Fester is not ‘behind’ Jonah any more than Nikolai ever was. Both of them are using Met. Jonah, just as Fester has used American politics to draw in and use Rod Dreher and George Michalopulos.
Yes, they are being used. You cannot convince me that Rod and George would sit in the same room as Bp. Nikolai Soriach or Bp. Tikhon Fitzgerald (two other ‘Team Jonah’ members) without breaking out in a verbal tussle. Tikhon has no room for conservative politics in his heart and he sure does not take kindly conservatives in general.
These men are not ‘behind’ Jonah, but rather each of them has an agenda that Jonah can help them with once he is alienated from the rest of the Holy Synod. Nikolai wants to be rehabilitated. Tikhon wants Benjamin smacked down for outshining in a few years the long, tiresome career in which he succeeded in accomplishing mostly nothing by doing nothing other than writing acerbic internet posts and nattering about decorum from his bathroom.
Fester also wants Benjamin knocked down, or rather mutilated and humiliated. It isn’t for the sake of justice. Just look at the emails. Investigating Benjamin was not about what is right but about what is expedient. The Dark Wizard wants Benjamin out of the way. But why?
Do we all remember that Benjamin has been behind two major clean-up operations- the Special Investigative Committee that brought down Kondratick AND preserving the Alaskan Diocese from imploding after Nikolai was removed? Jonah also credited Benjamin with moving him up the ladder for election as metropolitan. Benjamin has credibility, both in terms of his commitment to the OCA and morality in general. He has a lot of influence within the Holy Synod.
He is not scheming to topple Jonah to take his job, because he easily could have gotten a majority of the Holy Synod to elect him. But, Fester wants Benjamin neutralized for a reason. That reason is really about getting Kondratick restored to the priesthood and back into the administration of the OCA. He’s already partly-there since he has Fester whispering in Jonah’s ear.
Benjamin will fight to the end to keep Kondratick out of the priesthood because he knows not only every detail of the SIC report but also gory details that could not be included. He knows how evil the Dark Wizard’s master really is.
Dreher and Michelapulos are pawns and they don’t realize how bad they are getting played. On Fester’s watch, the gay deacon in Florida was doing his thing and fester said nothing. He said nothing about Stokoe’s homosexuality for years even though it was common knowledge amongst the ‘Syosset Insiders’ like himself.
Dreher and Michelapulos are pawns because they have not asked the really important questions, like what is Metropolitan Jonah’s plan for New Skete? It has been two years now and still they are publishing liturgical materials and carrying on with their usual goofiness. How about the liberalism of SVOTS? Can you think of any other place in the Church where spirituality is more unwelcome than at St. Vladimir’s, and yet Met. Jonah has done nothing to straighten up that mess. Michelopulos talks about the positive influence of Elder Ephraim’s monasteries, but Jonah has not moved his administration in that direction either.
Curiously, it has been Benjamin that banned New Skete liturgics from the Diocese of the West. That other ‘dangerous anti-Jonah conspirator’ Bishop Michael Dahulich has also been putting the breaks on make-it-up-as-you-like-it ‘parish traditions’ in the Diocese of New York and New Jersey.
Met. Jonah has been paralyzed. He has not acted as a leader within his own Synod, and therefore he cannot protect the OCA from the innovationists within it. The paralysis it would seem has come from the advice of the Dark Wizard. By alienating Jonah from the Holy Synod, Fester hoped to get Jonah to rehabilitate his master- this is why so much of this problem has turned on who controls the Diocese of the South as Kondratick’s new home.
Bishop Mark is not cooperating, and so suddenly Jonah is trying to take the diocese back over to himself. Why? Why is the Dark Wizard so concerned about the South? Now you are beginning to see what is going on here.
It was not difficult for Fr. Joseph to bring Rod Dreher onto Team Jonah. All he had to do was bring up the specter of homosexual priests or bishops. Rod is obsessed with the subject. He sees homosexuals lurking around every corner--or in this case, every iconostasis. His obsession with the lavender mafia goes back to his days as a Catholic, as can be seen by this post in the National Review from 2002--
ReplyDeletehttp://old.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback-dreher042202.asp
For those of us who followed his blog, CrunchyCon on beliefnet, it was easy to see that Rod paid undue attention to gays and gay marriage. He was also preoccupied with pop starlets like Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Lindsey Lohan, and Paris Hilton. Just google it. You'll have to look for "cached" information, however: he scrubbed his archives of most of these stories when he moved to the Templeton Foundation.