Beer monk! Incoming!

Brother Gregory needs to go visit St. Maximus in Denton. We have a member who also makes a quite excellent beer and even has dedicated taps on the door of his refrigerator.
To the previous commenter; I don't have answers to many of your questions, but I don't see what someone did in the past has to do with their becoming a monk. It might, in fact, be why they became a monk in the first place. They knew that they had a big problem and sought refuge in the monastery for their own salvation. I promise that they aren't there to hide, you can't hide from your sins in that setting.
As I said, I don't have answers to much of what you ask, and I too find some of it a little baffling, but I don't see anything wrong in what you had to say about Father Jonah.

Will,

Thanks for responding. You are right that Christians are called to forgive others, and you're also right the the OCA bishops asked for forgiveness (although it should also be said that all they "repented" for was not acting faster, without of course giving any indication of what actions they should have taken, while also using the old "sorry if you FEEL betrayed" dodge to skirt the ramifications of their behavior).

At the same time, I said very little about the bishops in general, and instead focused on +Dmitri (and a little on bishop-elect Jonah), and there the situation becomes a lot more troubling. To explain what I mean, please permit me to use an analogy.

Imagine that a husband is caught cheating on his wife. The mistress has even taken almost all of the family's money to buy nice things for herself. After getting screamed at by his wife the husband then responds, "I'm sorry that I didn't act sooner about this situation, and I'm sorry that you feel betrayed. I bow before you and ask your forgiveness. And now, it's your Christian responsibility to forgive me and act as if nothing ever happened."

But that's not all! The husband has also brought his mistress to live IN HIS HOME. He has also told the kids that they are now to obey every order given to them by the mistress (to whom he's given the special title of "Super Mom") while, at the same time, the kids are explicitly commanded by the husband to simultaneously not notice that the new woman in the house is his mistress.

And we're still not done! Imagine further that the mistress then sues the wife because the wife had the unmitigated gall of pointing out that the mistress is in fact a mistress.

If you encountered such a situation, you would undoubtedly say that this was one of the stupidest, most pathetic things you'd ever seen, and would possibly look around to see if Jerry Springer had set up cameras in the area.

And yet, spiritually speaking, that is PRECISELY what +Dmitri has done. Kondratick, with Fr. Fester's active support, misappropriated and misused millions of dollars. How has +Dmitri responded? He brought them both into his diocese, and even brought Fr. Fester into Rod's beloved parish and made Fr. Fester both an archpriest and dean of the area. And when Kondratick sues the OCA, +Dmitri STILL does nothing, even allowing Kondratick to remain the full-time, paid "parish outreach coordinator" of one of his churches!

As you said, Will, forgiving people doesn't mean that we should allow them to continue abusing their positions (and thus abusing us). And yet, but saying that we should not only forgive but even cover up the sins of some of +Dmitri's close friends, that is PRECISELY what you're doing.

And this ties into Peter's point about my first post. While I obviously disagree with bishop-elect Jonah's decision to allow Rymer to stay in his monastery, I also agree that Rymer should be allowed to pursue a life of repentance. But there's a major problem with the method Fr. Jonah has chosen.

Look at the situation: Rymer is a gay sexual predator. I don't mean to imply that being a gay sexual predator is any worse than being a straight sexual predator (I don't think it's any worse, because being a sexual predator of any orientation is abominable). But it's relevant to Rymer's situation. Rymer has demonstrated that he's a predator (he did, after all, have a sexual relationship with retarded man, and he even did it AFTER he knew that he is HIV-positive), and that his preferred sexual relationships are with men. So where is he now? In a monastery, where he lives around the clock with a bunch of men. Putting a known predator into an environment where he is going to experience incessant temptation seems at best naive and irresponsible. That is my criticism against Fr. Jonah's judgment. Not only is this situation dangerous for Rymer's salvation, but it's also dangerous for the monks who are around an individual with an extensive and sordid history of giving in to the very temptation with which they will innocently, but also quite unavoidably, present him.

The point that the Church is in the business of forgiveness is very true, but this doesn't mean that we should also be in the business of complicity and dangerous irresponsibility. Are we called to forgive individuals who engage in theft, coverups, and sexual crimes? Yes, the Gospels are clear that, as abhorrent as these things are, we're called to be forgiving. At the same time, there's a difference between being forgiving and being an enabler. When a bishop permits a thief and the thief's active assistant to thrive in his diocese, and even his own cathedral, without even so much as making those individuals make restitution, then he's not merely being forgiving: he's being an enabler. When a bishop puts a convicted child molester in a situation where the criminal leads youth retreats, he's not merely being forgiving: he's at the very least being VERY irresponsible. When another bishop puts a sexual predator in a situation where he will face constant temptation, he's not merely being forgiving: he's at the very least being VERY irresponsible.

Where, Will, should we draw the line between seeing a bishop as repentant and seeing him as still enabling the criminals we're supposed to forgive? Imagine how you would feel if you had children who went on a retreat and then learned that the retreat leader was a convicted child molester, and that your bishop knew all about the situation? Would you still be able to say, "Hey, we're in the forgiveness business?"

Imagine how you would feel if you were a widow from 9/11, or a mother of starving children in Eastern Europe, and learned that you were unable to obtain food or heat because the desperately needed relief you were promised instead went to pay the tanning salon bill for an archpriest or his family, and the bishop refuses to SAY ANYTHING about the situation beyond the ecclesiastical equivalent of "mistakes were made." Would you still be able to say, "Hey, we're in the forgiveness business?"

This is where I'm coming from. My request to Rod was not a dodge so that I could fling dirt while appearing sanctimonious. I truly want to know. HOW can he be so happy in his parish when his bishop and one of his priests are crown-of-their-heads deep in the ongoing scandal?

I'm not at that parish, and yet I'm deeply distressed by these problems. And, unlike Rod, I never publicly left a church and decried its sexual and financial scandals. Rod is now at the epicenter of the OCA's ongoing scandal, while at the same time he's made an example of himself as someone who exposes scandals and rejects their perpetrators, and yet he's blissfully happy?

I honestly want to know how I could be at least slightly as happy as Rod is at St. Seraphim without sacrificing my integrity. I truly want that.

Unfortunately, I think I'm getting an indication of how Rod's been able to maintain his happiness. To date he's said absolutely nothing about his bishop's or priest's activities and roles in the ongoing scandal. Despite his self-presentation of being a courageous truth-teller who will never compromise just to remain popular with people in power, all we've heard from Rod so far is the sound of crickets and a rustling breeze.

That is the sound of great crunchiness. It's also the sound of cowardice and hypocrisy.

Please, Rod, prove me wrong.