Month: May 2009

St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary has announced the topic for its summer institute and a very interesting lineup of speakers. The full announcement is available on the OCA site here. HT: orrologion

CRESTWOOD, NY [SVS/May 13, 2009] — Recent exchanges of views about Orthodoxy in America, the role of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the forthcoming pan-Orthodox sessions that will deliberate on the “diaspora,” emphasize how vital it is to reflect upon events that shaped the current landscape. As a foundational part of its mission, Saint Vladimir’s Seminary is a venue where controversial topics can be discussed openly and freely.

The seminary will host a summer conference titled, “The Council and the Tomos: Twentieth-century Landmarks towards a Twenty-first-century Church,” June 18-20, 2009. Conference speakers will focus on two watersheds that have shaped the Orthodox Church in America (OCA): the All-Russian Council (Sobor) of 1917-1918, and the Tomos of Autocephaly granted in 1970 by the Russian Orthodox Church to its daughter church, the Orthodox Church in America, then known as the “North American Diocese.” The conference will address the significance of the OCA’s presence in North America, and future paths and possibilities open to it, including its interface with the multi-jurisdictional Orthodox Christian communities in the US and Canada.

orrologion says it’s time to open the windows of our Orthodox house and let in some fresh air:

I for one am glad that these sorts of conversations are being had. They reveal us. Our creation myths can be challenged. Our skewed views of ourselves can be corrected. Greeks can hear how they are perceived; Russians and Americans and Arabs likewise. We’re all used to the smell of our own stink; we forgive our own pet sins, but not others’. We can see how our actions (and lack of actions) hurt others, and we can change (hopefully). We can compare and contrast our strengths and weaknesses, our love, our piety, our good works, patience, kindness. We can learn from each other and grow. We can live rather than simply preserve and grasp. We can see how Orthodoxy is not only what I grew up with, what ‘my’ spiritual father told, what Prof./Fr../Geronda/Vladyka said it was – we can see Orthodoxy is bigger than my family, my clan, my tribe, my culture, my opinions, my theological clique. Our laxity, our excuses, etc. can be revealed, and our shame can change us, we can be corrected. We are all in desperate need of having the windows opened to air out the house; and converts need their new homes to be lived in, to be used and filled, to become home.

Let us all welcome the opportunity to become the servants of each other. Let us compete to serve and sacrifice more than each other. When all sides do this, then will they way be clear to us all – God’s way and not our own. Let the OCA lay down her claims of autocephaly and sole jurisdiction, let the EP lay down its demands of obedience to primacy, let us all place Christ and His Church, the Orthodox faith, ahead of all things including language, culture and our pet ecclesiologies and theologies and forms.

Read “Sacrificing All” on the orrologian blog.

AsiaNews is reporting that Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I has “announced his intention to appeal to the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg over violations against the Orthodox community and its foundations, unjustly expropriated of lands and buildings by Ankara’s Direction for Religious Foundations.”

Speaking to faithful in St Georges’ Parish, close to the Byzantine walls of Istanbul, the Patriarch affirmed that the decision to go to the Strasbourg court was made by the Synod:

We have and you have come here to celebrate this religious ceremony in a parish that is facing many difficulties. Unfortunately it is not alone. The problem is that this parish and its community, as is the case with many other’s of the Church of Constantinople, have been abusively declared mazbut (occupied) by the Direction for Religious Foundations. This means that we cannot claim any rights to the management of the properties of this community, nor proceed with the election of its administrative board. As a result of this we have no right to manage that which was left to us by our forefathers. The only thing we are allowed to carry out in these places are religious functions. Unfortunately this is fate of this parish and many other parishes of the Church of Constantinople.

The Patriarch added that, in the courtyard of the Church where he spoke, a building which once housed the community’s school has been turned into a private gaming hall with the approval of Turkish authorities.

Read the backgrounders on the crisis threatening the survival of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on the Web site of the Order of St. Andrew the Apostle.

On his blog Koinonia, Fr. Gregory Jensen responds to the Holy Cross faculty letter which, he says, “reflects no serious criticism of the failures of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to provide effective leadership either in the United States much less world wide.” Excerpt:

In my view, I think that the leadership of the Ecumenical Throne and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America has been mixed at best. The events leading up to the autocephaly of the OCA are illustrative of this.

When the old Metropolia approached the Ecumenical Patriarchate ASKING for assistance in regularizing its relationship with the rest of the Orthodox Church, it was told that it had to address its concerns to the Moscow Patriarchate. It did and the result was the creation in 1970 of the OCA. Far from being a rejection of the Ecumenical Patriarchate the OCA was the fruit of the Ecumenical Throne’s unwillingness to involve herself in the life of the Church in America.

Another failure to take a leadership role in America is how the Ecumenical Throne responded to the group of Protestant Evangelical Christians who would go on to join the Church as the Antiochian Evangelical Orthodox Mission. As with the Metropolia, the Ecumenical Patriarchate WAS approached by Peter Gillquist et. al., only to be rebuffed. Is it any wonder then that not simply Metropolitan Philip of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of American, but many Orthodox Christians in America are skeptical about the ability of Ecumenical Patriarchate to lead the whole Church and especially the Church here in the States?

In both cases I must ask where was the leadership of the Ecumenical Patriarchate when leadership was needed?

The letter also references the 1994 meeting of Orthodox bishops in America—Greek, OCA, Antiochian, Ukrainian, Carpatho-Russian, and Serbian—in Ligonier PA. That meeting represented a concrete move toward a united Orthodox Church most likely under the presidency of then Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church of North and South America, Archbishop Iakovos of blessed memory. These plans were derailed by the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

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!

Read “Some Go Postal, I’m Going Editorial” on Koinonia.