Fr Hopko said in a sermon that in the last days there would be no persecution of the Church. There wouldn’t be any need for one because it would be existing mainly in the “form of religion” rather than religion itself. The entire multi-decade nonsense that took place in Chambesy is a case in point. Concern about the diptychs is as well. WHERE IS THE GOSPEL IN ALL THIS????

I’ve only quickly browsed via Google, including http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CCwQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.catholicculture.org%2Fculture%2Flibrary%2Fview.cfm%3Frecnum%3D1355&ei=VfduTef8GMWJtgeSwZStCA&usg=AFQjCNHaq23qR1wMJQamTL-dv_c7HLAqdg, so I might not grasp what you’re referring to. But ISTM what Dvornik is referring to is the organization of the Church into ecclesiastical provinces and bishoprics, even eventually an East/West subdividing, on the basis of the Roman Empire/Empire of the Romans’ cities, civil provinces, and East/West subdividing (e.g., a senior See in the West, and one in the East [though obviously structured differently, with plural patriarchates]). And also, it seemed to me he chronicled the jostling of Eastern Sees for leadership among themselves, not necessarily (as is frequently claimed) with Old Rome itself in any of their ‘crosshairs,’ at least not until Rome was clearly no longer in the Empire and Constantinople New Rome was clearly The Church’s active lead inter-patriachate See — where I wasn’t sure where Dvornik’s argument was going, and had to tear myself away(!).

So are you thinking of an idea that every independent country’s Orthodoxy should be autocephalous, and that Precedence/Diptychs should be based on The Church’s needs of the day, and not necessarily tied to ‘tradition for its own sake’?

I didn’t note whether Dvornik addresses the rise and organization of regional patriarchates as kind of (gradually) compromising provincial autocephaly (except in Cyprus)…? But I could see that they’re based largely within a single ‘independent country,’ the Empire, occasionally following its more transient trans-provincial structures, e.g., Proconsular Asia, Pontus (incl. Cappadocia), Thrace, “The East,” etc. So, “independent countries” being “independent” of “foreign” Orthodox Churches?

I used to be more sympathetic to the logic of the basic concept, but I’m persuaded right now that if that means a rather high ‘wall of separation’ between/among Local Orthodox Churches, such that cooperation, fellowship, friendship and amiability, even communication and visiting, are hard to come by … even when in the hands of just a few very powerful national or regional Patriarchs (or DECRs) … The Church loses something important. E.g., Medieval Orthodox Ireland supplied Bishops, Abbots, and Missionaries throughout Europe, East and West (without imposing Irish primacy over those distant lands); it also received the occasional Bishop willingly and freely from Celtic or Anglo-Saxon (pre-Norman) Britain (despite the pretensions of Anglo-Saxon Orthodox Canterbury to primacy over Orthodox Ireland — some things never change!!). It also received saintly Orthodox Irish Bishops back, consecrated in far off Rome or Jerusalem, without those patriarchs making grandiose claims over such great distances or disparate geography. Even an early Archbishop of Canterbury, St. Theodore of Tarsus, was a “Greek” recommended to Rome’s suggestion by a Berber abbot (after the choice of a couple Saxon kings reposed before being consecrated in Rome).

Arguably the modern ‘high wall of separation’ is also a root of the current anomalous “jurisdictionalism” spreading in Orthodoxy, West and even East. Does it sound like I’m parroting questionable statements from C’ople against “novel radical autocephalism”? Clearly the statuses and behaviors of Local Orthodox Churches has fluctuated throughout history. But certainly what C’ople once recently proposed to Rome “to be in the East what Rome is universally” is dangerous and without precedent: What Rome claims to be universally, is dangerous and without o/Orthodox precedent!

—Leo Peter

RE Am I the only one looking at this, and saying, “R U Kidding me???….with all the problems we are facing…who cares?”

Well… yes. That thought did occur to me too, but then (I thought)… what do I know about such things.

Oh, it was so conceived. We have to declare the mother unfit, take the baby and adopt him to make him into something.

Isa, I truly hope you’re right. For myself I continue to view it as Son of SCOBA but I’d LOVE to be proven wrong.

God forgive me greatest sinner and culprit of this all.

I can’t decide if I’m not jaded enough not to care. But since it is hard to lower the bar of expectations when it is rolling on the floor, I’m not too phased by this colossal waste of time and effort.

That said, whenever the Phanar’s 28 dreams run into a solid brick wall, it can’t be a complete waste or time.

Since the “Mother Churches” are too busy with their distant tournament of liquid emissions, us in the “Diaspora” have to get busy to make Chambesy useful.

The EA have been useful in that I can now tell anyone who wonders what a canonical jurisdiction is, and if the local Church parish which is the only one for hours around is really Orthodox or not, I can just give them the list on the EA website (I’ve done so with potential converts a half dozen times this past month alone).

Better yet, since the OCA is there per the directives of “All the [other] autocephalous Churches” as Fr. Arey never tired of saying (though it seems to have fallen out of common parlance, ever since the OCA was seated), the Phanar has gambled and lost on that one. It still hopes for a miscarriage, but this baby is coming to term.

From what I’ve seen/heard, it seems the EA for the British Isles is also going to be useful and an improvement already on the prior situation (where there was NO Pan-Orthodox organization).

Then there are those EA which are less than useful. Abp. Stylianos long refused to call his, and he or his boss evidently decided he could claim and invite the entire Far East. He didn’t invite the Japanese or Church of China under the MP, and of course not the OCA, in violation of the Chambesy accords, doing in fact what Abp. Demetrios refused to do (I doubt that he had to receive instructions to do so; his grand tour as the head of the troika that gave us Abp Spyridon (that worked well) showed that he is quite simpatico to the Phanar). It seems its belated meeting was quite perfuctory, which is just as well:I’d prefer it do nothing while the EA here gets going with the OCA part of it, a obviously recognized canonical part. That way eventually, hopefully, Abp. Stylinos will have to explain eventually how he doesn’t invite Met. Jonah, who had parished in AU when Chambesy was adopted and still has one at least, who is already recognized as a canonical bishop under Chambesy. One can be a little pregnant only so long. The EA in Australia is such a non-entity that the local version of SCOBA wasnt’ dissolved.

The EA has to be moved out of SCOBA II into Ligonier II.

I mean, someone actually spent money to have this crew fly to Geneva and spend two days talking about whether Cyprus or Georgia is sixth in line, and whether Poland should be ahead of Albania in the order.

Am I the only one looking at this, and saying, “R U Kidding me???….with all the problems we are facing…who cares?”

More and more I think the best advice to the OCA is, “Lose their phone numbers.”

Phew…you could not make this stuff up.

Best Regards,
Dean

PS BTW – These discussions were led by a metropolitan of Pergamom and Adramyttium. Talk about poetic justice! Now will someone please tell me when the last liturgy was celebrated in Pergamom. Since my relatives (and the Dukakis’s) were from Adramyttium, I’m assuming the last liturgy was 1922 there, but I suspect Pergamom might have been much earlier.

IMHO, the unanimity criterion is perfect. Regarding the Supreme Court: Rowe V Wade. No thank you.

Kyrie Eleison

“What ever happened to logic & fidelity?”

Have we ever had it? But how easy is it to be either when one is distorted by dhimmitude; Soviet oppression; and buffeted with democratic ideals?

Accommodation is not merely a concept that Dvornik “invented” by means of some sort of academic contortion. Rather, he astutely observed that it is a fundamental concept integral to Orthodox ecclesiology that can be seen reflected in the Scripture, the patristic texts as well as the canons (both implicitly & explicitly!).

The clustering of contiguous local churches (i.e., bishoprics) into autocephalous (i.e., self-headed) synods based upon geo-political boundaries & their ordering by rank are both based up this “principle of accommodation” which pre-dates the ecumenical councils & clearly continues with the era of ecumenical councils. Thus, we are bound to it as much as we are bound to any other element of the Holy Tradition.

What ever happened to logic & fidelity?

With regard to Councils, there is no rule book that says how they operate. It does not appear historically that they vote. They have a process known as “consensus” whatever that means. At Chalcedon, a block of bishops who eventually became known as monophysites did not concur and were opposed to the doctrinal formulation, but the Council thought they had a consensus and promulgated the formulation. The fact that there was some significant dissent didn’t seem to matter. After all, there was a consensus. That is about as precise as I can get. If you are looking for more precision, forget it. As for the EA, they work on the basis of a “unanimous” consensus, whather that means, as well.

Thanks.

Is there any leader out there who can tell the faithful how the structures of government work in this context? The more silence on this issue the more people will wonder if the structures of Orthodox Church governance work at all…….