wpk, Keithg29, brick22, BensGal, Lady Byzantine, Eli Akim, Kirk, Jerzy, Rusyn53, Lou, evergreen, old orthodox, PresJuliana, Heracleides, Addai
3135 Registered Users |
|
15 registered
(Katie g, Etnick, Mykhayl, Two Lungs, Benedictine, Addai, fr. Jim, Ray S., Athanasius The L, tjm199, 5 invisible)
and 215 anonymous users online.
|
|
The Byzantine Forum also hosts these private forums:
The Deacon’s Door (for deacons and deacon
candidates and their wives), the Orthodox Christian
Studies Forum (for currently enrolled students only of the distance education programs
offered by the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America) and
the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Clergy Forum
(for clergy, religious, and clergy wives of that Church). Contact an administrator for
access.
|
|
3135 Members
20 Forums
21737 Topics
284047 Posts
Max Online: 1087 @ 07/16/07 01:09 PM
|
|
|
#269415 - 12/19/07 11:49 AM
Re: Problem in a parish
[Re: marusia]
|
Roman
Member
Registered: 03/16/02
Posts: 142
Loc: Montreal
|
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.
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#269502 - 12/19/07 09:59 PM
Re: Problem in a parish
[Re: EdHash]
|
theophan
Moderator
Member
Registered: 11/27/02
Posts: 2690
Loc: Hollidaysburg, PA
|
This statement above jumped out at me. Why would anyone be sent to make a parish DISAPPEAR? . . . I know that this statement is not Theophan's . . .
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
Edited by theophan (12/19/07 10:00 PM)
Edit Reason: spelling
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#269570 - 12/20/07 10:50 AM
Re: Problem in a parish
[Re: EdHash]
|
theophan
Moderator
Member
Registered: 11/27/02
Posts: 2690
Loc: Hollidaysburg, PA
|
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#269573 - 12/20/07 11:00 AM
Re: Problem in a parish
[Re: pisankar]
|
Orthodox Catholic
Member
Registered: 11/05/01
Posts: 22048
Loc: Canada
|
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
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#273481 - 01/16/08 09:44 AM
Re: Problem in a parish
[Re: Orthodox Catholic]
|
Orthodox Catholic
Member
Registered: 11/05/01
Posts: 22048
Loc: Canada
|
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
Edited by Orthodox Catholic (01/16/08 09:45 AM)
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
Moderator: Father Anthony, Fr. Deacon Lance, Fatherthomasloya
|
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. 
