The blog Monomakhos has recently highlighted the contentious situation in the OCA's Diocese of the South with the once presumptive new hierarch Bishop Mark (formerly of the Antiochian Archdiocese). I saw first-hand how bad it got before Bp. Mark moved to Florida after the cathedral expressed their rather strong desire that he find somewhere else to take up residence.
So now Monomakhos has released a letter from the Dean of the Dallas Deanery. You can read the letter in its entirety here. An excerpt:
How does forgiveness compel us to make this man an official candidate? By all means, we urge the battered wife to forgive her battering husband, but does that forgiveness require her to move in again with him before she has seen clear evidence of his repentance? Yet this is precisely what is being asked of us in the Dallas Deanery: we are to forgive and accept a man who for ten months offered no apology to the priest in Dallas nor to the faithful of the cathedral for the scandal he caused; we are to forgive and accept a man whom you all heard say recently in Charleston that he found it difficult to ask forgiveness because he sees himself as the victim, not as one who as offended. Before you rush to believe his account of being set up and victimized, please do due diligence and speak with those who suffered because of his actions. It is not enough to tell the people in Dallas just to ‘get over it’ when you do not really know what this ‘it’ is. How is the apology this man wrote to the cathedral (after being prompted) at the start of the Great Fast, which did not apologize for any specific sins or errors, constitute an apology, repentance, or the basis for forgiveness? Such an apology that apologizes for nothing specific is worse than no apology —and it went over in Dallas, I can tell you, like another slap in the face. Yes, we must and do offer forgiveness to this man and pray for him, whether he is able to name his sins and ask forgiveness or not, but that does not require us to put him on our ballot. Indeed, his refusal or inability to admit to any specific mistakes provides a strong reason for excluding him from it...
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All this is baffling and cause for sorrow. Bp. MARK was hierarch over my parish while he resided under the Antiochian archdiocese, and I had many encounters with him, both in private and public. The man never struck me as anything but humble, steady, and wise in the ways of God. Yet here, as soon as he enters the OCA, there erupts this "scandal," which apparently can't be put to rest. I do not know the precise details of it, and I can say I almost don't even want to know them. What I can say, however, is watching the cathedral parishioners reaction throughout this process has not helped me to sympathize with them. None of it seems – if I may say so as an outsider – humble, steady, or wise in the ways of God.
ReplyDeleteLord have mercy on us.
I am personally tired of hints of things here and there, and stories of unnamed events that caused unnamed people to need some unspecified healing. If nobody wants to just come out and say what happened then I wish they would all be quiet.
ReplyDeleteBp. MARK was my bishop, I've looked him in the eyes many, many times, and I've never seen him be anything but genuinely loving and concerned for his flock. Now, he and my priest were personally very close, and he always referred to us as his "healthy parish", so for all I know we got the "good kid" treatment because our priest was his friend.
ReplyDeleteThat said, there's a good friend of mine who was one of the founding members of the parish, a cradle Arab, who only met Bp. MARK on his last pastoral visit because he spent several years choosing to disassociate himself from the parish. When he heard what was going on, he said, "Well, I'm not surprised. You wouldn't notice it because you're a convert, but a couple of the things he said while he was here would be very off-putting to Arabs. If he's got Detroit and Fort Wayne and talks like that to them, no wonder." When pressed, my friend said, "For example, he said something that was critical of Muslims. If you're an Arab-American, that doesn't fly. Muslims are family because they're Arabs, and you treat them like family. And yes, that means quietly giving them Communion if they're married to a Christian and not making a big fuss over it. That's just what you do, especially in Detroit."
I don't know what happened in Dallas. My priest hasn't been in touch with him since he got transferred; all he has said about is, "Bp. MARK isn't very good at keeping his mouth shut when he smells a rat."
The conflicts I have been aware of with respect to Bp. MARK have involved clergy assignment; ex-Fr. Isaac Henke in Fort Wayne (a situation that nobody actually seems to be able to explain clearly), Fr. Steven Ziton in Solon, OH (where +MARK backed him up against a hostile parish council and Met. PHILIP kicked him out anyway, which devastated a dear friend of mine who sang at that parish and loved the man dearly), and another situation in Ohio that I've never heard names in regards to, only broad contours -- something about a priest who was somebody's son or nephew or something that Met. PHILIP wanted reassigned someplace else and +MARK said no. I understand his "No Bingo" edict was not popular. I have heard stories about +MARK trying to address issues of clergy compensation in public fora and having the mic shut off on him; I've also heard about him getting screamed at in public at parish life conferences by old ladies from Detroit who claimed that he was killing their churches. I really don't understand; he did everything he could to try to encourage our parish to grow, and frankly our parish went out of its way to pretend it didn't hear him at every turn.
He and Fr. Alexander Atty mandated a "parish council workshop" in every deanery of the diocese. Theoretically every parish council member was supposed to attend a daylong event at a central parish. This daylong event consisted of Fr. Atty explaining in great detail how parish councils were a historical anomaly particular to the requirements of US law, they really had no particular place in Orthodox tradition, but if we had to exist, then we needed to understand first and foremost that the priest was not our employee, he was our boss. I have no particular problem with any of that, incidentally (particularly after reading Fr. Nicolas Ferencz' book American Orthodoxy and Parish Congregationalism), but the bottom line is that our entire parish council went up for the first one, and we were the only ones there. We looked around, saw that it was just us, and asked Fr. Atty, "Did we misunderstand something?" He looked grim and said, "No, you guys are the ones who did it right." My understanding is that there were some mandated dissolutions of parish councils, or at least some removals of individuals, following that debacle.
- cont'd -
I will say that I don't think +MARK wanted to be a bishop. I think he was simply the only unmarried priest around at the time. He never once struck me as interested in power; he just wanted to do the best job he could insofar as he understood the parameters of the job. I think what perhaps was not sufficiently conveyed to him ahead of time was that there are the on-paper parameters and then there the "real" parameters. That's a mistake that I don't believe AOCANA will ever make again, given how loudly they've trumpeted the "auxiliary" status of everybody recently elected.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand this either. I have met and spoken to Bp Mark a number of times and he always struck me as a kind and gentle person, who fulfilled his duties as best as he could. Plus, what does this all have to do with the task of theosis? Nothing much I would think, and it probably belongs in the opposite camp. So I think I will choose to ignore the drama and continue in prayer.
ReplyDeleteThe answer I got to the question "What, specifically, did Bp. MARK do wrong?" over on Mr. Michalopulous' blog was entirely a non-answer. I could conclude much from that; instead, I think probably I will simply determine that the discourse about +MARK's alleged wrongdoings is occurring on a plane that I am not capable of understanding. Tragic, all of it, for all involved.
ReplyDeleteRod Dreher, a conservative author and blogger, has posted what seems to be the most complete synopsis of what occurred at St. Seraphim. He (Mr. Dreher) was a member of the parish several years ago, and he has maintained contacts since then.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/2012/04/27/fr-justin-martyr/
I am sad to say that the report from the Dean of the Diocese of the South and those reports coming out of the Dallas Cathedral at the time these events were taking place sounded eerily and dishearteningly familiar to me. Having been in a troubled Antiochian parish under Bp. Mark, we were subjected to very similar hurtful dynamics. I pray Met. Jonah will send Bp. Mark to a monastery for at least 6 months. I don't pretend to know what Bp. Mark's culpability is in the matters where he has done injury (or acted unethically). Many times (perhaps all times), likely he has had honorable intentions, but it is disturbing that he appears to be unable to discern where there is real need and good reasons to use "economia," or give benefit of the doubt (from the perspective of seasoned Priests), and it appears he has made many injurious misjudgments for which he is unable or unwilling to own responsibility. (For the record, despite the alleged common practice in the Antiochian archdiocese, I do not believe refusing to commune Muslims was one of Bp. Mark's mistakes, and I'm sure there are many Priests, even in the Antiochian archdiocese, who would concur with that.)
ReplyDeleteIt is not the practice, common or otherwise, in the Antiochian Archdiocese to give the Eucharist to non Orthodox, much less to Muslims. If an Orthodox Christian marries a Muslim, they also are denied Communion. I nave heard Metropolitan Philip tell the clergy more than once that we are forbidden to give Holy Communion to non-Orthodox.
ReplyDeleteArchpriest John W. Morris
Thank you, Fr. John, for the clarification. I don't think anybody is claiming that the alleged practice is Met. Philip's public policy. "Common" was my inadvertent interpretation of the above commenter's description and, hopefully/apparently, inaccurate in any case. My apologies--I honestly didn't intend to embellish the account.
ReplyDelete