The posting reads like a Saturday Night Live spoof.
"Philaret of New York, the New Confessor" - as if!
As one of my OCA friends said, "They glorified him even before the medical examiner had signed the death certificate."
Their monastery specializes not only in incense but in Southern Baptist and Episcopalian converts. You know, people who, having left a very liberal denomination, find that even the Orthodox Church isn't strict enough for their tastes.
Besides, what fun would there be in leaving a denomination riddled with strife only to end up in one where there wasn't in-fighting. As I said, if you don't collect stamps or do model railroading, the antics of a group like the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia - hurling anathemas hither and yon - makes for endless hours of diversion.
But to suggest that anyone outside of a few small parishes filled (now) with disgruntled converts and (before) with Russian exiles, would take anything "Philaret of New York" would issue seriously . . . please.
Certainly not Roman Catholics in communion with Pope Benedict XVI.
No, Philaret was just one of . . . how many "Orthodox" bishops traisping around New York playing church?
Whoops. I replied to GMMAC by mistake. Ping to 93