Harry, I completely agree with you. The dioceses of an American Orthodox Church should be as compact and as respectful of political/municipal boundaries as possible. And yeah, 45-50 is a good age for a bishop, especially if they’re empty nesters.

George, Panacea? I said somewhere ordaining empty-nester (meaning actual fathers) as bishops was going to be a panacea? Anyhow the counter example you mention does not limit the episcopacy to proven empty nester clergy. That’s important because much of what could go wrong would have by that time. Seriously I’d even put an age requirement of 50 on it to avoid ‘childless’ being confused with ’empty nester’.

After all we have all heard of infamous cases of gay clergy married to women ‘in name only’ then off they go having relations of various sorts.

Anyhow if you look at our entire church from a management standpoint it’s smaller than any of our large corporations, and somehow the people who manage those get the job done without being never married. If the bishops were local/regional they could plenty well do the job once the kids were in college. I’m talking about ‘The Diocese of Dallas’ ‘The diocese of Evanston and Northewestern Illinois’ ‘The diocese of Indianapolis and Southern Indiana’ ‘The Metropolis of Los Angeles’. ‘The Diocese of Southern California’, etc.

Harry, I don’t disagree with you at all. But replacing unmarried “celibate” bishops with career-driven married men is not the answer. The first thing that has to happen is the severing of administrative ties with foreign overlords. Then and only then will we be a local church with a real holy synod that looks at the local situation and applies the canons to the situation at hand. I’ll say it again: I’ve got no problem with married bishops it’s just that I’m not naive to believe that this is a panacea. I look at the Episcopal Church with its myriad married bishops and I see even worse problems (at least doctrinally).

George, I suggest the ‘other paradigm’ you mention can be found in the Gospel — you’d think a church with ‘Orthodox’ in the title ought not be averse to it. Bishops ‘husband of but one wife’ ‘chosen from among you’. It doesn’t say ‘choose from only those among you who never were caught as groom in a marraige ceremony’.

The only way forward is to have local and at most half-day-drive regional leadership that can police its own ranks and is accountable with money. Once people really care about local growth are in place they’ll do the right thing other areas.

When money’s tight people are going to start really looking at where it goes and if the answer isn’t really really good it won’t be coming in any more.

Harry, I do give your point. You paint a vivid picture of corruption, non-accountability, finger-pointing and buck-passing. It’s a true enough picture and under conditions such as these, there is no way that more money (let alone growth) is going to be raised for the work of the Church.

My point is how can this situation be rectified? Is there another paradigm? I believe there is and it includes the complete severing of administrative ties to the Old World (among other things). This may be naive, but there’s no way that I see colonial eparchies growing, save for massive immigration to these shores. And even then, it’s just a stop-gap for further attrition.

George, the biggest obstacle I see is that the leadership of the Orthodox and Vatican church appears to be legally incapable of making a promise that can be depended upon by those in the church.

We have seen the high leadership of the church forcing a great deal of money from the parishes, for years, an in exchange providing no new faces, no materials, only opportunities for further giving. Also they return scandal. We see leadership arranging bags of cash on airplaines overseas, dumping entire constitutions when it comes time to investigate dubious favored parish financial activities, ‘bishops’ putting ‘priests’ in charge of seminary who later get dumped when the photos with the gay massuer ‘come out’, who cover up and enable teen-boy sexual misdoing. Even such high lay leadership as we do have deem it wise to protect their church related charitable giving by putting it into a separate fund they manage– and history has proven them correct so to do.

I’m sure that all those who gave generously when they thought their church was ‘self governing’ are wondering whether their donations will be refunded now that such PR turned out to be inconvenient.

Harry, that’s kind of my point. The state has absolutely no business providing charity to the people. Education, charity, welfare, hospitalization, etc. are the province of the Church. The state’s job is to provide security, sound money, justice, and treat with foreign governments. That’s it.

This idea of course is pie-in-the-sky at present. Since we live in societies that already do these things, then it makes no sense for us to tithe from the top (our gross income). However, we should tithe from the remainder. Let’s say that Bob makes $50,000 a year. His tax bite (state, federal, FICA) is $17,000. That means his take-home pay is 50K-17K= $33K. Instead of him tithing 10% of his gross ($5K) his tithe will be 10% of $3.3K ($3,300). That’s still significant. It’s much better than the $100 “dues” that he pays to St Joe of Kokomo Ruritanian Orthodox Church. (The same dues that Dr Igor Czozs who makes $150K pays.)

Let’s stay with this analogy, St Joe’s has 100 members, all of whom pay $100 each. this raises $10,000 annually. It costs $130K to operate that parish. The Ruritanian food-festival raises another $90K. Various funding drives make up the other $30K. If everybody “tithed” (gross less take-home) and the median income in Kokomo is $53,000, then we can extrapolate that the median take-home is $35,000. This means that the 100 members would be each tithing $3,500. $3,500 x 100 = $350,000. Ergo, no food-festival. Ergo, ministries like a soup kitchen, homeless shelter, etc.

The reason that this is pie-in-the-sky at present is because we simply don’t trust our bishops to do the right thing at the national level. This is endemic in the ethnic jurisdictions, where the average parishioner feels like a colonist trying to lay low from the gaze of the foreign satrap. Even in the OCA, which is a local church unbeholden to Ruritania, Bulbania, and Slobovia, the previous two metropolitans made a total hash of things. However, things seem to be looking up.

Anyway, what do you think?

George, one of the bigger puzzles from a Christian standpoint is why is it the church expects the people to donate the 10% to IT, and not as the people might deem wise? Now that the state taxes and provides human services (in democracies and not the autocracies some on this board appear to prefer) I think more than 10% of our earning already goes to providing the sort of support envisioned in the gospel. Food stamps, unemployment, doctors and medicines at any ER no matter rich or poor, and so on and on.

From Fr. Patrick Viscuso’s book: Sexuality, Marrige and Celibacy in Byzantine Law: The Alphabetical collection of Matthew Blastares

Gregory the Great, who is surnamed the Theologian stated, ‘The first marriage is legal, the second is a concession, the third is a transgression of laws and one beyond this, the life of a swine which does not even have many examples of evil’

Harry, I couldn’t agree with you more. The reason most people do not tithe is because they don’t think that we have “real” bishops. Your characterization of them is a stereortype but it’s one that’s inculcated in ethnic Orthodox by generations of observation.

My critique is that until it becomes obvious that we are all Americans and that we have an American patriarch and that we have dozens, scores, or even hundreds of dioceses, with bishops immediate to the people, then we’ll just plod along as before.

What’s bothersome is that it’s not just the peeople who don’t see this (in the main) but the episcopate as well. As I witnessed when one of their best and brightest thought I was a “fundamentalist” who believed in the Old Testament because I brought up tithing.

Why is tithing important? Because then the Church won’t be dependent upon the the super-rich.

George, we _do_ give sacrificially. As we are called not just to be stewards but good stewards, the project becomes to give where the giving is seen to do more than support the lifestyles of distant narthex nesting glory hounds who, though never married, pay themselves more than ‘their’ married priests who have families to support. They also go on very nice trips to visit one another.

So the great many highly successfull Orthodox give to those organizations that are proud to report how much good they have done with every dollar they get.

Look at all the CEO’s and other high executives in the Fortune 500– many are Orthodox. Until the church leadership is ready to demonstrate productivity with donated funds, the big money is donated elsewhere.

Scott, perhaps I overstated the case regarding the peoples’ appreciation of piety and morality. I’m not naive about people, the majority anyway. Nor am I against proper leadership by moral, pious, and holy men. I honestly believe though that had we had those kind of men leading us then our churches would be full of people responding to this right kind of servant-leadership. No, they wouldn’t be the majority of the people, after all, wide is the path to destruction. But Orthodoxy would be more than the measly 1% that it is in America at present.

Think of it, if we were 5% of the population and that 5% regularly attended church and gave sacrificially, the US would be full of Orthodox hospitals, orphanages, and schools.

St. Gregory of Nanziansus was of the opinion that any more than one marriage was a major problem. The three actually comes from Roman civil law that pre-dated the Church’s official cannon. The 4th marriage dispute with the Emperor Leo was a dispute because it was one more spat between east and west. The Patriarch of Constantiople was again’ it in part because the Pope was for it. Although the limit had been common practice for centuries. The statement that officially settled the matter making no more than 3 the canonical standard was publish as the Tome of Union in A.D. 920. Indicating the split that had occured between east and west was healed (sort of).

Within the Church I have no problem with the limitation as marriage is an ontological reality reflecting the hypostatic union of our Lord with His people. Each marriage takes its toll and leaves scar tissue that is not easily healed even if divorce is not a part of it.

The problem with the limit in today’s culture is when the standard is applied to those married outside the Church especially in civil marriages. Civil marriages are nothing more that property contracts. When the cannons are applied to those outside the Church, they punish those who marry, but not well to a greater extent than those who sleep around all over the place, but then repent. Strange I think, 3 failures in ‘marriage’ becomes the unforgiveable sin.

The cannonical requirement for a marriage to be complete is: 1. The freely given intent by a man and a woman to marry; 2) a contrct or bethrothal; 3) the sacredotal blessing of the Church–the word to seal the union and bring the marriage into the community.

Marriages outside the Church often don’t have the three and, as with baptism, even when they do may suffer from insufficiency.

Personally I’d like it to be the agreed position that no marriages outside the Church count. So when someone is received into the Church and given proper instruction and there is repentance, they would start new in Christ. There are other options, but none of them make a lot of sense to me.

Of course the Chruch needs to do a far better job of teaching the reality of marriage and forming us to live it.

Ultimately, I have to ask, “What is your problem with celibacy?”

Harry,

I don’t think you’ve really bothered to read what I’ve written on this. Autocracy or authoritarian rule is the type of rule I’ve suggested has been historically identified with Orthodox societies. That’s not a controversial statement at all. I have never once suggested that there was an autocrat among the Apostles. That is a Roman Catholic notion. If by bringing up conciliarity in the Church you are somehow trying to disprove the notion that authoritarian state rule is somehow at odds with Orthodox teaching, I think you’re mistaken. The canons assume an emperor.

What I have said is that bishops, in their dioceses, are very much like autocrats. Even rulers normally identified as autocrats like the Russian tsars did not have truly absolute power.

As far as an putatively ecumenical council not surviving the test of reception, it is true that this has happened. But it is also true that the only way we know that the council is not ecumenical is if the bishops convene a subsequent council to declare so.

As far as my profession and rules, contracts, etc. made or kept with those of different social castes in an authoritarian society: Those are the same problems that Orthodox societies have had from the very beginning and they managed to produce several great empires. It is often quite difficult to get contracts enforced or compensation made in our society too. You may not know this, but unless the government passes a statute that says you’re allowed to sue it, or agrees to let you do so, you can’t.

No, Harry, I don’t think I’ll give up on the notion of authoritarian rule just yet. Given the low and declining moral state of democracies, I think it’s imperative to find a better way.

In any case, if I have come across as too blunt, snarky or abrasive with anyone in this conversation (which I have enjoyed) I apologize. And I will try to let that be my last word on it.

Michael, regarding how ‘the present visible moral decay’ troubles you: I wonder what you think of the view of the church’s policy of permitting three marriages?

Now consider three marriages when less than 1 in 3 lived to be older than 30 years old when those rules were made.

Three marriages and before 30! Oh Tempora! O Mores!