Istanbul, uh C’ple, does not own the other autocephalous Patriarchates and cannot compel them to attend a council it convenes if they object to the terms. Antioch, Bulgaria, Georgia and Russia all had their separate legitimate reasons not to participate in a meeting that was a failure before it began.
True but recall that only C’ple declared ‘ethnophyletism’ to be heresy and they are far and away the most ethnophylestist of Churches.
I think in the Greek case both are sides of the same coin.
I think its more about survival than anything else. With only about 10 million Greek nationals, the population is shrinking at an alarming rate.
It would be a little like if the MP in the time of the Russian empire claimed that he was the supreme primate of the Orthodox world because Moscow has been called by saints the "3rd Rome", as if it were the new Byzantium; then, based on these claims of power, the MP and most of the Slavic Churches recognized the schismatic Turkish Orthodox Church as the canonical jurisdiction in Turkey with the support of the Turkish government.
The C.P. arguably isolates and hermitizes itself into a "museum chapel" with the Greek culture line because it's based in a practically Turkish-speaking nation (Turkey) with a historic policy of "Turkification" and very few Greeks. It doesn't look like Greece is going to get Istanbul back any time soon, and even if it did, there would still be the issue of how to evangelize the Turkish-speaking population of Turkey from Kurdistan to Smyrna.
There are good arguments for GOARCH parishes having Hellenistic culture, like you wrote above. A downside is that it can make things harder to bringing some non-Greeks into ORTHODOXY, whereas ORTHOXY teaches that you should do this. It's doubtful that you can make a non-Greek into an actual Greek, but Orthodoxy teaches that you can and should bring non-EOs into being EOs.
The COP is saying that it does not "own" the other autocephalous churches, but that it de facto can rule them as it so chooses, bestowing and removing autocephaly as it pleases, judging internal matters of those churches against them if their clergy "appeal" to the COP, etc. I am trying to think of an analogy to this system in the real world. Maybe it's like a corporation having subsidiary companies where the subsidiary owns and rules its own properties, but the head corporation can do anything it wants in controlling the subsidiaries. It is kind of like how the Roman Pope sees his relationship to Catholic "Patriarchates" like the Melkites, except that the Pope has been seemingly loosening his grip on them at least since Vatican II.
I think the EP's argument is centered around the unbroken chain of apostolic succession and how it relates, moves through time, from its foundations in the Church of Constantinople. It's relevancy not so much as a ruling agent, but as a fatherly figure.
Ap. Elpidophoros openly asserted below that the CP derives its supremacy from Rome being now outside of Orthodoxy. Were Rome in communion with Orthodoxy, it follows that Rome would have these supremacy powers. But Constantinople and the rest of Orthodoxy historically rejected Rome's supremacy powers over them. So the entire argument is a non-sequitor.
That is, the CP is not just arguing that it has supremacy from succession to the apostles. After all, other patriarchates from Rome to Jerusalem to Antioch have apostolic succession, and Byzantium got apostolic succession via older Sees. Rather, the CP is arguing that it has supremacy over all by "inheriting" it from Rome due to the CP being second in diptychs after Rome. And the argument that the CP gets Rome's powers that the CP rejected Rome having in the first place is an inherently illogical argument.THE ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH: FIRST WITHOUT EQUALS by Metropolitan Elpidophoros (Lambriniadis) of Bursa
...
In the long history of the Church, the presiding hierarch of the universal Church was the bishop of Rome. After Eucharistic communion with Rome was broken, canonically the presiding hierarch of the Orthodox Church is the archbishop of Constantinople. In the case of the archbishop of Constantinople, we observe the unique concomitance of all three levels of primacy, namely the local (as Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome), the regional (as Patriarch), and the universal or worldwide (as Ecumenical Patriarch). This threefold primacy translates into specific privileges, such as the right of appeal and the right to grant or remove autocephaly (examples of the latter are the Archdioceses-Patriarchates of Ochrid, Pec and Turnavo, etc.), a privilege that the Ecumenical Patriarch exercised even in cases of some modern Patriarchates, not yet validated by decisions of the Ecumenical Councils, the first of which is that of Moscow.
THE ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH: FIRST WITHOUT EQUALS by Metropolitan Elpidophoros (Lambriniadis) of Bursa
Earlier today Orthodoxy in Dialogue published Joseph Zheng’s When Andrew Reigned Alone on the Earth: Ecclesial Implications of the Ukrainian Tomos. In it he draws our attention to the followi…orthodoxyindialogue.com
If so, then I am guessing that the Ravenna document does not say that the Pope is the vertical supreme head of all orthodox Christians like he claimed to be since medieval times and like the CP is claiming to be now. Feel free to correct me on that.
Do you deny that Russia recieved its orthodoxy from Constantinople?
I like you, so please try to be decent and sensible.
Just the ones under him.
I’m a monster.
I'm a little of both. I like to stick things like paper pages in as bookmarks.I’m a monster.
I put bookmarks in my Bible and books I don't own. Otherwise, lots of dogearing.
I think that's over-simplifying things. Generally speaking, Synods are the highest bodies within their respective autocephalous Churches, with specific functions possibly delegated to other groups (like the OCA's nomination for Primate).
The US applied pressure on the election of that particular EP (who was Abp, not Met.), the Turkish state applied pressure also. In the subsequent election (of Pat. Athenagoras's successor) the US's pressure was rebuffed (both internally and externally). Generally, the prefect of Istanbul reviews the candidate list on behalf of the Turkish state and has the ability to strike names from the list; that list is then used by the Holy Synod to perform the election. (If you don't think that Athens, Jerusalem, and Moscow don't have similar issues / processes, I have a bridge to sell you...)
Elections for Hierarchs within the family of the EP are the exclusive provenance of the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate. While the Patriarch can nominate and express (strongly) his preferences, there is still an election process that takes place.
The GOA has a multi-level governance structure - for the Archdiocese/Eparchy as a whole:
Differentiating between the Assemblies (in each Metropolis) and the Congress (the whole Archdiocese/Eparchy):
The Q&A was at the annual conference of Leadership 100 (an endowment supporting Archdiocesan ministries) - and his statement was surprise that we allow the non-Orthodox to participate in one sacrament (marriage) and not others. It doesn't make sense to him (as it doesn't make sense to a lot of Eastern Europeans). But no policy was issued or furthered.
He announced a decision of the Eparchial Synod - which was basically to undercut the foundation of a religious exemption by saying that none existed. The priests who were issuing such exemptions were doing so without the blessing of their hierarchs (in most cases).
All of the above is a mess. Abp. Iakovos's "westernization" measures were not accommodations to Protestantism, but were trying to make the clergy seem less strange to the Americans they were supposed to be ministering to. I personally believe it was misguided - but I have the luxury of doing so, having grown up in a largely RC area where people see me in my cassock and assume I'm a Roman priest (and then I get to surprise them with my wedding ring). For clergy ministering in largely Baptist or Evangelical areas, and especially when the KKK was more menacing, it could be problematic (and this includes the incident from not-too-many years ago when a priest was assaulted within an inch of his life by a retired solider with PTSD who assumed he was an islamic terrorist).
I just think you're blurring the delineation between the matters of Church operation and the matters of dogma/faith. The All-American Council of the OCA can't make faith decisions, just as the GOA's Clergy-Laity Congress cannot. Synods make certain types of decisions, and Clergy-Lay bodies make other types. While some of the particulars are different between the GOA, OCA, AOA, etc., the larger principle is relatively stable here in the US.
I'm sure they do, but, I doubt anyone questions the Orthodoxy of those Patriarchates like many do with the Ecumenical Patriarch and your own Archbishop. As well, you're Metropolitan of Pittsburg seems to be quite the fan of Marx..enough said.
It's very sad, and it's unfortunate that this is the death knell of the Greek Archdiocese. They want to cater to a group that either doesn't exist, or, is a very small portion of the GOA. Outside of New England/Northeast (possibly Chicago, FL), the Archdiocese is not an ethnic ghetto of Greeks. Many of these people are converts to the GOA.
Hierarchs have to account on their own for their words and actions - I'm not in the real business of defending them, especially if the matter is not over mere context (like the Archbishop's question to the L100 group). The point wasn't defending the "Orthodoxy" of any of the Patriarchates - I don't know that any of us are in the position to either affirm or deny any of it - but to bring up the matter of state involvement in Hierarchical elections. In every place where the Church is intertwined with the state by choice (Greece, Cyprus, Russia, etc.) or by force (C'nople, Jerusalem, etc.) there is generally some kind of interference (at varying levels at varying times). I'm not a romanticist when it comes to this - having an Orthodox nation allows for beautiful engagement between the wider culture and the faith, usually producing beautiful art, literature, and a populace thoroughly enmeshed with the Church, but it only works if the Church is free to be prophetic, calling the State to account for the myriad of ways it falls short of the Gospel's standards. In many of our Orthodox countries, this doesn't happen.
Eh, the GOA is a big tent. The culture in Pittsburgh, Denver, Detroit, and even Atlanta is certainly different than that in Chicago, San Fran, and NYC. There are a lot of folks outside the more ethnic enclaves who are OK with Hellenism in small measure, as an act of kindness to their forbears who continue to worship faithfully - but many of the parishes have already moved on, and at least in our Metropolis we only have 1-2 where a Greek sermon is preached, and maybe a handful where the Liturgy is still 50/50 (instead of majority English). The movement toward the demographic continues.
I'm not sure how significant the movements between jurisdictions are (besides the mask protesters)... but the place where the GOA is definitely seeing a decline is in nominal membership. 50 years ago Greeks who at best could be termed "deists" or "agnostics" would be parish members because it was the center of cultural life (and the dues were reasonable). Now they don't feel compelled to remain (which is probably good), so we're seeing limited declines in membership (being partially offset by adult conversions in healthy parishes) but increases in both total stewardship and average stewardship/family.
I very occasionally dogear, but generally prefer bookmarks or post-it notes... But there is, in my mind, a certain charm to a dogeared book - it kinda screams "I've been loved" to me.I’m a monster.
I like Pittsburgh and Marx.
I like Pittsburgh and Marx. The peace-shattering practical problem for the Orthodox world has not been P. Bartholomew being cozy with Pope Francis or for that matter the medieval Pope's endorsement of teachings like inheritance of original sin. The practical problem has arisen when P. Bartholomew today and the medieval Pope during the Great Schism decided that they were the supreme rulers over all churches and then began to impose their uncanonical decisions infringing on the rest of the Church.
They don’t recognize it because the numbers aren’t in yet. The Ecumenical Patriarch is coming next month. That will fix everything, especially when he opens the doors of the St. Nicholas Shrine where each seat cost nearly $1,000,000. Just wait! It’ll be EPIC.
It is common in argumentation to assume innocence of one‘s interlocutor, that he is not lying, to take his words at face value. So when the Phanar tendentiously interprets Chalcedon 28 we do not second guess him but we argue back that he is wrong to assume leadership over the whole Orthodox commonwealth. This is well-established by both sides. If anything, the pretensions of the Phanar are growing: Abp. Elpidophoros authoring an article calling Bartholomew ‘primus sine paribus’ with the novel theology that His All-Holiness ’images forth the Father’. The terms of each successive Tomos pile up new privileges to the Ecumenical Throne, so that now any church authority that recognizes the new creation of the Phanar in Ukraine is also welcoming the establishment of EP churches on its own territory with no consultation, the reliance on the Phanar for chrism and several other elements of church relations policy that add up to recognition of universal Phanar supremacy. And they wonder why only Greek-run churches agree to those terms and recognize Epiphany Dumenko as Primate of Ukraine.
Personally I like it when a language like Greek is mixed in, like 1/3 in the other language.
This is hardly the way one should speak to a priest.
sorry, Father, demographic studies show steep decline of numbers of parishioners in the last decade, especially among Greek Orthodox. This is what Greek clergy have reported to Alexei Krindach.
Demographic data are perhaps too broad to be useful for this discussion, and they also do not assess measures of parish health (like stewardship) which may be more indicative than pure head-counting. What Fr. George says seems consistent with how it is here where I live. I have heard that the situation is worse in the Northeast where churches were slow to adopt a stewardship model over dues-paying model, and where they were more heavily reliant on Hellenic identity as a way to keep members engaged.
He was kind of alluding to this here:
To be fair, OCA has probably had demographic decline in the US Rust Belt and Mid-West Canada for a long time too though - The physical populations in those places are probably themselves treading water due to stagnant/"Rusting" economies.
My sense was they HATED people talking anything but Greek. He didn't just stare for like a few minutes. He meant to stare at us until we finished our meals and left. I recall something like that happening at another cafe.
Totally depressing how much the Rust Belt defines the core of the OCA. Economic history in America has not been kind to a people who relied on industrial labor. The growth is in the south now as people who can’t afford to live elsewhere pour into Dixie, hopefully watering down its culture.
Wow that sucks. Turks were never so mean when I stayed in Izmir and visited istanbul. They were curious about the yabanci and wanted to chat in English.I can see the emphasis on Greek working both ways. I think it would be neat if Palestinian Christians spoke Aramaic like in Jesus' time and Antiochians used Aramaic in their liturgy like the Maronites. It would be neat if more OCA churches used more Slavonic or their members knew slavic languages as a second one. Look at how the Jewish populations kept Hebrew alive through Yiddish and their liturgy and their community survived through the centuries. But... at the same time the Jewish population hasn't converted large groups of converts of foreign nations. Sure, they don't try to, but the focus on a single ETHNICITY by itself cuts against spreading the Word to THE NATIONS.
When I was in highschool a few decades ago, one of the most enjoyable activities I did was take a trip to Greece for a week with an art class. People were nice, but there was a strong language barrier that I would have liked to get through. I read that today, about 30 percent of Greeks know some English, which strikes me as relatively high compared to a lot of other nations' rates.
I can't agree with Abp. Elpidophoros' 2009 declaration that Hellenism is inherently ecumenical or nonphyletistic. The most intense xenophobia happened when my art teacher, a nice blond in her 30's took us, a group of about a dozen nice teenagers happily chirping about our Greek trip, onto the second floor of an Athens cafe, and there was a table of older Greek men. They got quiet and one of them turned and stared at us. It was a super intense stare. He was NOT happy. Then another guy at their table did it too. They were owls.
I feel that the Rust belt is kind of the homey heart of the OCA, with St. Alexis Toth having been in Minneapolis and Wilkes Barre, PA, and St. Tikhon's being not too far from the latter.