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| St. Ignatius Seminary, ELDONA, has one student - Heimbigner's son-in-law. |
From Eric Stefanski, former UOJ activist, now an ELDONA apologist. "Nothing to see here, move on."
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| Eric Stefanski is the Mouth of Heiser, who hides behind his attack-Yorkies. |
Stefanski:
It’s been an interesting week.
Over the weekend, a pastor took the report of an individual who didn’t understand answers he was given (and who asked questions with an evil implication in the first place) and said pastor twisted it up further and puked it out in a fit of self-promotion on Facebook and on his blog.
GJ - Yes, the spirit of ELDONA. They treat a future seminarian (the first non-relative) at St. Ignatius, enrollment one - Heimbigner's son-in-law) like dirt and add to their pile. "Evil inclination"? - please review your Small Catechism, Eric.
By the way, I wrote to Rydecki, which Eric failed to mention. Rydecki played dumb then began reciting the same charges - such as the post from 8 years ago. It sounded like an echo from Heiser.
I responded to what was posted with what I thought would be my first and last word on the subject, but…that response has since vanished from Facebook.
GJ - Eric, I am copying this one verbatim. You should thank me.
(Please note: I am *not* accusing that pastor of being a McCainanite and having deleted my response; I saw it posted properly on his wall, but it no longer shows up, and that may purely be a Facebook thing, not an intentional deletion on his part.)
GJ - I thought you were insulting your own ELDONA member, Eric, so I erased it as a favor to you. But since you want to compound your errors...
Because of mutual friends (and the general public), I will now post the essence of my response for those who might wonder at what happened.
An individual came to the annual “theological conference and business meeting” (i.e., colloquium and synod) of our diocese. He was a guest who was a potential seminary student. Having received certain books from the pastor with the blog, he set them out for others along with the books that are published by our bishop, several of which were written or translated by the pastors of the diocese. He did not ask permission, he just did it.
GJ - Eric, sweetheart. Please. He sent books for free around your little cult. He sent emails about posts he liked from this blog. He sent early copies of The Faith of Jesus. No one, including your infallible bishop, the Right Reverend James Heiser, STM, objected. Not one word. Not only that, I was in communication with Rydecki about this book and others.
After he was told that this was not the proper way to do things—that even a member of the diocese who had a self-published book asked permission before putting his book out for others—he took that as a condemnation of the blogging pastor and later that day asked again and again why there was tension between the diocese and said pastor or animosity against him. EVERY TIME he was answered that such was *not* the problem, but his own conduct was; whatever quirks noted in that pastor were excused as coming from years of being betrayed. Every member of the diocese present spoke well of him.
GJ - Eric, your deceit is overflowing. Oncken was quite the bully. You guys are so used to cult behavior you don't even recognize it. Eric, you said my style was "drive-by shooting."
"Every member" does not include Jim Heiser, who used such terms as crazy, liar, violator of copyright laws, etc. And he was furious over the post from 8 years ago. Do you guys need Midol?
"Every member" does not include Jim Heiser, who used such terms as crazy, liar, violator of copyright laws, etc. And he was furious over the post from 8 years ago. Do you guys need Midol?
You also repeated his demand that the post be removed, when you were acting up on FB the first time.
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| ELDONA spokesperson |
FULL DISCLOSURE: Personally, I said publicly over ten years ago that I thought this pastor was crazy and should simply be disregarded. I have come to conclude that he is abrasive online, with a ‘nuke first’ practice, largely because he has so often *been* disregarded, in spite of his usually being right on doctrinal questions. Crazy or not, bad attitude or not, right is right; doctrine must not depend upon the man, but only upon God’s Word…otherwise we’d all be sunk, anyway.
GJ - What a little sissy you are Eric, tossing your little insults about your little opinions in your little cult, but without the guts to name the person you are lobbing your stinkbombs at.
That said, this blogger is *not* a pastor in our diocese and should not be made to look like he is—that's neither fair to him, nor to us, nor to the world in general: discretion and courtesy are to be exercised so that existing lines are not blurred. Those lines exist for reasons, and if God so wills, we would not blur them, but declare them erased if fellowship were recognized to exist between us. That is not, however, the case, and it was not a guest's place to distribute materials without permission in what was, after all, both an official and public meeting of our fellowship. (Whether he acquired the books on his own for distribution or was given them by their author/publisher—the blogging pastor—is something I don't know.)
GJ - Eric, you continue to hide the reality of Heiser's hissy-fits. Too bad he controls your bad behavior so that you announce your extreme rudeness with so much sanctimony that your Father Below weeps for joy.
That’s all longer than my FB response was, but necessary background and shorter than his blog post (I think…I’m not going to go count words, though…it's shorter than the sudden wave of posts he's released to condemn us since then). Simply put, in response to what he posted:
1) The book situation wasn't what he said/was told;
GJ - You have hidden the facts in your cover story, Eric.
2) *No one* said he was a false teacher because he wasn't in the diocese;
GJ - But they did, not that I care.
3) When this pastor's misguided correspondent tried to posit that we were at odds with him we all spoke well of him, yet when this blogger received info from a single witness who demonstrated a lack of comprehension, his first reaction was to exercise the thermonuclear option against the diocese;
GJ - I know you and the other crypto-papists made no effort to contact your own member. Among so many ill-mannered clergy, you may not realize how thoughtless and insulting you are. So I will gladly tell you.
4) The pastor-blogger's doing this does more damage to him and, worse, the uncomprehending individual than to us. His continued vilification of our diocese and bishop simply makes him look worse, as he proceeds to put the absolute worst construction on all things and take any previous conversation or event now as an excuse to promote himself and degrade others.
GJ - That sounds like the Love-Letter Circuit Pastor in WELS, who told me he was concerned for me when I said he had a duty to report. Tears are dripping down - again - tears of laughter at your hollow hallowed language, Eric.
I concluded by responding to another of his blog posts, 1) that I had no problem with his condemnation (a decade or so ago) of my teaching what I learned of “Objective Justification” at Ft. Wayne, since I *was* actually teaching error by teaching that, but 2) that his ridiculous posts about the Rev. Dr. Kent Heimbigner getting his doctorate from Baylor (calling him a “Baptist theologian”) and about the diocese heading East were demonstrably wrong from day one and should be withdrawn, along with the current one.
GJ - Many readers responded to me that they found ELDONA's attitudes strange, toxic, and utterly humorless. They wondered about the fragile nerves of those who needed posts removed from 7 and 8 years ago.
I didn’t mention his post wondering what we would talk about since Dave Benke is no longer an issue, etc., and his followups today trying to link us to liberal ecumenism because we retain the historic vestments, his quoting of a Roman catholic blog that wrongly says that “Objective Justification” was the “petty” reason the diocese was formed, and so on, are simply too stupid to waste comments on—other than to say, “You know you are wrong in regard to both—and to several other things just mentioned—and your deceitful conduct is shameful. Your accusations of duplicity and betrayal must have been written while you were looking into a mirror.
GJ - I copied what was on the Net. That is called research. Try doing some of it.
“Now, this will be my first, last, only statement on this. If anyone cares to make a distasteful comment, I *will* delete it, because I'm not going to waste my life debating something that is undebatable. I was there; you weren’t. We sought to build you up, but you have not only tried to tear us down, you have massively impacted your correspondent’s life to his detriment.”
GJ - The indefectible ELDONA has spoken. We will all silence ourselves and step away, grateful to be in the presence of so much sanctimony, hypocrisy, and billowing smoke.
