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The following is an unedited post from my Facebook timeline and the Orthodoxy in Dialogue Facebook group. Defenders of True Orthodoxy™ will consider this a triumph.
I will continue to advocate for LGBTQ Orthodox Christians in my academic work (my PhD thesis on Father Pavel Florensky’s theology of same-sex love is delayed, but still in process), on the pages of Orthodoxy in Dialogue, in person, in video productions, and in books waiting on the back burner for the completion of my thesis. The most important of these will be entitled Our Life in Christ: Orthodox Spirituality for Gay Men.
Giacomo Sanfilippo
Giacomo Sanfilippo
by Deborah Ahee (Toronto, Ontario)
In 1995, I was suspended from the priesthood when my wife, for unknown reasons, separated from me three months before the birth of our last child, even though there’s no canonical requirement to suspend a priest guilty of no wrongdoing when his wife leaves him.
In April 2002, also for reasons never disclosed to me, at the recommendation of my bishop now convicted of and deposed for child sex abuse, I was deposed (defrocked) by the Holy Synod of the OCA. This was, and remains to this day, the second most catastrophic spiritual event of my life. (I’ll get to the most catastrophic one below.)
From 2002 to 2017, there were a couple of attempts to get me thrown out of the Orthodox Church. One Sunday morning in 2003 or 2004, an anonymous caller phoned the priest before the Liturgy and shouted a barrage of the worst profanities while asking him how he dared give Communion to the likes of me. I offered to stop receiving. God bless the priest, he stuck his jaw out and said, “We carry on as before.”
On Bright Tuesday 2016, my beloved father confessor at the ROCOR cathedral screamed at me that I was excommunicated for my MA thesis proposing an Orthodox theology and spirituality of same-sex love, even though he didn’t actually read it. The ROCOR bishop for Canada confirmed the excommunication, even though he too never bothered to read the thesis. At the time, I was attending two other parishes on new calendar feast days, so I continued to attend and receive Communion there. Both priests were aware of my thesis, and I told one of them about ROCOR’s excommuncation.
Things turned awful in May 2017 when Public Orthodoxy published my “Conjugal Friendship.” (Do a search on Public Orthodoxy to find it. ) The immediate assaults of sheer hatred on other websites and blogs stunned me. People claiming to know me IRL uttered the most vile untruths about me for an audience of internet users far and wide to read, one on an Orthodox Facebook group having something like 15,000 members.
Things only got worse when I created Orthodoxy in Dialogue in August 2017. The hatred intensified exponentially, especially on that hellhole of social media, Twitter, where users can create completely anonymous accounts. I operated two Twitter accounts, one for Orthodoxy in Dialogue and the other under my own name. Over the course of three or four years, I was verbally assaulted many hundreds of times on both Twitter accounts, some of them so bad that Twitter disabled their accounts when I reported them. Soon they became too numerous to report. More than one Twitter user dog whistled physical violence against me: “Oh, if I could find out where Sanfillippo lives I would love to go there and slap him.” I feared for my own life and for the lives of my fellows in the student residence where I lived. It takes just one radicalized Orthobro to put a bullet between your eyes or shoot up a whole dormitory floor.
Many times, people asked me why I stayed in the Orthodox Church when subjected to such ongoing spiritual and emotional trauma. I always replied that I would stay, no matter what, as long as I had somewhere canonical to attend the Liturgy and receive Holy Communion. I truly believe in the Orthodox faith and in the Orthodox Church as Church, regardless of how badly I am treated by Orthodox officialdom and by some of my Orthodox brothers and sisters.
I never once said on social media where I attended church. One genius demanded, “Where do you attend church?? I want to report you to your bishop!”
Two anonymous Twitter users finally accomplished what no bishop ever dared attempt against me.
On Ascension 2022, the elderly priest who loved me to pieces appeared extremely agitated when I stepped up to the Chalice. He fished around with the spoon, as if he didn’t want to give me Communion. He finally did, obviously very unhappy. At the end of the Liturgy he barked at me, “Sit down there and wait for me.” To lighten the mood, I said, “Am I in trouble?” He barked again, “I think you are.”
When the last person had left the nave, Father handed me a manla envelope thick with several pages. “Open this when you get home.” I started to open it there and then. “I said not here! When you get home!”
Of course, I opened it as soon as I got outside. I very nearly died. The envelope contained hard copies of two emails from anonymous authors and two or three screenshots of tweets in which I discussed the fact that children already know, or begin to know, if they’re gay or trans from a very early age. I mentioned a teenage altar boy at my unnamed church who I thought might be gay. He always seemed so happy to see me in church, even though we never spoke,. I wondered if it made him happy to see a gay man at the Liturgy, praying and receiving Communion. We LGBTQ people understand the importance of seeing ourselves, when young, reflected positively in culture and in individuals we can look up to.
The emails “informed” Father that I was a pedophile and a predator, grooming his teenage altar boys for sex and probably already having sex with some of them. They attached my tweets as “proof.” Father doesn’t use email. The parish secretary read these and printed copies for him. Who knows if she’s a gossip?
Father is good-hearted but simple. He read the tweets and thought they said what the emailer said they said.
I took the subway to the other church in the same jurisdiction. I showed the priest there the emails and the tweets. He was outraged, knowing that the accusations were false and the tweets said no such thing. He promised to intercede on my behalf with the first priest and with their hierarch. That was almost a year and a half ago. He never did what he promised. He now ignores my emails, my texts, my PMs on Facebook. He has unfriended (but not blocked) me on Facebook.
When I got home that day, I logged into Twitter and found that someone had announced the name, street address, phone number, and email address of the first church, urging people to contact them and denounce me. I can only surmise that one of my haters actually attends that parish, and recognized me in church one day. (My face is all over the internet if you google me. My name and my face have never been a secret.)
The other week, I attended the family memorial service organized by my son at his church in another jurisdiction. I made the coliva for it. The priest there treated me badly, too, but quietly, out of the hearing of others.
Other than the memorial service, I have not dared set foot in any church for almost a year and a half. Who’s to say that people who know my face and hate me don’t attend the other Orthodox churches in this city? Who’s to say someone won’t scream CHILD RAPIST! PEDOPHILE! HOMOSEXUAL! as I step up to the Chalice? I’m terrified to take that risk. I don’t want to subject myself or a congregation to such a horrific scene.
I was dying without Liturgy and without the Holy Mysteries. At some point, all prayer faded away.
Last Sunday, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life. I attended Mass in a Catholic church and received Communion. I went back and did the same yesterday. Both times, as soon as I entered the church and took a spot, the Jesus prayer started almost of its own accord for the first time since forever. The Lord was with me, and His Most-Pure Mother, and all the saints and angels of heaven, grieving with me that I could no longer be in my own Church, but likewise blessing me and my decision, not abandoning me.
I haven’t “become Catholic.” I have not “returned” to Catholicism. I am a brokenhearted Orthodox Christian, grateful to have found a temporary refuge in the Catholic Church—however long “temporary” might last.
Maybe, if God is merciful, I’ll receive Communion from the hands of an Orthodox priest one last time on my deathbed.
Please grieve with me and pray for me.
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