“People walking sideways, pretending that they’re leading . . . ”

The Assemblies (or whatever they’re calling them this week) deserve to be ignored in toto. The reason is that no jurisdiction besides the OCA (and that is certainly not uniform within the OCA) has any intention of this turning into a united autocephalous Orthodox Church. Not the slightest intention.

The whole thing was concocted to give the appearance that the patriarchs and their American hierarchs are moving toward climbing some tall hill to a united American church, whether autonomous under Constantinople or autocephalous. The truth is that if the will was actually there, it could be done and over with in 6 months.

Autonomy under Constantinople is probably a non-starter for the OCA and ROCOR. Autocephaly is a non-starter for Constantinople and, under its present leadership, the AOC.

In short, the whole thing is a thinly veiled lie, nothing more. What you will see is an indefinite churning of a bureaucracy that leads to nowhere. That’s all you’ve seen so far because the principals have no remote intention of getting to the point they say they wish to reach.

It reminds me of Augustine’s statement, “Lord, grant me chastity and continence – – but not yet.”

But if we choose to ‘come together’ in the context of submission to remote administration by a foreign power, we will be seen, correctly, as freely choosing without the budens of new immigrants and with full knowledge and ability to choose otherwise, to distort ecclesiology in favor of geopolitical ethnic entanglements. A church with ‘Orthodox’ in the title can expect to die quickly if the doing doesn’t reflect the title on the door.

Those who wanted an ordained young never married pope or group of ethnic overseas popes can already go to many places that offer that. We’re late to that party and it isn’t one our own preaching suggests we ought to join.

The right path is for the varous groups to gain autocephaly or something like it, then coalesce with those already similarly situated.

The goal, if we want to grow and not close the church doors as we marry our neighbors, is to remain in communion with all while choosing our own leadership here.