Who Does That? - Cunning Guile and Deceit - Part 2

The priests and bishops were supposed to help the people spiritually, but the ones involved in the story were not doing their job. They didn't reimburse the parish for expenses and gave power to a troublemaker. The bishop and other bishops did nothing when the story was brought to their attention. The Chancellor dismissed all complaints and may cover up bad behavior. The Chancellor and the Chancellor of the OCA has too much power and there is no independent committee to address complaints. The Chancellor of the Diocese of the South came to the annual meeting and gave a strange sermon about cunning and deceit. He pretended not to know things and didn't apologize for what they had done. He also admitted to religious discrimination and supported taking away someone's civil rights. As a young woman, I believe that the priests and bishops were there to help the people, guide them spiritually, and lead them down the right path, to help the parishes have a good priest, oversee, and keep things running smoothly, moving forward, and spread the gospel. And although I believe for most priests this is really still true, the priests and bishops involved in our story are way, way off track. Instead of helping our parish find a priest, as you heard in the previous recording, they took him away after we did all the work and spent all the money. And then they promised to reimburse us, but first they couldn't find the envelope with all the receipts and the expenses written out, even though it had arrived and they signed for it. Then they couldn't write the check because a tree had fell on the office building where the lady who writes the checks has her office, eight months earlier, and she was unable to write the check yet. And then lo and behold, the final reimbursement amount had to be sent for final approval to none other than Reverend Joseph Lupus, the instigator and the troublemaker, a local dean who was not the treasurer of the diocese, not the bishop, not the chancellor, and yet he gets final say. And if you push back and try to speak up against that, oh, no, no. You get removed from your position in the church. You get threatened to have a cannon placed on you if you don't do as I say, or if you push back and make, quote, trouble for Lucas. It doesn't matter how much work you've done for the church, how much money you've spent, how much time you've given. If you don't blindly obey and accept things the way they say, you will have your head cut off, spiritually speaking. And so the result of all that is that 40% of the amount that we were promised would be returned to the parish for all the expenses we incurred with immigration and getting ready for a priest and his whole family to live at our church was not returned to us because Joseph Lucas said so. And then there's the issue of the bishop, who at this point we still hadn't heard one word from other than emails with cut and pasted signatures of his. And at one point, I was able to call the bishop on his cell phone, and he actually answered my call, which was quite amazing. But the conversation was not quite a conversation. It was mostly me telling him what had taken place, which he may or may not have known all the details of. It's hard to tell because he didn't really answer me. He listened, maybe to what I had to say, asked me who I was at the end of everything I said and simply replied, I will keep that in mind. That, in my opinion, is not what I would call a bishop. That is not what I would call a shepherd of the flock. Highly, highly disappointing. Then all of the story was sent to the synod of bishops, just about every one of them that could be reached, got the story of the Ukrainian priest and St. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church. And no one responded. Not one word. No one was suspended. No priest, no bishop was reprimanded. No action at all was taken by any of the other bishops or the Metropolitan or the Chancellor of the OCA. The Chancellor of the OCA, Father Alexander Rentel, did have a conversation with me about my complaints in which at least he conversed with me, unlike the bishop, but in the end, he dismissed every bit of my evidence and every one of my concerns, therefore giving license to these priests and bishops to continue to act the way they were and to get away with what they had already done. I have since learned that Father Alexander Rentel is not only the Chancellor of the OCA, he is also the person you must complain to if you have evidence of bad behavior of priests. And he is also the final say on the Sexual Abuse Committee. And so therefore, if he likes you as a priest, he might cover up for you no matter what you do. It's possible, at least. How can this be allowed? How is this right? And how can any person feel safe and validated that their concerns will be heard when one person has so much power and there is no independent committee that will hear the complaints of the people and address them with concern and attention? Next, we have the uninvited arrival of the Chancellor of the Diocese of the South, Reverend Marcus Birch himself, who came on March 5th, 2023, to attend our annual meeting. He served the liturgy and gave a sermon that was quite unforgettable. In it, he confessed of his cunning guile and deceit that he wished he could have as a child. The entire sermon on Orthodoxy Sunday was all about cunning, guile, and deceit. Quite a strange subject for Orthodoxy Sunday. And it was quite bizarre. No one was left undisturbed, especially when he said that Christ used cunning, guile, and deceit when he went to the cross against the devil, and we should be more like Christ. But that wasn't the end. Then he sat in our annual meeting and proceeded to pretend he didn't know things that he obviously knew because he was on every email chain that went out between Fr. Joseph Lucas and many of our parish council members. He knew exactly what was going on, and yet he pretended not to know. And then he said things like, well, there might be a possibility of a priest for you, but probably not. What a good Chancellor he is to come to our parish, and instead of apologizing for what they had done to us, and the Ukrainian priest and his family, he behaved like that instead and promised nothing. He also admitted that Archbishop Alexander participates in religious discrimination in their attempt to evict a man who was a tenant and happened to be a clergyman from another jurisdiction in seven days, no less, taking away his civil rights, at least they attempted to, and demanding that the parish take illegal action. He, to top it off, said we could rent the apartment to anybody else we wanted. So therefore, it is obvious that Archbishop Alexander agrees with and participates in religious discrimination. Or at least that's how I see it. You could choose to look at it differently.