User talk:70.23.217.123

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Dear Eugene,

It has not been our intention to vandalize, and I am sorry if it has interpreted that way. We are rather shell-shocked and very weary of people who have malice against us or innocent people who get scandalized by people repeating things second and third hand who really know little about the people and the events of 20 years ago mentioning and repeating these unsubstantiated allegations. I am very new to this. I am monk who has lived in Holy Transfiguration Monastery for 27 years and am not very "techy" or a computer wiz. An older father and myself wrote and documented the article because some of our laity appealed to us since we have a lot of primary documents here. We wished to portray our Church for what it is, a traditional Orthodox Church that wishes to abide by the canons of the Orthodox Church. I am saddened that certain individuals have wished to create a miasma of sexual misconduct around HOCNA and our monastery to discredit us. Although we do not participate in Ecumenical activities, we are known in the Boston area for both our charity to all who appeal to us, our hospitality to strangers, and even helping out in civil projects like cleaning and renovating parks, etc. Our concerns about the links of hocna.info and pokrov and Fr. John Whiteford's links are the fact that they contain much information that are unsubstantiated allegations. There has been criticism about the article not complying to the NPOV and I am open to suggestions on how to do that better. I would even be happy if you can recommend someone to help us. What I find puzzling, and forgive my ignorance, is that why are these links considered complying to the NPOV? These links are to websites that have a much information that rely heavily on rumors and personal opinion, and that is why I deleted them, not because we fear criticism. I understand now that I should have given an explanation for my edit, but as I mention above, we are a bit "shell-shocked." That seems to come under a Questionable Source as described in the Attribution rules. There are two official documents that were issued about HOCNA and those are the Decree of the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia of February 1987 and The Decision of the Investigative Committee of the Church of the True Orthodox Christians of Greece Concerning the Accusations Against the Brotherhood of the Sacred Monastery of the Transfiguration in Boston of America of May 1988. I have posted the latter and I know that the former is on the hocna.info site and probably Fr. John Whiteford's site and Prorov. The trouble with these sites is that they have slanderous letters written by individuals that are, frankly, pornographic and libelous. The Decree of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia does make reference to these allegations at length and does not go into the lurid details , real or imagined by these "victims" and who, strangely, never had recourse to a civil action for the horrible wrongs allegedly done to their persons. However, some have set up websites. If you check on Pokrov you will see that we are probably the only group mentioned that does not have cases in the courts for sexual misconduct. Now in today's environment, with 9 men who claimed to have been grossly abused, not one has a brought a case against us? Doesn't that turn on a light somewhere? Or if one would happen to do a little research in how we are integrated and very well received in both the secular and church communities in the Greater Boston Area (Brookline is a suburb of Boston) and the hundreds of people, men, woman, and children we have passing through the monastery every month one would see that we are very transparent. If we were out in an isolated place and were very secretive there might room for suspicion, but that is simply not the case. Also, we have thousands and thousands of people who buy our icons, incense, and publications, and we are very well known in the Orthodox world for these items. These people would be very surprised to to see the allegation that "most Orthodox" know that HOCNA was founded because of us tying to flee an investigation for sexual misconduct. If someone could please, who is a completely neutral party, help us make the article more NPOV I would appreciate it. It is not a long article. I hope this explains why I deleted those items. What I think would be fair is to have the official documents and leave it at that and not have the links to websites full of salacious allegations and gossip. I look forward to hearing from you. Also, if we put the two official documents up we could take down the Who are the Real Victims, Parts 1 & 2 and Monastic Divorce, because those were obviously written to counter the gossip.Fr. Sergius Gordon 02:22, 19 March 2007 (UTC)