by Joanna Higginbotham 2016
My daughter, Gabrieilla, first met Alex Anderson in 1999 when he came to visit Fr. Gregory's Tennessee community for the summer. She had not seen him in over a decade when, out of the blue, 2016, he thought to send her an email. He was surprised to find that she is now living in Oregon. He also was living and working in the Portland area. The next Sunday he met us in Portland at church.
Later after we had said our good-byes to Alex, Gabriella noted that Alex must have been well aware that his Dad was an Agafangelite or else Alex would not have said that his father's OCA funeral was "more" than his Dad deserved. The ROCOR-MP spread the falsity that Fr. Vladimir was "briefly" in a "schsimatic" group but returned to what they call the "true ROCOR" before his death. Alex surely knows that his Dad was a HARD CORE Agafangelite – despite what ROCOR-MP claims otherwise...
Here is pasted a copy of my email account to Fr. Gregory:
| Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 6:43 PM |
| To: frgregory |
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|
Dear Fr. Gregory,
Yesterday Fr. Photios read the exorcisms prayers over Gabriella
after the Liturgy. Earlier in the week, totally out of the blue, Alex
Anderson contacted Gabriella by email. She invited him to attend the
exorcism prayers. It turns out that Alex had done some carpentry in
the parish, so he was not unfamiliar with the parish nor unknown to
the parish. He has not been attending church services anywhere
lately, saying he is put off by all the jurisdictional disputes.
At the coffee hour I took the opportunity to tell Alex that his father
actually was in our ROCA before he went to the hospital. My intention
was to remind him that his father would want him to go to church and
to be loyal to the ROCOR. But Alex was not receptive to this.
Instead he said something that shocked me, and also shocked Gabriella
even though she has no real understanding of the ROCOR-MP union..
Alex said he hates "politics" and that knew all about his father and
that his father was given a funeral far more than he deserved.
This was so bizarre that both Gabriella and I at first thought he must
mean that Fr. Vladimir died with some horrible secret sin. But later,
after Vespers (during the reading of the anathemas) I realized what he meant.
I confronted Alex and told him he was dishonoring his father by thinking
that his father had been a schismatic and that the OCA was doing his
father a great favor by giving him a funeral at all. I told Alex that
Fr. Vladimir was a true son of ROCOR his entire Orthodoxy life and
truly he did not deserve to be buried in world Orthodoxy.
I also told him that he was either an apostate or a schismatic or both
and that I would not stand by and let him draw my daughter down with
him into world Orthodoxy – that I would keep him at a distance, unless
he wants to return to the true Church, in which case then I want to
help him. He did not like that at all, and said I was offending him.
Alex later told Gabriella in private, "Your mother hates me."
. . .
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ROCOR-MP LIES:
p.s. I hear it a lot from world Orthodox people, the excuse that they are just sick of the jurisdiction fighting. That's just an excuse. TRUE SOLDIERS among us who think the truth is worth fighting for. Instead of being sick of jurisdictional disputes, how about being sick of the LIES that cause the disputes in the first place? What makes me sick is the purple Barney who pretends it is virtue to ignore the lies. Peace at the cost of truth. Also, I think some of the reason they want to ignore it is because they can't figure it out. rather than take the time to learn or admit they don't understand -- they say it is not important.
