Moderator: Mark Templet
I had a discussion some days ago about ROAC and the split from ROCOR in 1994. I've realized that I did not know the facts very well even if I read everything on http://www.roacusa.org and written by Vladimir Moss. So could someone summarize the fact from the Lesna council to the split? I am particularly interested in understanding why this deposition was uncanonical :
Priidite, poklonimsja i pripadem ko Hristu.
That's a great question. I never understood that at all.
So the process started from that Lesna Convent Synod meeting in 1992 ?
What are convocations and what role do they play in a deposition of a Bishop ?
Before deposing a bishop, you're supposed to summon him up to 3 times before the synod... If he never comes, he can be deposed. It seems it that case the deposition occurred without the persons being summoned and without them knowing there was a trial...
Priidite, poklonimsja i pripadem ko Hristu.
Therefore, the proceedings were "illegal" or invalid ?
Then Bp Valentine never received any summons ?
Also - is it a summons to appear before the Synod as a general group meeting ?
According to what I read, he was deposed without knowing there was an investigation and a trial, and without being summoned... Maybe some people reading could give us some inputs that are not on the Internet... because I think everything on the Internet about this. Or at least, I think.
Priidite, poklonimsja i pripadem ko Hristu.
It is a great question, I think we should wait for a better and "semi-official" response from some of our ROAC members here.
But, I only can say that the whole matter about this "deposition" was a complete nonsense. It was not serious at all, but a "agreement" betwenn ROCOR, in the person of Mark of Berlin, and MP. And this "agreement" was carried out in one of his meetings with Alexy II, the "orginal idea" was defroncking all ROCOR/FROC Bishops in Russia. "In fact" this "arrangement" can be seen in that Met. Valentin and clergy of FROC (some of them never were clergymen in MP) were defrocked almost in the same time by ROCOR and MP, and several years after they left both MP and ROCOR, If I am not wrong, both depositions were between 96 and 97.
That makes complete sense, Fr Siluan, thank you !
That's roughly what I had heard but not with any detail, appreciate that overview.
That is SO SINISTER, how it was actively plotted with the two ostensible enemy jurisdictions actually conniving on this scheme.
It shows us how frantic about the Rocor parishes on Russian [and what is now Ukraine ?] soil
Moscow really was! It was not a minor problem from the MP point of view.
Seemingly, a major one, so that they went to all that trouble to arrange for all the FROC
clergymen to be defrocked.
Think of the flurry of secret messages back and forth to Mark... I wonder if by phone, since there was no email then.
Or coded telegram like in older espionage days ?!
I wish that Mark had a secretary who will one day divulge all the TRUE FACTS of what Mark did in his unpleasant years of collaboration with
the enemy.
