ancientfaith
Fr. Steven helps us sort through the terms autocephaly and
autonomy and identifies some unresolved issues to be addressed by a
Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church.
My dear friends, I wonder if I’ve mentioned the names of these
churches—Russia, Romania, Georgia, Greece, Bulgaria—would you, aside
from their obvious Orthodox profession of faith, be able to connect the
dots that each of these has in common in a certain area, speaking solely
in terms of religious connotations? Guess it yet? Well, let’s suppose
that I threw in the Orthodox Church of America, the OCA, as a sweetener.
There yet? I supposed that some of you might have guessed
“autocephaly,” that curious word that has evolved over the centuries,
yet strangely not defined in the canonical legislation of the Church, as
the missing link in our little game. And you would be right, except for
the fact that all but the American Church have been universally
recognized as being in possession of this much-sought-after and yet
elusive appellation that has become so touted and controversial in
recent years.
But what I was really getting at is something a little more esoteric
in my admittedly lackluster and non-specific attempt at throwing out a
clue. All of these churches—again, except the American one—had
proclaimed their autocephaly before actually being granted it
by any rational and authoritative Church body. They all struck out on
their own in the hope, and, indeed, with ample historical precedence,
that recognition would follow some time in the future.
Autocephaly, or “self-headed,” refers to the status of a particular
church whose top bishop does not have to report to any other authority.
In other words, for all practical purposes, this church can set policy
for itself and effectually do what it wants in terms of its own
self-governance. This does not mean that it can against or in
contra-indication to the important tenets of the faith. The other
churches would, hopefully, condemn such actions and call for that church
to repent. And one would hope that it would also not set policies that should
actually have the approval of all the churches, though this has, in
fact, happened many times, to the ultimate grief of the Church at large.
Autonomy, on the other hand, is another form of more limited
self-governance, except that the mother church has the right to confirm
the bishops, in some cases to pick from among a select slate of
candidates, and usually produce holy chrism for the daughter church as
well. It should be noted that autonomy can take many forms, as defined
by the mother church, and two churches in this country, the Russian
Orthodox Church Outside of Russia and the self-ruled Antiochian Orthodox
Church, enjoy a certain degree of independence. Worldwide at the
present time, there are only two universally recognized autonomous
churches—Finland and Mount Sinai—with at least six others vying for this
status and receiving only partial acknowledgment.
As mentioned earlier, the history of the granting of autocephaly is a
checkered one, littered with the stench of politics and ecclesiastical
shenanigans, and all too often hyper-ventilated nationalism. Of course,
in the early years of the Church, the designation often applied to those
bishops not subject to the local metropolitan or patriarchal authority
for some reason or the other, and instead to a local synod or council.
The bishops of Britain were like this before the coming of St. Augustine
of Canterbury. In some cases, a church protested subjugation to a
particular see, like the Church of Cyprus did when its status was
confirmed by the Third Ecumenical Council in 431 as one of ancient
provenance, over the objections of Antioch.
More recently, the Church of Bulgaria proclaimed its independent
status in 1872, motivated by the need for nationalistic independence in
the sight of the Ottoman Empire, and, with its help, achieved this
distinction to the chagrin of the patriarchate of Constantinople, who
promptly labeled its followers heretics and schismatics—of which they
were neither—and decried the fact that the surrender of Orthodoxy to
ethnic nationalism could ever be a factor in Church
organization. Later this would be defined as phyletism, of which we have
spoken before, the organization of Church life around ethnic and
nationalistic principles. It would not be until the last year of World
War II when Constantinople would confirm the autocephalous status. As
for phyletism, set in stone in 1872 at a large pan-Orthodox council in
Constantinople, well, it has become, for all intents and purposes, the defining characteristic, sadly, of churches found in the—and I hate to even use the word—Diaspora.
So what has this aberration done for those of us outside patriarchal
territories? Essentially, it has infused a plethora of practices and
theological presuppositions into the concrete realities of everyday
Church life and regulations, creating havoc, misunderstandings, and a
host of conflicting presentations of the faith to the world at large. In
2006, Fr. Josiah Trenham of the Antiochian Archdiocese, compiled a list
of obvious discrepancies. Time prevents an in-depth discussion of these
at this point, though we will get to some of them in the future, but I
think it worth mentioning his well-considered and illuminatingly
irritating list. Here are some excerpts:
Some Orthodox jurisdictions receive persons from Latin and certain Protestant bodies into holy Orthodoxy by baptism and chrismation, some by chrismation alone, and some merely by confession of faith.
Some Orthodox jurisdictions receive Latin clergy converting to holy Orthodoxy merely by vesting, while others ordain.
Some Orthodox jurisdictions recognize all marriages performed outside holy Orthodoxy as being real marriages, though certainly not sacramental, whether performed for an Orthodox or a non-Orthodox, while others recognize no marriages performed outside holy Orthodoxy, whether performed for an Orthodox or a non-Orthodox.
Some Orthodox jurisdictions bury a person who was cremated with all funeral rites in the church temple. Others permit only trisagion prayers of mercy in the funeral home. Some forbid any prayers anywhere for a person who was cremated.
Some Orthodox jurisdictions recognize civil divorce as complete and sufficient for ecclesiastical purposes, while others do not recognize civil divorce at all, and insist on Church tribunals; while yet others deal with divorce in other ways.
Some Orthodox jurisdictions ignore bans of excommunication pronounced by hierarchs of other Orthodox jurisdictions.
I could name at least ten others fairly easily, and keep in mind that
these sorts of divergences have existed now and before in the Church
worldwide, but we are talking about here in the United States alone. So
you begin to see the fruit of phyletism and its interrelated connection
to autocephaly. A church in a single geographical area, in order to be
consistent and effective, must be united in policies and strictures
emanating from a single, cohesive ecclesiastical authority, and this is
the primary need for the concept of autocephaly, even if its
establishment is often for other, more mundane and even superficial
reasons.
But much of the contemporary hot wind about this topic began in 1970,
when the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America—again, the
Metropolia, or now OCA—received the coveted title from the Moscow
patriarchate, a church that was at that time hideously enmeshed in the
ravages and compromises of atheistic Communism. Only a few churches
recognized the new Orthodox Church in America, though none doubted the
canonicity of its bishops, but the flavor left in most mouths at the
time was one of self-aggrandizement, born out of a need to regularize an
extremely difficult and painful ecclesiastical status, cloaked in the
promise of a unified and common Orthodox Church ecclesiastical organism
in the United States. It failed, as history has now testified, and even
among those in the OCA, there are great divisions about whether this
non-recognized autocephaly should be maintained, especially as how
Moscow itself has a political stake in the game, since they granted it
to begin with.
But we should not come down too harshly on the OCA. What they did, as
we have seen, has a long and cherished history, and that very history,
as I said, has shown that if a church breaks away or establishes its own
independence, eventually it is accepted and all is right with the
world. The problem with the OCA’s action is that they didn’t then and
don’t now have the majority numbers, and in every other case of
autocephaly that we know of, the people were overwhelmingly in favor of
it. It is doubtful that they will ever be recognized as independent
among all of the hierarchs of the Orthodox world in their current guise,
and, in fact, they were as independent before autocephaly, even in
their irregular state, as they are now, while a church like the once
fiercely independent Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia is
actually less independent after its union with the patriarchate of
Moscow. Well, history does throw us some surprises.
The issue of American autocephaly actually goes beyond the membership
of the OCA, and we will return to it in a later podcast. The other
factors brewing in the current controversy involve those churches far
across the pond from us, and one only needs to mention the names of
Ukraine, Macedonia, Estonia, Belarus, and even France to see that there
are conflicts aplenty stirring in the Orthodox world, and there are
likely to be even more in the near future.
Therefore, the question of the establishment of autocephaly is a
crucial one, yet one more example of something from the Church’s past
that now needs a contemporary approach based on the fact that the Church
at large cannot act independently in such matters and still present a
unanimity and Spirit-inspired manifestation of her work and decisions to
the world. And while some might say that the Church really doesn’t need
to worry about what the world thinks, it is precisely from this source
that the future members of the Church will come from—hopefully—and that
God’s rational, created human beings must indeed be presented with
rational and unswervingly sensible solutions that reek of holiness and
not chaos. A swept house is always preferred to a cluttered one.
From all that we hear at the moment, agreement has already been
established that the creation of autocephalous churches will be the
prerogative of all the existing autocephalous churches. Each
must agree, or the autocephaly won’t happen, and likewise the revocation
of such cannot take place without the same procedure. I hope I will be
forgiven for thinking that this seems like a perfect road to an
interminable stalemate, if any church has the right to veto this
procedure, and perhaps this will not be the case that each church can
participate in the process. This schema, though agreed upon in general,
most likely faced some issues of particulars when the discussions begin,
yet the overriding question about how and when autocephaly is
established is a vital one if we are to avoid the current free-for-all
that serves as contemporary Orthodox Church polity, an ecclesiastical
traffic jam if there ever was one. May God lead us to a reasoned and
workable structure, reflective of and in accordance with his will.
Next time, we will break with our council discussions and turn our
attention to another pressing need: Orthodox unity in America. Until
then, a hearty “Christ is risen!” to all as we wind down this blessed
season of grace. And may God bless each and every one of you.