Problems of Orthodoxy in America
The Canonical Problem
by Father Alexander Schmemann
Webmaster Note. This article, written over 30 years ago, is
considered by many Orthodox scholars and Church leaders,
including His Eminence Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna, to be a
brilliant statement of the concept of "canonicity." It
is also, for the most part, a very insightful and correct
analysis of the American Orthodox scene. This article should be
carefully read by all serious-minded Orthodox Christians in
America.
(i) An Uncanonical Situation
No term is usedand misusedamong the Orthodox
people in America more often than the term canonical. One
hears endless discussions about the "canonicity" or the
"uncanonicity" of this or that bishop, jurisdiction,
priest, parish. Is it not in itself an indication that something
is wrong or, at least, questionable from the canonical point of
view in America, that there exists a canonical problem which
requires an overall analysis and solution? Unfortunately
the-existence of such a problem is seldom admitted. Everyone
simply claims the fulness of canonicity for his own position and,
in the name of it, condemns and denounces as uncanonical the
ecclesiastical status of others. And one is amazed by the low
level and cynicism of these "canonical" fights in which
any insinuation, any distortion is permitted as long as it harms
the "enemy." The concern here is not for truth, but for
victories in the form of parishes, bishops, priests
"shifting" jurisdictions and joining the
"canonical" one. It does not matter that the same
bishop or priest was condemning yesterday what today he praises
as canonical, that the real motivations behind all these
transfers have seldom anything to do wit h canonical convictions;
what matters is victory. We live in the poisoned atmosphere of
anathemas and excommunications, court cases and litigations,
dubious consecrations of dubious bishops, hatred, calumny, lies!
But do we think about the irreparable moral damage all this
inflicts to our people? How can they respect the Hierarchy and
its decisions? What meaning can the very concept of canonicity
have for them? Are we not encouraging them to consider all norms,
all regulations, all rules as purely relative? One wonders
sometimes whether our bishops realize the scandal of this
situation, whether they ever think about the cynicism all this
provokes and feeds in the hearts of Orthodox people. Three
Russian jurisdictions, two Serbian, two Romanian, two Albanian,
two Bulgarian ... A split among the Syrians ... The animosity
between the Russians and the Carpatho-Russians ... The
Ukrainian problem! And all this at a time when Orthodoxy in
America is coming of age, when truly wonderful possibilities
exist for its growth, expansion, creative progress. We teach our
children to be "proud" of Orthodoxy, we constantly
congratulate ourselves about all kinds of historic events and
achievements, our church publications distill an almost
unbearable triumphalism and optimism, yet, if we were true to the
spirit of our faith we ought to repent in "sackcloth and
ashes," we ought to cry day and night about the sad, the
tragical state of our Church. If "canonicity" is
anything but a pharisaic and legalistic self-righteousness, if it
has anything to do with the spirit of Christ and the tradition of
His Body, the Church, we must openly proclaim that the situation
in which we all live is utterly uncanonical regardless of
all the justifications and sanctions that every one finds for his
"position." For nothing can justify the bare fact: Our
Church is divided. To be sure, there have always been
divisions and conflicts among Christians. But for the first time
in history division belongs to the very structure of the Church,
for the first time canonicity seems strangely disconnected
from its fundamental "content" and purposeto
assure, express, defend and fulfill the Church as Divinely given Unity,
for the first time, in other terms, one seems to find normal
a multiplicity of "jurisdictions." Truly we must wake
up and be horrified by this situation. We must find in ourselves
the courage to face it and to re-think it in the light of the
genuine Orthodox doctrine and tradition, no matter what it will
cost to our petty human likes and dislikes. For unless we, first,
openly admit the existence of the canonical problem and, second,
put all our thoughts and energies into finding its solution, the
decadence of Orthodoxy will beginin spite of the
million-dollar churches and other magnificent
"facilities" of which we are so justly proud. "For
the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God:
and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that
obey not the gospel of God"? (I Pet. 4:17).
(ii) False ideas of Canonicity
We must begin with a clarification of the seemingly simple
notion of canonicity. I say "seemingly simple"
because it is indeed simple enough to give a formal definition:
"canonical is that which complies with the canons of the
Church." It is much more difficult, however, to understand
what this "compliance" is and how to achieve it. And
nothing illustrates better this difficulty than certain
assumptions on which the whole canonical controversy in America
seems to be grounded and which are in fact a very serious
distortion of the Orthodox canonical tradition.
There are those, for example, who solve the complex and
tragical canonical problem of Orthodoxy in America by one simple
rule, which to them seems a self-evident one: to be
"canonical" one has to be under some Patriarch,
or, in general, under some established autocephalous church in
the old world. Canonicity is thus reduced to subordination which
is declared to constitute the fundamental principle of church
organization. Implied here is the idea that a "high
ecclesiastical power" (Patriarch, Synod, etc.) is in itself
and by itself the source of canonicity: whatever it
decides is ipso facto canonical and the criterion of
canonicity. But in the genuine Orthodox tradition the
ecclesiastical power is itself under the canons and its
decisions are valid and compulsory only inasmuch as they comply
with the canons. In other terms, it is not the decision of a
Patriarch or His Synod that creates and guarantees
"canonicity", but, on the contrary, it is the
canonicity of the decision that gives it its true authority and
power. Truth, and not power, is the criterion, and the canons,
not different in this from the dogmas, express the truth of
the Church. And just as no power, no authority can transform
heresy into orthodoxy and to make white what is black, no power
can make canonical a situation which is not canonical. When told
that all Patriarchs have agreed with the Patriarch of
Constantinople that Monotheletism is an Orthodox doctrine, St. Maximus the Confessor
refused to accept this argument as a decisive criterion of truth.
The Church ultimately canonized St. Maximus and condemned the
Patriarchs. Likewise, if tomorrow all Patriarchs agree and
proclaim in a solemn "tomos" that the best solution for
Orthodoxy in America is to remain divided into fourteen
jurisdictions, this decision will not make our situation
canonical and this, for the simple reason that it does not comply
with the canonical tradition or the truth of the church.
For the purpose and the function of the Hierarchy is precisely to
keep pure and undistorted the tradition in its fulness, and if
and when it sanctions or even tolerates anything contrary to the
truth of the church, it puts itself under the condemnation of
canons. [1] And it is indeed ironical that in America the canonical
subordinationism, exalted by so many as the only
source and guarantee of "canonicity," is being used to
justify the most uncanonical situation one can imagine; the
simultaneous jurisdiction of several bishops in the same
territory, which is a betrayal of both the letter and the spirit
of the whole canonical tradition. For this situation destroys the
fundamental "note" of the Church: the hierarchical and
structural unity as the foundation and the expression of the
spiritual unity, of the Church as "unity of faith and
love." If there exists a clear and universal canonical
principle it is certainly that of jurisdictional unity, [2] and,
therefore, if a peculiar "reduction" of canonicity
leads to the de facto destruction of that principle, one
can apply to it the words of the Gospel: "Ye shall know them
by their fruits" (St. Matt. 7:16). "Canonical
subordinationism" is the best indication of how deeply
"westernized" we have become in our canonical thinking.
Canonicity has been identified not with truth, but with
"security." And nothing short of a real canonical
revival can bring us back to the glorious certitude that in
Orthodoxy there is no substitute for Truth.
Destructive of the Church's unity, "canonical
subordinationism" leads necessarily to the destruction of
the Church's continuity. There is no need to prove here
that the continuity in faith, doctrine and life constitutes the
very basis of Orthodox ecclesiology and that the focal principle
of that continuity is the Apostolic succession of the Episcopate;
through it each church manifests and maintains her organic unity
and identity with the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church,
the Catholicity of her life and faith. But whereas in the
genuine Orthodox tradition the "subject" of continuity
is the Church, i.e. the real continuity of a living and
concrete community with the whole tradition and order of the
Church, continuity of which the succession of the Episcopate is
the witness and the bearer, here in the theory of "canonical
subordinationism" the reality of the church is reduced to
the formal principle of "jurisdiction," i.e.
subordination to a central ecclesiastical power. But then the
meaning of the Apostolic succession is deeply changed as is also
that of the Bishop and his function within the Church. In the
original tradition, a Bishop through his consecration by other
bishops, becomes the "successor" not to his
consecrators but, first of all, to the unbroken continuity of his
own Church. [3]
The "Church is in the Bishop" because the
"Bishop is in the Church," in the "organic unity
with a particular body of church people. [4] In the system of
canonical subordination, however, the Bishop becomes a simple
representative of a higher jurisdiction, important not in
himself, not as the charismatic bearer and guardian of his
Church's continuity and catholicity, but as means
of this Church's subordination to a "jurisdiction." It
is difficult to imagine a more serious distortion and, indeed,
destruction of the Orthodox conception of continuity and
apostolic succession. For the Church cannot be reduced to
"jurisdiction." She is a living organism and her
continuity is precisely that of life. The function of the
Episcopate and of "power" in general is to preserve,
defend and express this continuity and fulness of life, but it is
a function within and not above the Church. The
ministry of power does not create the church but is
created by God within the Church, which is ontologically prior to
all functions, charisms and ministries. [5] And
"jurisdiction" when it is divorced from the real
continuity of the Church can become, and in fact often becomes, a
principle of discontinuity and schism ...
*A sad but typical illustration of this is the painful story
of the Russian ecclesiastical conflicts in America. Orthodoxy was
implanted in Alaska in the 18th century, by Russian missionaries.
Since then the Church here grew organically: from a
mission into a diocese, and then into a group of dioceses, or a
local church. The normal jurisdictional link between the American
Church and the Moscow Patriarchate was broken de facto by
the tragical events of the Russian Revolution. There was no
schism, no quarrel, no conflict. The Bishop appointed from Moscow
went to Russia and did not return. Deprived of material support
from the Mother-Church, poisoned by revolutionary propaganda, the
Church in America was in a great spiritual danger. In this
tragical situation [6] the decision of the Sobor of Detroit in
1924 to proclaim the temporary autonomy was not only fully
justified, it was indeed an act of real continuity, i.e.
of the Church's faithfulness to her organic growth. It was
moreover an act of the whole Church: Bishop, [7] clergy and
laity; and its motivation was profoundly and exclusively
ecclesiastical: to assure, under new circumstances, the
continuity of life, faith and order. [8] But the Moscow
Patriarchate condemned the American Church as
"schismatic," and in 1933 established here its own
"jurisdiction" in the form of the Exarchate. [9]
We have here a clearcut clash between the two "canonical
logics." On the one hand, there is the logics of organic
continuity in a Church which knows herself to be a reality, a
body, a living continuity and which for the very sake of that
continuity and growth, dares to take steps best suited to that
purpose. And there is, on the other hand, the legalistic logics
in which the whole Church life is nothing but a system of
jurisdictional subordination. The creation of the Patriarchal
Exarchate is, from this point of view, a very interesting
phenomenon. It implies that a Church can be created, so to speak,
ex nihilo, by the simple fact of the arrival to the
U.S.A. of Bishop Benjamin. It implies also, that in the Muscovite
thinking the continuity of the Church in America lies not
in her long and organic development, but exclusively in
her jurisdictional dependance of Moscow ... And it is really
astonishing how many people, even those who claim to
"understand" and "justify" the Metropolia,
but mainly for non-ecclesiastical reasons, fail to realize that
by the standards of a genuinely Orthodox canonical and
ecclesiastical tradition, the only real schism was
originated by the declaration of Metropolitan Sergiy of Moscow
that Archbishop Benjamin had "organized in New York a
Diocesan Council and that our North American Diocese has begun
official existence." [10] This act broke the real continuity
of the American Church, introduced division among Orthodox
people, weakened the discipline which was restored with such pain
after Detroit, opened the door to endless controversies and
accusations and, in general, contributed to the canonical chaos
in which we live today. And if Apostolic succession has been
established for the sake of unity and sobornost, and must never
become the vehicle of exclusiveness and division, if, in other
terms, a schism is an act of division, a break in the real continuity
of the Church, it was the establishment of the Exarchate that
provoked a schism, and a rupture of canonicity.
We mention the Russian tragedy because, as the time goes on,
it becomes more and more obviously a kind of "pattern"
for the whole canonical tragedy of American Orthodoxy. What
happened to the Russians is happening mutatis mutandis to
the others, the Serbians, the Romanians, the Bulgarians, the
Syrians, and for the same fundamental reason: the growing
discrepancy between the real situation, the real continuity, the
real needs of Orthodoxy here and the various
"situations" in Bucharest or Damascus, Istanbul or
Moscow. If the jurisdictional dependence of American Churches on
these centers in the early, formative period of Orthodoxy here
was a self-evident form of its continuity, it has
become today, paradoxically as it sounds, the cause of
discontinuity and division. It is a significant fact that, with
some very few exceptions, the schisms and conflicts which poison
our life here and obstruct all real progress, are rooted not in
the American situation itself, but precisely in this formal
"dependence" on ecclesiastical centers located
thousands of miles away from America and radically alienated from
the real needs of the Church in America. A Bishop virtually
without parishes is recognized as "canonical" because
he is "recognized" by his Patriarch, but a Bishop of
the same Church with a flourishing Diocese and with organic roots
in the real continuity of the Church here is declared
"un-canonical" for lack of such recognition. An
unnecessary and vicious split in a relatively small Archdiocese
is declared "canonical," because ten Bishops in the
Middle East have decided so. A priest in trouble in his own
diocese is always welcome in some other jurisdiction ... We are
constantly told that something is "canonical," because
it is "recognized" as canonical by such or such
Patriarch or Synod. But, once more, in the Orthodox teaching
canonical is that which complies with the canons and the canons
express the truth of the church. We must openly reject the
"romanizing" theory that something is true because some
infallible authority has decreed that it is true. In the Orthodox
Church truth itself is the supreme authority and criterion. At
one time the Patriarch of Constantinople "recognized"
as Orthodox and canonical the so-called "Living Church"
in Russia. This did not make it either Orthodox or canonical.
No Patriarch, no Synodbe it in Moscow or Belgrade or in
any other placehas the infallible charisma to understand
the needs and the truth of the American situation better
than the Orthodox people who constitute the Church here. In fact,
it is their lack of genuine pastoral interest in the real needs
of the Church in America, it is their "recognitions"
and "excommunications" that made the Orthodox Church
here a pitiful chaos. Obviously, as long as we believe that the
Holy Spirit acts in America only via Damascus or Sofia,
Bucharest, or Moscow, as long as our Bishops, forgetting the real
content of the doctrine of Apostolic succession which makes them
the representatives of God and not of Patriarchs, think of
themselves as caretakers of interests having nothing to do with
the interests of Orthodoxy in America, as long, in other terms,
as we reduce the Church, her life, her unity, her continuity to
blind and legalistic subordination, the canonical chaos will
continue, bearing with it the fatal deterioration of Orthodoxy.
Finally, all this leads to (and also in part proceeds from)
the harmful and un-Orthodox reduction of canonicity to an almost
abstract principle of validity. When a man has been consecrated
bishop by at least two other bishops, he is considered as a
"valid" bishop regardless of the ecclesiastical and
ecclesiological content of his consecration. But Orthodox
tradition has never isolated validity into a "principle in
itself," i.e. disconnected from truth, authenticity and, in
general, the whole faith and order of the Church. It would not be
difficult to show that the canonical tradition, when dealing with
holy orders and sacraments, always stresses that they are valid
because they are acts of, and within, the Church
which means that it is their authenticity as acts of the Church
that make them valid and not vice-versa. To consider
validity as a self-contained principle leads to a magical
understanding of the Church and to a dangerous distortion of
ecclesiology. Yet in America, under the impact of the
multi-jurisdictional chaos this idea of validity per se appears
more and more as the only criterion. There grows around us a
peculiar indifference to authenticity, to elementary moral
considerations. A Bishop, a priest, a layman can be accused of
all sorts of moral and canonical sins: the day when he
"shifts" to the "canonical" jurisdictions all
these accusations become irrelevant; he is "valid" and
one can entrust to him the salvation of human souls! Have we
completely forgotten that all the "notae" of the Church
are not only equally important but also interdependent, and what
is not holyi.e. right, moral, just, canonical,
cannot be "apostolic"? In our opinion
nothing has harmed more the spiritual and moral foundations of
Church life than the really immoral idea that a man, an
act, a situation are "valid" only in function of a
purely formal "validity in itself." It is this immoral
doctrine that poisons the Church, makes parishes and individuals
think of any jurisdictional shift as justified as long as they
"go under a valid bishop" and makes the Church cynical
about and indifferent to, considerations of truth and morals.
(iii) The Meaning of Canonicity
The canonical chaos in America is not a specifically
"American" phenomenon. Rather, Orthodoxy here is the
victim of a long, indeed a multi-secular disease. It was a latent
disease as long as the Church was living in the old traditional
situation characterized primarily by an organic unity of the
State, the ethnic factor and the ecclesiastical organization. Up
to quite recently, in fact up to the appearance of the massive
Orthodox diaspora, ecclesiastical stability and
order were preserved not so much by the canonical
"consciousness," but by State regulations and control.
Ironically enough it made not much difference whether the State
was Orthodox (The Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Greece), Roman
Catholic (Austro-Hungary) or Muslim (the Ottoman Empire). Members
of the Church could be persecuted in non-Orthodox States, but
Church organizationand this is the crux of the
matterwas sanctioned by the State and could not be
altered without this sanction. This situation was, of course, the
result of the initial Byzantine "symphony" between
Church and State, but after the fall of Byzantium it was
progressively deprived of that mutual interdependence of Church
and State which was at the very heart of the Byzantine theocratic
ideology. [11] What is important for us here and what constitutes
the "disease" mentioned above is that this organic
blend of State regulations, ethnical solidarity and Church
organization led little by little to a divorce of the canonical
consciousness from its dogmatical and spiritual context.
Canonical tradition, understood at first as an
organic part of the dogmatical tradition, as the latter's
application to the empirical life of the Church, became Canon Law:
a system of rules and regulations, juridical, and not
primarily doctrinal and spiritual in their nature, and
interpreted as such within categories alien to the spiritual
essence of the Church. Just as a lawyer is the one who can find
all possible precedents and arguments that favor his
"case," a canonist, in this system of thought, is the
one who, in the huge mass of canonical texts, can find that one
which justifies his "case," even if the latter seems to
contradict the spirit of the Church. And once such
"text" is found, "canonicity" is established.
There appeared, in other terms, a divorce between the Church as
spiritual, sacramental essence and the Church as organization
so that the latter ceased in fact to be considered as the
expression of the first, fully dependent on it. If today in
America so many of our laymen are sincerely convinced that the
parish organization is an exclusively legal or
"material" problem and ought to be handled apart from
the "spiritual," the root of this conviction is not
only in the specifically American ethos, but also in the
progressive secularization of canon law itself. And yet the whole
point is that canons are not mere laws, but laws whose authority
is rooted precisely in the spiritual essence of the Church.
Canons do not constitute or create the Church, their function is
to defend, clarify and regulate the life of the Church, to make
it comply with the essence of the Church. This means that in
order to be properly understood, interpreted and applied,
canonical texts must be always referred to that truth of,
and about, the Church, which they express sometimes for a very
particular situation and which is not necessarily explicit in the
canonical text itself.
If we take the canonical area which interests us more
particularly in this essay, that of ecclesiastical organization
and episcopal power, it is evident that the basic reality or
truth to which all canons dealing with bishops, their
consecration and their jurisdiction point and refer, is the
reality of unity, as the very essence of the
Church. The Church is unity of men with God in Christ and
unity of men one with another in Christ. Of this new,
divinely given and divine unity the Church is the gift, the
manifestation, the growth and the fulfillment. And, therefore,
everything in her organization, order and life is in some way or
another related to unity, and is to be understood, evaluated and,
if necessary, judged by it. The dogmatical or spiritual essence
of the Church as unity is thus the criterion for the proper
understanding of canons concerning Church organization and also
for their proper application. If the canons prescribe that a
bishop must be consecrated by all bishops of the province (cf.
Apostolic Canon 1, 1 Oecum, Canon 4) and only in case of
"some special reason or owing to the distance" by two
or three, the meaning of the canon is obviously not that any two
or three bishops can "make" another bishop, but that
the consecration of a bishop is the very sacrament of the Church
as unity and oneness. [12] To reduce this canon to a formal
principle that there must be at least two bishops for a
"valid" episcopal consecration is simply nonsensical.
The canon both reveals and safeguards an essential truth about
the Church and its proper application is possible, therefore,
only within the full context of that truth. And only this context
explains why canons which apparently are anachronistic and have
nothing to do with our time and situations are not considered as
obsolete but remain an integral part of Tradition. To be sure the
Melitian schism which divided Egypt at the beginning of the
fourth century has in itself no great importance for us. Yet the
canons of the First Ecumenical Council which defined the norms
for its solution keep all their significance precisely because
they reveal that truth of the Church in the light of which, and
for the preservation of which that schism was solved. All this
means that the search for canonicity consists not in an
accumulation of "texts," but in the effort, first, to
understand the ecclesiological meaning of a given text, and then,
to relate it to a particular and concrete situation.
The necessity for such an effort is especially obvious here in
America. The American ecclesiastical situation is unprecedented
in more than one respect. Enough time and energy have been spent
in sterile attempts simply to "reduce" it to some
pattern of the past, i.e. to ignore the real challenge it
presents to the canonical conscience of the Church.
(iv) National Pluralism and Canonical Unity**
The unprecedented situation of American Orthodoxy is that the
Church here, different in this from all other parts of the
Orthodox world, is multinational in its origins. Since the
Byzantine era, Orthodoxy was always brought to and accepted by
whole nations. The only familiar pattern of the past, therefore,
is not the creation of mere local churches, but a total
integration and incarnation of Orthodoxy in national cultures; so
that these cultures themselves cannot be separated from Orthodoxy
but, in their depth, are genuine expressions of Orthodoxy. This
organic unity of the national and religious is not a historical
accident, much less a defect of Orthodoxy. In its positive
expression it is the fruit of the Orthodox concept and experience
of the Church as embracing the whole life. Catholicity means for
an Orthodox more than geographic universality; it is, above
everything else, the wholeness, the totality of life as belonging
to Christ and sanctified by the Church. In this respect, the
situation in America is radically different from the whole
historical experience of Orthodoxy. Not only the Orthodox Church
was brought here by representatives of various Orthodox nations,
but it was brought as precisely the continuation of their
national existence. Hence the problem of canonical or
ecclesiological unity, which as we have seen is a self-evident
requirement of the very truth of the Church, encounters here
difficulties that cannot be simply reduced to the solutions of
the past. And yet, this is precisely what happens much too often.
On the one hand, there are those who believe that the old
pattern of national and religious unity can be simply applied to
America. The Church is Greek in Greece, Russian in Russia, therefore
it must be American in Americasuch is their reasoning.
We are no longer Russians or Greeks, let us translate services in
English, eliminate all "nationalism" from the Church
and be one... . Logical as it sounds, this solution is deeply
wrong and, in fact, impossible. For what, in their cheerful but
superficial "Americanism," the partisans of this view
seem completely to overlook is that the rapport between Orthodoxy
and Russia, or Orthodoxy and Greece, is fundamentally different
from, if not opposed to, the rapport between Orthodoxy and
America. There is not and there cannot be a religion of
America in the sense in which Orthodoxy is the religion of Greece
or Russia and this, in spite of all possible and actual betrayals
and apostasies. And for this reason Orthodoxy cannot be American
in the sense in which it certainly is Greek, Russian or
Serbian. Whereas there, in the old world, Orthodoxy is
coextensive with national culture, and to some extent, is the
national culture (so that the only alternative is the escape into
a "cosmopolitan," viz. "Western"
culture), in America, religious pluralism and therefore, a basic
religious "neutrality," belongs to the very essence of
culture and prevents religion from a total
"integration" in culture. Americans may be more
religious people than Russians or Serbs, religion in America may
have privileges, prestige and status it has not had in the
"organic" Orthodox countries, all this does not alter
the fundamentally secular nature of contemporary American
culture; and yet it is precisely this dichotomy of culture and
religion that Orthodoxy has never known or experienced and that
is totally alien to Orthodoxy. For the first time in its whole
history, Orthodoxy must live within a secular culture. This
presents enormous spiritual problems with which I hope to deal in
a special article. What is important for us here, however, is
that the concept of "americanization" and
"American" Orthodoxy is thus far from being a simple
one. It is a great error to think that all problems are solved by
the use of English in services, essential as it is. For the real
problem (and we will probably only begin to realize and to face
it when "everything" is translated into English) is
that of culture, of the "way of life." It belongs to
the very essence of Orthodoxy not only to "accept" a
culture, but to permeate and to transform it, or, in other terms,
to consider it an integral part and object of the Orthodox vision
of life. Deprived of this living interrelation with culture, of
this claim to the whole of life, Orthodoxy, in spite of
all formal rectitude of dogma and liturgy, betrays and loses
something absolutely essential. This explains the instinctive
attachment of so many Orthodox, even American born, to the
"national" forms of Orthodoxy, their resistance,
however narrow-minded and "nationalistic," to a
complete divorce between Orthodoxy and its various national
expressions. In these forms and expressions Orthodoxy preserves
something of its existential wholeness, of its link with life in
its totality, and is not reduced to a "rite," a clearly
delineated number of credal statements and a set of "minimal
rules." One cannot by a surgical operation called
"americanization" distill a pure "Orthodoxy in
itself," without disconnecting it from its flesh and blood,
making it a lifeless form. There can be no doubt, therefore, that
in view of a this, a living continuity with national traditions
will remain for a long time not only a "compromise"
meant to satisfy the "old-timers," but an essential
condition for the very life of the Orthodox Church. And any
attempt to build the unity of Orthodoxy here by opposing the
"American" to the traditional national connotations
and terms will lead neither to a real unity nor to real
Orthodoxy.
But equally wrong are those who from this interdependence of
the national and the ecclesiastical within Orthodoxy draw the
conclusion that, therefore, the ecclesiastical, i.e.
"jurisdictional" unity of the Orthodox Church in
America is impossible and ought not even to be sought. This view
implies a very narrow and obviously distorted idea of the Church
as a simple function of national identity, values and
self-preservation. "National" becomes here
"nationalistic" and the Churchan instrument of
nationalism. One must confess that one gets tired of the frequent
exhortation to "keep the faith of our fathers." By the
same reasoning a man of Protestant descent should remain
Protestant and a Jew a Jew, regardless of their religious
convictions. Orthodoxy should be kept and preserved not because
it is the "faith of our fathers," but because it is the
true faith and as such is universal, all-embracing and
truly catholic. A convert, for example, embraces Orthodoxy
not because it is somebody's "father's faith," but
because he recognizes in it the Church of Christ, the fulness of
faith and catholicity. Yet it is impossible to manifest and
communicate that fulness, if the Church is simply identified with
an ethnic group and its natural exclusiveness. It is not the task
or the purpose of Orthodoxy to perpetuate and
"preserve" the Russian or the Greek national identity,
but the function of Greek and Russian "expressions" of
Orthodoxy is to perpetuate the "catholic" values of
Orthodoxy which otherwise would be lost. "National"
here has value not in itself, but only inasmuch as it is
"catholic," i.e. capable of conveying and communicating
the living truth of Orthodoxy, of assuring the organic continuity
of the Church. Orthodoxy, if it is to remain the vehicle and the
expression of a national "subculture" (and in America
every exclusive ethnical nationalism is, by definition, a
subculture), will share the latter's inescapable disintegration
and dissolution. Orthodoxy as the natural solidarity and affinity
of people coming from the same island, village, geographical area
or nation (and we have, in fact, "jurisdictional"
expressions of all these categories) cannot indefinitely resist
and survive the pressure of the sociological law which condemns
such solidarities to a sooner or later death. What is required,
therefore, is not only unity and cooperation among various
national "jurisdictions," but a return to the real idea
of unity as expressing the unity of the Church and
the catholicity of her faith and tradition. Not a
"united" Church, but the Church
The unprecedented character of the American Orthodox situation
results thus in a double requirement. The Church here must
preserve, at least for a foreseeable period of time, its organic
continuity with the national cultures in which she has expressed
the catholicity of her faith and life. And she must, in order to
fulfill this catholicity, achieve its canonical unity as
truly One Church. Is this possible?
(v) The Solution: EPISCOPATUS UNUS EST
The answer to this question is in the doctrinal and canonical
tradition, but only if we look for its depth and truth, and not
for petty and legalistic "precedents" of a situation
that has none.
The canonical solution of which, in these concluding
paragraphs, we can give only a very general and preliminary
sketch, presents itself on three levels, which although they are
levels or aspects of the same ecclesiastical structure must
nevertheless be kept distinct.
There can be no doubt that the unity of the Church, as
expressed in her canonical structure, is expressed, first of all,
in and through the unity of the Episcopate. Episcopatus unus
est, wrote St. Cyprian of Carthage in the third
century. This means that each local or particular church is
united to all other churches, reveals her ontological identity
with them, in its bishop. Just as every bishop receives the
oneness of the Episcopate expressed in the plurality of the
consecrators, this fulness includes, as its very essence, his
unity with the whole Episcopate. In the preceding pages we have
spoken enough of the distortions implied in canonical
subordinationism. It must be strongly emphasized, however, that
it is the distortion of a fundamental truth: the unity and the
interdependence of the bishops as the form of the Church's unity.
The error of canonical subordinationism is that it understands
unity only in terms of subordination (of a bishop to his
"superiors") whereas, in Orthodox ecclesiology,
subordination or obedience is derived from the unity of bishops.
There is indeed no power above the episcopal power, but
this power itself implies the bishop's agreement and unity with
the whole Episcopate, so that a bishop separated from the unity
of bishops loses ipso facto his "power. " [13]
In this sense a bishop is obedient and even subordinated
to the unity and unanimity of bishops, but because he himself
is a vital member of that unity. His subordination is not
to a "superior," but to the very reality of the
Church's unity and unanimity of which the Synod of bishops is the
gracious organ: "The bishops of every nation must
acknowledge him who is first among them and account him as their
head, and do nothing of consequence without his consent... but
neither let him ... do anything without the consent of all; for
so there will be unanimity" (Apost. Canon 34).
The fundamental form and expression of episcopal unity is the Synod
of bishops and it would not be difficult to show that all
subsequent forms of ecclesiastical and canonical structure
(provinces, metropolitan districts, autocephalous churches) grew
from this fundamental form and requirements of the canonical
tradition. The various modes of groupings of local churches may
have varied. Thus, the present structure of Orthodoxy as a family
of "autocephalous churches" is by no means the original
one. Yet what cannot change is the "Synod of bishops"
as the expression of the Church's unity. It is very
significant, however, that whenever and wherever the spirit of
"canonical subordinationism" triumphs, the idea of the
Episcopate's unity and, therefore, of the Synod of bishops
becomes dormant (without, of course, disappearing completely).
When, for example, the Russian Church under Peter the Great was
given the status of a "Department of Orthodox
Confession" with, as its result, a bureaucratic system of
administration through subordination, the Russian Episcopate did
not have a plenary Synod for more than two hundred years! And, in
general, since "canonical subordinationism" became more
or less the working system of the Church's government, the
bishops themselves felt no need of Synods and
"sobornost." They were satisfied with
"Patriarchal" or "Governing" Synods, which,
although retaining something of the original ecclesiological
idea, were in fact, the products of the secular principle of
"centralized administration" rather than of the
ecclesiastical norm of episcopal unity. But it is very important
that we understand the difference between a "central
administration," even if it is called "Synod," and
the true ecclesiological nature of an episcopal Synod. A central
administration may consist of bishops (as the Russian Holy Synod,
or the Patriarchal Synod of Constantinople), but its very
function and nature is to supply the Church with a "high
power" not only not derived from the unity of bishops, but
meant to be a power above them. Not only is it not the
expression of the power of the bishops but, on the contrary, it
is understood as the source of their power. But this is a
deep distortion of the very nature of power in the Church, which
is the power of the bishops united among themselves and united
with their respective Churches as their priests, patrons and
teachers. In the Synod of bishops properly understood, all
Churches are truly represented in the person of their
bishops and, in the early tradition, a bishop without a Church,
i.e. without the reality of his episcopacy, is not a member of
the Synod. The Synod of bishops is the "higher power"
because it speaks and acts in and for the Church and takes from
the real, living Church the truth of its decisions.
In the canonical tradition the normal context of the Synod of
Bishops is a "province" i.e., a geographical,
territorial group of churches, forming a self-evident
"whole." While the Ecumenical, universal Synod remains
an "extraordinary" event, made necessary by a major
crisis, local provincial Synods are to be held at regular
intervals (cf. Apost. Can. 37; First Nicean, Can. 5; Chalcedon,
Can. 19; Antioch, Can. 20, Second Nicean, Can. 6; Carthage, Can.
27; Apost. Can. 37). And again, if the precise definition of a
"province" has greatly changed in Church history and,
by its very nature, depends on a great variety of factors, the
idea implied in these canons, i.e. that of a group of churches
forming a local church, united by territory and common concerns,
is quite clear. It is that part of the Church Universal, which
has all the necessary and sufficient conditions for a truly catholic
existence, in which all churches are in a real interdependence
and share in the same historical "situation."
All this brings us to the first "dimension" of the
American canonical solution: the unity of the Orthodox Church of
America is to be achieved and expressed, first of all, on the
level of the Episcopate. There hardly can be any doubt that
America is a "province" in the canonical sense of this
term, that all Orthodox churches here, regardless of their
national origin, share in the same empirical, spiritual and
cultural situation, that the life and the progress of each one of
them depends on the life and the progress of the whole. So much
has been already acknowledged by our bishops when they
established their Standing Conference. But this Conference
is a purely consultative body, it has no canonical status
whatsoever, and useful and efficient as it is, it cannot solve
any of the real problems because it reflects the division of
Orthodoxy here, as much as its unity.*** The bishops must
constitute the Synod of the Orthodox Church of America and
this, prior to any other "unification." For this Synod
will reveal and manifest in itself the unity of the Church which
up to now exists in the defective multitude of mutually
independent "jurisdictions." And they must and can do
it simply in virtue of their Episcopate which already unites
them. It is, in other words, not something new that is required
from them, but the self-evident manifestation of the truth that Episcopatus
Unus Est, of the very essence of the Episcopate which
cannot belong to "churches," but always belongs to the
Church in her indivisibility and oneness. One can almost
visualize the glorious and blessed day when some forty Orthodox
Bishops of America will open their first Synodin New York,
or Chicago, or Pittsburghwith the hymn "Today hath the
grace of the Holy Spirit assembled us together... ." and
will appear to us not as "representatives" of Greek,
Russian or any other "jurisdictions" and interests, but
as the very icon, the very "epiphany" of our unity
within the Body of Christ; when each of them and all together
will think and deliberate only in terms of the whole, putting
aside for a while all particular or national problems, real and
important as they may be. On that day we shall "taste and
see" the oneness of the Orthodox Church in America even if
nothing else is changed and the various national ecclesiastical
structures remain for a while in operation.
But, in fact, much will be changed. Orthodoxy in America will
acquire a center of unity, of cooperation, a sense of direction,
a "term of reference." We do not have to enumerate here
all problems that face us and which, at present, cannot be solved
because no "jurisdiction" is strong enough to do it by
itself. What is even more important, this center of hierarchical
unity will eliminate the numberless frictions among
"jurisdictions" which result in consecrations of new
and sometimes very dubious bishops. If the duty of the Synod,
according to canon law, is to approve all episcopal consecrations
("... and let those who are absent signify their
acquiescence in writing" 1 Ecum., Canon 4), the very
existence of a Synod will bring order into our
"jurisdictional" chaos, transform it into a truly
canonical structure.
(vi) The Solution: ECCLESIA IN EPISCOPO
The first stage described above is so self-evident that it
requires no lengthy elaboration. The next one has never been
really discussed and yet, if given some thought, appears to be as
obvious. It deals with the second level of unity which is that of
the Diocese. At this point, some statistical data may be
quite relevant: in the State of Ohio, to take but one example,
there exist at present 86 Orthodox parishes. They belong to 14
different jurisdictions, which means that every group is very
small and, of necessity, extremely limited in its educational,
charitable and any other "extra-parish" activities.
There is no Orthodox Bishop in Ohio, no center of unity except
the local "clergy fellowships." It is not difficult to
imagine what could be the possibilities of all these parishes if
they belonged to one local ecclesiastical structure. Deprived of
it, each parish lives "in-itself," without any real
vision of the whole. And yet there are scores of colleges in Ohio
with an urgent need for Orthodox programs, there are obvious
educational and charitable needs, and there is, above everything
else, the need for a common Orthodox witness in a non-Orthodox
world... . But is it not the very purpose and function of a
Diocese to keep the parishes together, to make them living parts
of a greater whole, indeed, the Church? A parish, left to itself,
can never be truly catholic, for it is of necessity
limited by the concerns and interests of its people. And it is
maybe one of the greatest and the deepest tragedies of American
Orthodoxy that the parishes have been, in fact, left to
themselves and have become selfish and self-centered
institutions. But how can a Bishop living in New York be a living
center of unity and leadership in Ohio, especially if his
power is limited to a group of scattered parishes? No wonder our
people grow in an almost complete ignorance of a Bishop's
function in the Church and think of him as a "guest
speaker" at a parish celebration. But suppose we have a
Bishop of Ohio. Suppose a diocesan center is established which
guides and centralizes all common concerns of the Orthodox Church
in Ohio, whichinstead of being, as it is today a principle
of division, becomes a principle of unity and
common life. Is it really necessary to even argue in favor
of such a solution? Is it not a self-evident one? To be sure
there are difficulties. The Church is multinational: to what
nationality will the Bishop belong? But is it an absolute
difficulty? Can it not be solved if some goodwill, some patience
and, above all, some desire for unity is shown? Is it very
difficult to work out a diocesan constitution which will
incorporate and foresee these difficulties? There could be
provisions for a multinational council to assist the Bishop, a
system of rotation of "nationalities," a set of checks
and balances. The experience of Orthodox clergy fellowships which
have almost spontaneously mushroomed all over the country shows
that a basis already exists for such a common structure, both
spiritually and materially, and that it needs only to be crowned
with its logical, canonical consequence.
(vii) The Solution: The Parish
Finally, the third level: the parish. It is here that
the national cultural unity, which, whether we like it or not,
still constitutes a vital necessity for American Orthodoxy,
fulfills its ecclesiastical function. It is probable that for
quite a while the parishes will remain predominantly, if not
exclusively, colored by their national background. This, of
course, does not exclude the establishment of
"pan-Orthodox" parishes wherever a national group is
too weak to maintain its own (in new suburbias, for example).
But, as a general rule, a parish cannot live by an
"abstract" Orthodoxy. In reality it is always shape by
this or that liturgical tradition and piety, belongs to a
definite "expression" of Orthodoxy. And it is good that
it be so. At this stage of the history of Orthodoxy in America it
would be e spiritually dangerousand we have explained
why-to break this organic continuity of piety and culture, of
memory and custom. There are some among us who dream of
"uniformity" in everything, thinking that uniformity
and unity are identical. But this is wrong, and it reflects a
very formal and not a spiritual understanding of unity. It may be
the source of many blessings for the growing Orthodox Church in
America that it will profit by the best in each national culture,
will "appropriate" the whole heritage of the Orthodox
Church. For through its unity with parishes of all the other
national backgrounds within the Diocesan framework, each national
parish will share its "riches" with the others and, in
turn, receive from the others their giftsand this is indeed
the real catholicity! The national culture of one group will
cease to be a principle of separation, of exclusiveness, of
self-centeredness and, will cease, thus, to deteriorate into a
psychological and spiritual "isolationism." And maybe
it is in America that God wants us to heal the multi-secular
national isolation of Orthodox Churches, one from another, and
this not by abandoning all that made the spiritual beauty and
meaning of Greek, Russian, Serbian and all other
"Orthodoxies," but by giving each of them finally their
catholic and universal significance. It is here that we can all
share and consider as truly ours the spiritual legacies of
the Greek Fathers, the paschal joy of St. Seraphim of Sarov, the
warm piety hidden for centuries in the Carpathian mountains. . .
Then and only then Orthodoxy will be ready for a real encounter
with America, for its mission to America... .
In the last analysis the requirements of our Orthodox
canonical tradition, the solution of our canonical problem
coincides, strange as it may seem, with the most practical
solution, with common sense. But it is not strange. For Tradition
is not a dead conformity with the past. Tradition is life and
truth and the source of life. "Ye shall know the Truth and
the Truth shall make you free."free to follow the
glorious Truth and to fulfill in this great country the mission
of Orthodoxy.
Endnotes
1. "The duty of obedience ceases when the bishop deviates
from the Catholic norm, and the people have the right to accuse
and even to depose him," G. FIorovsky,
"SobornostThe Catholicity of the Church," The
Church of God, London, 1934, p. 72.
2. Cf. John Meyendorff, "One Bishop in One City"
(Canon 3, First Ecum. Council) in St. Vladimir's Seminary
Quarterly, 1961, vol. 5, 1-2, pp. 54-62.
3. In all early documents the lists of bishops show their
succession on the same "cathedra" and not through their
consecrators; cf. for example, Eusebius, Eccl. Hist., V,
VI, 1-2; St. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., 111, 3, 3. On
the meaning of episcopal consecration by several bishops, cf. my
essay, "The Idea of Primacy in Orthodox Ecclesiology"
in The Primacy of Peter, London, 1963, pp. 40 ff.,
and also G. Florovsky, "The Sacrament of Pentecost" (A
Russian view on Apostolic Succession) in Sobornost, March
1934, pp. 29-35: "Under normal conditions of Church life,
Apostolic succession should never become reduced to an abstract
enumeration of successive ordainers. In ancient times Apostolic
succession usually implied first of all a succession to a
definite cathedra, again in a particular local sobornost.
Apostolic Succession does not represent a self-sufficient
chain, or order of bishops."
4. G. Florovsky, op. cit., p. 32.
5. "On the day of Pentecost the Spirit descends not only
on the Apostles, but also on those who were present with them;
not only on the Twelve, but on the entire multitude (compare St.
John Chrysostom's Discourses and his Interpretation of
Acts). This means that the Spirit descends on the
whole of the Primitive Church, then present in Jerusalem. But
though the Spirit is one, the gifts and ministrations of the
Church are very varied, so that while in the sacrament of
Pentecost the Spirit descends on all, it is on the Twelve alone
that He bestows the power and the rank of priesthood promised to
them by our Lord in the days of His flesh. The distinctive
features of priesthood do not become blurred in the all-embracing
fulness of Pentecost. But the simultaneity of this Catholic
outpouring of the Spirit on the entire Church witnesses to the
fact that priesthood was founded within the sobornost of
the church." G. Florovsky, op. cit., p. 31.
6. For a description of that situation cf. D. Grigorieff,
"The Historical Background of Orthodoxy in America" in St.
Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly, vol. 5, 1961, 1-2, p. 3ff.
7. There were 3 Bishops at the Sobor of Detroit.
8. Cf. Grigorieff, op. cit., pp. 19 ff. and A.
Bogolepov, Toward an American Orthodox Church, New
York, 1963, pp. 78 ff.
9. Cf. Bogolepov, op. cit., p. 81 and especially
Grigorieff, op. cit., pp. 29-32.
10. Quoted in Grigorieff, op. cit., p. 32.
11. Cf. A. Schmemann, "Byzantine Theocracy and the
Orthodox Church," St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly,
Vol. 1, No. 2, 1953.
12. "In the ordination of a bishop no separate bishop can
act for himself as a bishop of a definite and particular local
Church.... He acts as a representative of the sobornost of
co-bishops, as a member, and shares of this sobornost... In
addition to this it is implied that these bishops are not
separated and indeed are inseparable from their flocks. Every
co-ordainer acts in the name of Catholic sobernost and fulness...
Again, these are not only canonical, or administrative, or
disciplinary measures. One feels that there is a mystical depth
in them. No realization or extension of Apostolic Succession is
otherwise possible apart from the unbreakable sobornost of the
whole Church." G. Florovsky, op. cit., p. 31.
13. Cf. my essay "The Idea of Primacy in Orthodox
Ecclesiology" cited above and also my essay "Towards a
Theology of Councils," St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly,
Vol. 6, No. 4, 1962.
Additional Webmaster Notes
* The line of reasoning that he will use in the rest of this
sectionespecially his comment about the "clash of 'canonical logics'"is
the same as that used by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in Her stance against
Sergianism. This mindset is most clearly illustrated in the writings of the
Bishops alive during the wake of Metropolitan Sergius' infamous "Declaration"
of 1927. See, for example, the Epistles
of St. Cyril of Kazan.
** An excellent companion article to this
section is "Cultural
Paradosis and Orthodox America."
*** Contrary to what many Orthodox Christians
think, the word "canonical" is not part of the original
acronym. Fr. Alexander's words help us to understand why
this is the case. That most Orthodox Christians think S.C.O.B.A.
stands for the "Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox
Bishops in America" is both ironic and a lamentable
indicator that not much has changed since Fr. Alexander wrote
these words. As a poignant example of this, consider these
statements sent automatically to one who joins the "
Orthodox [Email] Forum List" (a.k.a., the "SCOBA
List") hosted by Fr. Hans Jacobse:
This List is for discussion
between Canonical Orthodox Christians and others interested
in the Orthodox faith... . This List defines canonical
Orthodoxy as those jurisdictions in communion with the
Ecumenical Patriarch. In America, the canonical Orthodox
churches are members of the Standing Conference of Canonical
Orthodox Bishops in America (SCOBA).
I received this as part of the "SCOBA
List" guidelines when I joined on August 18, 1997. Fr. Hans
is a graduate of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary.
Even more ironic is that within six years of
writing this article Fr. Alexander would be deeply involved in
negotiations with the Moscow Patriarchate leading eventually to a
declaration of the O.C.A.'s "autochephaly."
From St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly,
Vol. 8, No. 2 (1964), pp. 67-84. This was the first essay in a
series on the problems of Orthodoxy in America. The original
footnote numbering has been changed to a sequentially numbered
endnote format.
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