The Archons fight the good fight in the European Union Courts. The officials of the Ecumenical Patriarchate write journals, encyclicals and give academic lectures on the topics. I run marathons and speak about civil rights violations. These topics are serious and intense. I embrace who God has made me and I fill a gap in the public square as much as I can. The OCA has become a focal point for me because the leadership refuses to disavow their supporters who engage in extremist tactics like character assassination. They refuse to discredit the Orthodox Internet Pentarchy which pushes the OCA's hidden agenda and cause: to cease control by the crippling and the ultimate vanishing of the Ecumenical See. Although they are certainly ambitious they are not adequatly adept as they are unable to manage a retreat and reflective time for their Metropolitan. The OCA with its subversive supporters have set their sights on an American Patriarchate and are willing to "recede" or "diminish" so long as the Ecumenical See abandons its post and "cut and runs" like Antioch.
As always true to form these uniquely American Churches with their distinct ethnos grab for funds, the infrastructure, and the clout of various of GOA NPO ministries. For example SCOBA with its Ministries are essentially and undeniably the firstborn fruits of the GOA. These other jurisdictions pathologically project contempt for their own ineptitude, failings, financial short falls and internal discord. While former hierachs of the OCA were looting the treasury, the future custodians cleaned up the accounting and set the sights on power; shoring up their position and linguistically hijacking and controlling the rhetoric as their agenda moves forward. Meanwhile the GOA developed all the flourishing ministries of SCOBA while almost dismissing but certainly marginalizing the OCA; who seemed perpetually embroiled in scandal; or defending their irregular past to explain away their illegitimacy with new resolutions and sweeping statements. The OCA machine with their non-official media groups have started to reframe the debate and have doubled their propaganda efforts and revisionist history. Just read their Strategic Plan for the Orthodox Church in America.
Recap: These groups reflecting the cowardice demonstrated by the Patriarchate of Antioch which fled Turkey for Damascus; seeks to impose this model on on the Ecumenical Throne. They are completely deluded lamenting the collapse of SCOBA while getting into bed with Muslims by encouraging the exodus of Christians. Amazingly AOI and OCA supporters suggest His All-Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch become a U.S National that is ethnopheletism at its best.
Sorry to disappoint but the Orthodox Internet Pentarchy is akin to gnats and nothing more then a nuisance. The OCA leadership by not condemning such extremism is using these groups as an extension of their operation. They remain seeminlgy above the fray while covertly giving the green light. I will see that their plans foil and will expose then whenever and where ever I can. I am not intimidated by the propaganda and have the endurance, stamina, fortitude and inclination to do so. The civility that you seek in me if you reflect, you will find that it is exactly what disgusts all of us about politicians who speak lovely platitudes but fail to serve. I am direct and honest. Seek out the meaning the context and the implication of what is being said and less so about the format or stylistic differences.
5 comments:
"what amounts to the abandonment and indifference to our Holy See."
In North America, we have Holy Sees in Sitka, San Francisco, New York and Washington D.C. We will not abandon them either, nor look on them with indifference.
"The Archons fight the good fight in the European Union Courts."
That they do. There actions on the home front in North American Courts and Congresses is a different matter.
"The officials of the Ecumenical Patriarchate write journals, encyclicals and give academic lectures on the topics."
What do they do at St. Vlad's?
"They refuse to discredit the Orthodox Internet Pentarchy which pushes the OCA's hidden agenda and cause: to cease control by the crippling and the ultimate vanishing of the Ecumenical See."
LOL. The OCA has no such agenda. It's got its own problems to deal with in North America, but it has never passed up an opportunity to support the EP against the Turk. The Phanar is too busy trying to ignore the OCA to notice that. Pity.
Does the Phanar discredit its supporters who attempt to cripple the OCA so it vanishes?
"The OCA with its subversive supporters have set their sights on an American Patriarchate and are willing to "recede" or "diminish" so long as the Ecumenical See abandons its post and "cut and runs" like Antioch."
What ARE you talkning about (although it seems that you have finally caught on that when Met. Jonah said the OCA's vocation was to disappear, HB didn't mean for it to go away)? Antioch does not cut and run, which made the Phanar furious when Antioch defied both Porte and Phanar in choosing its own primate as required by the canons over a century ago.
Or are you refering to the fact that Antioch raises mature adults, and not dependent children to kling to? As we say in Alexandria, "When your son grows up, treat him like a brother."
"For example SCOBA with its Ministries are essentially and undeniably the firstborn fruits of the GOA."
The only thing that MIGHT fit that discription would be the OCMC and OCN (which is swiftly being overtaken it seems by Ancient Faith Radio), and even then they had imput from the other jurisdicitons early on. SCOBA and the rest (except OCPM, which started in the Antiochian jurisdicion) all originated across jurisdictional lines, including the OCA.
Of course, the North American Archdiocese with a Holy Synod with multi-ethnic jurisdictions was the first fruit of the OCA-wherever Met./Abp./EP/Pope Meletius went here, he had been preceeded by the Russian (and Arab and Albanian...) bishops of the OCA.
"Meanwhile the GOA developed all the flourishing ministries of SCOBA while almost dismissing but certainly marginalizing the OCA"
LOL. The rapt attention they give the OCA in Greece (shown by rompheas part in the Met. Jonah story) belies this.
"Just read their Strategic Plan for the Orthodox Church in America." I guess it can't be all that hidden as you just claimed, can it?
"Sorry to disappoint but the Orthodox Internet Pentarchy is akin to gnats and nothing more then a nuisance. The OCA leadership by not condemning such extremism is using these groups as an extension of their operation."
I must have missed that: I know Met. Philip has made such suggestions as you say, but I've never recall the OCA make such suggestions. Can you quote?
"Amazingly AOI and OCA supporters suggest His All-Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch become a U.S National that is ethnopheletism at its best."
What is Greek bishops turning Turk, as it were?
"These groups reflecting the cowardice demonstrated by the Patriarchate of Antioch which fled Turkey for Damascus; seeks to impose this model on on the Ecumenical Throne. They are completely deluded lamenting the collapse of SCOBA while getting into bed with Muslims by encouraging the exodus of Christians."
I'm going to assume you do not know the facts, and are not committing libel.
Antioch had been destroyed and in decline before Islam existed, and war didn't help that. The first time the Patriarch of Antioch had to leave Antioch was in 1099 when the Turks tortured him as the Crusaders approached, the later expelling him in favor of their own Latin Patriarch and sending him into exile to Constantinople. There the Patriarchate continued in exile (much like the Ecumenical Patriarchate continued in exile in Nicea when the Crusaders sacked Consatninople), the most disgraceful example perhaps being Pat. Balsamon the canonist, who was "polites" and after he was named Patriarch of Antioch at Constantinople never set foot in the patriarchate to reclaim it from the Latins, but did order the Antiocheans to abandon and suppress the DL of St. James the Brother of God and all other Traditions of Antioch and adopt the practices of Constantiople instead. The Patriarch did not return to his Patriarchate until 1276, after the Mamluke Baybars took the Crusader Principality of Antioch, massacred the Christian inhabitants, and tore down its walls and fortifications. The destruction of the town and warfare in the region diverted trade routes, and Antioch lost and never recovered its economic and commercial importance and never recovered, and the city eventually sank to only about 300 houses inhabited by mostly Turkman nomads, far lower than Constantinople at the Conquest, or Rome during the Pornocratia.
There not being much left of Antioch in any sense (as no one rebuild it, unlike what Mehmet the Conqueror did to Constantinople and the Renaissance did to Rome) in 1342 the Patriarch left for Damascus which long ago had replaced Antioch as the capital. The Patriarchs did, however, reside often at Aleppo 50 miles away from Antioch, guarding the sites and ministering to the flock. With the Melkite schism in 1724, the Phanariots took the Patriarchate to Phanar, with the Sultan's approval, and Phanariots succeeded each other as absentee Patriarchs as "Pat." Balsamon had done at Constantionple. When in 1899 the bishops resident in the Patriarchate of Antioch elected an Antiochian as Patriarch, the Phanar retaliated by calling Antioch schismatic for decades and giving the city where the disciples were first called Christians the OCA treatment.
Before the restoration of the Patriarchate, Antioch had begun to recover, having 20,000 inhabitants by 1899. By that time too the Christians had restored the city and see, rebuild themselves the Cathedral which still stands in Antioch, still has a flock (equal if not more than the Greeks in Istanbul) and serves as the focal point of the Orthodox parishes in the Cilician and Hatay provinces of the Turkish Republic on the edge of the war torn region of Eastern Anatolia. The Patriarch has an active and groving mission to the Turkish (which every is forced to learn and speak in the Republic) Muslims: I know a Bosnian refugee who was converted (his parents stopped putting up a fuss when they found out that an Arab priest baptized him). This in additon to the converts among the Muslims of Syria. Hardly "cutting and running."
Committ libel really?
Thanks for the history lesson. The Ecumenical Patriarchs also have had their share of executions. The doors which you see in the upper part of this blog are where one was hung. Imagine passing those doors on your way to work everyday. Let's pray memory eternal for all martyrs of our Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
You didn't however address the entry.
"The Ecumenical Patriarchs also have had their share of executions. The doors which you see in the upper part of this blog are where one was hung. Imagine passing those doors on your way to work everyday."
Don't have to imagine. Egypt's not a safe place either. Or Palestine, or Syria.
I recognized the Kara Kapi immediately: I've venerated the icon of St. Gregory V (the EP you speak of) on the door (hidden in the center) and his relics in Athens (where his murderers are identified as "impious men," not the "Turks").
"You didn't however address the entry."
That there is some vast conspriracy between the OCA and AOI? What conspriacy? Their visions overlap in many ways, they share similar goals, while they don't suffer the myopia infecting the Phanar and its goal of keepoing North America (and elsewhere) in perpetual subjugation. Needless to say, they are going to clash with those who would make the Phanar the Orthodox Vatican.
Isa seems to have gone quote by quote in addressing your entry, in some cases (most) refuting it.
This thread is exactly what I have been trying to tell you for a while. Instead of speaking out against the injustices done against our Orthodox brothers and sisters by Islam and secular governments, your posts have been hurling insults and sneers at fellow Orthodox.
Met Hilarion Alfeyev said that the great need today is for all Apostolic Church (East, West, Non-Chalcedonian, etc) need to join together in addressing the evils of society. If he calls us to join causes with those we are not in communion with, how much more should Orthodox abandon the kind of jurisdictional quabbling your posts promote?
I 100% agree "memory eternal to the martyrs of our Church". Let's honor their sacrifice, and end the bologna. Wasn't it St Paul who warned the Galatians not to bite one another, lest they consume one another?
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