Author: Ronald Andrei Muresan
January 21, 2011
I was four years old in 1960, the year the SCOBA Orthodox bishops’ council was formed, under ever-mounting calls (GOYA, SOYO, CEOYLA, etc.) for a North American Orthodox Synod, independent of the Old World, neither more nor less than the countries our ancestors came from. My father was 39 then, fifteen years younger than I am now. Eisenhower was president, and Queen Elizabeth of England was – still having babies.
To put it charitably, SCOBA elevated caution over action. That is how it felt to many of us in CEOYLA’s leadership councils. One might say they spent 50 years riding the brakes, the whole time reassuring us we were heading up-hill.
The 20th Century came and went. Hopes were raised at the 1994 Ligonier bishops’ conference, then dashed when the Holy Synod in Istanbul, Turkey (ancient Constantinople) reacted by retiring the dean of North American archbishops, Archbishop +Iakovos, who had seemed on the point of breaking the logjam and bringing about a united Synod of North America. SCOBA settled back into its status quo, and we watched the New Millennium come and go too. No united Orthodox voice. So far removed from public life that the U.S. National Cathedral “forgot” to invite a single Orthodox bishop to the National Cathedral Memorial Service after 9-11.
Then last year, 15 years after Ligonier, SCOBA watched itself voted out of existence by an Orthodox council in Chambesy, Switzerland. Not one American bishop cast a ballot, because none was even invited – they were locked out of this crucial decision about our church life. A synod with no say over its own existence – can be expected to accomplish – what?
SCOBA has now been replaced by a new Episcopal Assembly, 55 bishops who gathered in New York City last summer. They limited themselves to merely electing officers, cautious not to rush matters: they will not even be naming committees until sometime before their next annual meeting, in June 2011.
And now, some Old World apologists are spinning all this, cautioning that we might be getting ahead of ourselves. We are told after fifty years to again content ourselves with the mere fact that all our bishops assembled in one place. The implication: getting things done promptly is somehow risky.
Their motto has a familiar ring to it: “Speed is not the goal, Results are.” But an inconvenient fact confronts them: doing things their way has produced a half-century of no results. On the contrary, our separate “jurisdictions” have hardened more and more, isolated webs of duplicative, competing institutions, diocesan cathedrals next-door to each other, pious toil wasted, stumbling blocks that will add years of effort and hard feelings when they would have to be closed or sold.
Half a century of slow-walking have left American Orthodoxy in limbo, lacking even the spirit to protest at how the Old World Patriarchates disregard and snub us, deliberately denying us the right to vote on our church’s future. It is simply wrong to say that “due process is a Western, un-Orthodox concept.” Through the centuries, even those accused of the most devilish heresies have been allowed the right to be present at Church Councils, to argue their case and even vote on their own condemnation. One of the only Councils to exclude the accused has ever since been called The Robbers’ Synod. Due process was canonical before it was democratic.
I say that the “take it slow” apologists are hard pressed to make their case. The sixty years since World War II have yielded dubious results. The pages of history, the gospel, even medicine, teach us what results to expect when delay is piled on delay, frittering away precious time as we leave The Bridegroom standing at the door, knocking. Once the ship has sailed (or fracture untreated), you find yourself stranded at the dock, or. . . . Our ancestors – and we – sacrificed too much to let Orthodoxy be left to dissolve into the mists of history!
Our Old World mother Patriarchates seem bent on keeping us tied to their apron strings, but a half century of “talking about talking” is enough. Just last year brought yet another attempt to buy time: the Ecumenical Patriarchate teasingly announced, “Autocephaly will be on the agenda at the coming Great and Holy World Council of Orthodoxy, which is being prepared, perhaps as early as 2013.” A Council that has been a-planning for fifty years?! I am skeptical, but out of respect – for now – I won’t take the past half century as proof of bad faith.
I have a straight (multi-part) question for Fr. Mark Arey, spokesman for the Greek Archdiocese and by extension, for the Ecumenical Patriarchate (EP) of old Constantinople.
I should think he would have a straight, ready answer: “In which city on God’s Good Earth has the EP blocked out the 1,000+ rooms needed for this 2013 Great & Holy Council? (each bishop with his deacon + theologians + canon lawyers + seminary deans + monastics + the faithful + observers + press) “For what specific dates in 2013? “For 6 days? 6 weeks? 6 months?” “And those exact hotel names, please?” Enough with secrecy!
We North American Orthodox need to face up to the lessons of history and take matters into our own hands, unfamiliar as that may be for us: No nation, church or any other group has ever been given independence. They proclaim it themselves, declaring it the whole world over.
Hierarchs of America! Please convene on Pentecost 2011, Spirit-driven, and declare independence. UNANIMOUSLY. Stop acting like skittish red-headed step-children. Stand up for yourselves – and us – just like the Mother Churches did.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate stonewalled for 141 years before it formally recognized the Church of Russia’s independence. The EP actually threatened to excommunicate the Church of Romania after it declared independence in 1866, until 1885. We Americans can either pass our next 141 years running this “3-legged race” or we can live the life of an independent Local Church, in fact, if not formally. I see no signs that at The Last Judgment the Savior will demand to see our Tomos of Autocephaly, our Charter of Canonicity. He’ll simply ask whether we insisted on creating a proper Orthodox Church structure to minister to “these, the least of My brothers.” Here, in the blessed land where it pleased Providence that I and mine be born and live, as Orthodox.