The Society for Orthodox Christian History in the Americas
Posts tagged 1909
Irvine transferred to St. Raphael’s jurisdiction
2 years ago
This signature may belong to St. Alexander Hotovitzky.
The following letter was found in Ingram N.W. Irvine’s file in the OCA Archives in Syosset, New York. The letter is undated (the pre-printed date line “190_” does not have a specific year) and appears under the letterhead of the North American Ecclesiastical Consistory, 15 East 97th Street, New York, N.Y. It is handwritten and appears to be a draft of a letter that was sent to Irvine notifying him of his transfer from the Archbishop Platon to Bishop (now Saint) Raphael. This letter was probably written by Fr. Alexander Hotovitsky. The signature is not very legible, but the first initial is clearly an “A.” The first four letters of the last name are almost certainly “Hoto” or “Hato” or “Hito.”
Dear Sir:
This is to inform you that by the order of His Grace Archbishop Platon of North America you are […] now transferred to the Orthodox Syrian Mission in Brooklyn, N.Y. to be under […] jurisdiction of Rt. Rev. Bishop Raphael and perform such missionary work […] as His Eminence Bishop Raphael would desire for you within his diocese with understanding that all your service in N.Y. St. Nicholas Cathedral since now shall be discontinued and your connection with […] Cathedral cease, your name having been taken away from the list of clergy of the Russian Cathedral.
Therefore you have to remove your mailing box, etc. to any other address you wish and to make all necessary changes in your cards, letterhead, […], etc. without fail.
As to details in connection with this order please apply to the Bishop Raphael […] has a copy of this […]
[signed] A. Hoto[vitsky?]
Irvine is listed among the Syrian Orthodox clergy in the (Episcopalian) American Church Almanac & Year Book for 1912. Thus, the letter can have been written no later than 1911, when the book was published. In addition, the OCA archives have a letter from Irvine to the North American Ecclesiastical Consistory dated May 25, 1909 in which he talks about the Holy Synod blessing him to establish an English-speaking chapel in New York. More importantly, the archives also include a letter dated just one day earlier (May 24) from the Coudert Brothers law firm to Archbishop Platon regarding a lawsuit against St. Nicholas (Russian) Cathedral. The dispute involved a transaction between Irvine and a printing company. The Cathedral had won, but the printers were appealing, In a postscript, there is the following: “We understood from Dr. Hotovitsky that he had gone over this matter fully with you and that you were fully advised of the situation.”
I don’t think the printing company dispute related above would have been sufficient to precipitate Irvine’s transfer out of the Russian jurisdiction, but it was probably one of several factors. (Notice how strongly the letter’s author emphasizes that Irvine’s connection with the Russian cathedral has “ceased.”)
Irvine was a forward-thinking visionary, and that fit in well when St. Tikhon was in charge. But St. Tikhon was replaced by Abp Platon in 1907, and… well, let’s just say that Platon was no Tikhon. Abp Platon was probably far less encouraging of Irvine’s English work, and far less patient with Irvine’s idiosyncracies. On the other hand, St. Raphael was much more in like with St. Tikhon’s mindset, and would have welcomed a talented priest like Irvine. (In fact, even before he joined the Syrian diocese, Irvine had been writing articles for St. Raphael’s Al Kalimat journal.)
UPDATE: Since this article was published, we have verified that the above letter was, in fact, written by St. Alexander Hotovitzky.
[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]
Today in history: the death of St. Alexis Toth
3 years ago
St. Alexis Toth
101 years ago today, May 7, 1909, Archimandrite Alexis Toth died in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Here is the obituary that ran in the evening newspaper, the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader:
Rt. Rev. Alexis G. Toth, pastor of St. Mary’s Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of North Main street, this city, died at 2 o’clock this afternoon from a complication of ailments. He was 66 years of age and was born in Hungary. He was educated in a Roman Catholic preparatory college, taking a degree in theology and concluded his studies in one of the universities of the Orthodox Church. He travelled extensively and was conversant with many languages. One branch of his family was Russian and that brought him into close communion with the adherents of the Orthodox Church of which Czar Nicholas, operating through the Holy Synod, is the acknowledged head. In concluding his studies he was in many of the European universities and enjoyed a personal acquaintance with the present emperor of Russia.
Father Toth at one time is said to have held a government position in Russia and was considered one of the most eminent men in the Orthodox church. With Archbishop Tichon, of New York, he was one of the foremost men in the American branch of that church.
Some years ago he received a gold ecclesiastical crown from the Czar, which was brought here by a special emissary. It was a substantial token of the esteem in which he was held by the governing powers in Russia. He kept the crown in a safe at his residence here, as well as other valuable presents from high churchmen in Europe, and several autograph letters from the Czar. An altar covering used in St. Mary’s church on special feast days was of rich gold embroidery, valued at $5,000, and a present to Father Toth from the sisters of one of the large convents of Russia.
Father Toth was of princely bearing, not much in sympathy with democratic institutions, but very deferential to the customs of the people here. He was a rigid disciplinarian but very popular among the members of his congregation here. His death will be a great surprise. He was ill about five months, but because of his somewhat secluded position few outside the members of his congregation knew of his indisposition. He has relatives in Dakota and Minnesota. Though the rules of his church permitted him to marry he believed priests should remain single and did not avail himself of the marital concession. The remains will be in state at the church here and the funeral services will likely be conducted by Archbishop Tichon of New York.
There are several odd things about this obituary. Most obviously, it doesn’t say a word about St. Alexis’ actual conversion to Orthodoxy. Today, of course, he is most famous for his conflict with the Roman Catholic Archbishop John Ireland, but the Wilkes-Barre paper seems to have been unaware of this. The paper was also unaware of the fact that St. Alexis was married, while still an Eastern Rite Catholic priest, but that his wife died before he came to America. Finally, the reporter mistakenly thought that St. Tikhon was still the Russian Archbishop of North America, but by 1909, that position was held by Abp Platon Rozhdestvensky.
Despite the errors, I wanted to reprint this obituary in part because it was the first notice of St. Alexis’ death, published just hours after his repose.
[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]
The Archbishop Arseny Trial Transcript
3 years ago
by Matthew Namee
in Saints
Last week, Fr. Oliver Herbel wrote a series of articles on the 1909 criminal libel trial involving Archimandrite (later Archbishop) Arseny Chagovtsov, who is currently being considered for canonization by the OCA. Fr. Oliver’s summary may be found at the following links:
- Part 1 – Introduction
- Part 2 – the Prosecution
- Part 3 – the Defense begins
- Part 4 – the Defense concludes
- Part 5 – Addendum
Keep in mind, Arseny was not the one on trial. The defendants were in charge of Svoboda, a Uniate (Greek Catholic) journal which had accused Arseny of rape. The trial focused on whether the defendants had committed criminal libel. As with most libel suits, this led to a serious scrutiny of Arseny himself, since, if he was guilty of rape, the defendants could not be guilty of libel. But, to keep things straight, remember that the prosecutor is pro-Arseny, and the defense is pro-Svoboda.
If you haven’t done so already, I would strongly encourage you to read Fr. Oliver’s summary articles before digging into the whole trial transcript. Also, please note Fr. Oliver’s words from his fourth article: “ The transcript itself ends with an adjournment due to the illness of juror number six. The court adjourns for a week and then there is nothing.” This is very strange, and we continue to investigate the whole affair. But, in the interests of transparency and to allow the public to come to its own conclusions, we are making the source documents available to all, immediately.
The transcript is very large, and we have broken it into six parts to make for more convenient downloading. Click on the following links to download the transcript:
And finally, to give credit where it is due, Fr. Oliver is the one who tracked down the transcript. He sent a hard copy to my office, where we had it digitized and then sent to Fr. Andrew Damick, who uploaded it to OrthodoxHistory.org. It was a team effort, but in the end, it was Fr. Oliver’s research that got this thing done.
[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]
Archbishop Arseny Post 3: Clarifications and the Defense Begins its Case
3 years ago
Before I continue, I want to add a couple of words of clarification from the last post:
First, I suggested that relative to the documents the canonization committee claims it has, Arseny perjured himself. Here is how I came to that conclusion. The documents the canonization committee says it has from Kharkov would show that a son was born to the Chagovtsov family, after the first year of marriage, apparently. Fr. Andrew Morbey, in a comment on Frontier Orthodoxy, has stated that Archbisop Arseny’s wife died in childbirth, which may well be true, but it seems it would have been with their second child, who would have also died in the process unless we simply have no records of a second son/child. I base this on the online sources that say his wife died in the 1890s. Now, if that is true, then the following testimony seems very odd:
Smitkin: Were you a married man in Russia?
A: Yes.
S: Had children, didn’t you?
A: No.
[. . . other testimony, which, by the way, is fairly hard-hitting--including questioning about a lady who lived with him in New York; the judge upheld Garvan's objection, noting that Archimandrite Arseny's character was not on trial . . .]
S: How long had you lived in Kharkov?
A: Not in Kharkov, near Kharkov.
S: Well, near that place, how long had you lived there?
A: About thirteen years.
S: Didn’t your wife give birth to a son to you?
A: No.
[This may be found on pp. 45-46.]
Now, I am accepting the canonization committee’s evidence and the sources that give her death as the 1890s (though really, she could have died earlier and we’d have the same likelihood of perjury). If I am wrong in accepting the committee’s claim to documentation, then perhaps there is no perjury. Perhaps Dionysius is not really +Arseny’s son (i.e., his wife had an affair and answering “no” to a question that includes the phrase “to you” avoids perjury). Or, perhaps Dionysius is a son to +Arseny through other means (an affair with another woman or adoption, though the adoption option would seem to make the first denial of any children an example of perjury). I realize some might want to claim something was lost in translation or that Arseny misunderstood the question, but I find that misguided and, frankly, incorrect. Fr. Arseny comprehended the Russian translator well enough to clarify details and respond in a way that suggests good communication. The question is whether the documentation from the canonization committee is as solid as it claims. If it is, then relative to that documentation, I think there is perjury. If that documentation is wrong or has been misunderstood, then any of the other scenarios I mentioned could be correct, but none of them would be entirely exonerating of Archbishop Arseny either.
Second, when I mentioned Mary Krinitsky appearing nervous or confused, that is a judgment call I am making on the basis of the readings and exchanges and one I am making despite the clear translation difficulties. Her native Carpatho-Rusyn caused difficulty for the Russian translator and juror nine, the Pole, gave it his best shot in order to help.
Third, I wish to apologize to all the lawyers out there who want a sense for the momentum and flow of the trial, a better sense for what’s being objected to and how objections are handled, what kinds of questions are asked, etc. That is not the kind of analysis I am providing here. The trial transcript will be up on Monday, so any and all legally trained experts will be able to read the transcript for themselves at that time. In the meantime, know that my analysis is one that is simply looking for consistencies and inconsistencies within the narratives given and arguments made.
Now, I turn to the defense’s case. Due to its length, I’m going to divide it into two, maybe three parts. I ask that the readers forgive me for stringing this out. My intent is not to keep everyone hanging, but rather to keep the posts both an easily typable and readable length. The defense opened its case on page 175. Smitkin asked that the charges be dropped due to the state’s inability to make a strong enough case, but the court overruled and he continued on.
The first witness the defense called was Harry Needle, the notary public who validated the first affidavit that Mary Krinitsky had signed, naming Archimandrite Arseny as the biological father. Needle claimed Mary Krinitsky had been informed of the contents of the affidavit she signed (181) and that he knew nothing of the alleged offer of marriage and/or money to Mary Krinitsky in return for signing the affidavit (182). Furthermore, the affidavit stated that Archimandrite Arseny and Yatsko Adamiak threatened her and Mr. Needle, who testified to being able to speak both Russian and Carpatho-Rusyn, said Mary Krinitsky had stated the contents of the affidavit to him and she was fully aware of what it said (191-95). We also learned during this time that Hrycko Chaly was instrumental in getting Mary Krinitsky to sign an affidavit.
Mitrofan Biluszenko was called next. Biluszenko testified that Mary Krinitsky had approached his wife, hoping they might adopt the boy (211). This contradicted Krinitsky’s own testimony, for she had said that although she knew Biluszenko, she had not spoken to him. Biluszenko describes the incident of the rape and Krinitsky’s subsequent stay at the monastery until she began to show (215). He claimed that Krinitsky told this to him. He also claimed that Krinitsky told him she had been “paid off” and told to leave (215, 220). In cross examination, Garvan tied to show that Biluszenko had not obtained a painting job/contract for the monastery and was upset at Arseny and only testifying out of revenge, but Biluszenko denied such an accusation (denying both the attempt to obtain the job and that he was out for revenge). A week or two before the Svoboda article came out, Biluszenko came home to find Hrycko Chaly and Mary Krinitsky at his house along with Biluszenko’s wife and Eugene Wasylenko.
Bishop Soter Ortinsky was called as a character witness for the defendants. Ortinksy frustrated Garvan because Garvan asked whether any decent Christian man would write such an article as appeared in Svoboda. Ortinksy (240) informed Garvan that if the accusation was false, no, but if true, then it would depend on the laws of the country and what was allowable. Garvan was upset, likely seeing this as an evasive answer. Ortinksy also noted, in response to questioning by Smitkin, that he ignores the bad press he receives (244-45) rather than pursuing libel suits.
Fr. Nicholas Pidmorecki and Fr. Demetrius Dobrotwor, Greek Catholic priests were also called as character witnesses. During cross examination, Garvan asked Dobrotwor whether it was appropriate to publish an article sent into a paper with only an unsigned letter. Smitkin then objected and held up the very letter, noting it was signed. Thedosius Labowky was then called as an expert witness to verify the letter’s contents (as it was in “the Ruthenian language”).
Following that, Eugene Wasylenko, who had been at Biluszenko’s house, was called to the stand. Wasylenko gives the same recounting of Mary Krinitsky’s tale that Biluszenko had given, noting the buggy was the “first time” (261). He further claimed there had been no one in Mayfield by the name of “Andrew Pretash” (265) and that Mary Krinitsky had said she felt “threatened” by Arseny (270). Like Biluszenko, Wasylenko denied to Garvan that he had ever attempted to obtain work at the monastery.
The next witness to take the stand is Hrycko Chaly and it is with him that I shall pick up in post four. At this point, the defense as started to muster a case against the prosecution’s. Some headway has been made, as there is a notary public (Harry Needle) who testified to the affidavit that lies behind the Svoboda article and Biluszenko and Wasylenko now give the jury a testimony that contradicts Mary Krinitsky and offers a reason she may have changed her mind and lied (she had been threatened). This is becoming a he said/she said affair with an affidavit to back up the allegedly libelous article. The defense is not done yet, however.
Fr. Oliver Herbel, Executive Director
[This post is cross posted at http://frontierorthodoxy.wordpress.com]
The Criminal Libel Trial and Archbishop Arseny, Part 2
3 years ago
Well, this project has become a little lengthier than I intended, so the number of postings may be increasing. I do sincerely apologize for this. I simply did not want to throw together too long of a post. In this post, I am going to provide an analysis of the main components of the prosecution’s case, minus the cross examinations of the defense witnesses. That will be discussed in the next post, which will continue with the defense’s case. I will note some relevant cross examination by Smitkin, the defense attorney in this post here.
As mentioned in the last post, the criminal libel charge was pressed because of an article that appeared in Svoboda. Those interested in the original article may look here (p. 5, but half of the first column did not get copied–blame Svoboda, not me):
http://www.svoboda-news.com/arxiv/pdf/1908/Svoboda-1908-26.pdf
Likely, I’ll request microfilm for the article. In the meantime, this online version is the best we have. The article is translated in the trial transcript and the translations that were read were by St. (Fr.) Alexander Hotovitsky (in the transcript, it appears to be misspelled as “Holovitsky”).
What I need to make clear from the outset is that the trial I am analyzing is a criminal trial. The defendants are Anthony Curkowskyz (the editor of Svoboda and Konstantine Kirczow (who was in charge of many of the operations). A civil suit had also been filed by Archimandrite Arseny personally (for $25,000 in damages), with them as the defendants together with the Little Russian National Union, but that is not the trial being discussed here. I am providing an analysis of the criminal trial that proceeded because Arseny wished to have criminal charges pressed against Curkowskyz and Kirczow personally.
Now, as I had mentioned in the last posting, the trial centered on whether Archimandrite Arseny had sexually forced himself on Mary Krinitsky, during an evening buggy ride of several miles from Simpson, PA, to St. Tikhon’s Seminary. Also relevant is whether Arseny continued the abuse for a few months longer, before Mary obtained work elsewhere under the employ of Mr. Mendelson.
What the prosecution needed to do was prove that the accusation in Svoboda was criminally libelous. I am not a legal historian, so I do not presently know what the New York law on libel was at the time. I know that today, libel is extremely hard to prosecute and many states do not even have criminal libel laws on their books.
We also should note at the outset that there are two important but different issues that concern us today: the trial’s focus, which is whether Kircowz and Curkowskyz were guilty of criminal libel and whether Archbishop Arseny is worthy of canonization. These are two separate issues, so I beg the reader’s indulgence as I try to navigate the trial with these two distinct concerns in mind.
At the very beginning of the trial, the defense attorney, one L.A. Smitkin, argued that the case ought to be delayed until after the civil case had been decided, lest the criminal court appear to be aiding the plaintiff in that suit. Francis Patrick Garvan, the assistant DA (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Patrick_Garvan) said he had seen no such decision ever made in his eleven years prosecuting cases and the court (Judge Joseph F. Mulqueen) stated that Smitkin’s motion would be upheld only if “public peace” were being threatened by doing so. Therefore, the trial continued.
Now, let me state from the outset that this opening sets the tone for what one would read the rest of the way through. Smitkin makes numerous objections and takes numerous exceptions to them being overruled. Yes, Garvan is overruled at times, too, but not nearly as many times as Smitkin. Really, I wouldn’t be surprised if the ratio were 15:1, but I am digressing into the sort of area that might be nice for the next post concerning the “lighter side” of the case.
As is normal practice, the prosecution produces its witnesses first. The testimonies here are significant. The witnesses include Fr. Arseny, Mary Krinitsky, and Edward A. Delaney, Archimandrite Arseny’s lawyer from Pennsylvania. The case, by the way, was held in NY because that’s where Svoboda’s office was. Delaney testified that he tried to get a retraction from Svoboda but it was to no avail. He claims not to have been told that Svoboda had printed the article based on an affidavit from Mary Krinitsky herself. Interestingly, Delaney did claim that the reason he tried to obtain the retraction was “so the priest could go back to his parish at Mayfield” (p.35). In other words, the allegation had been taken so seriously that Metropolitan Platon had removed Fr. Arseny from the parish.
When Archimandrite Arseny took the stand, he stated that Mary Krinitsky worked at the orphanage from May until November of 1906, at which point she went to work for Mr. Samuel Mendelson. In both places, she worked as a “domestic,” i.e. low wage earning servant-lady. He also stated that Mary was in Simpson during the cemetery service on July 29, 1906, where she was working for Fr. Alexi Vogolovsky. He also said he gave her a ride from the cemetery to St. Tikhon’s monastery (estimated at about seven miles) (p.43). He also denied having kicked Mary out of the monastery and denied having refused her the opportunity to place her child in the orphanage later the following June (June 4th of 1907).
Under cross-examination, Smitkin tried to implicate Fr. Arseny in something else that happened in Russia, but Archimandrite Arseny side steps it. An interesting thing to note, however, is Arseny’s claim that he did not have any children while in Russia (prior to his wife’s death). He even specifically denied having a son pp. 45-46).
The denial of any children, especially a son, is an important point to note because according to the canonization committee’s life of Archbishop Arseny, there was a son from Arseny’s area of Russia (Kharkov) who died in 1937. Furthermore, the committee’s life refers to documentation received from Metropolitan Nikodim that claims a son was born to Fr. Arseny and his wife after the first year of marriage. In addition to the life, one may go here:
Therefore, relative to the documentation that would support the birth of the son, Archimandrite Arseny perjured himself. It is natural to ask why, but I presently do not know why he perjured himself.
On page 54, Archimandrite Arseny seemed to fudge on the degree to which he was aware of the status of his civil suit against the defendants. Smitkin was also able to introduce as evidence a statement from the filing of that civil suit in which Archimandrite Arseny claimed he was forced to resign as rector of the parish in Mayfield and withdraw to St. Tikhon’s monastery. Arseny tried to clarify that the way it had been translated to him was that if he was guilty, he was not fit to occupy any position in the Church. Whether Archimandrite Arseny misunderstood, lied on the stand (again?), or just had bad legal counsel on this particular point is impossible to tell.
Mary Krinitsky took the stand for the prosecution and supported Archimandrite Arseny’s testimony. In fact, she went so far as to name “Andrew Pretash” as the father of her child. Ms. Krinitsky claimed Archimandrite Arseny did not even touch her (p.73) and that the defendants tricked her into signing an affidavit claiming Arseny was the father by offering her either ten thousand dollars from one and marriage from the other (p.77). A few sentences later, however, she claimed the defendants were not present when she was tricked by false offers of money and marriage (p.78). The judge then threw out her claim that the defendants had said as much. She then claimed she didn’t know what she was signing, only that she was told to sign something that was “the truth” (p. 81).
In general, Mary Krinitsky comes across as nervous, scared, intimidated, and/or confused. She couldn’t even remember when her own son died, and the child did die (p.89). He lived fourteen to sixteen months. The birth certificate had Krinitsky as the surname, not Pretash (92). She also was not able to remember the name of the priest whose wife she worked for in Simpson during the service at the cemetery. Finally, we learn that one Hrycko Chaly brought her to a notary to sign the affidavit, not the defendants, and that the defendants did not make the false promises stated earlier (p.137). As a related side-note, reading her testimony is painfully slow because translation was a serious issue. She spoke Carpatho-Rusyn. One juror (number nine) could speak Polish and he conversed with her as did the the Russian translator for the court.
Samuel Mendelson was also a witness for the people and he claimed (156-7) that he filed a warrant for Andrew Pretash, after talking to Mary Krinitsky (who was working for him). Judge Mulqueen allowed this to be entered in, though he was concerned for hearsay because this statement was not made in the presence of the defendants. Mendelson was able to state that Mary Krinitsky signed an affidavit so that he (Mendelson) could follow through on procuring a warrant for Andrew Pretash (169). Mendelson’s description of this event is that Yatsko Adamiak, an assistant to Archimandrite Arseny, and Archimandrite Arseny himself paid Mendelson an unannounced visit. They asked to see Mary. Samuel Mendelson called her into the room and they confronted her with the article. She then denied that it was true and the affidavit to that effect was drawn up. This became the second affidavit Mary Krinitsky had signed and one that substantiated her testimony within court.
To summarize:
In Archimandrite Arseny’s favor, both he and Mary Krinitsky deny that the event ever occurred. Assistant DA Garvan is also able to show that although Svoboda might have had an affidavit (Garvan avoids getting into this), Mary Krinitsky signed a subsequent affidavit in which she claimed one Andrew Pretash was the father of the child and had abandoned his legal responsibilities and fled the town (allegedly going to Ohio somewhere).
Relative to the documentation given to the canonization committee from Metropolitan Nikodim, Archimandrite Arseny perjured himself. Smitkin must have known that many (not on the jury) would have believed Archimandrite Arseny had lied and likely Smitkin believed Arseny lied as well. Because Smitkin had no document to contradict Arseny’s testimony, however, the perjury has remained unknown. Overall, things look to be in favor of the DA office. There are cracks in the DA’s case, of course.
Mary Krinitsky was nervous and/or confused. It may well be that she was not the brightest woman and a Carpatho-Rusyn peasant girl could have easily found her role in the American court system intimidating. Another reason for finding the situation intimidating will be raised by the defense’s case shortly. She also does not help her credibility by not being able to say when her son died and not remembering whose house she was working in during the cemetery service event in Simpson. Although it could be a translation problem or simply her being nervous or perhaps a little mentally deficient, it could also be the sign of a witness trying to remember all of the right details of a scripted testimony. Mary claimed, however, that Mendelson never once mentioned the court case or why she was traveling to New York with him. Do we believe her? It is hard for me to imagine he never once mentioned the case and that Mary had no idea why she was going to New York, but that is what the testimony says.
At this point in the trial, what probably is working the most against Arseny in addition to the question of witness credibility (though again, remember, no one at the trial would have known Archimandrite Arseny almost certainly perjured himself) is the time line of events. Mary Krinitsky leaves the monastery at what would have been just after her first trimester had passed. Metropolitan Platon removed Archimandrite Arseny from the Mayfield parish just after the newspaper article went public and Archimandrite Arseny’s timing of his trip to Russia also looks suspicious (February to April, 1907) and when he returns, he is assigned to Canada. None of that proves guilt and the DA’s office has two strong collaborating witnesses in Arseny and Mary but the time line might look a little suspicious to some readers.
Is this enough to demonstrate criminal libel beyond a reasonable doubt? We shall see. In the next posting, I will analyze the defense’s case.
Fr. Oliver Herbel, Executive Director
[This post is cross posted on http://frontierorthodoxy.wordpress.com]
