I'm glad you took action to speak to someone who could help. Being in a parish for 15 years is a long time and maybe this meeting may help to soothe the hurt. I hope the new year brings a better sense of community for the parish as a whole and expecially for your in-laws . In a few months the current pastor will gone hopefully ...let cooler heads prevail.


z povahoyu,
marusia

Dear Marusia,

Thank you for your kind words!

It all comes together (or not) tonight!

Alex

I take it that, in typical Toronto fashion, you believe the world ends somewhere around the Oakville city limits?

Surprise, it doesn't! From the eparchial website:

This is an eparchy which begins at the Manitoba - Ontario border and stretches east to the Atlantic Ocean.

Our eparchy is not only composed of Ukrainian Catholics but also: Hungarian Byzantine Catholics and Romanian Byzantine Catholics.

Although I'm glad that our eparchy's problems are being discussed publicly, I must say that I dislike having to resort to "detective work" in order to comprehend exactly what is being said. I can understand a retisence about going public with "dirty laundry", but once you decide to do so, I figure you might as well name names & parishes instead of just providing clues.

@Alex: I have a matter that I'd like to discuss with you if you don't mind. If you're so inclined, please provide me with your email address (click my username "Roman"; then follow the directions to send a message). I would be much obliged.

Dear Friends,

Unfortunately, an impasse has come about and the president of the committee has just tendered his resignation after fifteen years of service to the parish.

Ah well . . .

Alex

One riddle demystified with the help of an agent (who is not "orthodox catholic", BTW. Demystification in red):

"Were sent to make a parish disappear"???

It seems to me that if this is the case then Islam won't have to use a sword. The churches will already be empty for them to replace the crosses with crescents.

This statement above jumped out at me. Why would anyone be sent to make a parish DISAPPEAR? maybe the Gospel is too foreign to such churches. Certainly, this is a morbid sense of evangelization; in fact, it is anti-evangelization.

But to serve as a *punishment*???

Is it a punishment to serve God and his people? Is it a reward for clergy to get *better* churches or be seated in places of honor? Is this the type of church that reflects the Heavenly Kingdom?

I know that this statement is not Theophan's, but more reflective of situations that are current in some churches.

Ed

ED:

Yes, this is my statement and it is an opinion--speculation from a man who has probably been "around too long" and "seen too much" of the same or similar things during the course of his life. When I hear that a particular priest has been sent to "be a penance" or "to shape up" a parish, I begin to see similar patterns. Maybe it's because of the job I have that I have seen or been given the "inside" of so many parishes and churches that I get into a reflex and often begin to suspect the worst.

Now I understand that we are seeing the problem as Alex outlines it and we are getting the story second hand from his father-in-law's perspective. So we have to take things at face value.

That having been said, I've seen too many churches with a few bucks in their treasury closed after a pattern like this one has begun. Sometimes the motive is to combine parishes because of clergy shortage. Sometimes it's to pay off the huge settlements that have arisen because of the clergy scandals. And sometimes for other reasons. But usually there is a new pastor assigned. The newness wears off and suddenly he is claiming that the finances are in disarray. Then he replaces the people who have been stewards of the parish's goods and funds for many years with people who are more pliant and will believe and do whatever he demands. Then programs and services are cut--due to a lack of funds. Finally the bishop comes in, closes the parish, and sells the property.

I won't catalogue the cases I've seen because space and your patience won't stand for it. Just a quick one from my own locality: a parish with a quarter million dollars and no debt is closed within two years of the assignment of a new pastor who replaces the parish council, throws money around, and then helps the bishop merge the parish into another some miles away.

This is why we don't put our faith in buildings, clergy, or anything else here. We're on pilgrimage. And to be on pilgrimage, we need to travel light and always be ready to move on.

In Christ Who is coming the Second Time for His People,

BOB

V.P. Doktor....

what kind of women do you have in UCWL up there? Where I am, they would have smacked him up side the head with a rolling pin while making varenyky and kept on going...

One of our parishes didn't like their new priest. He was "authoritian" with the UCWL and the Mens Club and didn't want them selling varenyky and other things. He went so far as to serve the DL in English.

He went on a hospital sick call visit and while he was gone, the Mens Club and the UCLW went into the parish house, packed up his belongings, piled the stuff on the front porch, changed the locks on the parish house and church and then called Philadelphia and told them they needed a new priest.

They've had to share a priest with another parish, but they've never been happier or more prosperous.....

Then why the buildings and clergy if they are only going to make matters worse? What you described here is not a pilgrimage, but a valley of tears; a cavalry of trojan horses more ready to deconstruct the *Body of Christ*.

Ed

ED:

Please take a look at my posts on suffering under Scripture and Patristics. This is the crucible of the Christian life as we understand it in the Apostolic Churches. We are here to have the rough edges worn off so as to put on the mind of Christ and follow Him bearing the crosses He sends us. We aren't here to have a smooth sail through life or even a smooth sail in evangelization. Sometimes we will take two steps forward and one back; sometimes one forward, and two back; sometimes make progress; sometimes rolled back to survival mode. But in all things, the Hand of Providence is there for us providing us with Divine Grace to persevere. We have to believe that the Holy Spirit is alive and well in all this and continues to work the Father's Will in history for the good of all of us.

The clergy are a necessary part of our walk. But not all are perfect; some are misplaced in their vocation; some are gems. (Therre is a story about a man looking up into the clouds and seeing PC written on the underside. He thought it meant "preach Christ" but the Lord was trying to tell him to "plow corn.") The buildings are there for the orderly development of our common life. But we are not attached to them as some want to be. The question we must constantly ask ourselves is, "What does this action, this event, this activity have to contribute to our salvation"? So many things don't contribute and they become readily apparent.

In Christ,

BOB

Dear Pisankar,

Well, that group of parish men and women obviously have what the Greeks call "Thrassos!"

In the current situation, the women tend to serve as the pastor's "agents."

This is why the current president will be resigning since the committee won't back him up and is now powerless to do anything, especially since the Ihumen refuses to even give them a hearing.

Frankly, I find the "Old Guard" to have much more intestinal fortitude to stand up for their rights than the Canadianized folk. The latter can be scared into compliance.

EdHash above mentioned what I meant by "punishment." The pastor, as has come out in the "back and forth," was sent here as a penance for an infraction against his monastic discipline. He acts like a spoiled child (very much like I do whenever the Administrator is forced to let me know my behaviour on this forum is not in its best interests) and while he must serve his penance, he isn't taking it lying down, but is kicking and screaming all the way.

There is also the other side of the coin with the adage "familiarity breeds contempt." My in-laws saw it as a mark of honour and also as a part of the job of being in a leadership position of having to entertain the pastor ceaselessly as they have for the last year.

It is always best to keep one's distance. But after the public put-down by the pastor, I emailed him directly to let him know that if he didn't keep a healthy distance from my in-laws, I would report him directly to his Ihumen and the Eparch.

He knows I would be given a serious hearing by both, so he now stays away.

This is all so very sad and I still can't believe it is happening.

I would have walked away long ago, but then again I haven't worked there as head of the committee for 15 years.

Perhaps the pastor just wasn't cut out to work with people.

Even my wife has an opinion of him and when once, at table, when he referred to the women's league ladies in a rather offensive tone (that would be the basis for harassment charges in any other context), my wife turned to him and told him, "Father, you will have to go to confession for that - I'm serious!"

Then again, anyone who can provoke my wife into a definite stand like that can't be all bad . . .

Alex

Dear Friends,

Just a brief update on how things have progressed.

My father in law resigned over the holidays and things have degenerated in the parish to a nasty degree.

During the coffee hour following the DL last Sunday, the parish priest left the hall as his partisans traded loud barbs with others.

Emotions ran high e.g. my father in law responded to another's supportive remark by saying, "The only reason he is in Father's pocket is because he wants to be a deacon!" To which the man's wife shouted, "I resent that!" Later, my father in law called them to apologise.

The acting head of the council got up to say, "We have a divided parish here . . ." And he was quickly cut off by another who yelled, "You are the one who is dividing up the parish, you idiot!"

On Monday, the council went to the Ihumen to launch a formal complaint and were received sympathetically but action was put off until after February.

Yesterday, I accompanied my in-laws to the parish council meeting (which meetings are now called by Father directly, over and above any lay leadership).

I was warmly invited to sit at the meeting table by everyone, except Father, but I was rather abrupt with him in trying to protect my in-laws two weeks ago at the height of the nastiness.

The whole meeting was replet with innuendo and with respect to the jobs that my father in law did so well for 15 years - Father's "partisans" as I will call them, stepped up to the plate one by one to say they will take them on now (with the implication that "it isn't such a big deal").

The ethnic division of the parish was also solidified in a number of symbolic ways and the "Western Canadian Ukrainians" gained ascendancy over all others and what is done in those parishes is now the standard for this one.

Father even went so far as to start naming the Western Canadian Ukrainians as his "inner circle." But when he got to the man "who would be Deacon" and the next parish council head, that fellow protested that he was never in Western Canada but is a Toronto native . . .

The bishop's name was bandied about to solidify the pastor's authority (in another parish where this has happened, it was reported to the Eparch and the Eparch came down hard on the parish priest saying, "I never gave you the right to speak on my behalf etc.").

The only overt nastiness occurred when one partisan of the pastor came up to me and told me that he was there to "give your father in law a heart attack."

Good manners and Christian values are in short supply in some quarters there, or so it would seem . . .

When one council member went to the city authorities and got approval for two road-signs indicating where the UGCC parish was for the benefit of the public, Father REFUSED to thank him, saying that was his job etc.

But yesterday, Father kept reiterating, "Thank God we now have a sign!"

Under my breath I muttered, "At least Someone is being thanked after all . . ."

Father's take-over of the parish council was complete. My father in law simply said afterwards that if Father is still at the parish at the beginning of April, he and his wife will transfer to another parish, period.

From where I was sitting, no one is going to be moving Father out any time soon . . . The only way that could be accomplished is if the entire parish was against him. The parish, however, is divided and his partisans shoot from the lip in quite the devastating fashion.

Alex

Alex:

Slava Isusu Khrystu!

May the Virgin of Perpetual Help intercede to help the situation in the parish. May the parish be protected and guided under the protection of her holy veil!

Peace,

John Doucette

Continued prayers for this community.

ALEX:

There must be a manual somewhere for priests who want to divide a parish and surround themselves with "yes men (and women)." I had such a feeling of deja vu reading your most recent post that I wondered if you were in central PA rather than Toronto.

BOB

Side note: Our parish council decided to paint our rather large foyer (gathering space) orange because someone (the pastor) thought it would be more cheerful than the light off-white it was when it was built a few years ago. But no one thought of the burgundy and light green borders of the carpet. The original design had high windows that were to give off plenty of light, giving one the "Light of Christ" as the welcoming atmosphere. I wonder what orange is supposed to mean--Halloween? So, Alex, the craziness goes on no matter where you happen to be.