Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you compass sea and land to make one convert, and when he is made, you make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves (Matt: 23:15)

It would be better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck and to be thrown into the sea than to cause one of these little ones to stumble (Lk: 17:2)

The American Synod, known as ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia), limps from one scandal to another, its profits wasted in futile, but very expensive, court cases which it loses (see the Belya case). At least the recent Sister Vassa scandal has not cost it any money, though it did even further destroy its already very tarnished reputation for the Truth. Some people there hate the Truth.

Then there was the recent pedophile priest case in Australian ROCOR, which had been swept under the carpet for years. Although the Australian courts found Rosentool guilty, as everyone had known for years, the people were told by another priest ‘not to judge their (guilty criminal) shepherd’! Apparently, priests are above the law and so are a law unto themselves.

Now we have a very similar case in the USA, where another pedophile priest (see rocorabuse.org) has not even been defrocked. The American Synod Chairman tells the mother of the victims of Williams not to make any fuss! Decades of sweeping everything under the carpet are coming out. What happens when that carpet is entirely lifted? For the moment it is only one small corner.

Thus, in another case, when another ROCOR bishop, known everywhere in his diocese as ‘Your Disgrace’, was reported to the Synod by his clergy for his homosexual relationship with his latest boyfriend. The Synod ordered that the bishop investigate himself (!) and he found, O wonder of wonders!, that everything was perfect. The whistleblowing clergy, not homosexuals or pedophiles, were then ‘defrocked’, unlike homosexual and pedophile clergy who are protected.

The clericalist mafia always justifies itself. But the people know and they massively followed the ‘defrocked’ clergy, who before being ‘defrocked’ had transferred to a canonical, non-schismatic Local Church, where they concelebrate with all other Local Churches. They left behind a mini mafia of clerics. The people have gone.

The priest investigating the Williams case also saw a document concerning the pervert bishop, but refused to believe it, saying that it was anonymous. However, the document was not anonymous, it was written by a very senior ROCOR cleric, who wished to remain anonymous because he knew what would happen to him if his identity were revealed. The investigating priest is now paying the price for his refusal to be honest in the first case of homosexual and bisexual mafia, with one of those priests the disciple of a pedophile old calendarist ‘bishop’.

Little wonder that one of the last honest ROCOR bishops resigned in disgust at the activities of the American Synod. ‘Let’s share the money between us’, they said.

Such are the ways of the world. Such are the ways of ROCOR. How are the spiritual grandsons of the mighty fallen. This is what happens when ideology, this time the ideology of right-wing nastiness (in other case it has been the ideology of left-wing nastiness), replaces the God of Love.