I’m just sayin’…

2) About freemasonry, I feel like this:

http://www.orthodoxfaith.com/ecumenism_masonry_councils.html

Whither “withering?”

1) OCA priest heeds the counsel of Mount Athos.
2) OCA priest recieves the mystery of Holy Baptism at (in Archbishop Dmitri’s words) the “spiritual center of Orthodoxy.”
3) Priest gets suspended by Archbishop Dmitri and turned out of the jurisdiction that denied him the blessing in the first place, which turns out to be a blessing, because he finds a true home in the ROCOR.
4) Metropolitan Jonah and the Holy Synod of the OCA comes around and recognizes his priesthood (a little over a week after Archbishop Dmitri’s retirement) and suspends their suspension of him which was a genuinely nice gesture though it had no bearing on his priesthood within the ROCOR and the Church outside of the OCA jurisdiction.

So who got withered? The “spiritual center of Orthodoxy,” Mount Athos? The ROCOR? The OCA? I’ll just let the events speak for themselves.

As to whether I will stand in the Archbishop Dmitri’s shadow or yours, I’m pretty sure that the Church teaches that “luck don’t enter into it” and also that the Lord Jesus Christ will be the Judge.

I guess I’m lucky it won’t be you who will be judging me.

Did you hear about the OCA priest (received into the OCA by chrismation) who went to Mount Athos and got his problem fixed by getting baptized? On his return he got suspended by his Archbishop Demetri. This priest was then received by the ROCOR.

Here is Archbishop Demetri’s take on what happened:

http://www.oca.org/Docs.asp?ID=85&SID=12

“I am writing to you so that you may understand my attitude towards your re-baptism and why I concluded that it was necessary to suspend you. When I first learned from you what you had done, I was perplexed, surprised, and shocked. Yet, because you accepted this baptism at one of the monasteries of Mount Athos, the spiritual center of Orthodoxy, and not from some cleric or monastery of one of the super Orthodox fringe cults, I held back my reaction…”

The rest of the letter is not so restrained with words like:

“It is, therefore, a sad occasion indeed when a brother priest chooses to leave this glorious company for any reason. This is especially true when he leaves us in an uncanonical fashion, that is, without release, and joins himself to another jurisdiction. The severity of such an act is aggravated when that jurisdiction is an uncanonical one, at odds with the Orthodox Churches and, at the same time, making extravagant claims for itself, that is, that it is the only ‘church’ which is faithful to the Tradition…The possibility for committing this unwarranted act will exist as long as there are robber bishops, who are eager to extend their jurisdictions and enjoy the sense of conquest. They are truly those who climb up over the walls to steal sheep and do not enter by the door.”

But the story has a happy ending though:

“On April 9, 2009, His Beatitude Metropolitan Jonah, Primate of the Orthodox Church in America, visited the First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia at his residence in New York. After praying before the Kursk-Root Icon of the Mother of God in the Synodal Cathedral, His Beatitude gave His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion a letter on the decision of the Holy Synod of the OCA regarding their former clergymen who had gone under the ROCOR while under suspension. At a recent meeting, the Holy Synod decided to recognize them as clergymen of the Russian Church Abroad, removing their suspensions.”

RE: The canonicity of the OCA and its clergy is not in question, only its autocephaly and the right of a local Orthodox church such as Russia to unilaterally grant autocephaly to a portion of its own jurisdiction.

The Georgian Orthodox Church was originally under the jurisdiction of Antioch. It was granted autocephaly by that patriarchate in 466. I’m not sure what Constantinople was considered at that point.

In any case, it’s certainly another example of a local church being granted autocephaly.

So what’s the problem?

Best Regards,
Dean

The canonicity of the OCA and its clergy is not in question, only its autocephaly and the right of a local Orthodox church such as Russia to unilaterally grant autocephaly to a portion of its own jurisdiction.

I have never heard of OCA clergy having problems except as would be related to being on the New Calendar, if a Protestant or Catholic convert was received by chrismation rather than baptism, or if a Catholic priest was recieved in his orders by vesting rather than ordination. These happen in other local churches, too, so it is not limited to the OCA.

I scanned through the book a year or two ago at the library of the Princeton Theological Seminary. If a visit should be possible, there is a decent collection of Orthodox materials at that place.

I’d like to hear about any OCA clergy/hierarch experience on the Holy Mountain.

Perhaps the newly ordained Bishop Melchisedek of Pittsburgh, with Greek and Athonite links, would be a good man to ask (see his biography at http://www.oca.org/HSbiomelchisedek.asp?SID=7).

Has the OCA suddenly had a wonderful change of heart so that its antipathy towards the ROCOR suddenly feels “dated” and so “20 years ago?” If so, thank God!

I’ve had the pleasure to know a few OCA clergy and laymen who heartily welcomed the reconciliation, as well as participate in the first (in a long while) service of a ROCOR bishop (Peter of Cleveland) at an OCA church, complete with an ordination by Bishop Peter of an OCA cleric. That was two years ago. Reconciliation takes time, but it seems that by no means all of OCA has ever been represented by its highly-visible anti-ROCOR minority.

Re: “Sounds a bit dated, like it was reacting to the polemics of, say, 20 years ago.”

Actually, it’s all very contemporary.

On the day of Halloween in 1991, the OCA issued a press proclaiming that all of Mount Athos condemned the ROCOR as “schismatic” and “deprived of divine grace.” (Trick or treat, indeed!)

The ROCOR and the MP restored communion in May 2007. Only two years ago.

In the recent years, months, weeks leading up to this reunion, I never stopped hearing the words “schismatic” and “deprived of grace” from both clergy and laity in my former “OCA flagship” parish whenever the subject of ROCOR came up. OCA folks got especially testy after the MP slammed the door on Fr. Leonid Kishovsky’s efforts to have the ROCOR come under the omophorion of the OCA.

Has the OCA suddenly had a wonderful change of heart so that its antipathy towards the ROCOR suddenly feels “dated” and so “20 years ago?” If so, thank God! As good as this feeling must be for some people in the OCA, the fact remains that there is a lot of work to do before the relationship between ROCOR and the “Metropoliate” is fully redefined.

Fr. Andrew Phillips (ROCOR-UK) said in a recent interview: “When the Church is persecuted, as ROCOR was, creating a siege mentality, there were two possible courses of action for outsiders. One was to support us, as the Serbs and others did, the other was to join in the stone-throwing. We know exactly who was who and who did what.”

Question: How does the following statement sound “20 years ago?”

“As far as the ‘autocephaly’ of the OCA is concerned, since it was not issued by the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, as only the Ecumenical Patriarchate possesses the right to issue a tome of autocephaly, or at least recognized officially by the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, it’s autocephaly is unsubstantial.”

Has the Ecumenical Patriarch suddenly recognized the autocephaly of the OCA?

As to the date of the letter from Fr. Theophanis, I only have the fragment I posted (forwarded to me from a friend). Earliest date would have to be 1991. I would like to have it for my files which means I must contact the Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies to see if I can get the issue that contains the letter ( “Vol. IX, Nos. 2 & 3 of Orthodox Tradition“).

BTW, another oldie but contemporary that I’d like to get is The Autocephaly of the Metropolia in America by Prof. Panagiotis N. Trempelas, a former member of the faculty at the School of Theology at the University of Athens. This book lays out the historical and canonical arguments against the OCA’s autocephaly. Anyone know where I can get a copy?

About the OCA and Mount Athos: I’d like to hear about any OCA clergy/hierarch experience on the Holy Mountain. Did they/you concelebrate? Did/Does Archimandrite Theophanis speak for the Holy Mountain?

I’ve had the opportunity to interact with two OCA clergy who went to the Holy Mountain but I never thought to ask.

One OCA priest became an ex-OCA priest (now ROCOR) after his pilgrimage to Mount Athos. The other priest gave a presentation about his “trip” to the Holy Mountain but did not mention one word about concelebration, or holiness, Elders or even prayer for that matter. He did show us lots of pretty pictures and and told “funny” patronizing, anecdotes about those crazy Greeks.

Let’s hear what it’s really like for OCA clergy on the Holy Mountain!

Finally, some clear thinking, straight talking and leadership from the Old World!!! These are the kind of statements America has been waiting for.

“As the prophets beheld, as the Apostles have taught,…as the Church has received… as the teachers have dogmatized,…as the Universe has agreed,… as Grace has shown forth,…as Truth has revealed,…as falsehood has been dissolved,…as Wisdom has presented,…as Christ Awarded,…thus we declare,…thus we assert,…thus we preach Christ our true God…This is the Faith of the Apostles, this is the Faith of the Fathers, this is the Faith of the Orthodox, this is the Faith which has established the Universe.”

Axios!!!

Best Regards,
Dean