www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Ben Lomond and Liturgy

www.gopoj.org [gopoj.org] is run by supporters of Irineos, the deposed Patriarch of Jerusalem. The man recognized by most parishes and monasteries of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem is Theophilos III.

By the way, whatever happened to Fr. John W. Hardenbrook? All I can see is that his son is now the priest of SLOCC.

Oh... Didn't know that. That was the first site listed when I googled the Jerusalem Patriarchate. Ignore that link cos it doesn't work anyways... :p

The whole story seems very very tragic. The people involved appear to be very dedicated, devout and sincere: just all round good Christians.
In the end with all the bad feelings it looks like (to me at first glance) the dissidents shopped around until they could find an Orthodox jurisdiction that would give them an Orthodox designation but in reality let them continue on their own terms.

Actually, I didn't even know the Jerusalem Patriarchate had parishes inthe diaspora. Is this something new or I am I just out of the loop maybe?

I have 2 questions:
1) What exactly was the issue with the music? Were the dissidents composing their own music/chants to go along with the traditional Orthodox liturgical services? Or were they introducing Protestant hymns into the services?


2) Why did they not want to have elected parish councils? What was their form of parish goverance if not by a parish council?
At least in Eastern Slavic history parish councils and brotherhoods go way back in history.

It sounds like they didn't want a church of comittees and social groups, but one that had a daily round of services and was comitted to preaching the Gospel.

This is not to disrespect anyone, but the "dissedents" in that parish appear to have been, at least partly, ethnic or cradle born Antiochian Orthodox who caught the new bishop's ear because Ss. Peter and Paul was not like other Antiochian parishes.

They did have way too many clergy--that should have been taken care of from get-go, and there seems to have been some jealous factions that were part of their group from their pre-Orthodox days.

Neither, they used other Orthodox chant besides Byzantine, like Obikhod, Bulgarian, etc.

It was their glut of clergy, so to speak, that enabled them to have a daily cycle of Vespers, Matins, and Liturgy. If the hierarchy didn't want that many clergy there they shouldn't have ordained so many. I think it was a bit dishonest to accept the parish as is and decide later they want them to change. If they had been upfront about wanting changes perhaps they would not have entered the Antiochian Archdiocese, and opted for another jurisdiction. Several other former EOC churches opted for the OCA.

Too many clergy at one parish...

What a nice little problem to have...

Does any of this matter at all now? Everyone has gone their separate ways. Nothing will fix what happened. The Church in Ben Lomand is still there, it's still orthodox, it just went through a change. A very painful change which very few of us here know much about apart from what we've read.

Some of us know people who are there. I happen to know one of the priest's daughters and we talked about it. But, all I can offer on this is second hand information because i was never personally involved in it. So while I could write a really post about what she told me, why would I? What does it matter to any of us? What does it matter to any of them by now? That was like... 10 years ago (?).

We need to wish Ben Lomand well, Fr David well, all of the people who left for other Orthodox Churches, Eastern Catholic Churches and even those who went back to their old Protestant Churches. It's done. Fini. Let's drop it because all this thread can really turn into is (at BEST) harmless blather and (at worst) a bunch of "I heard this" or "I know this person and she said.." and so on which, usually is considered... gossip.

Xpy

And I want to be clear that I am not accusing anyone here of gossipping.. yet. All I see is, at the moment, a useless thread that can only turn into something harmful but can never turn into anything useful or Godpleasing. i mean, if someone starts a thread about how much they love bananas, it may be useful, but there is virtually no potential for it to become harmful, hurtful or gossipy. So, who care. have fun discussing bananas! But this thread has all the potential in the world to go south and in a very serious way. All of our posts are very little more than speculation a topic that is very touchy and personal in ways we can't imagine. Should we really be airing out someone else's dirty laundry on the Net?