The following conversation appeared on Facebook in response to our Open Letter: OCA Priest Participates in Trump Riot, Reported to FBI. See below for our brief editorial comments.

Editorial Comments

1. We stated plainly in our preface to the open letter about Father Hodges’ participation in the Trump Riot that a concerned Orthodox Christian—having nothing to do with the production of Orthodoxy in Dialogue—had sent it previously to Archbishop Paul (Gassios) and then asked if we would be willing to publish it.
2. Father Holland has written twice for Orthodoxy in Dialogue: Sunday of Forgiveness and Open Letter to Father Aaron Warwick: A Good Man Taken in by Homosexualist Rhetoric. Matushka Marina Holland has written once for us (see November 8, 2017 in our Letters to the Editors). Editor Giacomo Sanfilippo has exchanged a number of fraternal emails with both of them. How then does Orthodoxy in Dialogue not seek to promote the free exchange of ideas?
3. How can we hate someone of whom we have never heard? Father Hodges’ name was unknown to us until the open letter was submitted to us.
4. “Orthodox Christians are not leftists.” We recommend that Father Holland study the history of late 19th-/early 20th-century Russian Orthodoxy, and get to know some actual Orthodox people. It’s also a verifiable fact that Father Holland’s son Daniel of thrice-blessed memory was a young, politically active Democrat at the time of his death.
5. How does Father Hodges know anything at all about Giacomo Sanfilippo’s life? Why do Hodges and others fantasize so feverishly about Sanfilippo’s imagined sex life? What does anyone’s sex life have to do with Hodges’ alleged participation in the Trump Riot?
6. Railing on about someone’s imagined sins and then concluding laughably with “I consider myself a worse sinner than this man” isn’t how Orthodox spirituality works.

ADDENDUM 1/19/21: See Father Mark Hodges Removed from OCA Clergy Directory.

Orthodoxy in Dialogue seeks to promote the free exchange of ideas by offering a wide range of perspectives on an unlimited variety of topics. Our decision to publish implies neither our agreement nor disagreement with an author, in whole or in part.

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