gwlevits2022

That was if not convicted. I already granted that he likely will be convicted, laicized, and sent to prison.

Priests who do wrong are indeed sent to monasteries all the time. And they can be monitored and kept away from visitors. 

Here’s the problem: legally, the victims (or their guardian) need to file a police report and make a statement for the police to get involved. They didn’t do that, and in fact, I know at least one person told Fr. Mark that they didn’t want to! But he insisted they do so, and eventually they did.

This vilifying of the hierarchy is gross and wrong.

That’s a whole lot of conjecture on your part.

I don’t think this is ever going to “blow over,” even if he is not convicted. He certainly won’t be given a parish assignment again. Even the most cynical person can see that everybody knows all about this now. At best, he will be sent to a monastery.

But, given the evidence presented, conviction (and subsequent laicization) is probably quite likely.

If he is convicted, he absolutely should go to jail. No doubt about it. I’m not defending his actions, nor would I ever.

All I am doing here is defending the actions taken by the hierarchy, and most especially I am challenging the horrible assertion that Metropolitan Hilarion of blessed memory knew about it.

Of course they handled it. It is in the process of being handled right now. There is a debate as to whether or not they did a good job, and I am presenting a small defense of how they did so.

How does that equate to defending FMW??

I was awarded money based on a translation that I submitted for a “competition.”

It’s also entirely debatable to what extent the organization is “his” at all. I never interacted with him regarding the competition, but with Dr. Xenia Nenchin, and to my knowledge he wasn’t involved in the judges’ panel at all.

Nice try at smearing me, though?

It doesn’t explain anything at all, actually. 

OK, well I don’t get that impression at all, and that’s definitely not what the audio says.

Are you serious? Read my reply three comments up, or listen to the audio again. He specifically said he discussed a crisis of faith.

If I were a bishop, I would probably at least temporarily suspend a priest who confessed struggling with belief in God.

And?

You’re assuming he confessed to molesting his daughters, as opposed to something much more vague like “struggling with lustful thoughts and actions” or something like that.

Why does it not make sense? A lot of this depends on what Fr. Serge was told and when. Fr. Mark wasn’t brought in to investigate as the dean until much later, so I’m not sure why people are piling on him and calling him a liar.

Why would it be laughable? You are assuming that Fr. Matthew confessed any of this.

Where have you seen me cover for him literally anywhere?

I am defending the hierarchy and how they handled this situation.

Investigations take time. They were in fact carried out.

Depends entirely on the nature of what was actually said to Metropolitan Nicholas.

Oh, right! I’m the one with the bold tone, not the people accusing the Church of a coverup based on carefully tailored and only partial evidence. Right.

“Clean the church” means having a key and access to the church at all hours, which she was asked to relinquish. This is a separate case of someone demanding access to church property and simply being told “no.” Conflating it with accusations is wrong.

The contents of the original letter aren’t available, so it’s conjecture what Metropolitan Nicholas is actually replying to.

If you have access to it, produce it. I haven’t seen or heard it. 

Huh? Where do you see anybody talking their way out of anything?

Why would you post this here? For clicks?

1. The audio doesn’t even remotely say what you are alleging.

2. It is policy to wait for a final court verdict; the suspension is sufficient for now and has been made public.

Yes because he spoke about his “crisis of faith.” It has nothing to do with Metropolitan Hilarion knowing about the abuse, which he almost certainly didn’t. 

No one was covering for him. 

Ridiculous comment. 

ROCOR is historically connected to the Russian Church, but there are many parishes with hardly a single Russian.

ROCOR is far more missionary than people give it credit for. Look at the surnames of the clergy sometime. Even this sordid story: Kapral (Czechoslovak, though he was Ukrainian), Kotar (Slovenian), Williams (English), Mancuso (Italian).

What issue?

It’s not common in ROCOR or Orthodoxy at all. That’s why it is such a big deal now. 

The Church didn’t hide anything. God forbid. 

Of course there’s a way around it, because ROCOR took appropriate and timely measures. It’s a stain on the abuser and any enablers of his, not the Church. 

Who on earth are you talking about??

Your headline is slanderous and abhorrent bait. Fr. Matthew did not say he came fully clean to His Eminence and told him everything he had done, but that he came to him during his “crisis of faith.”

A priest who doubts his faith in God could rightfully be suspended, rather than continue serving. It’s a fully logical statement.

Nothing here even remotely implies that Metropolitan Hilarion knew about the sexual abuse, much less hid it.

You should delete this post and confess it.

Lots of people accusing other people of making up stories. I promise mine is true (and it’s not that crazy anyway).

I was invited to a college party with some friends. A girl I knew from a club we were both in kept hanging around each of my conversations and eventually just yelled over the din “I like you!!!”

Now, I had not realized until that point that she was even interested. But she was pretty, and there’s no time like the present, so I just kissed her. We dated for a few months, it was cute. That’s all. 

There are sooooo many of these in Russia and Ukraine. The commies renamed everything, and only a fraction of it was changed back.

Leningrad – St. Petersburg

Stalingrad – Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd)

Sverdlovsk – Ekaterinburg

Gorky – Nizhny Novgorod

Ordzhonikidze – Vladikavkaz

Ustinov – Izhevsk

Andropov – Rybinsk

Kalinin – Tver

Zagorsk – Sergiev Posad

*Tsaritsyn

Tsargrad is what the Russians called Constantinople (“King of Cities”, or “City of Caesar”, depending on whom you ask).

Believe it or not, Tsaritsyn doesn’t have any thing to do etymologically with the word Tsar. It’s named for the nearby Tsaritsa River, which comes from the Turkic words Sary Su, meaning “yellow water.”

No, bad commie.

Also coming from a Russian Orthodox background, I feel like you have a lot more names available than you think!

Not that should should change the name you chose (NTA, keep it), but the pool of traditional Orthodox male names is actually enormous.

Rent-free

I don’t think it’s because your experience is invalid, but because you put your anecdotal personal experience up against a generic and more correct statement that it IS widely used in English. The prevalence of both Jewish protagonists and NY-adjacent settings in mass media make it pretty hard to miss.