ecumenical patriarchate

A really interesting passage from “The legacy of the French Revolution: Orthodoxy and nationalism,” an essay by Paschalis Kitromilides, which explains, among other things, the historical process by which the Church of Greece was granted autocephaly.

While the Enlightenment confronted the church with a secular universalist ideology, which, questions of doctrine aside, could in some instances complement and even sustain its own ecumenical values, nationalism gave rise to a conflict, where the issues not only were on the level of secular versus transcendental values but also set the ecumenicity of Christian ideals against the parochialism of nationalism. The history of this conflict turned out to be identical with the history of the Orthodox Church in the nineteenth century.

Ultimately, writes Kitromilides, “the ecumenical patriarchate, once its own formal requirements were satisfied, supplied the canonical sanction for turning regional churches into instruments of secular authority. The latter in turn used the churches for the enhancement of its own power by enlisting them in a leading role in nationalist projects.” The essay is reproduced in the Cambridge History of Christianity (Vol. 5, Eastern Christianity) published in 2008.

Excerpt:

Greece’s first head of state, Ioannis Kapodistrias, was a devout Orthodox, deeply concerned with the restoration of religious order and Christian morals in the fledgling state emerging from the war of independence. This was reflected in the pertinent initiatives of his administration. One of his main concerns had to do with the preservation of the administrative links between the Orthodox Church in the new Greek state and the ecumenical patriarchate, because Kapodistrias was convinced that the doctrinal communion between the two branches of Greek Orthodoxy might be upset if the administrative links were severed.

The president’s good intentions, however, were not much helped when in May 1828 Patriarch Agathangelos dispatched a mission of four very senior prelates from the patriarchal synod to Greece bringing letters addressed to ‘the clergy and notables of the Peloponnese and the Aegean Islands’, whereby they were asked to resubmit to the Sublime Porte. In respectful and entirely conciliatory letter, Kapodistrias rejected the patriarch’s admonition, pointing out that it was totally impossible for the people of Greece to give up the freedom they had won with so many sacrifices. In contrast to Agathangelos, his successor Konstantios I sent his good wishes and his blessings to the Greek state in August 1830 but expressed his concern about news of Calvinist infiltration among the Orthodox of Greece. Kapodistrias reassured the patriarch about Greece’s devotion to Orthodoxy and to the Great Church. This in turn gave Konstantios the opportunity to insist on the complete re-establishment of administrative unity between the church in the territories of the Greek state and the Great Church of Constantinople. Continue reading →

The Moscow Patriarchate has released a statement, in English, on the work of the all-Orthodox pre-conciliar meeting in Chambesy, Switzerland, earlier this month. The patriarchate explains how “episcopal assemblies” are to be constituted.

Text follows:

The 4th Pan-Orthodox Pre-Council Conference, which took place at the Patriarchate of Constantinople’s Orthodox Center in Chambesy near Geneva, completed its work on 12 June 2009. The delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church led by Archpriest Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external church relations, included Archbishop Mark of Berlin, Germany and Great Britain, Russian Church Outside Russia, Archpriest Nikolay Balashov, DECR vice-chairman, and Mr. A. Churyakov, an interpreter.

The conference was chaired by Metropolitan John of Pergamon. Metropolitan Jeremiah of Switzerland, Patriarchate of Constantinople, acted as its secretary. It was attended by delegations of the Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Georgia, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria as well as Orthodox Churches of Cyprus, Greece, Albania, Poland, Czech Lands and Slovakia. They were led by their hierarchs.

His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia addressed a message of greetings to the conference.

As had been agreed by primates and representatives of Local Orthodox Churches at their meeting in October 2008 at Fanar and reaffirmed by subsequent correspondence, the 4th Conference focused on the canonical order of the Orthodox diaspora. This decision on the agenda was made by the participants in the beginning of their work. The rest of the agenda items for Pan-Orthodox Pre-Council Conferences, including a procedure for declaring authocephaly and autonomy and the diptych order, will be considered in the sessions to follow the preparatory work to be done by the Inter-Orthodox Preparatory Commission.

The participants considered documents prepared by the Inter-Orthodox Preparatory Commission at its meetings on 10-17 November 1990 and 7-13 November 1993 and the conference of canon law experts which took place on 9-14 April 2009 in Chambesy. The documents were clarified and amended by consensus.

The conference agreed that the problem concerning the canonical order of the Orthodox diaspora, that is, those faithful who reside beyond the traditional boundaries of Local Orthodox Churches, should be dealt with on the basis of ecclesiology, canonical tradition and practice of the Orthodox Church. To this end, it was agreed to set up bishops’ assemblies consisting of all the canonical Orthodox bishops who take pastoral care of the community in a given locality. The task of bishops’ assemblies will be to ascertain and consolidate the unity of the Orthodox Church, to provide common pastoral care for Orthodox people in a region and to bear common witness before the external world. The assemblies’ decisions are to be made on the basis of consensus reached by the Churches whose bishops are represented in them. The authority of a bishops’ assembly exclude interference in the diocesan jurisdiction of each of the bishops and does not restrict the rights of his Church including in her relations with international organizations, governments, the civil society and mass media as well as other confessions, governmental and inter-confessional organizations and other religions.

The conference also adopted a revised draft procedure defining basically the work of regional bishops’ assemblies in the Orthodox diaspora.

DECR Communication Service (Dept. of External Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate)

Turkish newspapers say a deal is in the works. Will there be reciprocity from Greece? When President Obama was in Turkey, there were reports that “the recognition by Greek authorities of muftis in Thrace and financial support for Muslim schools might prompt a Turkish rethink on the Halki school.” Here is the story from Hurriyet, the Turkish newspaper:

ANKARA – The Halki seminary on the island of Heybeliada is to be reopened, Culture Minister Ertuğrul Günay said, adding that they are searching for a formula to integrate the Orthodox theological school into Turkey’s university system. “Although we have not finalized a decision in the Cabinet, my personal impression is that we are going to open the seminary,” said Günay, speaking on Kanal 24 television over the weekend.

Recalling that the functioning of the Halki seminary is not compatible with the Turkish university system, Günay maintained that work is underway to find a formula for its status. He explained that the question is whether the seminary would function like a university, which then has to be integrated into the Turkish university system, or if it would function like an autonomous private high school.

One of the latest proposals was for the seminary to become a private university under the auspices of a foundation, such as how Koç University was established under the auspices of the Vehbi Koç Foundation. The Heybeliada University would be set up under the Ayatriada Foundation with the patriarch chairing the latter and people with Turkish citizenship making up the rest of the board. However, the patriarch has rejected the idea.

The expectation of the reopening of Halki Seminary, which has been closed since 1971, has been long spelt out by the European Union in the course of entry talks and was lately expressed by U.S. President Barack Obama during his visit to Turkey in April.

State Minister and Chief Negotiator Egemen Bağış said that reopening Halki Seminary was a domestic issue for Turkey, in an interview with the Greek daily Kathimerini, reported the Anatolia News Agency on Sunday.

Reciprocity principle

“Turkey needs to address the religious needs of the Orthodox community as well as Greece needs to address the needs of the Turkish community in Western Thrace. These are domestic matters for both countries,” said Bağış. Although the reciprocity principle is not a must, both countries must tackle the problems simultaneously Bağış underlined.

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese released the schedule for Ecumenical Patriarch Batholomew’s visit to the United States in October. Separately, a detailed agenda for his upcoming environmental symposium has been posted online.

The patriarch’s “Symposium VIII — Restoring Balance: The Great Mississippi River” offers a rare opportunity to present Orthodoxy’s distinctive, sacramental understanding of the stewardship of Creation to America and the world. And this trip, which will involve about 200 participants in all, will no doubt generate a huge volume of media attention. We will be following the symposium closely here on the Observer.

If the text accompanying the agenda is any indication, the work of the symposium will be heavily inflected by an environmentalist ethic that looks at humanity primarily as a source of pollution and largely ignores the benefits of balanced economic development that does not degrade or abuse Creation. There is the utopian dream of returning the Earth to its pristine, pre-industrial state. Example:

But the fate of the Mississippi waters is more than one aspect of global warming. It is also, very acutely, an ethical crisis. The exploitation of the great river – its pollution, the disastrous confinements of its course and the draining of its wetlands – is starting to produce catastrophic human and natural consequences. But it is not clear that the lessons of the Katrina hurricane have been learned. Development for short-term gain rushes ahead, especially in the Delta itself.

The Mississippi is a challenge not only to human responsibility for the environment, but to democracy. Many people know what should be done: a curb on development and a massive, costly programme to restore the river to something like its ancient health. But few are ready to vote for it. That is the real Mississippi crisis.

The Symposium agenda writer also notes, about a Day One stop in Memphis at the National Civil Rights Museum, that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of racial equality has been only partially realized with the election of President Barack Obama. “Yet fulfilling the dream of economic justice and what is termed today ecojustice, which is of particular concern to the Symposium, has not been realised,” we are told. Continue reading →

Address given at the SVS conference on Orthodoxy unity in America, June 20, 2009.

Highlight: Met. Jonah introduces into official discourse the need to de-imperialize Orthodox ecclesiology.

1917 Council and Tomos: St Tikhon’s Vision Then and Now

Metropolitan Jonah

The Great Council of 1917, and the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church that it began, are aspects of the de-imperialization of the Orthodox Church and its canonical structures. This began a process of the transcendence of the imperial domination of Orthodox ecclesiology, which reigned from Constantine and Theodosius to Nicholas II, and the beginning of the adaptation to a new era in which the Church is independent of the state. This was the beginning of a new conciliar vision, which has developed significantly over the past century. What it did is to set up a new set of structural and canonical interpretations, demanding a worldwide rethinking of Orthodox ecclesiology.

The fruit of this vision, partially, is the Orthodox Church in America, and her autocephaly. The conflict with the old ecclesiological and canonical interpretations forms the context for the issues surrounding the acceptance or rejection of the autocephaly. This conflict is, however, also the fruitful ground for a creative resolution to the issues confronting the OCA, and the Orthodox Church throughout the world.

The Orthodox Church in Russia began preparing for a great Council over a hundred years ago, particularly in 1905. In the final decades of the Russian Empire there was a tremendous intellectual ferment among the clergy and intelligentsia of the Russian Church that not only sought a way out of the morass of the Oberprokurator system suppressing the Patriarchate, established by Peter the First, but that was also very much in dialog with the social, political and cultural developments of the time. The Russian Empire not only had tens of thousands of churches, and over a thousand monasteries, in its own territory, using Slavonic and a “standard” practice also taught in the seminaries and academies; there were dozens of missions to tribes of many languages, as well as extensive foreign missions, including that to North America. Each of these served in the local language, generated liturgical and catechetical material in these languages, and recruited and trained local indigenous clergy.

Continue reading →