The entire post by Fr. Gregory of Koinonia is here. I quote what I believe to be a rather meaty part of the article below.
...History to one side, I would take exception to what seems to me to be the faculty's condescending tone toward the OCA. This tone is much in evidence when they say that the Ecumenical Patriarchate has "exercised restraint and has not broken communion with this jurisdiction” (i.e., the OCA). These words and the use of scare quotes when referring to the OCA and its autocephaly does not suggest, to me at least, restraint but provocative spirit.
In the first place, whether a majority of the autocephalous Church do or do not accept the autocephaly of the OCA is not the point. Truth is not subject to a majority vote! If I may quibble here. If almost no one accepts the autocephaly has it then been accepted by the whole Church? If not, then a basic and much vaunted building block of the Church - asseveration of a thing because it has been accepted by the Church entire and not by a Universal jurisdictional fiat - would seem to be in question here.
Further, and at the risk of generating more heat then light, it seems that the Churches that do not accept the autocephaly of the OCA have a vested interest in not doing so. If the OCA's status is accepted, then they have find themselves with parishes and dioceses on the canonical territory of another Church. Put another way, if the OCA is canonical, then by their presence here Ecumenical Patriarchate et. al. are themselves up to charges that they have violated the canons and that it is the OCA that has "exercised restraint" by not breaking communion with these jurisdictions.
Stepping back a bit, and as I posted this on AOI, as long as the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese (with the consent and encouragement of the Ecumenical Throne) sees its primary mission as caring for the Greek community it is not fit for leadership here in America and pretending otherwise is a waste of resources and detrimental to our wtiness to the Gospel. I don't fault the Holy Cross faculty for defending the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Nor do I fault the clergy and faithful of the GOA for wanting to care for their own. Both of these are certainly worthy goals.
But I'm not Greek and to be painfully honest about the matter I have no particular interesting in focusing my ministry as a priest around caring for the Greek community. There's nothing wrong with what the GOA wants to do, but if this is their primary mission let them take a secondary role in the life of the Church in America. And the same, I am sorry to say, must be said for the Ecumenical Patriarchate on the universal level.
If they want to take a leadership role, what should they do? A good start would be for the Ecumenical Throne to demonstrate the desire and the ability to care for the whole Church in America and not simply the Greek community.
The let them demonstrate do so by doing what thousands of American who have joined the Orthodox Church have done, subordinate their own language and culture to the Gospel. Let the GOA lead by demonstrating through the use of their time, talent and treasure that they are will and able to promote the well being of those who are not Greek. One way to do this would be to commit themselves here in America to do what they have done in overseas missions: Create indigenious English language, non-Greek, Orthodox Christian communities.
After 12 years in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese I simply have not seen from Archdiocese (or Ecumenical Patriarchate) provide effective leadership in America. While I do not call into question the faith and commitment to Christ of the bishops, clergy and laity of the Greek community here and abroad, as long as the primary concern for the GOA the needs of the Greek community (which include the preservation of Greek cultural identity and language), the needs of those of us who are not Greek will simply take a backseat.
Put another way, as long the primary mission of the GOA is caring for the Greek community, then non-Greeks and their pastoral and cultural needs will remain secondary. If caring for the Greek community is primary, pastoral care for non-Greek Orthodox Christians, to say nothing of philanthropic outreach, evangelism and home missions will always come second. Having been a missionary I got to tell you, you cannot be effective in bring people to Christ and His Church under these circumstances. . .
In the first place, whether a majority of the autocephalous Church do or do not accept the autocephaly of the OCA is not the point. Truth is not subject to a majority vote! If I may quibble here. If almost no one accepts the autocephaly has it then been accepted by the whole Church? If not, then a basic and much vaunted building block of the Church - asseveration of a thing because it has been accepted by the Church entire and not by a Universal jurisdictional fiat - would seem to be in question here.
Further, and at the risk of generating more heat then light, it seems that the Churches that do not accept the autocephaly of the OCA have a vested interest in not doing so. If the OCA's status is accepted, then they have find themselves with parishes and dioceses on the canonical territory of another Church. Put another way, if the OCA is canonical, then by their presence here Ecumenical Patriarchate et. al. are themselves up to charges that they have violated the canons and that it is the OCA that has "exercised restraint" by not breaking communion with these jurisdictions.
Stepping back a bit, and as I posted this on AOI, as long as the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese (with the consent and encouragement of the Ecumenical Throne) sees its primary mission as caring for the Greek community it is not fit for leadership here in America and pretending otherwise is a waste of resources and detrimental to our wtiness to the Gospel. I don't fault the Holy Cross faculty for defending the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Nor do I fault the clergy and faithful of the GOA for wanting to care for their own. Both of these are certainly worthy goals.
But I'm not Greek and to be painfully honest about the matter I have no particular interesting in focusing my ministry as a priest around caring for the Greek community. There's nothing wrong with what the GOA wants to do, but if this is their primary mission let them take a secondary role in the life of the Church in America. And the same, I am sorry to say, must be said for the Ecumenical Patriarchate on the universal level.
If they want to take a leadership role, what should they do? A good start would be for the Ecumenical Throne to demonstrate the desire and the ability to care for the whole Church in America and not simply the Greek community.
The let them demonstrate do so by doing what thousands of American who have joined the Orthodox Church have done, subordinate their own language and culture to the Gospel. Let the GOA lead by demonstrating through the use of their time, talent and treasure that they are will and able to promote the well being of those who are not Greek. One way to do this would be to commit themselves here in America to do what they have done in overseas missions: Create indigenious English language, non-Greek, Orthodox Christian communities.
After 12 years in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese I simply have not seen from Archdiocese (or Ecumenical Patriarchate) provide effective leadership in America. While I do not call into question the faith and commitment to Christ of the bishops, clergy and laity of the Greek community here and abroad, as long as the primary concern for the GOA the needs of the Greek community (which include the preservation of Greek cultural identity and language), the needs of those of us who are not Greek will simply take a backseat.
Put another way, as long the primary mission of the GOA is caring for the Greek community, then non-Greeks and their pastoral and cultural needs will remain secondary. If caring for the Greek community is primary, pastoral care for non-Greek Orthodox Christians, to say nothing of philanthropic outreach, evangelism and home missions will always come second. Having been a missionary I got to tell you, you cannot be effective in bring people to Christ and His Church under these circumstances. . .
Complete article here.
Posts
Josephus,
ReplyDeleteChrist is Risen!
Thanks for the cross post.
Your point is well taken and not a quibble. It may in fact be that the Churches who do not accept the autocephaly of the OCA are correct. But I think as part of this conversation I think it is important to at least consider the possibility that whether right or wrong, the Churches of the Old World are not wholly disinterested in their refusal and in fact may be pursuing their own respective self-interests.
All of this highlights for me why the current debate about the role of the Ecumenical Throne is so important. Is there such a thing as a universal primacy in the tradition of the Orthodox Church? And if so, what does that primacy look like? how does it function? And if not, then what?
The arguments in favor of the primacy of the Ecumenical Throne seem to me to be essential no different from those advanced on behalf of the Church of Rome. If this is the case, it seems to me that the more important conversation is not the role of the EP but the role of Rome in the life of the Church.
Does this make sense?
In Christ,
+FrG
It does indeed.
ReplyDeleteThe Church abhors the current uncanonical state of the diaspora. The future shape of the American church is in flux and in response the two leading patriarchates are positioning to throw their omophoria over the mish-mash of overlapping areas of influence and call it theirs.
I sometimes wonder how Moscow would act if Constantinople didn't exist. I can look at history (e.g. the Kievan church and all that occurred there) and see a patriarchate that has no little regard for its place in Orthodoxy.
At the moment the mix of autonomous and autocephalous bodies that make up the Church are acting like a loose confederation without a common direction and lacking a unified voice. Each body having its own agenda, the rhetoric is free-flowing and the response is that all sides are at a high dudgeon.
While not a total top-down, hierarchical, aficionado, there is great merit to a church that speaks with a single clear voice and doesn't fall into name calling on jurisdictional line drawing and draw its diptychs with an erasable marker. :) I hope the efforts of Ravenna and future dialogues will be helpful in understanding what the pre-schism role of the Pope was and how it might applicable today.
I offer a brief insight into one of my papers with regards to OCA jurisdictional canonicity
ReplyDeleteIn reading online blogs and the rhetoric from the “modern Day Iconoclasts” at AOI, OCL and elsewhere it seems to me that everybody is missing the point about ‘canonicity’ of the OCA.
The problem truly lies with the Moscow Patriarchate. As everybody knows and agrees Jurisdiction is, put simply, a geographical boundary of a particular bishop. It is essential to mention that the “Golden Seal Certificate” of 1591 is the primary source of definition of the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate.
The problem today in America goes back to the 16th century when the Moscow Patriarchate took it upon herself to expand her geographic territory along with the secular power of Czarist Russia.
It was then, Moscow broke canon law in regards to America. The question is how can the ‘daughter’ church be jurisdictionally legitimate if the ‘mother’ church was not within her canonical authority to bestow it? Obviously there is a common communion the real issue is jurisdictional territory.
The online thugs want to make it about: ethnicity, feeling unaccepted, self interest of the Holy Patriarchates or some other irrelevant issue like an individuals grammar… one priest goes so far as to say he won’t serve people pastorally because of their insistence on cultural identity, this smells of bigotry to me. What’s next no pastoral care because of skin tone? What’s worse is his pride in that evil position.
The truth of the matter is in 1794 with the arrival of Kodiak Mission’s to supposed Czarist Alaska and part of the geographical jurisdiction of the Diocese of Irkutsk, a diocese well beyond the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate, the continental problem begins. As a foot note as early as 1528 Orthodox had come to other parts of the continent; Don Theodoro with the Narváez expedition in Florida, Ioannis Fokas sailed up Pacific coast under Spanish flag in 1592… so the idea Russians was here first is another scapegoat.
As the situation in North America grew further complicated and communities began to bring their own clergy from other homelands, for example The first Greek Orthodox community in the Americas was founded in 1864 in New Orleans under the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
By 1900 Moscow recognizing the developing issue of jurisdictional claims to the New World began flexing her political power and unilaterally abrogated Canon law again with no concern for other jurisdictions on the continent and continued further un-canonically expansion with the change to the name of Aleutian Islands and Alaska to Aleutian Islands and ‘North America’ thus attempting to claim, in an expansionist ideology well beyond its canonical geographic and territorial boundaries an entire continent, a new anomaly for Orthodoxy.
Confusion grew even further when the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1908, temporarily transferred jurisdiction to the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece. This arrangement was maintained until 1918 and in 1917 Czarist Russia fell to the communists and the Moscow Patriarchate fell into turmoil. Creating yet another element into the mix.
Anybody who claims the situation is as simple as “Moscow granted us autocephaly in 1970” so the conversation is over or tells the Holy Patriarchate of our Mother Churches “Hands off” is either delusion or ignorant to the facts which brought us to this current anomaly.
We must pray for the Great Council and the holy mission which they will embark upon for only they can direct the future of this Holy Vessel.