Like many other clergy in the Orthodox Church in America, I’m attending the 16th All-American Council. Also like many other clergy, I attended the first plenary session (or was it an episode of Oprah?) Monday evening. During the question and answer period that followed Metropolitan Jonah’s address and the responses from some members of the Holy Synod, the Internet came in for some rather negative criticism. (See AFR for the audio; time references below are for that version).

Bishop Benjamin (fairly) derided partisanship on the web:

I think one of the great challenges us to in this age is the Internet. And it is no secret that there are often dueling websites, this site for the metropolitan, this site is against the metropolitan. And it has made our life a living hell. And I would like to say to those who run those websites: just stop it, grow up, and get over yourselves. (applause) The Internet is a great tool, and we need to use it for good, to build up the body of Christ, not to destroy it or to wound its members. (1:20:45ff)

Metropolitan Jonah, in the final response of the Holy Synod to questioners, went further:

If there’s no market, if people aren’t interested in reading it, they’re not going to publish it. Right? You’ve gotta turn off the Internet. It’s fine for email, but I was quite surprised, for example, to find my own personal emails read to me, and even SMS texts. Isn’t this immoral, unethical, and just downright sinful? Brothers and sisters, our first task, we really have to think about how we are acting in regards to one another. As Vladika said, the children, what are they reading? No wonder. So, just remember, if there’s no market, they’re not going to publish. And if they do publish, who cares? Because if we don’t read it and if we don’t allow our minds to be polluted by this kind of verbal pornography. (2:25:58ff)

Time does not allow an extend response, so two brief thoughts:

Uninformed or malicious partisanship is bad for the Church. But what are we to do about the situation of the past year, where the most partisan of the websites (on both sides) were operated with the spiritual and material support of the highest levels of leadership in the Church?

Silence gives cover to the Evil One. In the first few months of this year, the faithful received leaked news from a questionable site, followed by information at OCANews, a video of the Metropolitan speaking from the ambo of his cathedral in DC, and, finally, the minutes of the most recent Holy Synod meeting. Not too long after this, OCATruth was established, and Monomakhos took up arms, anonymous mercenaries in service to then-unknown masters. The barrage of information was contradictory, inflammatory, and disconcerting, and spread all manner of spiritual infection.

In the face of this, the Holy Synod was silent. The Metropolitan Council didn’t say much more, in favor of allowing OCANews to function as its de facto press organization.

All of which leads me to recall the experience of Jesus in the boat with his disciples in Luke 8:22-25:

Now it happened, on a certain day, that He got into a boat with His disciples. And He said to them, “Let us cross over to the other side of the lake.” And they launched out. But as they sailed He fell asleep. And a windstorm came down on the lake, and they were filling with water, and were in jeopardy. And they came to Him and awoke Him, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” Then He arose and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water. And they ceased, and there was a calm. But He said to them, “Where is your faith?” And they were afraid, and marveled, saying to one another, “Who can this be? For He commands even the winds and water, and they obey Him!”

Christ did not allow the storm to rage, keeping silent or murmuring soothing platitudes that “everything will be alright.” Rather, his first act was to stop the waves and the storm. He didn’t teach until after the disciples had no care about the tumult.

It is clear that the faithful of the Orthodox Church in America needed (and still need) someone to rebuke the waves and the wind, to calm the storm, to remove the fearful distractions that steal faith and joy. The same Internet that was the medium for the revelation of the problems (but not, in the main, the problem itself) could have been the medium for stilling the waves and bringing peace to God’s children. It’s time to go beyond silence, finger-pointing, and delegation of the public response. The Internet is not the problem. Our leaders should make it part of the solution, using the medium to dispel the storm of confusion, contradiction, and worry.

The first question that comes up with regard to email is: Is it secure? Most individuals are not really aware of how email systems work. The diagram below shows, in simplified (and ugly) form, how a message is handled from sending to delivery. Working from left to right, the user composes a message, clicks “Send,” which causes the mail client to give the message to the mail server (a Mail Transfer Agent in technical terms) which in turn queues it up to be sent. The sender’s mail server contacts the recipient’s mail server and transmits the message. The recipient’s mail server places it in a store (a “mailbox”) until the recipient uses a mail client to retrieve, or delete the message. If the recipient chooses to forward or reply to the message, he becomes the sender and the process starts anew. If you really want to see all the details of how email systems are put together, this article has a good explanation of all the pieces.

Basics of mail transfer. Network connections are shown in blue. The mail store ("mailbox") is shown in green.

The email infrastructure on the web is old, dating to the early 1980s, when computer networks were rare, email was a novelty, and computer security minimal. What security infrastructure there is in modern email systems is generally in the form of “add-ons” to the mail clients, to include encryption and virus/spam checking. Thus, a sender can encrypt the message (but not the recipient and other “envelope” details), hand it off to the server, and let it travel to the recipient’s email server as a sealed box until decrypted by the recipient, with a password or other form of authentication. In reality, the majority of email is unencrypted, and most users don’t know how to use the encryption features in their mail readers, if present. Further, existing Internet protocols (IPv4 for those of you with propeller beanies) have no built-in encryption. Thus, the entire system is built on sending email “in the clear.” Anyone with access to the network connections can easily read your email as it goes by for the majority of systems. The only thing preventing others from reading your email from the mail store on the receiving server is the strength of the password mechanism.

In other words: it’s not terribly secure in most environments. The newest Internet protocols (IPv6, again for your nerdniks) will make encryption standard for all transmissions (securing the wires, effectively), but, despite lots of pressure from a declining pool of available network addresses, is still a ways away from full deployment. Even then, people don’t like entering passwords or using biometric cards or similar devices regularly, so the system remains vulnerable to unauthorized or unexpected access simply by using a computer that is still “logged in” or has a saved password that automates the process of logging in (i.e., without ever prompting the user, who might not be the actual owner of the email store).

The second question that comes up is: Who owns it? Well, this is thornier. In general, companies employ a simple axiom: corporate business stays on corporate systems. Thus, corporate employees may not store corporate (or customer) data on personally owned systems. Corporate employees use corporate email addresses to transact corporate business (@bigcompany.com), never using a jimbob@yahoo.cxm even if it’s more convenient. Most corporate IT policies also indicate that employees have no expectation of privacy with regard to electronic communication (e.g., email, or instant messaging, if offered) conducted with company systems. Using company systems for personal business is usually discouraged, if not prohibited outright. Additionally, the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, which is applicable to publicly held corporations, mandates an extensive retention period for electronic communications.

Violation of these policies in a large company can lead to governmental fines or other penalties and can even lead to termination of employment for individuals.

Company ownership of these communications facilitates the handing-off of critical activities in the event that an employee is incapacitated, dies, or leaves the company unexpectedly. Previous discussions are then easily transferred from the old person to the new by system administrators. Company operations are allowed to continue with fewer disruptions.

So, in a secular environment, the company owns the email, the chats, the calendars, and so on, because those things are all related to transacting company business, even if aspects of it are confidential or proprietary. These communications are seen as the property of the company because they represent work undertaken on the  company’s behalf as a result of the employer-employee relationship.

Note that the notion of emails being “on” a computer is an obsolete one, particularly with the increasing use of webmail (i.e., reading email using a web browser) from services like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and even the Microsoft Exchange/Outlook web interface and smart phones such as the iPhone or BlackBerry. In these cases, the mail is never really “on” the computer used to read the message, in that that computer is only displaying the message without storing it on the device. The message is kept in the mail store. For this reason, many companies will permit a company-provided web interface to be used to read company email, as perhaps the only weak exception to the “company data stays on company systems” rule, since nothing is actually “resident” on the local system.

But in the Church, we have been operating with a different standard. It is by far the norm that every clergyman and church worker has a private email address used to conduct Church-related business. (This is still true when a church-specific email address such as frjohn@somechurch.com simply forwards to a Gmail account, as the mail store is not owned by or contractually provided to the church.) Thus the messages related to the operations of the diocese or parish are diffuse – stored and transmitted on a mix of systems determined, in most cases, by the convenience of the person choosing the email address. Church communications are rarely stored on Church-owned systems, and, as often as not, are entrusted to “free” providers elsewhere.

This is problematic at a couple of levels. First, no one generally knows who has actual custody of the communication. Who is responsible for Gmail, or Yahoo Mail, etc? Are they honest? Have they been background-checked? Is the mail encrypted within the message store? (If not, system intruders can steal it. Many readers have been contacted by companies who have recently seen their email lists compromised in just this fashion. Those lists provide half the information needed to steal from the mail store.) These questions are why companies either host email internally with trusted employees running things or use other companies that provide security protections within the contractual terms of service.

Secondly, the confidentiality of the data is by no means guaranteed. (Encryption would help, but, as mentioned already, few messages are encrypted.) Gmail, in fact, is rather explicit that your email messages will be scanned for keywords that can then be used to present advertising to you. Innocuous? Maybe. But what if someone gets the idea to look for other things, or specific name and email addresses, and to perform specific actions (like forwarding it to another website’s owner) on that basis. How would you ever know?

Third, there is no clear idea of “ownership” of the communications. This is made abundantly clear in the current mess. If a diocesan chancellor or treasurer conducts diocesan business via a Gmail account, is that his personal communication, or does it belong to the diocese? If it’s sensitive information (perhaps relating to pastoral matters), what steps have we taken to safeguard that sensitivity and who is responsible for protecting it? Again: who owns that communication: the parish, the account holder, or the original sender? If a diocesan officer uses a private account to conduct both personal and diocesan business, how does one differentiate church communications from private ones without reading the messages? (As noted previously, use of company systems for personal business is generally discouraged, if not prohibited entirely by larger companies in the secular world.)

Fourth, how are transitions to be handled, especially if they are unexpected? Electronic communications, particularly email, provide a lot of documentation about current planning and policy. If the person responsible for these activities leaves or dies, how is his successor to continue the work without them? For transitions that result in any animosity (such as the forced removal of an officer), how is it possible to secure this critical information against malicious destruction or theft intended to thwart future work? Within the OCA, remember that Kondratick removed boxes of documents from the OCA Chancery following his suspension as chancellor. In a more email-centric culture, mailboxes are just as vital.

Fifth, there is no expectation of recovery in the event of loss. If a free system such as Gmail is used, there are usually no guarantees at all regarding recoverability of emails in the event the mail store is compromised or destroyed. (See paragraphs 14 and 15 in the Google Terms of Service.) The maintenance of the confidentiality of passwords is the sole responsibility of the account owner (Section 6.1 of the preceding link: “You agree and understand that you are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of passwords associated with any account you use to access the Services.”) Gmail offers no provision to recover communications deleted from an unauthorized access. The other free providers, including Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, AOL, etc., have similar if not identical provisions.

Sixth, there is no assurance that deleted communications are deleted permanently and from all archives. There is no way for a user to know whether digital copies of emails are retained anywhere else. This has significant ramifications for anyone who has conducted extremely sensitive or regrettable exchanges using an email account from a free provider.

None of these questions and concerns has an easy answer, but they do, I think, point to the need for increased use of parish- or diocese-owned systems for handling Church-related communication, if only to provide necessary guarantees of privacy of email conversations and a clear record of “ownership” of them.)

More on this soon. Your comments are encouraged.

I start today’s brief post with a couple of Scripture passages that pertain to our current situation in the OCA. Please read them now, rather than skipping over them to get to my comments below. If you’re not reading the Scriptures regularly, you’ve got no business even thinking about this situation.

And the Lord passed by before [Moses], and proclaimed, “he Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.” -Exodus 34:6-7

I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  –Ephesians 4:1-3

Most of the readers here already know of the situation that has developed between Metropolitan Jonah, the Holy Synod, and the Metropolitan Council. Like me, most readers know little beyond what has been produced by two web sites and a couple of less-than-edifying mailing lists.

The basic trajectory was an internal dispute within the Holy Synod, followed by a leak by a former bishop with less than honorable intentions, a lot of other chatter and documents, and, in the end, the Metropolitan himself postponing the spring meetings of both the Holy Synod and the Metropolitan Council. Since that time, the Holy Synod has been quiet, as has the Metropolitan Council. Perhaps they’re all talking privately, but that’s generally no problem (absent a legal gag order).

Nonetheless, the continuing spitefulness from the retired bishop in a public forum, the ongoing conjectures and accusations from a site claiming to be committed to the truth, resolutions from a diocesan council, more negative gossip in the various mailing lists and discussion fora, has served only to sow discord and distrust in many corners of the Orthodox Church in America.

This discord is already having tragic consequences. The distrust is daily making it more difficult for our leaders – the bishops of the Holy Synod, the esteemed members of the Metropolitan Council, the officers and administrators in Syosset – to be reconciled. His Beatitude talked pointedly about the role of discord prior to his selection as Metropolitan: “If we can build that community of love and respect, seeing how our passions have distracted us from that living communion with God, have turned us against one another, and have created all sorts of hostility between–well, we just saw it, between the body of the All-American Council and the Synod of the Bishops. … Between the Synod of the Bishops and the Metropolitan Council–talk about a sick dysfunctional situation!”

Indeed. We are quickly moving to a position where each of us will be at each other’s throats, every part of it built on suspicion, accusation, and, saddest of all, falsehood. Such would be a position that makes reconciliation and resolution nearly impossible. (Of course, all is possible with the Holy Spirit, but human freedom can and does interfere.)

In spite of the difficulties within the Holy Synod, our bishops appear more united, and more cohesive, than they have been in decades. But, if this continues, we can expect a return to the old order of parochialism, meanness, and dysfunction. We can expect a return of the manipulators and thieves who stand ready to gorge themselves on money and sin amid the chaos. They will not be easily pushed out, if the last go-round was any indication. Once again, our own children will grow up distrustful of Christ’s own Church, and even more individuals – men, women, boys, girls, those enslaved to their passions, those who’ve never known a god willing to take on human flesh – will not hear the Gospel. Our sins will be visited upon our children, and our children’s children.

Lent is half over. We have spent these preceding weeks listening to all of this, distracting ourselves from holy things in favor of the trashy fare of the checkout lane.  It’s time for us to let our leaders pray (and even repent) rather than respond to the darts being hurled at them. It’s time for us to pray ourselves. I encourage each of us to add twelve metanias (prostrations) and accompanying prayers to our prayer rule for each time we think on this affair in the course of the day, simply to ensure that prayer is part of our deliberations.

I have written this in haste, and I ask your forgiveness for editorial sins and for any offense it causes. Kyrie eleison.