A Brief Synopsys

So, what has happened over at OCANews?  Well, Mark Stokoe obtained some rather damning evidence of the conspiracy of Fr. Joseph Fester and Rod Dreher to engage in ‘ecclesiastical agitation’ for Met. Jonah.

The agitational narrative set by Fester & Co. is this: Met. Jonah is a socially conservative bishop being set upon by the leftist establishment of the OCA.  Let’s look at this.

1. Yes, the OCA’s traditional base, Carpatho-Russians, are old school Democrats dating back to their days as a predominantly blue-collar community.  Many have them have slowly picked up modern liberalism, making some of them social liberals.  Same thing in the GOA and AOA.

2. Converts as a whole tend to be socially and politically conservative.  Hence Dreher and Schaeffer (in his previous morph) found Orthodoxy attractive in its strict morality and distinct lack of ‘progressive’ impulses to change.

3. Fester was a key member of the Kondratick Administration near the end, and maintained good relations with those ‘liberals’ back East.

4. As Met. Jonah began to impulsively run up against the Holy Synod, Fester appears to have found a way to get people ‘excited’ about otherwise ‘boring issues’ such as moving from Syosset to DC… politics.

5. American politics are highly polarized, and the convert community (including much of the DOS) is conservative while the establishment of the OCA is on the more liberal side.

6. Fester saw that by tying Mark Stokoe’s objectionable personal life to his message and painting his message as an attempt to keep the OCA on a liberal track, he could rally the convert troops.

The problem with this narrative is that it has major flaws.

A. Jonah’s social conservatism can’t really be differentiated from Met. Herman’s social conservatism (for example, Herman was a long-time participant in the Right-to-Life march in DC).  Yet, the establishment supported Herman until he blew himself up by not listening to reason (wow, is that happening again?)

B. The ‘gay deacon’ in the South was carrying on during the reign of the saintly Archbishop Dmitri.

C. The outing of Mark Stokoe was facilitated by the ultra-liberal Bishop Tikhon Fitzgerald, who is also one of the most ecclesiastically conservative bishops the OCA has ever known.

D. The OCA Synod as a whole has done nothing ‘liberal’ nor undermined the morality of the Faith, but rather took Jonah to task for his public remarks regarding the OCA’s autocephaly and continuing to not understand how the OCA’s statutes operate.

What Fester has counted on is that the polarization of Americans in general would work for him if he took a side and made like Stokoe was thinking in terms of turning the OCA into the Episcopal Church East, despite the fact that nearly every ‘liberal’ impulse found amongst OCA members and leaders was there when he was the Right Hand Man of Kondratick.  He was up to his eyeballs in what he now seeks us to hate.

For the sake of clarity I want the reader to know that I am far from being a liberal in any way.  What I am not is a reactionary and will not have the likes of men such as Bp. Nikolai manipulate my emotions for their own reward.  Nikolai wants back in, mostly because he has been spurned by the Serbs for good reason.  Kondratick wants back in too, and saw his opportunity with the rise of Jonah.  Fester gained access to Jonah and poured the potion of ‘liberal conspiracy’ into his ear and now we have this.

That is not to say that Jonah does not on his own have fond memories of Kondratick saving him from Bp. Tikhon Fitzgerald’s passive-aggressive fits.  But they needed a narrative to swing Jonah and so politics became the center of the game.

Fester has become the Dark Wizard.  The real heroes are the members of the Holy Synod.  They have stuck together, but also acted mercifully towards both Jonah and Fester.  We will see how far they will go before lowering the boom.