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Wednesday, November 12, 2008

A New Metropolitan for the OCA (Orthodox Church in America)!






The 15th All-American Council of the Orthodox Church in America(which was held in the city of Pittsburgh) just picked a new Metropolitan Bishop.

Play Audio

This is from the Press release:


"PITTSBURGH, PA [OCA Communications] -- On Wednesday,
November 12, 2008, His Grace, Bishop Jonah of Fort Worth was elected Archbishop
of Washington and New York and Metropolitan of All America and Canada at the
15th All-American
Council of the Orthodox Church in America
.

His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah was born James
Paffhausen in Chicago, IL, and was baptized into the Episcopal Church. While
still a child, his family later settled in La Jolla, CA, near San Diego. He was
received into the Orthodox Church in 1978 at Our Lady of Kazan Moscow
Patriarchal Church, San Diego, while a student at the University of California,
San Diego. Later, he transferred to UC Santa Cruz, where he was instrumental in
establishing an Orthodox Christian Fellowship.

After completing studies
at UCSC, James attended St. Vladimir's Seminary, graduating with a Master of
Divinity degree in 1985 and a Master of Theology in Dogmatics in 1988.

He went on to pursue studies towards a Ph.D. at Graduate Theological
Union in Berkeley, but interrupted those studies to spend a year in Russia.

In Moscow, working for Russkiy Palomnik at the Publishing Department of
the Moscow Patriarchate, he was introduced to life in the Russian church, in
particular monastic life. Later that year, he joined Valaam Monastery, having
found a spiritual father in the monastery's Abbot, Archimandrite Pankratiy. It
was Archimandrite Pankratiy's spiritual father, the Elder Kyrill at Trinity-St.
Sergius Lavra, who blessed James to become a priestmonk. He was ordained to the
diaconate and priesthood in 1994 and in 1995 was tonsured to monastic rank at
St. Tikhon's Monastery, South Canaan, PA, having received the name Jonah.

Returning to California, Fr. Jonah served a number of missions and was
later given the obedience to establish a monastery under the patronage of St.
John of Shanghai and San Francisco. The monastery, initially located in Point
Reyes Station, CA, recently moved to Manton in Northern California, near
Redding. During his time building up the monastic community, Fr. Jonah also
worked to establish missions in Merced, Sonora, Chico, Eureka, Redding,
Susanville, and other communities in California, as well as in Kona, HI."


To read the rest please go to the website.

This next audio is the address Metropolitan Jonah delivered at the council a day or so before he was elected as the Metropolitan of the OCA.

As seen from the website:
"Newly consecrated Bishop Jonah is the Bishop of Fort Worth and Chancellor of the Diocese of Dallas and the South." (when they say newl consecrated, they mean newly consecrated as a bishop. This speech was made before he was elected as Metropolitan)

Play Audio


"In a stirring conclusion to the banquet, the newly elected Metropolitan Jonah encouraged the faithful with his vision for the future."

Play Audio


"Fr. Tom Soroka (The Path and Sermons At St. Nicholas) interviews Fr. Thomas Hopko (Speaking the Truth in Love) on the convention floor and asks for his reaction to the election of Metropolitan Jonah."

Play Audio





JNORM888

5 comments:

VSO said...

I know nothing about him. Is this good or bad?

Jnorm said...

I don't know. I have friends in the OCA. I will ask them what their thoughts are, but I really don't have a clue.

From what I can tell from the audio, the mood seems to be happy. So if the people at the local council were happy, I'm happy.




JNORM888

Jnorm said...

ok, I found the press release so I posted a snippet of it on the blog. The link to the website has the rest.





JNORM888

Jnorm said...

I wish him many years!!!


I also posted another audio of a speech he made a day or so before he was elected.





JNORM888

Anonymous said...

The first page of Metropolitan Jonah's latest has been leaked on the Web:

Five Good Reasons TO Visit a Monastery

The Temptations of Monastic Minimalism by Metropolitan Jonah (Paffhausen)

The priest looked out of the altar, checking to see if the choir director was ready to begin the hours before the Divine Liturgy. Just as he was ready to say, "Blessed is our God," his newest convert, Bill, made his usual late entrance into the church, having just gotten out of bed after skipping last night’s 40 minute Vespers and General Confession . Bill, as he insisted on being called (“So what if there isn’t a St. Bill, my priest said that I might be the first one!”)-- had been a normal young evangelical convert, clean-cut, single, and working his first job out of college. Then he discovered Orthodoxy in a bookstore, and with great zeal embraced the Faith. He was chrismated after a usual six-month catechumenate, during which he read just about every book in print on the Orthodox Faith.

After a year or so in his OCA parish, Bill decided that he missed the the DIY ethic from his evangelical days. This is where his change began. Not only did he become obsessed with sorting the “little ‘t’ traditions” from the “Big ‘T’ Traditions” and thus became more and more skeptical about what he called “ Old World Orthodoxy,” but also started to become, well, weird. Like this Sunday morning. Bill was not content to come in like everyone else. Rather he crossed himself like he was waving gnats from his face at the entrance to the nave, and with the entire congregation watching ,casually flopped into the pews.

But then, just before the time the Liturgy should have begun, Bill came up to the door of the altar and announced he must have confession since he missed General Confession last night . Father, being patient reminded him that confession was not necessary before communion and besides, it wasn’t even Lent!

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