Tuesday, May 03, 2011

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?

5 comments:

Eric said...

Perhaps wrongly, I find this wildly entertaining. Who needs TV or video games when you have Stokoe, OCAT, and the internets?! Michalopulos is fun too!

Mr. G. Z. T. said...

I don't typically follow this kind of thing, and I take it all with quite a large grain of salt and suspension of judgment, but you have to admit that this last week has been a very interesting train wreck. And the people at OCATruth can try to take down their articles, but once something goes out in the ether, it's out there forever (both morally and literally)...

Pauli said...

Wonder what kind of hit count they are getting?

Mr. G. Z. T. said...

They're probably doing okay. I didn't subscribe to them on principle, but I drop by every couple hours to see if anything else has popped up...

Anonymous said...

Oh, the days are just too full!

quoting a certain retired bishop....