewildered by his performance after they chose him?
- On what CANONICAL BASIS did Metropolitan Jonah resign?
- On what CANONICAL BASIS did the Holy Synod accept his resignation without consequent canonical deposition for looking back from the plough?
It seems the Holy Synod has fallen apart and fell apart even before Vladyka Dmitri [Royster] fell asleep (witness the unseemly debacle around the Archdeacon Gregory Burke, which, even if the bungling criminal meting out kangaroo court justice to Protopresbyter R. S. Kondratick had not already opened the barn doors, still undermines the moral authority of the OCA episcopate). For any Hellenophiles out there, there’s a good poem by the great demotic Greek poet, Constantine Cavafy, which refers to the case of one historic hierarchical resignation, that of Pope Celestine… Dante places him way, Way, WAY down in The Inferno {actually, Love BT is wrong… the figure mentioned is in the antechamber of Hell: editor}.
Tikhon
Bishop OCA retired
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As per usual, this is riddled with lacunae of the most obvious sort. For instance, this assertion is a lie:
Recently, Bishop Basil Osborne, once a hierarch of the Church of Russia, vicar of ever-memorable Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, who upon seeing the see vacated by the falling asleep of Metropolitan Anthony and given to another hierarch and not himself, ran with some of his faithful to the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch’s Russian division in France, and, then, just last year, requested to be deposed in order to marry his lady love.
Here’s the truth:
Metropolitan Anthony Bloom headed the diocese until his death in 2003. Bishop Basil Osborne continued as the administrator of the diocese, maintaining the late Metropolitan Anthony’s cosmopolitan Orthodoxy. When the situation became untenable, Bishop Basil applied to have his diocese transferred from the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate to that of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Before that could happen, on 9 May 2006 the MP Holy Synod peremptorily announced him retired. In his place, the Holy Synod appointed Archbishop Innokenty Vasilyev of Korsun as temporary administrator of the diocese. On 6 October 2006, the Holy Synod announced that Archimandrite Yelisei Ganaba, head of the Russian Spiritual Mission in Jerusalem, is to be consecrated Bishop of Bogorodsky, vicar bishop of the Diocese of Korsun, with responsibility for the administration of the Diocese of Sourozh.
“Russian Orthodox Diocese of Sourozh”
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Orthodox_Diocese_of_Sourozh
In short, Tikhon’s assertions about Basil Osborne lay revealed as a farrago of lies. Now, note this claim:
Bishops often retire due to age and infirmity, but they don’t resign. … On what CANONICAL BASIS did the Holy Synod accept his resignation without consequent canonical deposition?
Truly? Then, according to this logic, in the considered opinion of Love BT, the OCA Holy Synod must depose Herman Swaiko from the episcopate! Love BT said so! In short, Love BT kicks himself in the arse by not doing his homework. He posted without thinking (as is his wont), and in so doing, he jammed a rocket up his arse sideways (and lit the fuse to everyone’s great and gleeful amusement). These weren’t the only errors of fact in this disordered ramble, but let’s leave it at that. He’s sunk… that’s good enough. This was just another special pleading for his dirty pal Bobby K (remember how the Feds nicked his son for fraud… the tree isn’t far from the apple it drops) that means that Bobby is still on the OCA Holy Synod’s shit list.
By the way, Love BT is correct in one assertion:
On what basis did they elect a novice and untested bishop as their [First Hierarch]?
The MP, the Church of Bulgaria, and the Church of Serbia all have rules that mandate that any candidate for First Hierarch must be at least fifty years-old and a ruling bishop for at least five years. I think that all other Churches have similar rules (or customs, which amounts to the same thing). Ponder this… the OCA Holy Synod appointed two immature men Metropolitan (JP and Tikhon Mollard) and they’ve appointed one rank beginner (JP). An OCA source told me:
They chose JP because the Holy Synod overruled the popular vote twice before… in the case of Lazor and Swaiko. In the case of JP, they “gave the people what they wanted”, knowing it’d be a train wreck (giving them the moral standing to reject future “popular” choices). In the case of Mollard, Peterson hated the only viable candidate, Pleska, so, Peterson turned the Synod against Pleska and had the pliable Mollard installed. They’re scared shitless of Dahulich… he’s ambitious and power-hungry. Mollard’s a nice guy… and everyone is scheming on how to use him. Things are going to hell in a handbasket.
Do bear in mind that the popular election is only a “beauty contest” in canonical terms… only a Holy Synod can elect a First Hierarch… that’s true in ALL Orthodox Churches, both Eastern and Oriental. That’s a good place to end this. It’s not pretty… but that’s the way it is, all too often. We must attend to reality, or, reality will attend to us… that’s the only choice on offer. It’s time to go home… and more people realise that every day. The konvertsy are ploughing their own furrow… let them be, they’re impervious. We have the Russian Church in the diaspora to reunite and heal…
Barbara-Marie Drezhlo
Wednesday 6 February 2013
Albany NY
Voices from Russia 
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