The Rev. Peter Pawlac says a blessing at the Divine Liturgy on the Feast of the Ascension at the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration.
By Peter Smith / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The leaders of their global churches may have some difficulty in getting together after a 1,200-year gap.
But in the basement of a South Side Flats church on a recent Thursday
afternoon, members of Western Pennsylvania’s diverse array of Orthodox
churches put aside religious labels for a humbler cause.
As they do each week, volunteers laid out breads, pastries, cereals,
canned goods and other foods on shelves and folding tables, setting up
for the food-pantry distribution at Holy Assumption of St. Mary Orthodox
Church. Colorful icons of saints, along with black-and-white photos of
past parishioners, filled the walls behind them.
Before opening the doors, the pastor led them in an ancient Easter
chant known as the “Paschal Troparion”: “Christ is risen from the dead,
trampling down death by death, and upon those in tombs bestowing life.”
As the doors opened and the clients filed in, volunteer Denise Panos
Daugherty was there to greet them: “Welcome ... It’s hot out there. ... I
missed you guys last week. ... We’ve got doughnuts today.”
The parish is overseen by the Orthodox Church in America,
historically rooted in Russian immigration. It hardly mattered that Ms.
Daugherty belongs to St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Oakland,
or that other volunteers come from Ukrainian, Serbian and
Carpatho-Russian backgrounds. Each group, and others, have their own
array of churches, shrines and lines of authority.
The food pantry is “one place where all the divisions have been
transcended through the bridge of love,” said Igumen Patrick, rector of
the parish, sporting a black cassock, large pectoral cross and a full
salt-and-pepper beard. (“Igumen” is a monastic title, and he goes by
just one name, reflecting the Orthodox convert’s Irish Catholic
heritage.)
Here in Western Pennsylvania, long a heartland of American Orthodoxy,
such cooperation extends to various charities and religious activities,
said the Rev. Radu Bordeianu, a priest at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox
Church in McCandless and professor of theology at Duquesne University.
“On paper there are many jurisdictions. In practice there are good relationships,” said Father Bordeianu.
The relationships are mixed back in the Old World.
Leaders of the mother churches of the world’s 300 million Orthodox
Christians have been preparing to make history of a truly epochal
nature, but they may have to settle for something more ordinary.
They plan to convene this Thursday on the Greek island of Crete to open a 10-day “Holy and Great Council.”
As planned, it would be the most broad-based gathering since the
early Middle Ages for Orthodoxy, an ancient faith marked by
lavish Byzantine liturgy, chant and pageantry, the profusion of stylized
holy paintings known as icons, an emphasis on right belief and right
practice and a belief that authority is shared by bishops rather than
held by a pope.
The last time Orthodox leaders all got together — in 787 — a
Byzantine monarch was on hand to welcome them to the remains of the
Roman Empire. The Roman pope sent approving representatives, as the
definitive split between Catholics and Orthodox was still three
centuries in the future.
High on that year’s agenda was a raging debate that gave us the word
“iconoclasm.” (The council concluded icons should be venerated — not to
be worshiped or destroyed as idols.)
This week’s gathering, decades in the planning, should still bring
together a broad array of Orthodox hierarchs. But a much-touted
“Pan-Orthodox council” may not pan out.
Churches based in Bulgaria and Syria say they won’t attend due to
disputes over the council agenda and documents. Others question the
value of a council without representatives from all the self-governing
churches.
Despite such rumblings, the Johnstown-based Bishop Gregory of
Nyssa says the council will go forward, and he plans to travel to Crete
as part of the delegation of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.
He said all the churches agreed in advance to the council drafts.
“Now for some of them to get cold feet or have buyer's
remorse is not serious,” said Bishop Gregory, head of the American
Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese. “If there is a serious issue, of
course we can discuss it.”
He expects all churches will send some representation.
“If for 1,200 years we have not met as Orthodox at this
level, and the global Orthodox Church is getting ready to meet and
you’re not there, how do you explain that in the future?” he said. “That
you had an issue about this or that?”
Father Bordeianu said the absence of some churches should not
prevent others from working on agreements “move Orthodoxy forward,
unrestricted by compromises with the so-called traditionalists who have
undermined the conciliar process all along.”
The council is scheduled to take up six draft documents on topics
ranging from rules about marriage and fasting to relations with
non-Orthodox Christians and the modern world.
The council is also to take up the issue of bishops’ overlapping
lines of authority in “diaspora” lands such as the United States. The
council’s draft document says such situations need fixing but will take
time.
Western Pennsylvania Archbishop Melchisedek of the Orthodox Church in
America said his main hope for the upcoming council is that bishops
have good face-to-face dialogue.
“If they resolve a few issues, that’s icing on the cake,” he said.
“The main thing is they are going to get together and can actually talk
things through concretely, to plan the next meeting, where hopefully
they do more.”
For many lay people, news of a historic council is “not high on our
radar,” said Dawn Boyle, a parishioner at Holy Assumption. They’re more
focused on concrete things like the food bank.
“You’re supposed to help your neighbors,” said Ms. Boyle. “This is a front-line way of doing it.”
Orthodoxy is the predominant Christian church in many parts of
Eastern Europe, the Caucuses and Middle East. But they face a range of
problems, from ferocious persecution in the Middle East by the likes of
Islamic State to the armed conflicts involving Russia and Ukraine, two
heavily Orthodox lands.
In contrast, U.S. Orthodox churches enjoy religious freedom and have
attracted converts as well as more recent immigrants. But they’ve also
had to adapt to life as a minority in the American melting pot now that
they’re generations distanced from their immigration origins.
The Orthodox comprise about 1 percent of the Pittsburgh-area
population (and a fraction of a percent in Pennsylvania overall as well
as in Ohio, West Virginia and the nation), according to the Pew Research
Center.
Yet Orthodox have had an outsized impact on this region’s religious landscape.
They’ve raised scores of churches with the signature onion domes of
Eastern Christianity above city neighborhoods, steel towns and coal
patches. That includes five cathedrals between Pittsburgh and Johnstown.
Mon Valley Orthodoxy even had a star turn in the 1978 Oscar-winning
movie, “The Deer Hunter,” set in Clairton. More recently, star Steeler
safety Troy Polamalu raised the visibility of his adopted faith,
crossing himself after big plays in right-to-left Orthodox fashion.
Parishes in post-industrial cities are aging and struggling, but some
have grown in the suburbs — including Holy Trinity, which transplanted
from the North Side to the North Hills in 2013.
Among the region’s Orthodox landmarks is the Monastery of the
Transfiguration on a former farm in Ellwood City, where the resident
nuns celebrated Jesus’ Ascension into heaven at a liturgy last Thursday.
They were joined by visitors from as far away as Michigan and Oklahoma,
who brought their young children with them on retreat.
After the service, the sisters provided the children with clerical
costumes and banners so they could practice processing through the
monastery grounds on a pristine spring day, chanting the Pascha
Troparion.
The monastery is “a great place to reorient yourself spiritually,”
said Kory Warr of Oklahoma City, who has been visiting for two decades
since he converted to Orthodoxy and now visits with his wife and
children. When their younger son, now nearly 2, was born prematurely,
the couple’s first call for prayer was to the nuns.
Wearing long black habits, the nuns accompany the liturgies with
Byzantine chants in a small chapel covered with large icons of the lives
of Jesus and Mary.
The nuns consider it their role to provide a spiritual haven and to teach, particularly young people.
“We are not here for ourselves,” said Mother Magdalena. “We are here
to give” and to model the fact that one “can live a life of purity and
have joy.”
Others share their concerns.
“Our society is not very welcoming to the religious person,” said
Bishop Gregory, the Carpatho-Russian leader. “We’re losing our kids, not
just the Orthodox kids but all kids. The millennials don’t see the
relevance or importance of church.”
He hopes the council answers that indifference by offering a compelling “Orthodox encounter with the contemporary world.”
Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Savas of Pittsburgh said such an
encounter should come through dialogue with people at whatever their
starting point, citing as a model the biblical story of Jesus speaking
to a Samaritan woman despite differences over gender, ethnicity,
religion and morality.
“He doesn’t require a confession of Orthodoxy” to discuss theology
with her, he said. ”It seems we’re being told how to do it. You
communicate the truth in loving conversation.”
Peter Smith: petersmith@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416; Twitter @PG_PeterSmith.