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To: kosta50

Luckily, the Greeks are less then 10% of the Orthodox Church. The Slavs are some 50% or more and they are not changing, neither are the Ethiopians, Kenyans or Arabs. The Russian, Serbian and other none-Greek Churchs I've been to in America look just like their cousins across the pond.


19 posted on 02/26/2005 8:16:20 AM PST by jb6 (Truth = Christ)
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To: jb6
"the Greeks are less then 10% of the Orthodox Church"

Worldwide, this is true. The vast majority of the world's Orthodox Christians are Slavs (on the Old Calendar, no less). But here in the US, the GOA is by far the largest of the Orthodox Churches. I daresay that there are probably more members of the GOA in the State of NY than there are in the entire OCA.

The condition of the GOA is therefore vital to the condition of Orthodoxy in America. All of the abuses that Kosta mentions are certainly true -- in the 20th c the GOA led the way in these things, sadly. Kolokotronis has talked about the attempts by previous hierarchs to make the GOA into a sort of "Eastern Rite Episcopalianism," and it is true. There are understandable reasons for it, but that doesn't make it less regrettable.

But the trend in the GOA has turned sharply more traditional at the local level, especially with the younger generation of priests. The outward things are slow to catch up (I don't think we'll see pews disappear in my lifetime, but all new iconography seems to be traditional, organs are slowly being left unused in many parishes, and traditional chant is making a comeback), but in my personal experience, Greek priests under the age of 45 are very solid in understanding and teaching the spiritual life and the faith.

23 posted on 02/26/2005 9:06:17 AM PST by Agrarian
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To: jb6; FormerLib; kosta50; Agrarian
"The Slavs are some 50% or more and they are not changing, neither are the Ethiopians, Kenyans or Arabs."

I don't doubt for a minute that this is true of the Serbs and perhaps the Bulgarians, but the OCA can hardly be called the same as Slav Orthodoxy across the pond in Europe. And as for the Arabs, go to an Antiochian Church someday. They make the GOA look like a right wing subset of ROCOR.

The truth of the matter is that in the GOA there is a very large younger group of priests and seminarians who are actively rejecting the creeping Westernizing of the Church under +Iakovos. The fact that their parishes have pews or chairs, use paraffin candles and pray the Divine Liturgy in part or nearly whole in English is, in my very Greek chauvinist mind, neither here nor there. As far as I can see, these things make about as much difference, perhaps even less, than the issue of whether we use a calendar devised by a pagan Roman Emperor or a Roman Pope. The real issue is whether or not the Divine Liturgy is preserved inviolate and unchanged, that the clergy look like and live their lives as Orthodox priests ought and that we as the laity do the same. To accomplish the latter is extremely difficult in the society we live in, which is why preserving ties to the Mother Churches is vitally important. The old countries, whatever their manifold social and civic problems may be, are countries whose essential nature is Orthodox. Maintaining or developing an Orthodox phronema in those place will be for the foreseeable future far easier there than here. To the extent that those cultures and churches can be our anchor to windward, not the cause of insular, ethnic ghettos here, then we must maintain our ties and reject autocephally. Its a danger and a shame that +Philip and his evangelicals don't understand that. You'd think after the Ben Loman fiasco they'd have learned something.
24 posted on 02/26/2005 9:18:07 AM PST by Kolokotronis (Nuke the Cube!)
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