This is so basic my newly turned three year old gets it. Her art may be abstract but the history is basic. Hieromonk Joshua provided this on a FACEBOOK thread on my homepage. I think it's a homerun.
"The OCA was started in 1970, from what my history books say. It was a completely new entity that gained its standing from a TOTALLY subjugated Russi...an Orthodox patriarchate that had NO FREEDOM to give "autocephaly" autonomously and free from political constraints of the atheistic communist government. Alaska and the West Coast were Russian parishes (NOT on Russian soil but American soil) and they were passed to, in the confusion and aftermath of the Russian Revolution, to numerous subdivisions of the fractured Russian Church and other churches who came in to protect their own ethnic Orthodox populations. Obviously, ROCOR has been officially recognized as the sole retainer of that Russian ecclesiastical patrimony by the Russian Orthodox Church and NOT the OCA.
By the very fact that Met. Jonah has said that the OCA "can dissolve" indicated from the highest levels of the OCA that it is ONLY a transitional "medium" as I understand the organizational documents, or at least the "oral tradition" seemed to indicate. Now, when one understands that ROCOR is NOW the ONLY approved extension of the Russian Church it makes sense that ROCOR will become the repository for all OCA parishes and institutions in the transition to a united American Orthodoxy. The Universal Orthodox Church DID NOT APPROVE nor SANCTION any autonomy or autocephaly -- therefore it is an extension of charity (mostly economy) by the Mother Churches (with the "First in Honor" being the EP in consultation and synodia with all the Mother Churches) to slowly but consistently work to bring the OCA into actually recognized canonical Churches. It is the Church Universal which grants autonomy or autocephaly and this is what the next Episcopal Conference is about."
5 comments:
Fr. Joshua has struck out again.
"The OCA was started in 1970, from what my history books say. It was a completely new entity"
Your books do not know their history-Met. Ireney wore the mantle of St. Innocent of Alaska far easier than EP Nectarios donned that of St. Andrew (and, many Ukrainians would claim, than the Czars wore the crown of St. Volodymyr). The CoG has St. Andrew, the OCA has St. Herman the last of the mission of 1794, and the OCA glorified him as patron of the Americas. As the Met. of Heracleia enthrones the EP, and the Met. of Kiev enthrones the PoM and investsts him with the staff of St. Peter, so too the successor of St. Innocent in Alaska enthrones the saint's successor as Primate of North America as Metropolitan of the OCA. The OCA's throne in Sitka dates from 1840, that of SF from 1870 (though the parish dates from c. 1825: the original site at Fort Ross is again in OCA use), and the NY Russian Cathedral of Abp/Pat. St. Tikhon commemorates Met. Jonah in its diptychs (although as a metochion, per the OCA Tomos of Autocephaly).
"that gained its standing from a TOTALLY subjugated Russia an Orthodox patriarchate that had NO FREEDOM to give "autocephaly" autonomously and free from political constraints of the atheistic communist government"
For the sake of argument, let's say that is true: are we, Father, to apply that same yardstick to the autocephaly granted by an Orthodox patriarchate that has (and has) NO FREEDOM to give "autocphaly" autonomously and free from political constraints of the Muslim Turkish government? At least half of the Orthodox Churches might like to know the answer to that question before they meet next at Chambesy (oops! forgot. We won't be doing that). So Poland and the Czech Lands and Slovakia should dissolve, since their autocephaly was given in the same circumstances? Moscow, Warsaw, Prague, Bucharest...all should hand over all the properties etc. that the Uniates demand, since formal return to Orthodoxy came under the same atheist communist sponsership?
I've never seen it explained coherently why that makes a difference: none other than the US Supreme Court had upheld Soviet control-if that is all the Patriarch of Moscow was at the time-over the jurisdiction in America (Kedroff v. Saint Nicholas Cathedral of Russian Orthodox Church of North America). What was to be gained from setting America free, in particular when parishes were allowed to remain under Moscow? Seems rather a disconnect.
In any case, the Church of Moscow, Slava Bogu!, has been free at least since c. 1990. There is a canon of limitations of 30 years to lodge a complaint, and Moscow shows no signs of doing so against the OCA. Quite the opposite.
"Obviously, ROCOR has been officially recognized as the sole retainer of that Russian ecclesiastical patrimony by the Russian Orthodox Church and NOT the OCA."
No,the Tomos recognizes the OCA as the sole inheritor of the ecclesiatical patrimony of the Russian Archdiocese of North America, Moscow abolishing its Exarchate of North and South America to pave the way. ROCOR doesn't retain anything prior to the Karlovsky Synod, hence it has no recognition, official or otherwise, of ANY of that patrimony. She does have her own patrimony though: as someone (Arab) in SF told me, the shrine of St. John in the Cathedral of the Joy of All Who Sorrow surely keeps SF from falling into the sea. (My sons and I went on pilgrimate two years ago). And of course there is Jordanville.
"By the very fact that Met. Jonah has said that the OCA "can dissolve" indicated from the highest levels of the OCA that it is ONLY a transitional "medium" as I understand the organizational documents, or at least the "oral tradition" seemed to indicate. Now, when one understands that ROCOR is NOW the ONLY approved extension of the Russian Church it makes sense that ROCOR will become the repository for all OCA parishes and institutions in the transition to a united American Orthodoxy."
LOL. Not quite.
"The Temporary (Provisional) Statutes of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia." That indicats from the highest levels of the ROCOR that it is ONLY a transitional "medium" as I understand the organizational documents. The oral tradition I heard was that when the Bolsheviks fell, they would step in and take the helm of the PoM. It didn't work out that way: the Church which survived Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev still lives.
I am aware that those who prefer to live in dead empires of long ago and far away-instead in the time and place God has placed them-have latched onto that snippet of one of HB+Jonah's speeches, but HB has made it clear what he means by that: the OCA can dissolve only into a united AUTOCEPHALOS Orhodox Church of North America. It was an expression of his humility in the service of the Church, not an open ended offer as rubber stamp for overseas phylarchs.
ROCOR, I am told by a hieromonk in it, has self-rule but not autonomy. Its very name, of an Orthodox Church outside its canonical boundaries, by that very fact disqualifies it as a locus of unity on the North American continent, coupled with its branches in Germany, Australia, South America etc. She is not a Mother Church, a fact that came home when she started building "Outside Russia" on Russian soil (although I see that Moscow showed characteristic wisdom in appointing Bishop Evtikhi as vicar in Russia, as was done in North America). According to GOARCH's own, Fr. Arey, secretary to SCOBA and the EA, the OCA is a Mother Church: he said in "its own self-understanding," but that's how Moscow, a plurality of the autocephalous primates and the vast majority of the Orthodox Faithful understand it.
The permanent Statute of that Mother Church, adopted at her first autocephalous All American Council, has an Article of interest perhaps to ROCOR's fate:
Article XII - National Groups
When the good of the Church requires that particular national groups receive an assurance of identity, the Holy Synod may establish dioceses and/or deaneries and set standards for their participation in the life of the Orthodox Church in America by mutual agreement with the group and until such time as the diocesan structure of the Church can be organized on an exclusively territorial basis. If a given group is organized as a diocese, the bishop of this diocese is a member of the Holy Synod and receives an episcopal title defined territorially. The Statute shall constitute the fundamental law for the existence of all such groups within the Orthodox Church in America.
"Now, when one understands that ROCOR is NOW the ONLY approved extension of the Russian Church it makes sense that ROCOR will become the repository for all OCA parishes and institutions in the transition to a united American Orthodoxy."
NO one understands ROCOR as the only approved extension of the Russian Church. That doesn't concern the OCA-which is busy being the North American Church on North American soil-but its Tomos does concern ROCOR. Abp. Justinian, not Met. Hilarion of ROCOR, represents Moscow in the North American EA, taking his place in the diptychs as vice-president, and Abp. Justinian derives his position and authority from the Tomos granted the OCA. Abp. Justinian commemorates Met. Jonah, Met. Jonah does not commemorate Abp. Justinian, and neither commemorate Met. Hilarion. As of yet, I understand, Met. Hilarion is not required to commemorate Pat. Cyril.
Not all the OCA parishes and institutions are Russian, though I think the OCA should have formed a national diocese for its Russians and its Carpatho-Russians long ago. Its indigenous parishes and institutions belong to it by international treaty and Federal law. ROCOR going to try to take them too? Bucharest can't get the Romanian Episcopate to look overseas and has enough problems with the Russian Church in Moldova (also "Outside of Russia"). Is ROCOR going to succeed where ROC failed? The Albanian Archdiocese, the Mother of her Mother Church (if you don't know the story, let me know) has made it clear it won't join the EP's bishop of two parishes: why would they join ROCOR? Maybe the Bulgarians would join you. As for the many Greeks, Arabs and others in the OCA, let alone converts, I can't say.
Chambesy, if it gets going (a big if-a ROCOR hieromonk in NZ tells me that the Phanar's exarch in Australia is refusing to call one, an embarrasing lacuna in the world wide Chambesy scheme that is going to have be eventually be dealt with before it undoes the whole scheeme worldwide) will bring about the dissolution of ROCOR, not the OCA. Over the objections of the Phanar's exarch in Mexico, the OCA's Mexican (as in Mexican, not just staying there) Exarch will be in the South American one. I expect that the seperate Canadian EA, if that comes about, will devolve into arm wresting between the Phanar's exarch there, fighting for the maintenance of the ghettos and inertia, and the OCA and Antiochian bishops moving forward, no doubt outside the EA structures. The OCA (and I expect our Antiochian Archdiocese) will be able to hold their own on their in their own homelands, and Mother Church in her Mother Country. ROCOR, not being a Mother Church, but existing outside its Mother Church and Mother Country, is going to get bogged down in the Episcopal Assemblies of the Mother Countries they serve. The Universal Orthodox Church did not approve nor any autonomy or therefore for ROCOR-- therefore it is an extension of charity (mostly economy) by the Mother Churches (with the "First in Honor" being the Phanar, in consultation and synodia with phyletist elements in all the Churches except the OCA, in an effort to make sure the voice of the "diaspora" is muzzled) to slowly but consistently work to bring the ROCOR into actually recognized EA in the "diaspora." Were Chambesy to progress, the Holy Synod of ROCOR will cease to exist, divided up between North America/Canada, Latin America, Western Europe and Australia (if that EA is ever called). Met. Hilarion will be under Abp. Justinian, as he is in the EA now.
"The Universal Orthodox Church DID NOT APPROVE nor SANCTION any autonomy or autocephaly -- therefore it is an extension of charity (mostly economy) by the Mother Churches (with the "First in Honor" being the EP in consultation and synodia with all the Mother Churches) to slowly but consistently work to bring the OCA into actually recognized canonical Churches. It is the Church Universal which grants autonomy or autocephaly and this is what the next Episcopal Conference is about."
That may be how it may happen in the future, but besides my own Alexandria and Antioch, and the fallen see of Rome, that is not how it ever happened in the past. I could show that in every instance, but I'll err on the side of brevity: Constantinople was elevated to autocephaly in two steps at the 2nd and 4th Ecumenical Councils, neither time the first see of Old Rome being represented and present. The Patriarchate of the West for nearly a millenium didn't reconcile itself fully to the move until its Crusaders sacked Constantinople and imposed a Latin suffragan on it, ratifying 2nd place at a council the Vatican alone calls ecumenical "the General Council of the Lateran," at least nearly two centuries after the patriarch who sits in the Lateran left the Universal Orthodox Church. When New Rome submitted himself to the Ultramontanist heresy of the Patriarch of the West in the Lateran, and the Third Rome refused to follow, Moscow/Kiev took its autocephaly. Constantinople, once she was integrated back into an actually Orthodox recognized canonical Church, she evaded approving or sanctioning Rus' autocephaly for nearly a century and a half. The Metropolitan of Kiev at Moscow and his Holy Synod continued on, just like the OCA has for under half a century.
So the Universal Orthodox Church can come up with a process to approve or sanction any autonomy or autocephaly, but that has nothing to do with the OCA except that the OCA's impute and approval and sanction for the process will be required for it to be an act of the Universal Orthodox Church.
The OCA was granted autocephlay over North America by the Church with jursdiction over it. Therefore it is an extension of charity (mostly economy) by the OCA (with the precedent being its predecessor Abp St. Tikhon not insisting on his canonical rights per Ephesus c. 8 and not excommunicating the phyletist trustees, defrocking their hireling priests, deposing the bishops proving them antimens: of course he couldn't have deposed, Met./Abp./EP/Pope Meletius, as the CoG had already deposed him with the agreement of Alexandria and Jerusalem went he set up the Phanar's jurisdiction in the Americas) in consultation and synodia with the Mother Church of Moscow) to slowly but consistently work to bring the various "jurisdictions in diaspora" (which do not recognize the others as the canonical jurisdiction) into the actually recognized canonical local Orthodxo Church-the OCA. This may not be what the Episcopal Conference is about-I've always seen it as an attempt by the Phanr to get the canon 28 mythology in the back window when it couldn't get it in the front door-but Lord willing it is how it will end up.
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