The problem with OCANews is that Mr. Stokoe was at once an 'insider' within the OCA's structure, yet running a news web site reporting from the 'outside.' It is tantamount to someone working for the White House while also being a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
Those who wish to fulfill the role of reporter need to have some distance from what or who they report on. Having two roles is just undoable over the long haul.
This became a real problem when Mark decided to start 'reporting' on the topic of the Manhattan Declaration and homosexuality.
The danger with mark running OCANews by himself is that it ego boundaries tend to get a bit blurry. He has no one to check his work before it goes out, and people tend to perceive OCANews as an extension of Mark. I'm not sure that is all that inaccurate in either case. So, when the topic swung towards a matter having to do with a condition of Mark's personal life, he lost the ability to deal with the matter with even the appearance of impartiality and he opened himself up to inquiry as to how much he was 'guiding' the discussion on OCANews in favor of his own preferences.
Bishop Matthias had the canonical right remove Mark, and did so on substantive grounds: you can't sit in a room with Bishops and laity that you will then report on with a less-than-friendly light and expect confidential conversations to be kept confidential. We all know that meetings change once the tape recorder is turned on. Mark is a walking (and posting) transcription machine. That's why his site was effective, but it also becomes a liability when you are supposed to work together with the people you publicly criticize.
In this last case, the matter of homosexuality and gay marriage is a hot-button topic. Mark did not, in all fairness, treat the matter in a balanced way, but posted a number of extreme (by Orthodox standards!) essays without a counter-balanced approach. He also opened up a can of worms for the clergy who posted (for example, Fr. Vinogradov wrote something which was refuted by his own Bishop), which ran the risk of opening up another wound in the OCA.
If Mark is going to criticize the moral standards of the OCA, then he has pushed the boundaries of his own role as a 'trustee' of the OCA. He is expected to uphold and protect the morality of the Church, not to lobby for change. He was expected to represent the people of the Midwest in advising the Holy Synod rather than directing the latter's pastoral activity.
He went a step too far. Whereas before he was holding the bishops accountable for upholding morality, he started to get into the topic of changing morality. These are very different concepts.
I think everyone is grateful that Mark was instrumental in exposing the corruption of the Ancien Régime, but I think that being on the MC while trying to run OCANews is simply not workable. Furthermore, mark would do well to have other people involved to make sure that OCANews runs as a less-than-personal-crusade. One must always be careful in reporting on a topic tangential to one's personal life.
There are those in the OCA who think he's been running a personal campaign from the very beginning and that there's been as much distortion as so-called exposure.
As an outsider watching I believe that OCAnews is such a virulent near occasion and occasion for sin, for so many Orthodox who are active on the Internet, that should it continue, Mr. Stokoe is in grave spiritual danger knowing what his site promotes...and he'd have to be a mental cripple not to know.
M.
