Jonah Paterno
My readers often alert me to a proverbial "tree falling in the forest" so that we can all hear it. Here's the latest: Leader of US Orthodox Church Quits Amid Rape Claim. This leader is none other than Metropolitan Jonah (aka Met. Jonah, +Jonah, J++, etc.) who you may have read about on this blog before (here for instance).
I'm just going to put the entire thing here, it's not long.
Author: Frank Eltman, Associated PressFunny thing about that blog post of mine. I noticed that the links to the ocatruth.com site go to a link farm specializing in Russian Brides, trips to the Holy Land and "Mark Stokoe", among the regular girly links. The tag line for the new site is "What you need, when you need it." Funny.
Date Published: 7/20/2012
The leader of the Syosset-based Orthodox Church in America has resigned and been replaced amid questions about whether he failed to report to church officials or law enforcement an allegation of a rape by a priest and other sexual-misconduct claims.
The church issued a statement saying Metropolitan Jonah, the archbishop of Washington, submitted his resignation in a letter on July 6. The letter from Jonah noted the resignation had come at the request of the Holy Synod of Bishops. Jonah did not refer to the rape allegation in his letter.
Part of the letter to the bishops said he begged “forgiveness for however I have offended you, and for whatever difficulties have arisen from my own inadequacies and mistakes in judgment.”
There was no telephone listing for Jonah, who couldn’t be reached for comment on Thursday.
The church on Monday issued a three-page statement detailing Jonah’s four-year tenure as its leader. It said Jonah had failed to report a 2010 rape allegation involving an unidentified priest to authorities when he learned of it last February. The statement said in light of sex abuse scandals involving the Catholic Church and at Penn State University, “the risk of liability to which the Metropolitan has exposed the church can not be overstated.”
It also said Jonah had “repeatedly refused to act with prudence, in concert with his fellow bishops” regarding the church’s standards and procedures regarding sexual misconduct.
It said for several years there had been a repeated pattern of Jonah “taking other unilateral actions that were contrary to the advice of the Holy Synod and/or the church’s lawyers.” It added he withheld information from brother bishops and church lawyers “concerning litigation matters, and matters which might have resulted, and still might result, in litigation.”
It said he gave unauthorized people a detailed internal church report concerning “numerous investigations into sexual misconduct,” which risked leaking names of accusers and the accused.
Father Eric Tosi, a church spokesman, referred any additional questions to the church statement.
There are approximately 80,000 Orthodox Church in America members in more than 800 parishes and institutions in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
But Rod has changed since 2006. Something like this would never make him question his faith anymore. It's so much more resilient now.
ReplyDeleteActually I'm pretty sure Ray's days as an EO are numbered. The only real mystery is: where next? As I see it, Rod's fourth religion will either be
a) Southern Baptist, in conformity to his new down-home Louisiana Ruthie roots (just so long as they aren't one of those icky congregations that has a fixation on fermentation);
b) some weird Sarum Rite Anglican splinter whose total numbers make the OCA look like the Lutherans in Wisconsin ("ok, so their apostolic lineage is a little suspect, but they have that Tragic Sense of Life that really is one of the marks of the true church"); or
c) Just as Ray wrote that piece announcing he had changed his mind about suburbia (The Day The Crunchiness Died) and thus reversed everything he had been saying for 7 years, he'll fall off his horse on the road to St. Francisville and realize that, well, for him, Moral Therapeutic Deism, kind of works after all.
The Man From K Street
So does that mean he's J+-?
ReplyDeleteKathleen
LOL, Kathleen.
ReplyDeleteDon't you love irony? :D :D
Dianonymous
You might be on to something with that Moral Therapeutic Deism idea, K. This discussion caused me to go see what Our Hero has been up to lately over on the not-so-conservative American Conservative.
ReplyDeleteAnd sure enough, there he is wondering "whether there is a "vital center" in American religion. The title of "Moneychangers, All of Us" is also telling.
Sounds to me like he is about to draw the conclusion that there is no organized church in the USofA that will meet his standards. After all, churches have icky people in them. And their music sux.
But Rod has changed since 2006. Something like this would never make him question his faith anymore. It's so much more resilient now.
ReplyDeleteWell... yeah, seemingly so. Our friend HM Stuart emailed me when he posted this quote from Frank Sheed. I was bemused; quoting this type of apologetic note to 2006 Dreher would have elicited the standard line that you are being a wagon-circling enabler who doesn't care about the victims of clerical abuse. And here he is in 2012, using the same reasoning from a Roman Catholic apologist to provide guidance for dealing with scandals arising in his new churhc.
I don't claim to know if Dreher is being hypocritical or resilient or dense or what. But I agree that it is very ironic.
LOL...y'all have got to visit the Monomachos blog, where Rod has been hanging out lately. It is in full-blown Denial and Jonah-Defending Damage Control mode.
ReplyDeleteHere is a priceless gem posted by a konvertzy priest:
"It applies to the scandalized, who yield to the temptations arising from scandals—the ones who lose their faith and leave the Church because they have been scandalized by various happenings which occur in society, but also in the bosom of the Church. If the scandalizers have a responsibility before God and will give a fearful account before God on the Day of Judgment, the scandalized also have a shared responsibility."
Heh. The irony is killing me.
Re Rod's eventual churchy destination: It appears he is already a de facto Congregationalist. At the Monomachos blog, he maintains that he has a good parish, and that's all that matters, so he'll just cling to his parish and pretend the rest of the OCA doesn't exist. Or something like that.
ReplyDeleteSo, what happens when his parish gets a new priest, and the new priest turns out to be a stinker? Lord only knows. :o
Diane what that priest said about the responsibility of the scandalized may as well have been what I was saying 8-9 years ago. Maybe it's because I'm a konvertzy Katholic. But at that time I was either ignored, told I was insensitive or pitied for not getting it by the SCCB (So-called Catholic Blogosphere).
ReplyDeleteI am really grateful for the balanced approach that my instructing priest took when I was coming into the Catholic church in dealing with these matters. We dealt with the whole concept of the church as the Immaculate Bride of Christ and the imperfect hierarchy from multiple angles throughout Church history. Either Dreher never thought of this stuff, never imagined he'd encounter it, or he play-acted the entire thing to get out of the Catholic Church with an excuse many would accept. This equates to the question of whether his reaction to the scandals is stupid, naive or pointing to an ulterior motive.
Stupid, I feel, should be ruled out; he's not. Naive is more likely.... but I've noticed for some time that reactionary folks like Dreher tend to judge religion by a higher ideal. In his case, that ideal is crunchiness as discussed in his first book, and according to the manifesto contained therein, small/local is better than big/global. By that standard, congregational is definitely better than worldwide by definition. So I think that de facto Congregationalist is a fairly good call on Diane's part. And I think that the evidence would suggest that this was his ulterior motive all along--to end up in a boutique religion defined by his own ideals.
...and I would probably be reminded by a priest-friend of mind that we have a name for judging the Catholic religion by a higher ideal: gnosticism.
ReplyDelete"folks like Dreher tend to judge religion by a higher ideal. In his case, that ideal is crunchiness as discussed in his first book, and according to the manifesto contained therein, small/local is better than big/global."
ReplyDeleteWell said and very insightful, IMHO. ;)
Diane
Ray is the bishop of his crunchy church, and the blog is his magisterium. Maybe he should rename his "view from your table" the "view from your altar"
ReplyDeleteThe "view from your table" stuff is amusing to me. It's sort of like saying "hey, look what I'm eating! look what I'm drinking! it tastes SOOOO good!" Childish.
ReplyDeleteDoes he really do a "view from my table" thing?Lord. Have. Mercy.
ReplyDeletedianonymous
I don't suppose it's dawned on you earnest young whippersnappers that gnarly authentic apostolic religions have also become for some the voyage to India to study with the Maharishi of the current day.
ReplyDeleteWhen you're born a chubby elf in the earthy authenticity of rural south Louisiana, you desperately need an authenticier authenticity than the authentic one which won't stop pointing out to everyone else that you're not.
Plus, when you finally seduce some sweet, spiritually searching coed enough years younger than you not to know any better, it helps to have a fallback ashram on hand that isn't so fussy about contraception.
After three C-sections, the next little bronco would pretty much have to come down the chute, and then how would that end up harshing the view from your table? Worse than being sold a poor choice of wine. (shudder) You could replace the wine.
Rudy
LOL. More delicious irony from the Monomachos blog. Someone there wrote, re Met. Jonah's apparent penchant for taking "problematic" priests under his wing: "He [some Friend of Jonah] told me he supported the Metropolitan, that his problem was that he, Metropolitan Jonah, could not see guile in anyone, especially a priest."
ReplyDeleteHmmmm. Didn't many people say the same about the late great Pope John Paul II? -- i.e., that he didn't crack down hard enough on some perps, e.g., Marcel of the Legionaries, because he, JP II, had a hard time believing ill of the priesthood? And that this naivete' on JP's part stemmed from his upbringing in communist Poland, where he had known only heroic, saintly priests?
Yet, at the height of our own sex-abuse scandal, Dreher reamed John Paul II up one side and down the other. When the pope died, and the faithful responded "Santo Subito," Dreher went ballistic. Yet he was ready to canonize Abp. Gandalf (who protected and sheltered registered sex offender and child molestor Stanley Rayburn) as soon as the good abp. breathed his last. And now he is making excuses for Met. Jonah.
More savage irony than in the entire collected novels of Thomas Hardy. Amazing.
Diane... right. I mean, really, the whole thing that dragged me into this discussion on the SCCB was the accusation that if you aren't screaming and quick to judge then you don't care about justice. Now some others are being quick to judge someone he likes and he says "Now, hang on here, let's not be too hasty...." OK, fine; I don't have a problem taking your word, Rod, that your buddies are innocent, but just realize that I got reamed for that attitude during the last decade when it was Catholic priests in front of the firing squad.
ReplyDeleteWhat is going on now vis a vis Catholic child sex abuse scandal is pretty much lost on people like Dreher. What I'm talking about is the drying up of the large lawsuits, the crumbling of SNAP and the discovery, slow but sure, by the populace at large that other organizations like Penn State University and the public schools everywhere have serious abuse problems. And of course there are all kinds of defensive maneuvers that go on at these institutions by those who, like Paterno, know it's going on but enjoy the gravy train. Obviously that doesn't let the Church off the hook one bit, and Catholics rightly argue that the Bishops will be more harshly judged, but it does provide perspective on all the attacks on celibacy and the priesthood based on child abuse--e.g., Jerry Sandusky is a married man.
So, are people going to start suspecting every football coach out there like some do when they see a Roman collar? I don't think so. There is going to be all kinds of objectivity and warnings about prejudice with regard to coaching. Maybe there will be increased vigilance. I doubt there will be some of the crazier talk about how "we are really all to blame for this", etc.
And...
ReplyDeleteI think the reason the perspective is lost on him is the lens he sees all this abuse through is Roman Catholic Child Abuse. So when he sees the horrors at Penn State or in the OCA he thinks "wow, that reminds me of the horrible Catholic church," whereas when I look at the Church's scandals, I grieve that it contains actors as bad as the secular world and other churches, sometimes worse. IOW, the lens I view this through is the Church's own teachings on sin, the spirit of anti-Christ and lawlessness that St. John and St. Paul claimed had already invaded the Church in their time, Christ's parable about the wheat and the tares and his warning about the inevitability of scandals.
This view of mine has time and again exposed me to the accusation that I'm insensitive to the victims of abuse. So I've examined my conscience on this point. And when one really looks at how little was done in counseling the victims of abuse by an organization like SNAP which instead busied itself with publicizing stories of every accusation, whether proven or not, it can be seen that they have likely not examined theirs. If they still have one.
Hear hear, Pauli. What you said!!!
DeleteAs the daughter of a sex-abuse victim (whose abuser was NOT a Catholic priest), I learned a long time ago that these people do not really give two hoots about the victims. They have an agenda, and the victims are just pawns in that agenda.
LOVE what you said about the Catholic perspective -- Original Sin; wheat and tares. So true. Dreher never got it.
This is my thought where his next church will be. Jonathan Carpenter
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jsm.org/
I don't know, J-Carp. His son, Donnie Swaggart, has more facial hair.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of facial hair...
ReplyDeleteMaybe this will help us narrow Dreher's religion down:
Dreher: And by the way, what kind of 45-year-old man wants to work as a preschool teacher? I don’t get it.
Alan B. Wow. I’m pretty sure Jesus Christ loved helping the little children.
Dreher: Oh, please, stop it with the sentimentality.
This denunciation by Dreher of Jesus' famous remark concerning suffering the little children as annoying sentimentality leads me to think Dreher's religion may not be so much Christianity as given by Jesus but rather a particularly cultivated form of it, what we might think of as Bluto-Beard Christianity, or BBC (not to be confused with that British outfit.)
Unlike sentimental, regular Jesus-beard Christianity, Bluto-Beard Christianity stops up the sink with its beardiness as soon as it enters the kitchen, its sanctum sanctorum, where it functions first and foremost as a transformative topical testosterone ointment, reinforcing its own beardiness as it miraculously heightens its devotee's spidey sense while girding his loins against regular Jesus-beardy sentimentality toward little children, Catholic priests who, face it, if they had been BBC-manly wouldn't have shamed their Church the way they uniquely did, unsanctioned food choices, those demons still waiting every minute of every day to sneak up behind the devotee and yank his pants down, and all the other vicissitudes of our sick, sentimental culture a BBC man must suffer.
If the beard on your religion doesn't knock others down and make them bleed with its spring steel toughness, you too may be one of those mewling sentimentalists.
Fortunately, there's an ointment for that.
Rudy
Rudy, meant to say, I think that's hilarious. :)
ReplyDeleteOne thing that has struck me, now that Rod has blasted the elderly Father Groeschel for Saying Things Elderly People Sometimes Foolishly Say, is this:
Rod's m.o. WRT alleged perps in his own communion is to give them the benefit of the doubt, refrain from hasty judgments, dig for further evidence before jumping to conclusions, make allowances and excuses out the ying-yang, cite extenuating circumstances, and presume innocence until the perp is proven guilty. Much of this (except the excuse-making) is quite noble.
But Rod's m.o. WRT alleged perps in the Catholic Church is ***always*** to presume guilt, jump instantly into mega-bash mode, and unmask his batteries before bothering to get the full facts -- indeed, quite often, he simply refuses to get the full facts. (Did he ever say Word One about theose Philly priests who were falsely accused or against whom there was no credible evidence?)WRT alleged Catholic perps, Rod shoots first and asks questions later. He assumes the worst, makes NO allowances EVER, and jumps to every uncharitable conclusion in the book, sometimes falsely. He assassinates characters left and right, leaves human devastation in his wake, and never bothers to clean up his mess.
This is contemptible.