ANAXIOS!

A brief outline of some of the grievances regarding Metropolitan PHILIP of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America:

* Documents forged by +Philip have been presented as official to the faithful. By many verifiable accounts, this is not the first time this has happened. These forgeries have served one purpose only - to preserve the power of a man who has no qualms creating division and discord in order to achieve his own ends.

* +Philip has demanded obedience from others; he has demanded those bishops he paid to be designated "auxiliary" to be obedient to a Patriarch and Holy Synod he has ignored and subverted, after a mostly failed attempt at the manipulation of that Synod through various means of fraud.

* +Philip has for years advanced the notion of his financial accountability, but for years refused to submit himself and his church (with regard to taxes, these entities are one and the same) to independent audits. There are a plethora of stories of financial irregularities,. . . But by ignoring the calls for independent audits, these many rumors are granted a certain gravitas. If they are false, it is rather simple to show them to be so.

* He has squashed even modest, civil questioning. One woman, when attempting to bring up the question of audits on the floor of an Archdiocesan convention and appealing to common form, was told by +Philip, "I am Robert's Rules of Order." He censored and ridiculed priests who merely asked him about the logic behind the Joseph Allen affair.

* His manipulation of mass-media for purposes devoted to obvious, crass self-promotion. . . .

* Three of his cronies are convicted felons who serve on the Archdiocesan Board of Trustees. One of them was the fellow who at least twice tried to slip a false Synodal statement in front of the Patriarch for his signature. Sometime try googling Walid Khalife. You will find court documents like these, which notes crimes normally associated with the mafia, and a host of pictures and mentions in official AOANA literature. Another trustee is a man who was convicted of embezzling money from a non-profit raising funds to fight breast cancer. What reputable church organization has on its board of trustees men with these areas of expertise? There is a reason such men are on the board, dear reader.

* +Philip has lived a life of rather flamboyant decadence and ease, and promoted a culture of decadence within the Archdiocese, mocking the teachings of Christ, the Apostles, and the fathers of the Church. . .

* Over the course of the last few months, many persons have asked the rhetorical question of the day? What does the Detroit mafia have on +Philip that results in his granting them every wish he possibly can? . . .

1. Email or write to AOANA and with one simple message: Metropolitan Philip, ANAXIOS. Please resign. [Contact info here.]I do not even think it important to state your reasons. He knows the reasons that he should resign. If you wish, send him a list of reasons as well. The important thing is that the message be sent by a large number of people from throughout the AOANA.

2. Ask your priest and parish council to immediately cease sending all funds to Englewood. Have your representatives going to the upcoming convention state that your parish will send no more funds to +Philip's money laundering machine until there is an independent audit done of all archdiocesan accounts and financial holdings and the findings of that independent audit have been made public and any problems uncovered by that audit have been thoroughly addressed. Burn the leeches off of the Body of Christ.

3. If your parish will not immediately cease to send all funds to Englewood, there may be another option available to you. Some states have laws governing charitable giving that require non-profits to spend money given to them as designated. Thus, if the giver at an Antiochian parish writes "0$ to Englewood" or "none of this money may be sent to the Archdiocese," then in those states the parish is required by law to see to it that none of that money is passed on to Englewood. In parishes that give to AOANA via a tithe, then those gifts given with that designation requirement may not be tithed. Tennessee has such laws, and some folks in my parish have already written such requirements on their checks. Even if your state does not have such laws, I am told that many parish constitutions require that designated funds must go as designated. Even if your parish and your state do not have such rules, the folks who handle the money at your parish may follow through with your wish, because that is the Christian thing to do.

4. There needs to be a coordinated demand that the AOANA board of trustees be voted into office by the faithful at conventions without any interference from the Metropolitan. The Synod should have the right to veto anyone, of course, by a majority vote in the Synod (with the Met only having one vote). All potential members of the board of trustees should be required to have full background checks, and the results of those background checks should be made public before voting. . . A June 16 letter from Englewood (signed by +Antoun) to all clergy, archdiocesan trustees, and parish councils reads thus: His Eminence Metropolitan PHILIP has appointed a Nominating Committee to screen the candidates for the Archdiocese Board of Trustees, consisting of the following: His Grace, Bishop ANTOUN, Rev. Fr. George Kevorkian, Mr. Fawaz El Khoury, Mr. Philip Haddad. The purpose of this committee is to ascertain the candidacy of any individual seeking election to the Archdiocesan Board of Trustees at the biennial Convention this July in Palm Desert, California, and to assure that the candidate is fully aware of his/her obligations and responsibilities as a member of the Board. This committee needs to be disbanded immediately. Any committee member known to have approved the trusteeship of one of the felons mentioned above should be banned from Church office of any sort. . . . The demand for changes in policy must happen at the upcoming convention. Ask your priest and parish delegates to the convention to demand policy changes regarding the selection and election of Trustees. Ask them to send this message: Our parish will boycott all future AOANA activities and conventions until a fair and transparent system for the election of trustees is put in place. Until this happens the conventions are a farce. If a substantial change does not occur at Palm Desert, illegalish business as usual will be our future.

5. Ask your priest to commemorate your diocesan bishop in the manner formerly done. The man who instituted the new rules lied and laundered to present himself as having the authority to change them. He did not, and does not, have that authority. Obviously, if your local diocesan bishop has specifically ordered that you follow this instruction then you must follow it. If not, then it seems your parish is free to follow the former manner of ritual. If free, then the matter is in the hands of your priest. There is no harm in the asking, with all that is going on he may not have thought about this important matter. I have heard that some parishes have now ceased to commemorate +Philip, or are planning to do so in the near future. I am ambivalent about this move, as I do not see how prayer for the man could be a bad thing for him or for the Church, but I also understand the notion that he no longer has legitimate authority over his flock, and that this should be reflected in the Liturgy. Of course, each of us should remember +Philip daily in our prayers, that God bless him and grant him salvation. Even if he is no longer fit to serve as a bishop, our God wishes to bless +Philip with every blessing of the Kingdom of God, as our God kenotically offers Himself to every human soul.

In the future, I plan to offer more thoughts with a more detailed statement of certain grievances. I also plan to provide a list of historical instances in the life of the Church in which there was a public outcry for the resignation of an Orthodox bishop or for him to be deposed. While I think +Philip has done enough to merit his being deposed, I would be content to see him retire to some fancy resort. . . so long as godly leadership is restored to the Church. Pray God a Metropolitan Basil, or a Metropolitan Mark, or for that matter, six formerly Antiochian bishops who serve in a Holy Synod with +Jonah as its Metropolitan. I know such is unlikely, but a man can pray.

Lastly, I would like to say this. My father taught me that life should be approached with short term pessimism and long term optimism. Sometimes there is a need to act. Not from an ideological agenda or just for the sake of acting, but because love demands a motion, even, at times, motions as uncomfortable as these. There is such a need now, but it is not to be approached as dire or with undo feelings of urgency. Let us act now - prudently, forthrightly, in solidarity with our brothers and sisters who love Christ's Church. Things may well get worse before they get better (there is always the ebb and flow of these sorts of little crises in the Church, and this is a little crisis in the long view of the Church). They will certainly get more bizarre before they return to something of a sanity. But I have no doubts, friends, that the image of Christ will be made manifest, in all truth, goodness, and beauty, in His Church, in those cities and suburbs and small towns and hills and fields and hollows and swamps we call America, "the land of my sojourn," as an old friend put it. Glory to God for all things.

The original at The Ochlophobist is even longer and more detailed at points, but FR's 'excerpt' rules require 300 words or less. If you weren't aware of the nonsense afflicting our Archdiocese, visit www.ocanews.org and read the sorry history of +Philip's neo-papal pretension in purporting do dethrone all of our diocesan bishops and render them his auxiliaries, complete with forged documents, the Fax of Englewood replacing the Donation of Constantine.

To Metropolitan Philip [Saliba]: ANAXIOS! ANAXIOS! ANAXIOS!

Kolo,

In case you’re not following this, things have gotten pretty nasty in Antioch. And to be frank, H.E. +Philip has no one to blame but the man in his mirror.

That blog site is not my own (not sure if that’s what you meant). All I do is read the reports (with my chin on my chest at times, I’ll admit).

And pray.

And go to church.

And pray.

Obviously, I have an opinion and I will remain informed - but out of the mud will I stay.

First, I do not believe that it is right to air out the laundry of the Church in the domain of skeptics, and unbelievers. As for myself I will allow the Holy Spirit to do what He has done for 2000 years. Whether the Metropolitan is guilty or innocent I will make no judgement of. Many saints have been falsely accused, and many guilty have been properly accused.

. . .Many saints have been falsely accused, and many guilty have been properly accused.

That is certainly true, but I cannot think of any saint who opposed the foundation of monasteries; sought to remove bishops from their sees without charge or consent; demanded honoraria comparable to a month's wages for a skilled worker and luxurious accommodations as a condition of paying a two day archpastoral visit to a parish; trampled the canons to permit a confidant to remarry while remaining in the priesthood (and to a divorcee at that) and adding excommunication to deposition when dealing with disobedient clergy; or whether through a bizarre combination of arrogance, naivite, and lack of spiritual discernment, or through just plain dishonesty, used fradulent documents to bolster his position in an ecclesiatical dispute.

All these Metropolitan Philip has most assuredly done, and I confine myself to charges provable as a matter of public record.

I pray that Met. Philip will be a saint in the really important sense of standing at the right hand of Christ on the Last Day, but his recent public acts are not supportive of his glorification ever being proclaimed before that day, and render him unfit to lead our Archdiocese.

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