While we’re on the topic of crooked and immoral church administration, let’s look at the Orthodox Church in America. Shortly before he was elected primate of the Orthodox Church in America, Bishop Jonah gave an electrifying speech in which he said the two previous metropolitans of the OCA, Theodosius and Herman, were corrupt, and that they and some of their allies had “raped” the church. He also said, criticizing the corrupt autocracy of the previous metropolitans (Herman had just been forcibly retired in disgrace, and gone off to live with his longtime driver and friend), and suggesting how bishops should rule the Church:
“Authority is responsibility. Authority is accountability. It’s not power.”
Well, a recent special investigative report recently released detailed how, exactly, Herman raped the Church in one particular way with his gross abuse of power and financial chicanery at St. Tikhon’s Monastery, ,which has left the monastery poor and deeply in debt. The report concluded that Herman, who lives on monastery property with his Friend, should be asked nicely to get out of the house on monastery property and leave for exile — or else.
This is how they’re treating the whited sepulchre who used to be the head of the Church, the closest thing the OCA has to a pope, over his calamitous misrule. From reading that devastating report, Herman is no doubt lucky that he’s not being hauled off to jail. That the OCA is finally getting its house in order and holding its former top leader to account is confidence-building, if you ask me. No man is above the moral law. No man.