Iubite parinte David

Poate va mai amintiti de mine sau nu cind slujati la Cathedrala Constantin si Elena dar eu si fiul meu Christian nu v-am uitat si am stiut ca mai devreme sau mai tirziu veti apare pe net sau pe undeva pentru ca dragostea Domnului Christos nu ne lasa indiferenti la ce sa intimpla in jurul nostru.Eu sint muncitor deci nu am studii superioare dar am vazut ca se comenteaza acel apel la unitate si demnitate.Am sa adaug si eu ce stiu sau deduc din ceia ce se intimpla.Preafericitul Daniel are o misiune destul de grea in opinia mea si de aici cred eu rezulta aceste probleme ca sa le zic asa.
1) poate va mai amintiti ca la alegerea lui sau opus foarte multi consideridul mai putin vrednic de scaunul patriarhal,foarte apropiat cercurilor protestant-catholice west europene poate chiar masonice.Membri laici si nu numai ai sfantului sinod au facut atunci cerc in jurul lui.
2) divergentele aparute cu ocazia pasapoartelor biometrice cu cei mai mari duhovnici ai romaniei in care romanii au toata increderea care se opun total acestora.De fapt Parintele Patriarh i-a c-am criticat mai voalat cei drept.
3)apoi ar fi apropierea Preafericitului de ecumenisti si de tot ceace sint ei.
4)atacurile celor din romania si din afara care sint inpotriva notiuni de stat national unitar si ca ortodoxia sa fie religia de stat, sau cea mai importanta.
5)perceptia multora ca sint inca ierahi in BOR care au colaborat cu autoritatile represive comniste.
Acestea ar fi pe scurt cred eu unele probleme.Deci rog pe multi care se simt afensati de aparent nationalismul ortodox roman sa ne ierte pe noi caci pot sa afirm ca in general romani sint oameni primitori si nu uram pe nimeni indiferent cine ar fi.Este una sa fii ortodox in romania si alta fii ortodox in america.
Va rog sa ma iertati pe mine pacatosul. marcel

–Leo Peter

Greg,

Christ is Risen!

Does the Church of Greece really not have Communion with the OCA? I’d never heard this before. I’d heard that they don’t recognize the OCA as autocephalous, but like some others, considers it still part of its Mother Church the Moscow Patriarchate (which ‘set it free’ in 1970), and in Communion thru the MP, so to speak. Is this incorrect?

Thanks,
Leo Peter

I am impressed by depth of your understanding.
Father, that was a good hunch! Eliot is the name of an activist I have met 7-8 years ago. He was pro-abortion (his speech sounded very much like what Bartholomew and his predecessor, Athenagoras, have stated: if a man and a woman truly love one another …), pro-communism and against nuclear energy. People were paying very close attention to what he was saying. I guess I am using this name to undo what he is doing …. Back then I didn’t have an Orthodox Christian perspective of anything. I am a convert from Ignorance.

Now, let me tell you this …the day before yesterday a thought came to my mind: ‘someone is going to ask me if this is my real name’. And here you are…

Dean, I couldn’t agree with you more. Sometimes a man just has to take a man’s word, fully realizing that there’s always an agenda and/or other subtext hidden underneath. We must be sympathetic to a people’s culture and their own particular “back story.” Having said that, we’ve got to get back to Christ’s ipssima verbi when we preach the Gospel. All else is secondary. Certainly love demands that we respect each other’s experiences and concerns, but not at the expense of the Gospel. As Schmemann said long ago, “Jesus didn’t die on the cross for bishops to wear nice robes.” [paraphrase] Therefore to place anything but love on such a lofty pedestal risks turning us into idolaters. Eventually people turn against false idols. That’s why SCOBA degenerated into a joke. If the upcoming bishops of North America are not serious and continue to disguise their ethnic agendas via an emphasis on “pastoral concerns” then the EA will take the place of SCOBA in the false idol category.

Eliot,

Perhaps I need to define what I mean by multi-culturalism. When I was in Romania (and for that matter, among Romanians in America), I learned that there is Romanian Orthodoxy, Russian Orthodoxy, Serbian Orthodoxy, Greek Orthodoxy, etc. However, there is not Hungarian Orthodoxy, German Orthodoxy, or Israeli Orthodoxy (of the Christian type). When I converted to Orthodoxy in Romania, I accepted it in terms of Romanian language and culture. When a Hungarian friend of mine (a Romanian citizen) converted to Orthodoxy and became a monk, he took a Romanian name and identity.

Father Staniloae, a strong proponent of Romanian Orthodox nationalism, maintained that there is no such thing as an abstract person, a person without cultural identity. All human beings come in concrete incarnations. They are Romanians or Italians or Mexicans, with an identity that is both given to them without their choice, and more or less embraced (or rejected, as the case may be) in their free will. In the eyes of the Romanian Patriarchate, it is not normal, or a sign of moral, spiritual, or psychological integrity, for a Romanian to cast off his or her identity as Romanian Orthodox. I think we American Orthodox need to understand this when we read statements like this “Appeal for Romanian Unity”.

As Dean says in his posting below, we who have been formed in the American culture have a different experience and perspective. To us, ethnicity is secondary or tertiary. And yet we, consciously or unconsciously, often wish to impose our multi-cultural, pluralist, democratic, capitalist “diversity” on the rest of the world (as, for example, in Iraq and Afghanistan). That has often been called cultural imperialism, and perhaps we American Orthodox also have a tendency to judge the Old World by American standards. In fact, we are the new kids on the block, and the little guys in world Orthodoxy.

As for what the Patriarchate meant by “non-canonical church structures”, I doubt if it would be referring to the OCA Romanian Episcopate, although many people would agree that, unfortunately, the Patriarchate has shown a tendency to be quite careless in its language and pronouncements in recent years, when speaking about the diaspora. I believe there has been some history in the diaspora of some autonomous and non-canonical groups and individuals calling themselves Orthodox (including Romanian), and assume that is what is meant here.

By the way, if it is not too cheeky of me to say it, I have a hunch that the name on your passport would not be Eliot Ryan.

Without commenting on the status of the Romanian issues, I think the following true story could be helpful.

We had a Romanian man who worked in the production area of one of our companies. He was very active at the local Romanian church. Having visited our small, mission parish of St. Raphael, which is comprised of about 50% cradle Orthodox and 50% converts, he was just genuinely confused by what he witnessed there.

So one Monday morning, he comes up to my partner, a Greek American, and sincerely asks, “Steve, you are Greek, and Orthodox…I am Romanian, and Orthodox…, but this Joe (a black man at St. Raphael’s), what is he?”

There is ethnophyletism and then there is just plain confusion, based upon your experience. I think we, in America, have to be careful not to confuse the two.

If your entire experience consists of a world of homogenous, “XXX-Orthodoxy”, i.e. a situation where virtually 100% of the population is Orthodox (something we in America cannot relate to), then your point of view is going to be different than the situation (here in America) where we comprise 1% of the population.

Put differently, although this never dawned on me when I visited Greece for some reason – when I was in Russia it just amazed me that I was in a country where virtually everyone had an icon in their office. For some reason, that just struck me as bizarre beyond imagination.

I came away thinking, “I wonder what it’s like to live in an environment where EVERYONE is Orthodox?” That thought was just incomprehensible.

I’m not saying these comments from the Old Countries are justified, or right, and am certainly no fan of ethnophyletism…but I think we in America, just as those 2nd and 3rd generation Orthodox living in Western Europe, are going to naturally have a different paradigm than those living in the Mother Countries.

Finally, it’s always struck me as ironic that our point of view, living in these more diverse societies, may actually be much CLOSER to that of the “Church of the First 15 Centuries” than those in the Old Countries. Think about it – the environment of the church, for 1500 years, was one where no one ethnic culture was predominant….there was a citizenship (ie Roman) which was of paramount importance – but one’s ethnic identity, be it Syrian, Greek, Italian, Egyptian, Lebanese, Armenian etc – that was clearly of secondary (probably more accurately tertiary) importance.

That fact tells me that we, in the lands of the “diaspora” may actually have something to teach those in the Old World. Perhaps Orthodoxy in those new lands is a harbinger of a return to a more dynamic, activist Orthodox Christianity – something the Old World has forgotten for 10 centuries.

Just a few rambling thoughts provoked by your comments.

Best Regards,
Dean

Multi-culturalism is not on their cognitive map.

Fr. David, this is the only one statement I disagree with…

It does appear to me that you do have a very good understanding of the Orthodox nationalism and phyletism issue. Even if you state that “it is difficult for us to truly understand what we are judging” you do make several statements which I perceive as being totally correct.

I would like to add a couple of things:
1. Even though the Romanian Church itself has only been autocephalous for 125 years the Romanian people had over the course of history many devout Orthodox Christian great statesmen. They were great defenders of the True Faith. They built many churches and monasteries in thanks to God. They had saintly people as spiritual fathers. Often their mothers became nuns after they raised their children. For example St. Daniel the Hermit advised St. Stephen the Great.

2. The evil one, in his latest struggle to destroy the Orthodox Church, has spread Orthodoxy to the four corners of the world. This is why we have what we call today the Orthodox diaspora. I do not believe that “multi-culturalism is not on their cognitive map”. They, too, are entitled to their own “thinking and sensibilities”. They are certainly sensitive to dramatic changes in worship/praxis and unclear boundaries between True Faith and heresy. Unfortunately, after the fall of Communism some Romanians have chosen to exchange their faith for material benefits and they became baptists, Adventists, etc.

3. The canonical status of the Episcopate led by Archbishop Nathaniel was acknowledged by the late Romanian Patriarch Teoctist. (See podcast on ancient faith radio site: Archbishop Nathaniel Updates on Romanian Orthodox Episcopate in America ). I really do not know what +Daniel meant by “non-canonical church structures”.

There is evidence that the true Orthodox faith in Romania needs to be protected. We Orthodox have to put our Orthodox Faith first and then our nationality/passports. We should have friendly relations with heterodox, but we must not compromise the God given Truth.

Eliot,

For those of us who are Americans in our thinking and sensibilities, whether converts or cradle Orthodox, I think it is difficult for us to truly understand what we are judging when we talk about Orthodox nationalism and phyletism. As one who was converted and ordained in Romania, I have lived in this atmosphere and I believe I understand it better than many.

The Romanian Orthodox Church does not understand itself to be phyletistic. For them — I think it safe to say ALL of them — it is a self-evident truth that the Orthodox Church is the Mother of the Romanian Nation. This, essentially ideological, belief plays out in the context in which the Romanian Church itself has only been autocephalous for 125 years, having had its own Patriarch for only 80, and has experienced its existence as being constantly threatened, from both the west and the east.

We must understand that, to Romanians, the act of leaving the Romanian Church and going under another one, with a different ethnic identity, is tantamount to betrayal of family, people, and in fact, one’s own true identity. Multi-culturalism is not on their cognitive map.

The reason I like the above response, from the French Orthodox, is that it is respectful and appealing, yet undeniably authoritative; and it comes from people who mostly understand that they are, indeed, a multi-cultural Orthodox diaspora, a new reality which is still strongly related to the old. And not too far away either culturally or geographically.

An inside source tells me that the Romanian Metropolitan of Paris quickly took the Patriarchate’s “Appeal” off his web site, in the embarrassment over the level of reaction it stirred up in France. For that matter, many Patriarchal Romanians in America are not happy about it, I believe, and these people will be heard in Bucharest.

Fr John, I defer to your experience. I’m rather taking the long view and trying to be very charitable. But I believe you’re right about Canada. Also things tend to be even more extreme in Australia.

The indivisibility of the nation (people) with the Orthodox Church may be expressed best by the fact that the ribbon in every Romanian Gospel book is the “tricolor”.

The Romanian Orthodox Church is a Church of apostolic origins, born out of the mission of St Andrew the Apostle, who preached the Word of the Gospel also in the old Roman province of Scythia Minor, the territory between the Danube and the western part of the Black Sea, present Dobrogea (south east of Romania). … Romania has a population of 21,794,793 inhabitants, of which 86,7% declared themselves as Christian Orthodox.

Given this background, it is not surprising that nation and Orthodoxy are virtually indivisible concepts. I don’t see anything wrong with it. Also, the Scripture tells that God does judge the nations.

When Romanians, Serbians, Russians, etc, get out into the rest of the world, the connection between Orthodoxy and nationalism does appear as phyletism. When making judgments on this phenomenon one has to take into account that every emigration generally goes through three general phases. Fr. Andrew Philips writes:

The first generation, that of the grandparents, remains faithful to the old country, though is often coloured by nationalist cultural nostalgia. The second generation, born outside the homeland, suffering from an inferiority complex in the new country because of its origins, fights against its own roots. It denies that it is anything but indigenous to the country of emigration and ends up, for example in the USA, being more American than the Americans. It is only the third generation (sometimes aided by the elderly but conscious representatives of the first or grandparents’ generation) that begins to get the balance right.

What worries me is that, in Romania, nationalism as a sentiment already took precedence over Orthodoxy. In an article titled Robber’s Synod in Bucharest
the author concludes:

Today, the protection of the true Orthodox faith in Romania, its confession in accordance with the letter and the spirit of the dogmas and holy canons, can only be done with the support of the other Local Sister-Churches with who we are in communion.

In the same article is given a quote from the book “Laymen in the Church” by a Romanian theologian, Liviu Stan:

The laity, with or without the blessing of the hierarchy, must fulfil their duty, they have a right to a correct announcement of the Word and the Church Teachings, and if someone tries to contravene this right of the laity, then, the voice of God may be found in that of the laity.

to all Romanian Orthodox clerics and faithful abroad, who are, without blessing, in other sister Orthodox Churches or in non-canonical church structures

Fr,

I agree that my observation might be too arcane for the average parishioner, but the above line in the opening paragraph of the Appeal leads me to think that my original citation from the Response is indeed referring to churches rather than nations, and I might be on the right track. (But then, who am I? I’m just an interested observer of the Orthodox Church, trying to understand her, and thankful to have found a site like AOI. Oh, well… thanks for your insights.)

I don’t suppose there is any way to contact any of the actual signers of the Response? (I’d need to do that in English, of course.)

‘Go back to a time’? It still persists in many, maybe most places where ‘Amurricans'(what I call Anglos) do not numerically predominate. And in some places, like Canada, the reaction against ethnophyletism is so strong that you won’t even hear “Christos Anesti” in an English (-only) language parish.

Fr Gregory, what you say is most probably true, but that is merely an excuse and can in no way justify the subsumation of the Gospel to the state. I realize that I’m in no position to lay blame as I am not a priest and thus captive to an unsympathetic hierarchy. But the fact that such an unsympathetic hierarchy exists in the first place is precisely the point.

geo

Yes, I totally understand… and sympathize with those who might wish to sign and can’t.

On the other hand, the nationalism in Romanian Orthodoxy is so all-pervasive as to be unrecognized by most, being wrapped in the most sacred of terminology and tones…. The indivisibility of the nation (people) with the Orthodox Church may be expressed best by the fact that the ribbon in every Romanian Gospel book is the “tricolor”.

And no doubt in other national Orthodox churches as well.

In fact, the marriage of Orthodoxy and Nation are so complete and so completely hallowed as to be unrecognized as phyletism within the national space. Only when it gets out into the rest of the world does it appear so.