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An
Uncanonical Situation
False
Ideas of Canonicity
The
Meaning of Canonicity
National
Pluralism and Canonical Unity
The
Solution: Episcopatus Unus Est
The
Solution: Ecclesia in Episcopo
The
Solution: The Parish
Endnotes
An Uncanonical
Situation
No term is used—and
misused—among 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 with 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
purpose—to 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 begin—in 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).
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
fullness, 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 fullness 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 clear cut
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
dependence 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
Synod—be it in Moscow or Belgrade or in any other place—has 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 holy—i.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.
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 organization—and
this is the crux of the matter—was 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.
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 America—such 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 creedal 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 Church—an 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?
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 fullness 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 Synod—in New York, or Chicago, or Pittsburgh—with 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.
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,
which—instead 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.
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 dangerous—and 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 gifts—and 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, "Sobornost—The 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 sobornost 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.
Go to the Top
Author: Protopresbyter
Alexander Schmemann (Memory Eternal)
Source: This
article was originally published in St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly,
Vol. 8, No. 2 (1964), pp. 67-84, and is widely disseminated on the
internet. |
