So, what have we learned?

Mark Stokoe has released emails cataloging chats between Fr. Joseph Fester and Bishop Nikolai Soraich.  It shows how the Dark Wizard worked hard to get Bp. Nikolai lobby Metropolitan Jonah prior to the Holy Synod meeting in Santa Fe.  Of course, we know how it all ends: Fester’s plan crumples as his ‘bloc’ never materializes, and Jonah eventually agrees to a Leave of Absence, which he later disavows.

But, seriously, Nikolai?  What is Fester doing talking to Nikolai?

When Jonah was the "Superior" at Manton, keeping in mind that Bp. Tikhon Fitzgerald refused to give Jonah the title 'abbot,' in large part so he could interfere in the community more freely, Nikolai used to come and ‘clean up’ the monastery by throwing out novices and ordering Jonah around.  It was B. Benjamin who made him 'abbot.'

Nikolai characterizes his activity there as ‘protecting’ Jonah, a tacit admission that Tikhon was really hurting Jonah… or that he thinks Jonah was incompetent.  Funny how things have changed- Tikhon went from hating Jonah to “supporting” him.  Actually Tikhon’s real hatred is reserved for the man who shows him up the most- Benjamin.  We will explore this later.

Perhaps this is one reason why Nikolai does not get much of a response from Jonah and finds one more reason to complain.

But, Nikolai succeeded in being one of the few bishops in American Orthodox history to so provoke his clergy that they almost unanimously asked him to go away!  You have to work very, very hard to get that kind of collective distain from a community.  When Nikolai left Alaska, the people up there breathed a sigh of relief that could heard across the entire Lower 48.

Nikolai went off to Australia, and that did not go well for him there either.  A deal was struck for the Serbs to receive him, only they decided not to at the last minute.  Having soiled his reputation by filing a lawsuit against the OCA, he has relegated himself to the dustbin of self-immolated ministries.

Nikolai can certainly relate to Jonah’s lack of adaption to the OCA statutes.  Nikolai had a habit of suspending clergy without either reporting the incidents to the Holy Synod (per the statutes) or affording the disciplined clergy a chance to defend themselves in a Spiritual Court (per the statutes).  Nikolai’s excuse was that the statutes did not follow the canons and so he felt free only to follow the canons and ignore the statutes.

The funny thing about that was that Nikolai as a diocesan Chancellor for a number of years, and so he had to know about the statutes prior to being consecrated.  Ditto with Met. Jonah.  So, if the statutes were so ‘bad’ why did not either one of them raise an issue prior to being consecrated?

This brings me to my point- when you take a job or a ministry or whatever, you accept it as it is or you refuse to until the ‘job description’ changes.  We who work or have worked in the secular world know this common sense principle.  You do not take the job and then resent having to do it because you do not like how you agreed to do it to begin with.  We can call that immaturity or whatever, but however you call it, it does not make sense.

Nikolai should know better by now- he routinely flaunted the OCA’s statutes and paid the price.  The fact that a failed hierarch would dare to advise Met. Jonah is simply ludicrous, particularly when Jonah’s problem appears to be a failure to grasp the conciliar nature of his office.  Despite what Nikolai or Met. Hilarion might be telling him, the OCA’s Metropolitan is not by design a singular office.  He has to work within the parameters of the statutes, which purposefully allow no one bishop to operate as a sole proprietor of any diocese.

This is at the heart of the episcopal oaths and canons, which call for the bishops to be of ‘one mind’ with their metropolitan, but also for the metropolitan to be of ‘one mind’ with his bishops.  There is supposed to be a collegiality within the Holy Synod.  This is at the heart of the problem.  Jonah is not grasping this very readily.  The Russian do not operate this way, and the Kondratick administration of which Fester was a functionary encouraged as ‘every bishop for himself’ model that allowed the Central Administration to run amok.

The new crop of bishops appear to want to break the old mold of the metropolitan and the bishops as atomized figures, avoiding one another and any degree of cooperation.  Jonah certainly suffered under this old system, which allowed Tikhon Fitzgerald to utterly neglect his parishes without any interference from the Holy Synod, but this is the only system he has known.  His speech at the AAC was inspiring, but it lacked any recipe for a new vision of the OCA’s Holy Synod.  While he talked a lot about new ministries, the central force behind these ministries, the OCAHS, was utterly absent from his vision.  It should have been a red flag, but we were all so overjoyed to have a new and clean hierarch wearing the white hat.

The real “new vision” of the OCA is a Holy Synod where the Metropolitan and the Bishops work together in unity.  Fester’s comments about “castrating” Bishop Benjamin, who helped get Metropolitan Jonah into the running for metropolitan in the first place, tells us all we need to know about the Dark Wizard’s plan.  Fester wants to hurt people.  He has forgotten what it is like to be a Christian and stops hiding his inner darkness from those with whom he shares this darkness.

The bishops want Met. Jonah to succeed, but that success rests on his ability to work with them, not over or around them.  Herman and Theodosius failed as metropolitans because they avoided their Synods and worked on their own, thus sealing their own fates.  But, this new Holy Synod can change that tragic pattern by learning from it.

Fester wants a return of the “bad old days.”  He wants to see Nikolai back in power.  That should spook anyone.  Just ask the Alaskans.