Posting Father's Comment here it is informative deserving its own forum.
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Howdy! Friend!
Let me get to the point: All of us are thankful for the OCA glorifying our North American saints! None of them were members of the OCA, however. All of them were members of the Russian Orthodox Church as is Saint John Maximovich. Why didn't the OCA glorify him, may I ask? If they were the ONLY truly LOCAL CHURCH then why didn't they glorify him also?
Who wouldn't be thankful that some zealous Russians or, should I say, Ukrainians, took the initiative and moved to glorify OUR Orthodox PEOPLE? After all, it is an historical fact that none of our now glorified saints were Americans! Even the native people were Russian citizens!
Apart from being the truth to glorify the "just before the Lord" they were also used and manipulated so as to establish the myth that the OCA is "here to stay" and a legitimate "local Church." The idea was: "Local Churches glorify their own, don't they? So, let's do it and establish ourselves in the eyes of many as the ONLY legitimate local Church in North America!"
Friend, it is wrong, very wrong, to use the holy for political ends and political statements.
The OCA was born to be a transitional beauty and a gift and as long as she knows that she is to be a self-less transition and motivator for unity then she will give great glory to God! How many months ago were people saying the OCA was going to be an idealistic still birth because of corruption? How many said that she was going to be a "no-show" theoretical ecclesiastical vapor because of internal OCA wickedness? How humility goes out the window when noxious self-possessed triumphalism displaces holiness.
These glorifications of our saints happened with much holy complicity with all other Orthodox in North America. However, the OCA's time has come to morph: "Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies . . ."
You, friend, are wandering off into oblivion with your "dissolving stuff." Are we doing "ecclesiastical chemistry" now? We are talking, are we not, about reality or are you talking about clorox and caustic soda? What are you smok'in? It's not good to smoke while doing chemistry. "As for me and my house . . ." we will breath reality! You, with these "dissolving" comments, just went down a gopher hole and I refuse to follow! So there!
In the final analysis, I think His Grace Bishop Kondratic has ingloriously exposed the transient nature of all jurisdictions -- "You cannot love both God and money." So, the Holy Orthodox Church is here to stay and jurisdictions are NOT.
As Saint Paul says: "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." This does NOT make the OCA the sole harbinger of toxic finances or a lacking of integrity in high clerical circles. All of the ecclesiastical conflagration of the recent past simply means that others had and have better and more sophisticated "checks and balances" on their sin.
We Americans have at last been noticed by the Mother Churches (Thank the Lord!) and will now get all the genuine Christian attention we need to become full participants in world-wide Holy Orthodoxy. We are ALL on this Blessed Pilgrimage to Orthodox unity by the power of the Holy Spirit! Remember: "Father, I pray that they be one as We are One."
I love the OCA! Sho'nuff! We all owe her much! I love the liturgical texts, the beautiful music, the learching and fits toward an authentic Orthodox evangelization in North America, etc. I hope you are alive and conscious enough to realize that the false OCA American ethnic triumphalism is a killer of brotherly love and Orthodox unity which, incidentally, denigrates and negates all the many good and righteous developments and offerings from the humble ones amongst us. Give me Greek or Russian or Ukrainian or Bulgarian Orthodoxy and ethnicity any day! It will have infinitesimally small amounts of charitable annoyance compared to triumphalistic American pragmatic ethno-orthodoxy!
So, make a decision for love and decisively turn your back on triumphalism. Yes? I would rather smell an incense offering than what you are smok'in any day! Dissolving stuff? Go figure!
1 comment:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6531581438632726952&postID=4411918534261913912
"What can I say? I believe in freedom of speech so speak away!
Um, on second thought, I have this gift of freedom of speech also! I would suggest shifting from attack mode and putting it into creative and charitable mode! I hit and miss the creative mode (I pray I get better at the charitable mode) every so often so I am not perfect."
None of us are, Father. I apologize if my tone came off as an attack.
"It is impossible to intimidate me. I have nothing to loose -- I am a Hieromonk."
LOL. If you did, I have no means to take it-I'm a layman.
"I am sorry I was not absolutely clear in the most minuscule of OCA and Moscow Patriarch facts! I didn't know I had to. After all I am not an encyclopedia but a human being with just so much gray matter. Forgive me! My reasoning still stands, however."
What reasoning: "Obviously, ROCOR has been officially recognized as the sole retainer of that Russian ecclesiastical patrimony by the Russian Orthodox Church and NOT the OCA"? Hardly a minuscule matter. We would have to see some official recognition by Moscow of ROCOR at least as explicit, at least as official, at least as numerous as Moscow has made for the OCA. Those greater than us have misstated the facts on this.
His Grace, Bishop+Maxim posted on orthodoxhistory.org "the question of the OCA (the Orthodox Church in America, formerly the Russian Metropolia) was not discussed it has become clear that its “autocephaly” (given by a unilateral decree of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1970) is understood only as autonomy." If that were true, the OCA would not have been in attendance, following the Phanar's retreat from bringing Estonia to the council of Ravenna with the Vatican. As His Grace correctly notes, "The order of seating at the Assembly followed the Diptychs (the established order of precedence of the ancient and newer Patriarchates and autocephalous Churches), so that the bishops of the OCA came after the Serbian and Romanian delegations." If the OCA was autonomous, its Holy Synod would have sat with the Russian bishops (as the ROCOR bishops did), ahead of the Serbian and Romanian delegations. Further, Met. Jonah would have been co-chair, and it would not be, as His Grace correcty reports "this Episcopal Assembly, having Russian Archbishop Justinian (Moscow Patriarchate) as co-chair."
As for the "unilateral decree," no Tomos of Autocephaly of any Church did not originate in a "unilateral decree," so I'm not sure of the relevance.
In Christ,
Isa
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