Fr Mark, thank you for your gracious and merciful words to us all in this time of tempest. I enjoyed your address last year to us and I pray that should you find the time to read my appraisal, you will see that I spoke highly of your abilities and vision. If I’ve ever given offense, please forgive me.

Thanks all for your questions – I just don’t have the time to address them all at the moment. I would clarify my use of the words “canonically able” by saying that first and foremost, this means (to me) bishops whose ordinations have no impediment. Second, it would mean bishops who are not in schism from the Body of the Church.

As far as the details of the process for calling a Great and Holy Council are concerned, I really am not in a position to know such things. My experience, however, teaches me that the funding and logistics necessary for such an event could be handled relatively easily.

Lastly, on a personal note, let me thank you all for refraining from gossip during some obviously difficult days in the OCA. I hope and pray with all of you for a healthful and expeditious conclusion to the current situation.

Eliot. Except for Moghila, Bulgakov and some others, we do not limit the Church’s sacraments to seven or any other number. The Greater and Lesser Blessing of Waters are sacraments. The blessing of food is a sacrament. The anointing with chrism on certain feasts is a sacrament. Etc., etc., etc.

I am not looking for any easing of praxsis, just the opposite. IMO those who reject or trivialize the traditional practice in favor of current political idelogy do a great disservice to the Church.

I also feel that those who are rigid in their practice and want everything to stay the same without really engaging the United States or the people here do an equal disservice.

We have the opportunity in the US to find a new balance that will allow the Holy Tradition to be fully expressed but in a manner that is more consonent with our culture. The hierarchy has to be more responsive and flexible, the laity has to be more patient and we need to learn obedience. All of us need to open our hearts more to God in humility.

I don’t always know what to think about OCAnews, but this report makes it out to seem that His Beatitude wasn’t the “American” primate we (or at least I) envisioned. This is either very disconcerting, or a smear campaign and very disconcerting.
http://www.ocanews.org/news/JonahLeaveofAbsence2.25.11.html

In a certain sense these are Christological differences because they represent vastly differing ecclesiological understandings as well as different soteriological approaches.

The Orthodox Church has the fullness of truth, not by our merits but by God’s mercy. We have a treasure, but we have to uphold this treasure and we would be betraying our Savior if we deny it. Metropolitan Kallistos

Orthodoxy claims that its sacraments are essential to salvation. The Sacraments are Christ. He is the true minister. The sacraments of other non-Orthodox Christians are incomplete or inexistent.

For Orthodox, the Seven Sacraments of the Church :

1- Sacrament of Baptism.

2- Sacrament of Confirmation

3- Sacrament of Confession

4- Sacrament of Eucharist

5- Sacrament of Unction of Sick

6- Sacrament of Matrimony

7- Sacrament of Priesthood.

are far more than symbolic acts. They transmit grace to the believer, resulting in true communion with Jesus Christ. The Sacrament of Confession was instituted by the Lord Jesus when He said to His pure disciples:

Assuredly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew: 18:18), and after Resurrection He said, “As the Father has sent me, I also send you and when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them, if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. (John 20: 21-22).

.
Fasting and prayer are very important because some demons come out only by “prayer and fasting”. Orthodox worship God as if He were real and this is the proper form of worship, because God is real! The evangelicals commonly reject the liturgical approach to worship. One can even notice disdain for the Holy Liturgy from their side. Some tend to favor a frightfully simplistic message and practice, but want to still call it Orthodoxy.
.
Any changes in the Church’s dogma made to accommodate newcomers would be a great mistake and a betrayal of those who give their life to preserve the fullness of truth.
.
Laziness, spiritual and intellectual, and pride are the causes of ignorance of Orthodoxy and disrespect for the richness of Orthodox history, worship and teaching.

Every bit of Church dogma was imposed through the blood of those ready to give their life to defend it; being a matter of life – not merely a theoretical speculation. (Theologian Fr Dumitru Staniloae)

If for any reason a Council would decide to change the 2,000 year old Orthodox practice and justify it by citing the helplessness of modern man, such a Council would be not only non-Orthodox, but actually anti-Orthodox.
.
It is true that we are helpless. Many of those who call themselves traditional Orthodox Christians are helpless when it comes to fasting and long prayer services. But we have to be humble and acknowledge it and strive to improve. To bring down the standards and to dilute everything is not going to do any good. We are not saved by our own works alone. We are saved by grace through our own faith, and faith is a gift from God
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Psalm 51:17

Fr Mark,

thank you for clearing that up. I may have misremembered as it was just over a year ago. I wrote a more contemporaneous essay (dated March 2010) which has been published on http://www.monomakhos.com. I’d very much appreciate it if you took the time to read it. Although it was a first-hand account, if there are any mistakes or misunderstandings, please bring them to my attention.

Geo

p.s. I enjoyed meeting you and appreciate your coming to meet us last year. You were honest and forthright in your answers.

Jamey Bennet just posted this on Facebook and has been making similar postings wherever this has spread:

“I spoke with Monk Gregory just moments ago. He is the Metropolitan’s assistant, and lives with His Beatitude. He said unequivocally, IT IS NOT TRUE. Met. Jonah has not resigned. It is true that he spoke with some bishops about the possibility of a sabbatical, but even this is not occurring. According to Monk Gregory, he is not going anywhere.”

I take this as a trustworthy source. Now… hopefully back to the topic.

I smell Dolmades in our future …

http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2011/02/metropolitan-jonah-of-oca-resigns.html

Eliot, has not every council formalized divisions already existing? The Church was ‘united’ by excluding a whole bunch of folks who thought they were in the Church. In some cases those communions still exist as separate entities. Certainly few of the heresies condemned have gone from the human heart and mind.

Do we not already have a divisions that many are refusing to acknowledge?
A. Modernists
B. Static traditionalists (including the ethno-centrists)
C. Traditional Evangelists

In a certain sense these are Christological differences because they represent vastly differing ecclesiological understandings as well as different soteriological approaches.

We are a house divided against itself, IMO

I do have a really difficult time with the unctious and arrogant language that is used to describe the event–but I’m just an uncouth Kansas boy. I remember the old marketing book: How To Swim With the Sharks Without Getting Eaten . One of the author’s points was: “Never sign anything in a room with a chandelier”: Too much hype, too much peer pressure, too little substance.

To this poor ol’ Kansas boy, the whole thing seems like a room full of chandeliers.

Whatever the outcome, we are responsible for how we respond to God’s word and His love. I have to rely on God to lead us through the morass.

St. Basil and the other few who stood against Arius originally never left the Church to start their own thing. The modern mind being what it is, we already have folks leaving just because they don’t like the clothes their priest wears.

Fr. Mark, permit me to humbly add a 5th question to my list above.

5) Does the Ecumenical Patriarch hold any unique powers at the Great Council? For example, if the majority of fathers of the council vote on an issue and the Ecumenical Patriarch does not agree with the vote can His All Holiness overrule the vote or issue the equivalent of a veto?

How about the Episcopal Assembly? If the majority of members of the Assembly vote in a manner that Archbishop Demterios disagrees with can he overrule the vote or issue the equivalent of a veto?

“Canonically able to attend”-according to the practice of EVERY Ecumenical Council, that would mean every canonical Orthodox bishop would be able to attend.

Not a consensus on who can come. Not a vote on who can come. Not a committee appointed to select who can come. At the Third Ecumenical Council Nestorius was given-over the objection of Rome, what some are calling ‘the primus” today-his seat at the council.

If you are a bishop in an Episcopal Assembly, which were set up for this “Great and Holy Council” procedure, you have the canonical right to come to the “Great and Holy Council.”

Is that what you mean, Father, by “canonically able to come.”