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Even if you don’t understand Greek, you will still understand what is going on.

Ed. Harry Coin, an occasional commentator on AOI published this editorial on Orthodox News recently.

By Harry Coin | July 6, 2009

The people who consider the church a ‘home near home’ come with the expectation that it is a place where the right thing happens most of the time, and the higher the authority the more often the right thing happens. If that isn’t the case, then even if people come at first, they won’t stay or come consistently since we all know the sort of experience where the wrong thing happens takes much less work to find, or finds us whether we want it or not.

Nobody older than 14 expects any gathering of people to get it all right all the time. The whole matter of survival much less growth for our Orthodox church turns on whether there is or isn’t a tolerated culture of leadership misdoing, while accepting the expected individual stumbles.

The historical time is over when the leadership can put on grand clothing and be accepted as if they lived as they would have people think during visits and occasional services. Much as in the days of the village where everyone lived so closely with one another they knew the main points of the truth of matters, the modern cell phone cameras and internet and so on has closed the ‘anonymity and impersonalisation gap’ opened during the 1900’s. No more will the future support ‘rock star’ bishops who gain moral authority only by their seeming during infrequent visits. Continue reading →

The “Companion to the Greek Orthodox Church,” edited by Fotios K. Litsas, was published by Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in 1984 as a guidebook to various topics in Church life. The book included the article “Orthodoxy in the United States” by Rev. Thomas FitzGerald, now dean of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, and an expert on American Orthodoxy. Fr. FitzGerald closed his 1984 article with a bold prediction:

Orthodoxy in the United States may no longer be viewed simply as a diaspora composed primarily of immigrants intent upon returning to their homeland. Rather, Orthodoxy in the United States can only be viewed properly as an emerging local Church comprised primarily of American citizens of a wide variety of racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds.

In due course, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the various Orthodox jurisdictions in the United States will be united into an autocephalous Church which will be officially recognized as such by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the other autocephalous Orthodox Churches.

In the same article, Fr. FitzGerald notes:

Viewed from the perspective of Orthodox ecclesiology, the proliferation of parallel and often competing jurisdictions on the same geographical territory is a serious anomaly. The establishment of “ethnic” and even “political” dioceses rather than territorial dioceses may have served the short-term needs of the immigrants. However, the ecclesiastical requirements for canonical order, integrity, and the unity of the episcopacy in a given region were sacrificed. This led to an undue emphasis upon a policy of “congregationalism” which is alien to Orthodoxy, and to an attitude of phyletism, both of which have greatly diminished the mission and salutary message of the Orthodox Church in the United States until very recently.