More hits in the last month than all the rest of history.

Largely from including the URL to this site in my signature on the Venuleius web-log, it seems. And then there was the link which did not actually work from Pactum Serva. Between those two, that's 1/3 of everything. I didn't know that many people read Venuleius. I got about 300 hits from there, and that's just people who followed my random link in my own signature, not a direct link from him.

EDIT: Oh, it seems I'm one of the few links on his front page. Well, whatevs.

Two methods of interpretation.

I'm not going to comment much on this except to point it out. By the way, if you don't care about the OCA's internal workings (really, why should you?!), you can ignore this post, though I suppose you can find something in here of interest.

Two different sites, on opposites sides of some dispute, posted a copy of a speech Metropolitan Jonah, the primate of the OCA. One interpreted it as a sign he was wrong, another as an example of how awesome and right he is. If it were merely a matter of interpretation, I suppose this would be quite justified, and on some level it is a matter of interpretation, but there are a large number of matters of fact which are at stake between these two interpretations. I certainly don't have sufficient access to the facts to make a decision between one party or the other, but I am forced to wonder at times what state of affairs could make the pro-Jonah side (note: the other "side" is not anti-Jonah) ever change their mind. There surely must be some somewhere, since there is, at some level, a basis in matters of fact. It could be something that they're 99% sure isn't going to turn out to be the case, as long as there's something other than, "My Metropolitan, right or wrong."

Disclaimer: I am pro-Jonah, pro-Synod, and (most of all) pro-Matthias. I want the lot of them to be able to work together and play nice. I can't believe either the simplistic pro-Jonah side or the nuanced interpretation put forth by Stokoe is the whole truth, but I certainly have neither the access to information nor the inclination to discern necessary to develop an informed opinion on the matter. Therefore, I won't form or express an opinion directly on the matter and confine my comments, as usual, to how much I dislike OCA Truth and the Monomakhos web-log.

EDIT: Though one "matter of fact" which I am fairly glad that Stokoe did address is the matter of Metropolitan Theodosius's retirement. The people on OCA Truth and Monomakhos constantly harp on it, and Met. Jonah mentions it, but he retired suddenly due to health problems after 25 years of service and well before the scandals caught up with him. Several of the people writing those web-logs were barely here for +Herman's reign, much less +Theodosius's, so they have no institutional knowledge of this sort of thing. I was (barely) not around for +Theodosius, though I did meet him in the (I think it was) '04-'05 school year when he was in town, he hung out with the OCF for the evening. And another note, it felt to me like +Herman promoted Sanctity of Life Sunday and the other stuff around the Pro-Life cause more than +Jonah, but it could just be that, after +Job's repose, we didn't have a bishop relaying that push. But it's pretty much the only thing I really remember about +Herman's primacy.

And now all those truthers can shut up.

The Synod met and has released the minutes of their meeting. MINUTES.

Now, if only they would stop their illiterate ramblings.

EDIT: And a summary report of the Metropolitan Council meeting, but no minutes yet.

I thought I wouldn't write about OCATruth anymore...

...but they took down their post copping to their identities (Rod Dreher and Jesse Cone being the primary authors, Jason Folsom providing the hosting, just so google knows that Rod Dreher and Jesse Cone were the authors of the irresponsibly libelous OCATruth website), admitting Dreher had a copy of the confidential SMPAC report and Metropolitan Jonah's response, and admitting that perhaps Metropolitan Jonah had made some mistakes at some point in his lifetime. They did this under the guise of not quoting parts of e-mails that had been stolen (see here for details), but the post where they admit who they are doesn't exactly contain any such confidential information, does it?

To quote an instance of their irresponsible and reckless reporting - which, to be fair, they retracted - here is something they posted a couple days ago:

Last night at St. Seraphim’s Cathedral in Dallas, Bishop Mark made sure that Bishop Nikon was commemorated as locum tenens, not Metropolitan Jonah, even though Jonah had sent down a directive stating that now that he was coming back from his agreed-upon leave, he was going to resume his role as the Diocese of the South’s locum tenens. Why is Bishop Mark defying the Metropolitan? Why is he obliging the Dallas cathedral congregation, in its communal prayers, to defy the Metropolitan’s legitimate order?

Somebody's poisoning the well! And then the retraction soon after. This is called "Fox News". And, once again, it's from an "officially" anonymous source.

Hrm. It seems a very wise fellow once said in a very similar situation, "If you cannot even sign your name to such an accusation, is it really responsible to publically denounce a fellow Christian and stir up suspicion and distrust in others?" His name was Jesse Cone and he was defending somebody at his cathedral spoken ill of only a couple months ago in the comments at OCANews. Well, here is somebody speaking ill of somebody at that very same cathedral and hiding behind his anonymity to boot! Well...

I'm having too much fun with this.

PS the other post they retracted contained an exercise in counterspin, which is fine, since I'm not a fan of how Stokoe spins his materials, either, but notably absent were explanations of, viz, somebody referring to Bishop Mark with a rather unflattering and insulting term which ought not to be used with respect to a hierarch.

EDITED TO ADD: And while we're on the subject of things removed from their blog that were "under the seal of confession" or whatever, have they removed all their speculation about Mark Stokoe's personal situation? And their calls for Fr Ted Bobosh to discuss it?

An ironic comment...

...from one of the OCATruth authors:

If you cannot even sign your name to such an accusation, is it really responsible to publically denounce a fellow Christian and stir up suspicion and distrust in others?

How three months will change one's opinion, it seems, once the rubber band is on the other claw!

And one from Rod Dreher:

When I was a Catholic, and a journalist writing about the sex abuse scandal, I heard from priests and laymen all the time who had truly shocking and terrible things to report. I believed then, and believe now, that they were telling me the truth. But I couldn't report any of it unless they were willing to put their name to the criticism of particular bishops, priests, et al. Their views and information, however passionately held and grounded in fact, were useless gossip. And for all I know, they had it wrong. That they wouldn't say what they felt needed saying in public, with their names attached to it, said a lot about the credibility of their accusations. [Ed: emphasis added] It is perhaps understandable, to an extent, when a priest or layman whose income depends on not crossing church leaders is hesitant to stand up. But that didn't stop many OCA priests during the Herman mess. What's stopping this anonymous attacker of Fr. Joseph from identifying himself or herself now, and letting all of us at the cathedral be the judge of his or her credibility?

No one has the right to do this to our parish and its priests. No one. Whoever you are, you either have no idea what you're doing, or you don't care.

Of course, two years is plenty of time to change your mind about anonymous criticism, especially if one discovers the utility of providing it. I believe he owes an apology to Fr Ted Bobosh.

I really don't intend to keep harping on this issue. I don't belong to any "team" and I don't pretend to have sufficient information to have a meaningful opinion about the current conflict between Metropolitan Jonah and some other members of the Holy Synod. I certainly don't have a public opinion of Fr Fester. I do, perhaps, have an unhealthy interest in schadenfreude and a couple spare minutes to use google well...

Rod Dreher is behind OCATruth.

No wonder it seemed very "Fox News" - they had professional guidance. I admit to being surprised. Perhaps if I could stomach his prose, I would've been familiar enough with it to recognize it. However, I doubt whether I've read more than 2000 words written by him besides his at-times-slanderous anonymous posts on that web-log. Now, the behind-the-scenes details, those are about what I expected (a little more involved, actually, but not too far), just not the name I expected. I especially like the irony of the OCATruth people harping on an investigation of how/whether Stokoe got the confidential SMPAC report (he didn't) when Rod Dreher got both it and the official response of the metropolitan. Seriously, though, I think he could have done some good if he wrote a web-log saying, "Hey, I'm Rod Dreher, and I want to provide some balance here." Etc. And conducting it in the way you have to when you're attaching your name to it and have some integrity.

Okay, and the campaign against Bishop Mark which just rolled out, I didn't know what to make of that, but the background there doesn't look good.

Anyway, there was a pretty good ordination today, I like our new bishop. It's also always good to see all these shiny bishops in one place. One kid remarked to me that he was surprised that they were so funny. Anyway.