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Fr. Joseph is a good guy. I've met him, and he is deeply devout and sincere. There was at one point a steady stream of priests and faithful out of the Antiochian Archdiocese into the ROCOR, the OCA, and elsewhere for a number of reasons that are better not discussed on FR. Suffice it to say that there are different visions of what constitutes healthy Orthodoxy, and Metropolitan Philip's vision is one that is rejected by many, including by many in his own Archdiocese.

A close friend of mine in the Antiochian Archdiocese (with no plans to go anywhere, ever) describes Metropolitan Philip's approach to the faith "Vatican II Orthodoxy." He hastens to add that, as with some of the GOA's Abp. Iakovos' perceived shortcomings and the OCA's Metr. Theodosius -- a lot of this is a generational thing, and the future of the Antiochians is not there.

Fr. Joseph went to the ROCOR, and for some reason, Metropolitan Philip wouldn't give him a canonical release -- which is unusual, since Metropolitan Philip has given many priests canonical releases to go to the ROCOR. I've met several.

Fr. J went anyway, and the ROCOR bishop where he lived had the bad sense to accept him without one. That same bishop is notorious for holding strictly to the ROCOR position of not communing with the Moscow Patriarchate or anyone who is in communion with them until things get straightened out. Most ROCOR bishops and priests today ignore that, and Fr. Joseph was ignoring it as well, until some troublemakers decided to formally "turn him in" for communing non-ROCOR folks. For the reasons he outlined, he couldn't in good conscience do that, and since he had left without a canonical release, he had nowhere canonically to go but back to the Antiochians. Had he obtained a canonical release successfully back when, he could have left the ROCOR for a different jurisdiction -- private word is that he still wouldn't choose the Antiochians if he had a choice, but he didn't have one.

I met him when his parish was under the ROCOR, and had been for some time -- it was thriving and healthy at that time. The situation was tragic for the folks at his parish and for him personally. There is a silver lining, because it highlighted the fact that Bishop X of the ROCOR is not a reasonable fellow at all, and it played a role in sidelining him when it came time for talks with the MP. It also heightened a lot of people's desire to get this reunion with the MP done and to institute formal intercommunion again (even though informal intercommunion has long been the rule in most of the ROCOR.)

Finally, it reminded a lot of people that if one has problems in one's parish, diocese, or jurisdiction, the best way to deal with them is to prayerfully work to clean up one's own house -- not to jump jurisdictions. Lord only knows that I completely understand why Fr. Joseph left the Antiochians back when he did -- and I also understand why he left the ROCOR when he did. But these things are very hard on parishes.

Amongst converts to Orthodoxy who left churches that slowly slid into apostasy, there is that question always burning in the back of one's mind: what if it happens here? Why didn't I leave Anglicanism (or whatever other denomination) when I saw the first warning signs? There's a bit of that "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" mentality when troubles are seen in Orthodoxy. And I think that this is at least a part of what Fr. Joseph is talking about.

The jurisdictional situation in America is uncanonical and un-Orthodox. One can only pray that the current trend toward slowly and organically coming to a single Orthdox Church here in America will continue. Then tragic stories like these will stop.

We'll have different tragic stories then!