Fr. John Meyendorff – AOI - The American Orthodox Institute

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HT: OCANews

A Challenging Vision For Orthodox Christians in America: An Interview With Father John Meyendorff

Translated (with Introduction) by Father Robert M. Arida, Boston MA

Introduction

Fr. John Meyendorff

In 1990 the late Father John Meyendorff, renowned church historian, patrologist and dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary, was interviewed in Paris by Antoine Niviere. The interview was subsequently published in Service Orthodoxe de Presse (no.146, March 1990). Some 20 years later it was reprinted in Le Messager Orthodoxe (no. 148, 1-2009).

Father John’s responses to Niviere’s poignant questions help to provide, in a very condensed format, an historical and theological backdrop for evaluating the recent Episcopal Assembly convened by His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. The interview also provides a vision for its work in the future. This historic assembly, held in New York City on May 26-28, 2010 was a response to the decisions of the fourth Pre-Conciliar Pan Orthodox Conference held at the Orthodox Center of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Chambesy, Switzerland (June 6-9,2009). Focusing on resolving the various ecclesiological anomalies caused by the so-called “diaspora,” the Chambesy conference was the result of the gathering of primates representing fourteen autocephalous churches invited to Istanbul by His All Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (June 6-12, 2009). Missing from the list of invitees was His Beatitude Metropolitan Jonah of the autocephalous Orthodox Church in America (OCA).

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