PASTORAL LETTER ON RECENT EVENTS

March 3, 2011

Holy Martyrs Eutropius, Cleonicus and Basiliscus of Amasea

Beloved Clergy, Monastics and Faithful of the Diocese of the West,

As many of you are painfully aware, there are numerous speculations and opinions floating about the internet following a recent meeting of the Holy Synod of our Orthodox Church in America.  I believe there is no accident that this great temptation is happening just before the period of the Great Fast.

I have been quite reticent about making matters more complicated, more confusing, and more perilous by making some sort of public statement that will be parsed and scrutinized by others.  We have come to a precarious time in our history, a time when it is possible for anyone with an opinion or thought to broadcast it to the world.  And, it seems there are those who feel every matter is their business.  The result is soul destroying.  The demon of gossip runs about freely among us, hardly detected and unexposed to the light of day.

What occurred in Santa Fe was a matter that should have and could have remained within the body of our Holy Synod.  It should have remained there to preserve both the dignity of our much-loved Metropolitan and of his brother hierarchs, the Synod of Bishops.  It was and remains a matter that touches upon mutual accountability, truth and a most sacred trust that must exist among the hierarchs of the Church of God.  It was and remains a matter that touches upon the meaning of obedience to each other out of love in Christ, conciliarity.

Very soon after our meeting, postings began to appear on the internet from people who were not in the room, from persons who had and have no first-hand knowledge of the deliberations that took place there.   A website in Greece, for example, assured the world Metropolitan Jonah had been asked to resign and was no longer the primate of the Orthodox Church in America.  This is flatly and totally untrue.  It is a lie told by gossips who know nothing.

The Holy Synod of Bishops, a body whose very nature requires mutual obedience to each other in a spirit of truth, asked Metropolitan Jonah to request a leave of 60 days and to allow us to remove the heavy burden of care for our Church from his shoulders so that he could attend to his own physical, mental and spiritual health.  We attempted to do this in a manner that would allow him privacy and to retain the dignity of his office.  This is clearly indicated in the minutes.  I regret our delay in releasing these minutes has allowed speculation to injure the Body of Christ and for that injury to fester.  It has allowed persons outside the body of the Synod to spin and color the facts.

The Metropolitan Jonah remains the primate of the Orthodox Church in America and, like the rest of us, is accountable to God and to the entire Church for his actions.  Our polity that rests upon the critical relationship between the primate and his synod is, I believe, what is being challenged but remains unchanged.

I ask your prayers for both the Metropolitan and the Holy Synod and I ask your forgiveness for the disturbance that has occurred in the peace of the Church.

+Benjamin, Bishop of San Francisco and the West