Julia Duin writes an extensive story in the Washington Post on Metropolitan Jonah and the OCA:
They appeared at the edge of the crowd on the Mall, a group of men seemingly out of a distant century. Their heads were crowned with klobuks, the distinctive headgear of Orthodox clergy. Sporting black cassocks and untrimmed gray beards, with golden icons dangling from their necks on long chains, these visitors stood out among the crowd clad in jeans and winter coats. The man in their center carried a bejeweled walking stick.
Metropolitan Jonah, 51, leads the Orthodox Church in America, the second-largest Eastern Orthodox body in the United States. He was there to rally the huddled masses waiting in the freezing air to begin the March for Life, the annual demonstration protesting the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide. His aim was to boost Orthodox participation in political issues. But his efforts to change the OCA would spark a ferocious reaction from his own bishops one month later. At issue is the very nature of Orthodoxy in the New World.
The tensions began with Jonah’s surprise election as head (or “metropolitan”) of the OCA in late 2008. The new leader, who is the first native-born convert to head the church, wasted little time instituting change. He put word out to his bishops and seminarians that their presence was expected at the March for Life, held every January. It was time, he would later tell a reporter, for the Orthodox “to step out in the public square” on a number of social concerns, including abortion. To encourage such stepping out, Jonah also decided to move the offices of the OCA from its isolated Syosset, N.Y., chancery to St. Nicholas Cathedral in Northwest Washington.
On the morning of the march, Jonah preached an uncompromising Gospel at the cathedral. “We need to see and call things what they are and not in some disguised politically correct language,” he said, dressed in resplendent gold brocade vestments, his salt-and-pepper beard making him appear like an Old Testament prophet. “Abortion is the taking of human life.”
Read the full article on the Washington Post.
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“Metropolitan Jonah goes to Washington” neglected to mention one very important aspect of Metropolitan Jonah Paffhausen’s problems within the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). The OCA’s Sexual Misconduct Policy Advisory Committee sent a report to the OCA Synod that was highly critical of the metropolitan’s actions – and inactions – on reported cases of clergy sexual abuse and misconduct. Anyone who may have been harmed within the OCA should call the police, not church officials. Sex crimes, however old, are best investigated by the independent professionals in law enforcement.
To your knowledge, will this report ever be made public? Has anyone outside the Synod or Committee actually seen it?
Thanks.
I don’t know if it will be make public. Not sure who has seen it at this point. It is obviously a big issue as it involves the safety of children and vulnerable adults.
Thank you Melanie.
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