Posted by Al
on 5/8/2009, 9:20 am, in reply to "Metropolitan Jonah's Russian Interview - "It is Time to be Direct""
While most of my disappointments in this interview are being addressed by others on OCANews.org, there are two points I would offer.
1. The "candidacy" of Fr Geracim for what appears to ultimately be Bishop of Alaska. While he might be "locally elected" by the Synod, there is no mention of the involvement of the clergy/laity of that diocese. I would have expected Dean to comment on this.
2. From whence comes the 100,000 number? With his claimed 650 parishes (I would bet he's including "missions", some of which are really outposts where an occasional liturgy is conducted by a supply priest) that would be an average parish size of 154. I looked at the 2007 statistics for the Diocese of the West (http://dowoca.org/files/events/2008_rep_book_vol3.pdf) and found that the average reported parish size is 49 (26 for "missions" and 65 for "parishes/Russian Deanery"). Only four parishes had more than 100 members, and only one of these had over 150.
This look led me to an even more distressing discovery. While the Diocese reported a 2% growth in membership from 2003 to 2007, 12 of 21 missions and 16 of 30 parishes reported a drop in membership.
But, back to the 100,00 figure, if DOW is reasonably representative of the entire country, one would have to conclude that 2/3 of the "Believers" that +Jonah counts in the OCA do not see fit to be counted as "members" of an OCA parish.
But, at least it's a bit more honest than the 1,000,000 figure used to get the recent loan from Honesdale Bank!
Sadly, some habits just refuse to die.
Al
Paros Island, Greece
