And the steps seem to be following through already: there is no new Metropolitan being elected. Instead there is an administrator of the Metropolitan see in place. We shall see where this goes.

1. With much prayer…
2. After Metr. HERMAN either retires or dies, let his successor be elected by the OCA not as “Metropolitan,” but as “Temporary Administrator” of the OCA, with the mandate to do all he can to lead the OCA parishes into organic unity with the Antiochian Archdiocese; and let him keep his current diocese.
3. Close down the OCA headquarters in Syosset, hopefully selling the property to pay off all the debts of the OCA.
4. Move key OCA staff personnel from Syosset to the Antiochian headquarters in Englewood, New Jersey, to augment the staff there, in whatever ways may be deemed appropriate.
5. Build a state-of-the-art facility at St. Tikhon’s Monastery for the OCA archives, or expand the archival facilities at Antiochian Village to house them there.
6. Rearrange the dioceses of the Antiochian and OCA bishops roughly as follows:
   • Metr. PHILIP – New York City area and Washington, D.C. area, as at the present time.
   • Bp. Nikon – his current diocese of New England (currently the Antiochian Archdiocese does not have a bishop for their 9 parishes and 1 mission in New England), and any other Albanian parishes desiring to stay under him.
   • Bp. Alexander – his current diocese of Ottawa, Eastern Canada, and upstate New York.
   • Archbishop Seraphim – Western Canada, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon (currently the Antiochian Archdiocese does not have a bishop for western Canada and Alaska); and appoint him as temporary administrator for Alaska.
   • Bishop Tikhon – Eastern Pennsylvania, and the rest of New Jersey not under Metr. PHILIP.
   • Bishop Thomas – Western Pennsylvania (the OCA currently does not have a bishop for western Pennsylvania), West Virginia, Delaware, and the rest of Maryland and Virginia not under Metr. PHILIP.
   • Bishop Mark – Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.
     Archbishop Nathaniel – Michigan, and any other Romanian parishes desiring to stay under him.
   • Archbishop Job – Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri.
   • Bishop Antoun – Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi.
   • Archbishop Dmitri – Texas, New Mexico, Arkansas, and Louisiana.
   • Bishop Basil – Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, and the Dakotas.
   • Bishop Joseph – Southern California and Arizona.
   • Bishop Benjamin – Northern California, Nevada, and Utah.
   • Bishop Alejo – Mexico.
   • NOTE: According to this arrangement, only one hierarch would be asked to relocate his headquarters: Archbishop Seraphim. But this might not be so difficult for him since he originally hails from western Canada, and there is the precedence of a strong episcopal presence there in the ministry of Archbishop Arseny of Winnipeg in the 1920s and 1930s. (Bishop Benjamin has already moved the diocesan headquarters of the OCA Diocese of the West from Los Angeles to San Francisco.)
7. When Metropolitan PHILIP either retires or dies, allow any of the above named bishops to be considered as a possible successor.

There’s more read it all. I especially like this one:

Encourage every OCA and Antiochian parish to study the lives of Saints Tikhon and Raphael, to celebrate their Akathist hymns perhaps once a month, to celebrate their Feastdays, and to have their icons displayed together in the church, accessible for veneration.

For the purpose of Orthodox Unity in the USA? I bet some Anglicans, RCs and Lutherans would join in that prayer. Might even get the GOA!

So if some good can come of this Crisis - indeed some amazing Good, some amazing healing: then I think the millions were well spent.

Paul Fromberg (of my former St Gregory of Nyssa Parish in SF) designed the cool logo.

But really, what about “OS 09″ no… wait… that was taken too.

(Actually, probably just a case of “we didn’t know”. But they would have done well to say the name out loud at a meeting with their tech folks.)

Digg it

F I’m ever asked why I want to be a priest, I hope I can be this eloquent. (Props to Fr T)

IGHT OUT OF A Facebook Profile. But I think we need to get the Gospel Message out there to all those heathens that are trying to CHANGE THE DIVINELY ORDERED INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE.

Besides: there should be 4 wives for Jacob.

ODAY IS THE Feast of the Prophet Moses (in the Eastern Rite). Earlier this week was the feast of Joshua. No - I don’t know why Joshua comes first. One of the things I love about the Eastern Calendar is the knowledge in the Church that the calendar doesn’t so much commemorate historic events as create a picture. From now until Christmas we will be celebrating feasts of the saints who came before Jesus as forerunners.

In a mild sense, liturgically, advent has started. (Although I’ve not seen Christmas stuff up in the stores yet, thank God!)

Palin is a pious, Christian who was baptised Roman Catholic and apostatised as a child. Now she speaks in tongues, thinks Jews need to be saved and imagines that she’s going to heaven with all certainty because she’s on God’s side. McCain is a bit shady in his religious views, but I gather he’s a low church Anglo-Baptist. Biden is a devout Catholic who disagrees with his church on several issues. This was an acceptable stance until about 4 years ago when the right wing in the Catholic Church got into power. Catholicism - like Anglicanism - is a Big Tent. Sadly - no one has told the fringes. Obama is a member of the UCC: a Christian body the last I checked, although their definition mightn’t match yours. He’s sworn up and down never to abandon the man who led him to faith in Jesus: until it would cost him some votes to stay loyal. Yup, all of these folks look like my Brothers and Sisters in Christ.

Truth be told, from a Conservative Roman Catholic point of view, both the VP candiates are worse than Protestants: an apostate on the one hand and a man who wilfully disagrees with “the magisterium” on the other hand. And neither presidential candidate is “really” Christian either - since neither of them belong to a real Church.

From where I stand: they will all get into heaven before me and I hope they pray for me when they do.

So, now that the secular media and the partisans of the Stupid Party and the Evil Party Are whipping Christians into a feeding frenzy far worse than the lions in the coliseum: I’m bowing out and retreating back to my Anarchristian Corner. The rest of you remember the words of that Great Saint who said, “You’re fasting from meat, but you’re eating each other.”

This will be the last political post of this election cycle. I hope.

Yet some folks imagine that because he wanted his bones mingled with another guy, they could therefore imagine him (Newman) as gay. In like manner Aelred, Shakespear, Sergius and Bacchus, Jesus (with his “Beloved Disciple”) and Jonathan and David as well. I don’t think we have any proof one way or the other.

Still, a Biographer of Cardinal Newman answers calumnies of homosexual lobby. ANd it’s funny because we see the same kind of assumptions in the biographer. Once you assume he’s straight - with no evidence at all, because he was celibate - all the other assumptions fall directly into place. No evidence is needed. At all. If we assume you’re gay, the evidence falls into place. If we assume you are straight, the evidence falls into place. If you assume that a given option is “objectively disordered” then - horrors - None of the “good people” could be that and all the evidence falls into place.

In other words, there is no evidence. At all: there is only assumptions.

Was Newman attracted to men? I assume that he was: because I assume that most celibate men (ER, WR, Anglican, RC or EO) in orders are sexually attracted to men. Most of them are campier than drag queens and quite a few of them are exactly the men that the boys who got beat up in school were expected to grow into (one priest known to me referred to the lot of them as “booger eaters”). The few men who do not fit either model are bookish geeks whom I imagine to be without any sexuality whatsover.

In this regard, I’m rather fond of my late friend Linda who - at least once in my presence - when asked if she were gay or straight said, “I’m celibate. Celibacy is my sexuality.”

If we assume you are celibate - and allow in Charity for you to live that way - everything else will fall into place. No?

Charles Emory Smith, the former postmaster general, predicted in The Brooklyn Eagle in 1900 that one day every household would be linked to every other by means of pneumatic tubes. Around the turn of the century, there were even several proposals to build a system between North America and Europe

There’s a cool picture there, as well.