"Canonicity" in America
As a result of all of these things [numerous
historical and canonical factors contributing to the current
American Orthodox landscape], contemporary Orthodox Christians in
the Americas are hard–pressed to explain their Church, the
jurisdictional divisions which they inherited from the Old World,
and themselves. Except for a small minority of Old Calendarist
traditionalists, they are beset by innovation, by accommodation
to a culture which, unlike the cultures which fostered the
national Orthodox Churches, is not Orthodox in its origins,
and—especially in the case of converts and Orthodox with a
Greek Catholic background—by a crisis in self–identity.
Aside from a kind of spiritual malaise, this situation has
resulted in a move away from an organic, spiritual understanding
of the Church towards a preoccupation with structure and
legitimacy or "canonicity." [161]
Therefore, for several decades American
Orthodox have seen repeated attempts by various groups to
establish a single ecclesiastical jurisdiction as the American
Orthodox Church, in order to solve the lingering crisis in
self–identity—albeit a false crisis which rises out of
a misunderstanding of the unity within Orthodox disunity and
which sets aside the subtle advantages of a more traditional,
organic ecclesiology for the concerns of institutional
self–definition. [162]
In the light of this artificial crisis,
American Orthodox have undertaken to define their Church on
correspondingly artificial models which are more institutional
and structural and which are clearly better understood in the
West. The Patriarch of Constantinople, a "first among
equals" and a Hierarch with nothing more than a primacy of
honor in the Orthodox Church, has begun to take on the qualities
of a "Pope of the East." [163] Jurisdictions attached to Constantinople, therefore,
look to the "Prince of Equals" for their claims to
primacy. Of late, this neo–Papal trend has been transformed
into a kind of "Patriarchal" ecclesiology, in which
official relations between the Mother Churches in Europe and
their Orthodox counterparts in the Americas have been taken as a
sign of "canonicity" or jurisdictional legitimacy. [164] Various Churches have thus
clamored to form or to strengthen relations with several ancient
Patriarchates, in order to lay claim to a certain validity or
primacy.
These definitions and attempts at establishing
a firm self–identity have had the effect of wholly
invalidating the positions of the Churches in exile, such as
those resisting the lingering Communist contamination of their
Mother Churches, and traditionalist resistance movements, such as
that of the Old Calendarists. As we have already noted, these
innovative efforts to re-define the Church in a contrived way
move one away from the organic substructure of the Church and set
aside, for the sake of external definitions of validity, the
integrity of the resistance movements which have always
facilitated natural reform in the Church by an insistence on the
primacy of Church Tradition. The end product of these inauthentic
attempts at self–definition has been a spirit of
jurisdictional conflict in American Orthodoxy that has invited
adolescent rivalry, slander, and the most vulgar political
intrigues, [165] and
which has seriously compromised the whole Church’s witness.
Endnotes
161. Orthodox writers in the West often use
ecclesiastical terminology in a loose way or with Western
overtones. The validity of any Orthodox Church rests on the valid
Apostolic Succession of its Bishops, its adherence to Holy
Tradition, the quality of its spiritual life as measured by the
so–called "barometer" of monasticism, and its
consistent production of Saints. Jurisdictional canonicity is a
matter of administration, not validity, and is a secondary issue.
Moreover, it is an issue that presents tremendous problems for
Orthodoxy in America, where the administrative Canons of the
Church must be applied with great discretion. Indeed, it is often
precisely on canonical grounds that various Churches in exile and
in resistance have established their administrative facilities,
so that "canonicity" characterized by certain
structural or institutional affiliations comes to naught in the
face of these movements.
162. The penchant of modernist Orthodox
jurisdictions in America to fixate on external, institutional
unity was well illustrated recently by the highly publicized
meeting of the so–called "Standing Conference of the
Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas" (SCOBA)—an
extra–canonical body notorious for its unjustified exclusion
of traditionalist Orthodox jurisdictions from its ranks—at
Ligonier, Pennsylvania, in December of 1994. Referring to itself
as "the Orthodox Church in North America," SCOBA
declared that it was "one Church, not multiple
‘jurisdictions’" and "outlined future work
towards becoming an ‘administratively united’
Church" (The Shepherd, Vol. 15, No. 4 [January
1995], p. 21). The Ecumenical Patriarchate, however, threatened
by the prospect of losing its most successful Exarchate (in
worldly, not spiritual, terms), "moved quickly to quash the
unity initiative" (Ibid., No. 6 [March 1995], p.
20).
163. See "Œcumenical Patriarch to Athos:
‘Remain Silent,’" Orthodox Tradition,
Vol. 6, No. 3 (1989), p. 5. This interesting article recounts the
response of Patriarch Demetrios to a protest by the monks of
Mount Athos with regard to what they see as the increasingly
inappropriate leadership being assumed by the Constantinopolitan
Patriarchate as a spokesman for the Orthodox Church in general.
164. Just such a theory was the theme of a book
written by a Russian Patriarchal clergyman, Archimandrite
Seraphim, The Quest for Orthodox Church Unity in America (New
York: Sts. Boris and Gleb Press, 1973).
165. "Jurisdictional Sectarianism," pass.
From Chapter
3 of Archimandrite Akakios, Fasting in the Orthodox Church (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist
Orthodox Studies, 1996 [1990]), pp. 61-63.
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