Uncategorized

OCL Fall Annual Meeting Calls for Reasonable and Prayerful Involvement of Clergy, Laity and Hierarchy in the process of Creating a Unified Orthodox Church in North America

More reflections on the OCL conference

4 Comments

Fr. Peter-Michael Preble offers more thoughts on the recent OCL conference. Fr. Peter writes:

Fr. Peter-Michael Preble

The first point, and I said this in my sermon yesterday, is that I believe the American Orthodox Church is on the cusp of greatness. I think we are standing in the door way of a new something (I can’t seem to find the right word) — generation maybe, era perhaps, explosion…not really sure. I say this because we have some great young leaders emerging in the church. People like Metropolitan Jonah, Fr. Justin Matthews of FOCUS North America and others are injecting new excitement and energy into the American Church.

We are at the threshold of becoming a truly American Church and not just a small immigrant community. I am reminded of the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Boston. The signs used to read “Irish Need Not Apply” Then the church came into her own. The Roman Church under the leadership of visionaries like Richard Cushing of Boston. Cardinal Cushing had a vision for the American Church and built many of the School and Hospitals that the Church in Boston still uses to this day. Cushing was 44 years old when created bishop and was 49 when he became the 3rd Archbishop of Boston. He served the church in that roll for 26 years until his death in 1970. He had a vision to move the church for it’s immigrant roots to a major religious force in America.

Read the entire post on Fr. Peter’s blog.

Deprecated: str_replace(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($subject) of type array|string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/genesis/lib/functions/image.php on line 116
class="post-2701 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-blog-archive tag-all-orthodox-pre-conciliar-consultation tag-chambesy tag-diaspora tag-ecumenical-patriarchate tag-moscow-patriarchate tag-news tag-orthodox-church tag-patriarch-kirill tag-patriarchate-of-constantinople tag-uncategorized entry">

Moscow Patriarchate reports on Chambesy meeting

3 Comments

The Moscow Patriarchate has released a statement, in English, on the work of the all-Orthodox pre-conciliar meeting in Chambesy, Switzerland, earlier this month. The patriarchate explains how “episcopal assemblies” are to be constituted.

Text follows:

The 4th Pan-Orthodox Pre-Council Conference, which took place at the Patriarchate of Constantinople’s Orthodox Center in Chambesy near Geneva, completed its work on 12 June 2009. The delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church led by Archpriest Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external church relations, included Archbishop Mark of Berlin, Germany and Great Britain, Russian Church Outside Russia, Archpriest Nikolay Balashov, DECR vice-chairman, and Mr. A. Churyakov, an interpreter.

The conference was chaired by Metropolitan John of Pergamon. Metropolitan Jeremiah of Switzerland, Patriarchate of Constantinople, acted as its secretary. It was attended by delegations of the Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Georgia, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria as well as Orthodox Churches of Cyprus, Greece, Albania, Poland, Czech Lands and Slovakia. They were led by their hierarchs.

His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia addressed a message of greetings to the conference.

As had been agreed by primates and representatives of Local Orthodox Churches at their meeting in October 2008 at Fanar and reaffirmed by subsequent correspondence, the 4th Conference focused on the canonical order of the Orthodox diaspora. This decision on the agenda was made by the participants in the beginning of their work. The rest of the agenda items for Pan-Orthodox Pre-Council Conferences, including a procedure for declaring authocephaly and autonomy and the diptych order, will be considered in the sessions to follow the preparatory work to be done by the Inter-Orthodox Preparatory Commission.

The participants considered documents prepared by the Inter-Orthodox Preparatory Commission at its meetings on 10-17 November 1990 and 7-13 November 1993 and the conference of canon law experts which took place on 9-14 April 2009 in Chambesy. The documents were clarified and amended by consensus.

The conference agreed that the problem concerning the canonical order of the Orthodox diaspora, that is, those faithful who reside beyond the traditional boundaries of Local Orthodox Churches, should be dealt with on the basis of ecclesiology, canonical tradition and practice of the Orthodox Church. To this end, it was agreed to set up bishops’ assemblies consisting of all the canonical Orthodox bishops who take pastoral care of the community in a given locality. The task of bishops’ assemblies will be to ascertain and consolidate the unity of the Orthodox Church, to provide common pastoral care for Orthodox people in a region and to bear common witness before the external world. The assemblies’ decisions are to be made on the basis of consensus reached by the Churches whose bishops are represented in them. The authority of a bishops’ assembly exclude interference in the diocesan jurisdiction of each of the bishops and does not restrict the rights of his Church including in her relations with international organizations, governments, the civil society and mass media as well as other confessions, governmental and inter-confessional organizations and other religions.

The conference also adopted a revised draft procedure defining basically the work of regional bishops’ assemblies in the Orthodox diaspora.

DECR Communication Service (Dept. of External Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate)

Deprecated: str_replace(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($subject) of type array|string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/genesis/lib/functions/image.php on line 116
class="post-2607 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-blog-archive tag-abp-nathaniel-of-detroit tag-bp-thomas-of-charleston tag-fr-antonio-perdomo tag-fr-hans-jacobse tag-fr-justin-mathews tag-george-michalopoulos tag-john-couretat tag-john-maddex tag-met-christopher tag-met-jonah tag-met-philip tag-mother-sarah-elizabeth-oftedel tag-nicholas-tatich tag-orthodox-christian-laity tag-peter-marudas tag-uncategorized entry">

Uncategorized

OCL Fall Annual Meeting Calls for Reasonable and Prayerful Involvement of Clergy, Laity and Hierarchy in the process of Creating a Unified Orthodox Church in North America

More reflections on the OCL conference

Moscow Patriarchate reports on Chambesy meeting

The Road to Unity. From Vision to Action: Orthodox Christianity in America

Metropolitan Jonah: on the occasion of the great feast of the Lord’s Pascha, 2009