RESPONSE

Submitted September 24, 2004

RESPONSE TO “ORTHODOX CHURCHES IN USA NOT READY FOR UNITY”

Mr. Harry Katopodis' "Hellenic Voice" article, "Orthodox Churches in USA Not Ready for Unity," purports to correct supposed "inaccuracies and dangers" in Presbytera Frederica Mathewes-Green's writings, but contains a number of inaccuracies and errors of its own, from an Orthodox Christian perspective.

First, he ignores historical facts. Until 1917, there was only one single Orthodox Christian episcopate in North America, as the holy canons of the seven Ecumenical Councils mandate. It was established by the Russian Orthodox Church as a foreign mission, starting in Alaska in 1794 and spreading across the rest of the continent during the 19th and 20th centuries. This single church organization served all Orthodox Christians here: Albanians, Americans, Arabs, Greeks, Native Alaskans, Romanians, Slavs and others. True, in the early 20th century, some Greeks in the northeastern United States began to incorporate, uncanonically, their parishes independently of episcopal supervision for purely phyletistic and sometimes anticlerical reasons, but many of those in the western and southern United States long remained under the omophorion of the local bishop supplied by Russia. Church unity in North America did not break down into numerous, overlapping ethnocentric "jurisdictions" begun and controlled from overseas until after 1917, when the fall of the Russian monarchy cost the young North American mission all of its material support and manpower supply literally overnight.

Second, Mr. Katopodis is much more ambivalent about Orthodox Christian morality than the Church is. The Church says abortion is wrong, a sin, the murder of an innocent and defenseless human life. Her canons apply penances and excommunications against those who get abortions, practice abortion or make abortion possible through complicity. Orthodox Christians never "lobbied the emperor to outlaw abortion" in ages past, as he sets forth in a false argument, simply because they did not have to: abortion was already illegal in cultures shaped by an Orthodox Christian conscience, like Byzantium or Imperial Russia. Moreover, his charges of fanaticism are mislaid. If any American Orthodox Christian have spoken out that politicians like Senator Paul Sarbanes should be denied communion for their pro-abortion stance, it is because the Greek Archdiocese hypocritically honored them first as being model Orthodox Christians, even though they hold public views and push policy that are unorthodox and immoral in the eyes of the Church. The Church is not ambivalent on the question of abortion at all. Neither does being anti-abortion equate with being Republican, as Mr. Katopodis seems to think. Many members of Orthodox Christians for Life are Democrat, Republican, non-partisan and non-voter, and do good work defending human life and helping women in crisis pregnancies, as good Christians should.

Third, Mr. Katopodis states that the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America is "less likely to be too influenced by Protestantism, Catholicism and religious fanaticism" because of its subordination to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Yet the Greek Archdiocese is the one jurisdiction in which Western influences are the most obvious! Things like Roman Catholic organs, Protestant choir robes, anti-hierarchical and anticlerical congregationalism, weddings with brides marching down the aisle to "Here Comes the Bride" -- widespread in its parishes -- are unthinkable in Greece or any other Orthodox Christian culture! And Greek Archdiocese presbyters who speak out against such unorthodox things are often given a hard time by parishioners who claim to "know better," but disrespect clergy and show more interest in Greek language and culture than in Orthodox Christian faith and spirituality. If subordination to the Ecumenical Patriarchate is supposed to ward off undue influence from Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, it's not working in many Greek Archdiocese parishes today.

We can sinfully ignore it all we want, but ethnic pride and linguistic heritage are not the foundations on which the Lord Jesus Christ built His one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. The Church, with Constantinople taking the lead in 1872, condemned phyletism (church-related ethnocentrism) as a basis for church organization *anywhere* in the world. The Church upholds, in line with the canons of the God-inspired seven Ecumenical Councils, the principle of *territoriality* for church organization: there can only be one bishop in one city, and all Orthodox Christians in a given land must belong to one single church organization. Within that unity, we can certainly make allowances for "ethnic parishes," multiple languages, different customs and typica. But our present disunity is wrong, sinful, unorthodox, uncanonical, scandalous and ineffective. If we wonder why the Orthodox Church isn't making headway in North America, maybe it's because we so stubbornly resist doing things the Orthodox Christian way! Maybe it's time for us to try things God's way, rather than man's way, if we are to be blessed.



Volume 6 Number 39 - Tuesday, September 28th, 2004	A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY