Author: Hope – Speranta
June 6, 2009
I ask you to consider the following four questions: 1) who are we, 2) what are we being asked to reject, 3) what are we being asked to accept and 4) why are we being called to consider leaving the ROEA, OCA behind and form the Romanian Orthodox Metropolitanate of Americas (ROMA) under the Church of Romania (BOR)?
First, review the following historical facts.
1. Our Romanian Episcopate is 80 years old(1929-2009).
2. For just over twenty (20) years (25%) the Episcopate was under the Church of Romania (BOR) as an “autonomous” body (1929-1951).
3. For almost (60) years (75%) the Romanian Episcopate existed separate from, not under BOR, the Church of Romania (1951-2009).
4. For over fifty (50) years (62%) the ROEA has had canonical protection of some kind (however disputed) other than BOR (late 50’s – 2009).
5. For almost forty (40) years, (50%) the ROEA is in the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), an autocephalous; totally free and canonical (even if not totally globally recognized) local and indigenous Orthodox Church, composed of a diversity of believers from various ethnic, cultural and national backgrounds (1970-2009).
1) Who are We?
1. We are Orthodox Christians of diverse backgrounds, local and indigenous, as well as immigrants from Romania, who comprise the ROEA, OCA, four generations (80 years old) in North America, living and witnessing to our faith of the Risen Christ in our homeland (for many a new land).
2. We are North Americans and citizens of Canada and the United States
3. We are members of an Autocephalous Orthodox Christian Church, who are free from European Church institutions and influences living, teaching and proclaiming our Orthodox Christian Faith to “the world” here in North America .
4. We are a multicultural and diverse Church reflecting the nation and society we live in and call home.
5. We are free of all government control and influence, foreign and domestic, as an Orthodox Christian Church living in democratic nations and societies ( Canada and the United States ).
6. We are an 80 year old Orthodox Church with a life, history, practice and policy growing as Orthodox Christians in North America as citizens of Canada and the United States , most of who are of Romanian descent and heritage.
2) What are We Being Asked Reject?
1. We are asked to reject our identity, personal and collective, and everything that formed and shapes us as Orthodox Christians in North America as we leave our church structures, practices and policies.
2. We are being asked to reject an Orthodox Christian ecclesiology that is local, organic and indigenous, consistent with the canons and Holy Tradition.
3. We are being asked to voluntarily dismantle our church structure that has kept us free of foreign and European (Romanian) Church and State control, practice and influences of almost sixty (60) years.
4. We are being asked to end our free, independent, indigenous and local Church life, institution, structure and administration of fifty (50) years.
5. We are being asked to leave our church institutional affiliation with our brothers and sisters in the autocephalous OCA, institutionally free from outside and foreign governments, churches and influences, of forty (40) years.
6. We are asked to end our existence, as an 80 year old Episcopate (ROEA, OCA), to become a dependency under the Church of Romania as we break with our 80 year Church history, tradition and practices that was established, lived and passed on by our Episcopate Pioneers, Orthodox immigrants from Romania, many of whom are our parents, grandparents and great grandparents, and our three wise Father-Bishops; Policarp, Valerian and Nathaniel who guided us. Together they worked to acquire and develop the Orthodox Christian Way here in North America proclaiming Christ’s Resurrection to all people here in North America, not just Romanians. They rejected both the idea of a Romanian “transplant church”, from different soil and conditions and a “grafted limb church” to a foreign church in Romania for a correct Orthodox theological and historic model of church; local, organic and indigenous.
3) What are We Being Asked to Accept with the Proposal?
1. We are asked to accept an ineffective and incomplete model of ecclesiology -a nation building global ethnocentrism.
2. We are asked to freely choose and vote to adopt a modified Proposal that offers less that what we already have (autocephaly: administrative freedom and independence) the first step in making us dependent upon the foreign state run Church of Romania.
3. We are asked to consider becoming a dependent (autonomous) church body, the Romanian Orthodox Metropolia of America (ROMA), under the Church of Romania (BOR) by merging our Church with the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese of America (ROAA) which is already under BOR as an autonomous (not fully independent and free) church structure.
4. We will be asked to freely choose and vote to remove ourselves from theautocephalous Orthodox Church in America (OCA).
5. If we accept this Proposal we will:
- enter into a Romanian Orthodox Church under Romanian State control and answering to it
- be shaped by a Romanian Church mindset, policies and practices, structure and leadership grounded in a East European context, with a radically different view and interpretation of the ROEA, OCA, her history, and the Orthodox Church and her work in the United States and Canada,
- be shaped by a foreign cultural ethos, worldview and identity, neither grounded in democratic core values nor a North American multicultural pluralism and temperament.
4) Why are we considering such a Proposal?
In the midst of this turbulence and confusion we are moved to ask, have we “forgotten” who we are? Have we lost our identity as Orthodox Christian people of Romanian heritage of eighty years in the ROEA, OCA? We do have an identity. We have a spiritual formation. We have a collective face and a body. We are “Orthodox Christian”, “North American”, “citizens of Canada or the United States “, “Autocephalous” with diverse backgrounds most of whom are Romanian, in the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America, Orthodox Church in America.