Posted on 11/19/2005 12:37:40 AM PST by Queen Beruthiel
July, 2005 was a turning point for the Orthodox Christian Church in North America. It was the time when two independent self governing Orthodox Christian Church bodies in North America, the Autocephalous Orthodox Church in America (OCA) and the Self-Ruled Antiochian Orthodox Christain Archdiocese of North America, met with the clergy and lay leaders of the parishes throughout the Americas. In a conciliar manner, hierarchy, clergy and laity reasoned together to make decisions for the good order of their respective bodies, so they could move forward to face the challenges of the 21st century. The OCA meeting took place in Toronto, Canada July 17-22, 2005 and the Antiochian meeting took place in Dearborn, Michigan July 24-31, 2005.
Both groups realize that they are at a crossroads and that bold thinking and actions are needed to meet the needs of the People of God. The theme of the OCA meeting was “Our Church and the Future” and the theme of the Antiochian meeting was “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” (Romans 12:2) These two themes interrelate as Father Thomas Hopko, Dean Emeritus of St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary, pointed out. We are transformed by trusting in God and through God all things are possible. If we are conformed to the world and seek prosperity, possessions, position, popularity and prestige for the Church we will have no future. All Orthodox jurisdictions must die in Christ so that they can be resurrected in Unity and the Church can witness to Christ and make disciples of the people who live in the Americas. This is the mission of the Church and it can be best accomplished in Unity.
Although both meetings were held separately there were common elements and themes that both assemblies must address in order to move ahead to meet the spiritual needs of the faithful. One priority was Orthodox Christian Unity in North America and another was Evangelization. His Beatitude Herman, Archbishop of New York and Washington and Metropolitan of All America and Canada, addressed the topic of Unity in an eloquent and direct address to all delegates, observers and visitors in his banquet remarks. Metropolitan Philip, Primate of the Antiochian Archdiocese, devoted his keynote address to the topic of unity. Both leaders see Unity as necessary and part of the good order of the Church in the Americas. OCL will post the text of both speeches on its web site www.ocl.org when they are made available.
The faithful clergy and laity of both assemblies are ready to work together in Unity to do the work of the Church which is to keep the faith as it has been handed to us at this time and place by the apostles and church fathers and to share the faith with all those who seek to become Orthodox Christians. The clergy and laity of both bodies share this commitment to Orthodox administrative Unity. They are willing to give up what needs to be given up to accomplish this task. The delegates to the Antiochian Archdiocese meeting voted a strong resolution directed at SCOBA to move ahead to make Unity a reality. The full text is printed for your consideration.
A highlight of the OCA meeting was the panel discussion on Orthodox Relations which featured a video presentation by His Grace Bishop Basil of Wichita of the Antiochian Archdiocese. He called for the re-establishment of a bilateral commission between the OCA and the Antiochian Archdiocese on topics of mutual concern. He received an extended standing ovation. People applauded this concrete proposal.
Other concrete options that the clergy and laity suggested in informal gatherings related to Unity included:
Asking the two primates Metropolitans Herman and Philip to appoint two bishops from their archdioceses to meet together to discuss how the two archdioceses can work together to address mutual concerns.
Setting up a meeting between Metropolitan Philip and Metropolitan Herman so that they can sit down together and talk directly about their mutual interest in jurisdictional Unity as part of the good order of the church. Father Leonid Kishkovsky stressed the importance of direct contact Metropolitan to Metropolitan in External Affairs and many saw the wisdom of these interactions and wondered why there is such little eye to eye contact between the hierarchies in the Americas. A meeting with Metropolitan Herman and Metropolitan Philip would be a very meaningful concrete first step to jump start the movement toward administrative Unity.
Establishing a new organization of all the canonical heads of jurisdictions to replace SCOBA. Those left out of the SCOBA meetings would be able to participate.
There is a consensus among the faithful People of God in both jurisdictions that the OCA and Antiochians share enough mutual interests that they should move ahead. They cannot wait for all jurisdictions to join together at the same time. Some jurisdictions are not ready. Move ahead with those who are ready and in time the others will follow because they will have no choice. Most of the faithful believe that the OCA must take the leadership role in moving ahead on Unity because they are the local Church in the Americas by the fact of their Autocephaly.
The second common element of both meetings is the commitment of both assemblies to Evangelization. For hundreds of years Orthodox Christians couldn’t even talk about their faith for fear of having their tongues cut out or face other reprisals. The Church and its people were in captivity in Moslem or Communist lands. But today in America they are free to speak and write about the ancient apostolic Orthodox Christian faith. In America people are looking for the ancient faith and they are finding and choosing to become Orthodox Christians. They are flocking to both of these bodies through their well developed programs in Evangelization. So much more could be accomplished if they did this work of the Great Commission together! Here is the perfect bilateral program to further develop.
Two other highlights that I observed worth noting are that the Council Study Papers sent to the delegates and observers of the OCA meeting were excellent and applicable to all Orthodox jurisdictions not only the OCA. The lectures and panel discussions and the process involving all the participants to solicit their input on each priority were well organized and involved everyone. All the steps were designed to get input and create the vision for the OCA for the next ten years.
The outstanding Antiochian Camp and Youth and Young Adult Programs were presented by gifted and spirited young people. As faithful stewards we must guide our youth so that they can pass down Orthodoxy to the next generation. As a United Orthodox Christian Church in North America all our youth could have opportunities to participate in the excellent programs. There would be no jurisdictional barriers. The youth are ahead of us and inter-Orthodox programs such as OCMC, IOCC and OCF have broken down jurisdictional barriers. Both conventions were well attended by youth and they participated in all aspects of the meetings.
The holy services of daily Divine Liturgies and Vespers were holy occasions for the participants to reflect upon the work that they were doing each day. The Holy Spirit was truly guiding these two proceedings involving collectively over 3500 Church leaders. The people of God are ready to work toward building a United Orthodox Christian Church in North America. We call on the hierarchy to lead!
*** Observations submitted by George Matsoukas, Executive Director of Orthodox Christian Laity, an independent movement of Church Faithful dedicated to the formation of a United and Self Governed Orthodox Church in North America.
"Considering that the schism in 1054 was mostly do to the bishop of Rome trying to institute a policy that the Roman Bishop and Rome itself were more official than other churches it seems ridiculous to me that any churches would attack another on that basis."
You've lost me....Who's attacking whom?
I've seen several orthodox denominations try to say the OCA is illegitimate on the basis of the autocelphany. I've also seen infighting between some OCA and ROCOR folks on this issue.
I think the history of the orthodox church makes fighting about the officialness of one place over another or one patriarch over another silly unless something substantially against the doctrine reveals itself which it hasn't in this case.
The Moscow church has been coming into relations with numerous churches alienated during the 1917 revolution and granting them autocephany.
Now is a time of healing, and I've seen a lot of vicious attacks on healing based on 'questions of authority'.
"I've seen several orthodox denominations try to say the OCA is illegitimate on the basis of the autocelphany."
Not any of the SCOBA jurisdictions, I trust, since the OCA is a member of SCOBA! Given the raison d'etre of ROCOR, I can see how they might not like the OCA.
"The Moscow church has been coming into relations with numerous churches alienated during the 1917 revolution and granting them autocephany."
I'm curious, which ones? My understanding was that several Orthodox groups in states of the former Soviet Union wanted or took autocephally, the Churches of Estonia and the Ukraine spring to mind, but I was unaware that Moscow actually granted it.
The primary reason for the "precipitous decline" in reported OCA membership is two-fold:
1. Some of the older "ethnic" parishes, esp in the Northeast, are dying out. They either lost their children to the surrounding culture or to Orthodox Churches that use English.
2. Most importantly of all is the fact that there has been a bit of a revolt in the OCA regarding how the national church assesses (i.e. taxes) parishes to run the central organization. The old-line churches and the eastern dioceses prefer a "per head" assessment, in part because that is the way it has always been done. The growing dioceses, on the other hand, have been for some time advocating a "tithe" system, whereby a "flat-tax" on each parish's annunal budget is assessed.
The problem is that many churches are hit hard by a per capita assessment, since younger growing churches might have young families with many kids and little disposable income, and churches in parts of the country where there is a lot of geographical mobility have people coming and going a lot. There are also lots of visitors and catechumens in the growing churches.
In any event, in the past, churches were encouraged to use a count of however many people sometimes attend the parish. While the number is accurate in terms of people attending, it doesn't necessarily at all reflect the number of people who are financially committed to the parish. As the amount of money assessed by the national church increases, many parishes, like ours, have started to carefully scrutinze the number of parishioners reported. More and more, parishes only report adults who are both regularly attending and regularly financially supporting the church, and thus even though our parish is more full than ever, the number of reported "full members" has stayed the same or perhaps dropped.
The old-line parishes back east either don't have to worry about these kinds of fluctuations, or figured out "the game" a long time ago. Mission parishes wanting to report their growth are, on the other hand, penalized in a sense.
Those dioceses, like ours, that advocate a "flat tax" on a church's budget, believe that this would be more fair (especially since many young, growing churches are on a shoe-string budget as they try to support a full-time priest and acquire a permanent building.) They also believe that more accurate numbers will be able to be collected on how many people are actually attending Liturgy every Sunday...
Most of the one's I've heard re-entering into relations with the MP are former soviet republics. The last 10-15 year had done much to reinstate the pre revolution situation. Most churches will not submit to coming under the governance of Moscow since they still fear the KGB ties of the soviet era, so ties have normally resumed and the church has been granted autocephally. ROCOR is in the midst of this now.
Ukraine is quite a barbed situation given there is now a breakway group in Ukraine that wants a separate Ukranian church, one that wants to continue to be in the MP and of course the whole Uniate/Ukranian Catholic 'issue', which is an ongoing problem between the Catholic and orthodox churches. I don't see that situation cooling for quite some time; it seems they are quite on the verge of splitting.
I've heard a group in ROCOR aren't hot on the idea of communion with the MP and are looking to leave ROCOR as soon as they are in full communion with the MP (which they seem close to now... the ROCOR main site has tons of articles on Moscow/ROCOR joint activities).
The thin that surprises me though is that even in this, the doctrine, and litergy remain effectively the same across all of them, there are some local traditions but largely conformity to the true church. The Catholic church hasn't managed this with absolute top down control, and the orthodox chuch has. It makes we wonder whether top down control isn't more of a risk than an asset; it makes it easy for something like vatican II to change the whole church for the worse...
For this reason I rather like the idea of autocephany, with various means of communication and cooperation between churches.
I'd especially like expanded terms for cooperation with the Catholic church, not in the form of communion (unless the doctrine issues can truly be solved in favor of the pre-schism church and not some concession to Rome), but in terms of promoting the faith we share. The Catholic church is seeing tough times that are seeing many Catholic faithful question the church; I think there's a lot of places where the Catholic and orthodox church would see muual benefits to cooperating.
Beware the "flat tax", my brother. Once a parish gets financially established and is ready to start raising the money necessary to provide a suitable life for the priest and his family, at least the smaller parishes, the parish finds that by far its biggest expense is the priest. In our parish its about 85% of the annual budget (which has nearly doubled in 4 years). With an Archdiocesan assessment of 15% of the budget, in theory we can't open the doors. For real big parishes I suppose it can work, but for small ones its a constant struggle which we deal with by trying to negotiate down the assessment... with mixed results.
I'm in the North East. Our OCA parish uses English, and is losing people to MORE ethnic parishes.
Budget wise I think the church should be careful with that, it can really crush parishes in places they are really needed. It seems to me any tax should be in relation to the actual dollars being collected.
You, of course, put your finger right on the weak point of leadership under the Churches of Russia or Greece, i.e. the specter of ethnic nationalism.
My fundamental problem with Patriarchates like Constantinople, Jerusalem, or Alexandria being the focus of oversight is that they really don't have the internal buffering influence of a church with lots of parishes, parishioners, monasteries, and clergy in the "old country."
Were the EP to oversee the Church of America, he would essentially become the "Patriarch of America," and I fear that the tail would soon begin to wag the dog, since the purse-strings would be in America, even more than they already are right now for the EP.
It would run the very real danger of becoming a sort of de facto American autocephaly, but with the Americans wielding the prestige of the EP.
I therefore believe that we would actually be better off with autocephaly than with oversight by a Patriarchate like the EP. At least with autocephaly, we'd have the rest of the Orthodox world putting pressure on us as the "upstart Americans," rather than being in the position of having to put pressure on both the EP and America, were we to misbehave (as we most certainly would.)
In any event, no one of import (in fact, no one at all) has called me recently (or ever) to ask what my position is on this matter, so I'm just typing out into the ether, and my opinions are pretty meaningless! :-)
Actually, two years ago when I fell head over heels in love with the Maronite liturgy, I surfed the Internet with a feverish frenzy for anything to do with the Maronites. In the process, I stumbled upon a Yahoo group and joined. In the confirmation message, the group moderator sent me some information to "pass on to your pastor". It was a lengthy document on how to evangelize the Maronite Church.
Since then, I have gained a deeper understanding of how the Maronites proselytize (sp?), and it's not done on an active basis. For the present, they are focused on the documents emanating from the 2 year Synod recently held by the Patriarch. According to one Maronite priest who hosts a web site, the Maronite Church is now focused on implementing the recommendations that came from the Synod. These include better translations of liturgical texts into 4 primary languages - English, Spanish, French and Arabic. The Maronite Church has grown tremendously in the diaspora and now counts 3 million + communicants. The other emphasis is on restoring some of the 24 Anaphoras that were lost. Evangelization is not even a blip on their radar screen.
At the OCA parish I attend the geust priest we had was pushing for us to evangelize more to our aquaintances.
I've heard the Antiochian church is a lot more evangelical.
Another excellent observation! This is perhaps more evident in the Catholic Churches than in the Orthodox, due to the legitimized acceptance of Roman Catholics at any of the 22 different liturgies.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, my experience has been that the few remaining Lebanese who still claim St. Ann's Church as their own, have been read the riot act by Abouna. On more than one occasion he has reminded those assembled that the parish is no longer 'ethnic' . The 'registered' members of our parish now include Americans, Germans, Argentinians, Brazilians, etc. It is no longer strictly a 'Lebanese' Church. This is an important distinction. It is not necessary to be Greek or Russian to appreciate the Orthodox Divine Liturgy, nor that of the Eastern Catholic Churches. I believe that with time, we will see this continued shift of other ethnic groups drawn into our respective 'liturgies' without necessarily having to adopt the associated lifestyle.
This is a gradual rather than radical shift in thinking. Like your wife, Kolokotronis, I have been willing to learn how to prepare some of those marvelous Lebanese delicacies. On the other hand, come Good Friday when we gather as a community to eat a meatless meal prepared by various parishioners, I contribute my own cooking talents through tried and tested recipes. This year, I introduced them to homemade stuffed shells. They looked so out of place, poised against the hummous, tahini, labke and other Lebanese specialties. Then someone shouted out ... "Thank you for the stuffed shells! They're excellent!" It didn't take long before the dish was emptied and many grateful smiles were directed my way.
This is part and parcel of evangelization, Kolokotronis. If you call them to your church, be prepared to welcome their cooking as well :-)
With no offense to the Orthodox for whom I have the utmost respect, have you considered any of the Eastern Catholic Churches?
The Catholic Church is both Western and Eastern. As most of us realize, the Church began in the East. Our Lord lived and died and resurrected in the Holy Land. The Church spread from Jerusalem throughout the known world. As the Church spread, it encountered different cultures and adapted, retaining from each culture what was consistent with the Gospel. In the city of Alexandria, the Church became very Egyptian; in Antioch it remained very Jewish; in Rome it took on an Italian appearance and in Constantinople it took on the trappings of the Roman imperial court. All the churches which developed this way were Eastern, except Rome. Most Catholics in the United States have their roots in Western Europe where the Roman rite predominated. It has been said that the Eastern Catholic Churches are "the best kept secret in the Catholic Church."
The Vatican II Council declared that "all should realize it is of supreme importance to understand, venerate, preserve, and foster the exceedingly rich liturgical and spiritual heritage of the Eastern churches, in order faithfully to preserve the fullness of Christian tradition" (Unitatis Redintegrato, 15). Pope John Paul II said that "the Catholic Church is both Eastern and Western."
Check your local community at the following link and look into attending an Eastern Catholic Liturgy (not to be confused with the Orthodox Church).
Eastern Catholic Churches in the U.S.
The Eastern Catholic Rites retain the rich heritage of our church, without the "novelties" introduced into the Novus Ordo liturgy. Incense is used throughout.
I am a Roman Catholic who celebrates my faith at a Maronite Catholic Church. The Consecration is in Aramaic, using the words and language of our Lord at the Last Supper. Communion is ONLY distributed by the priest. It is by intinction (the priest dips the consecrated host into the Precious Blood) and is ONLY received on the tongue. The priest administers communion with the words: "The Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is given to you for the remission of sin and eternal salvation".
A Roman Catholic may attend the Divine Liturgy at any Eastern Catholic Church and fulfill their Sunday obligation. You can learn more about the 22 different liturgies at this link:
"In any event, no one of import (in fact, no one at all) has called me recently (or ever) to ask what my position is on this matter, so I'm just typing out into the ether, and my opinions are pretty meaningless! :-)"
Gee, every time they call me I refer them to you! I didn't think they would listen to me and now I know! :)
"This is part and parcel of evangelization, Kolokotronis. If you call them to your church, be prepared to welcome their cooking as well :-)"
Given the number of ethnicities we have in the parish, many of our meals are a gastronomic tour de force, but when it comes to fasting food, I'll stick to the food of the Orthodox ethnicities!:)
Many years ago, after a number of the then old and now mostly dead Greek ladies were complaining about some pastries the younger maybe 50% convert ladies had tried to make after the old ladies had given them all but unintelligible receipes (some of this, a little of that, cook it 'til its done, etc.) my wife and another covert girl decided they would have an American pie baking "contest". Guess who won? That shut the old ladies up good!
It seems that we have conflicting reports.
One poster said their are more non ethnic people ebracing the traditions of ethnic parishes (which I beleive is true) and another suggested the demise of the OCA is that it is too ethnic (which is not my experience at all, I have yet to find a strongly ethnic oca parish)
Frankly if one is already Catholic and looking to leave I don't suspect Eastern Catholic would be a suitable substitute.
The Orthodox and Catholics do not disagree (mostly) over the litergy. It is doctrine issues. I suspect a Catholic who has made up their mid to leave is leaving over that, and not simply the litergy. (This is part of why pushing the Eastern Rite in the Catholic church hasn't seduced away so many people as one might have thought even after the Catholics invited any orthodox clergy into the Catholic Eastern Rite church.)
Ah the joys and pitfalls of having my Russian wife :) An advantage is she can make tons of those old world recipes! A disadvantage is she can make ALL those recipies. Ever tried Holodets?
(Still perogies, and Pelemni are a great treat, not exactly fasting food though).
"Ah the joys and pitfalls of having my Russian wife :) An advantage is she can make tons of those old world recipes! A disadvantage is she can make ALL those recipies. Ever tried Holodets?
(Still perogies, and Pelemni are a great treat, not exactly fasting food though)."
The Russian widow of an old Ukrainian fellow who just died will be putting on a meal for us after his 40 Days Memorial tomorrow. Russian main meal with assorted Greek, Lebanese, Armenian and Bulgarian tidbits! We will be, as they say, in hog heaven!
I recall asking a group of monastic women at Bodbe monastery what made them choose their current lives, and not one of them replied with an answer about ethnicity. Not all of them were Georgian.
"It is beyond me what the ethnicity of a parish has to do with Christ."
Well, unless you're Greek, your probably right. Christ was a Greek boy, you know. My great grandmother told my mother and she told me! :)
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