Metropolitan Jonah on Orthodox unity

Jesse,
That wouldn't happen to be St. Barnabas, would it? If so, I was received into the church there as well.

It was indeed St. Barnabas. Find me on Facebook!

John B,

With all due respect, how long do you expect your Diocese's Carpatho-Russian traditions to continue? Unless your Diocese is blessed with an inordinate baby boom and retention rates, do you really think you'll be able to support a hierarchy in two generations? And if you are under the EP anyway, what is wrong with just being GOA? This is the sort of ethnic hair-splitting that dissuades large numbers of Americans from Orthodoxy.

John B.,
I'm not sure that the concern is that the EP would act as some kind of domineering despot (how would he?). The issue is it's claim to primacy. I'm much too ignorant to throw into that debate but anxiously await the outcome.

Jesse,
Another poor soul corrupted by Torrey I see. :)

First, to Jesse et al,

I visited St Barnabas once back in about 1989 with no one less than Metropolitan JONAH, then simply Jim Paffhausen. He took me there for Vespers. It was a great experience - my introduction to the AEOM.

It so happened that I was listening to Vladyka Jonah's lecture on primacy when I received an e-mail informing me of the posting on ocanews.org of Archimandrite Elpidophoros' rather unfortunate (colourful metaphor replaced) speech at Holy Cross. I have now listened to this sermon. I have weighed everything in the context of having known His Beatitude for many years. I count him as an early mentor when I came into the Church (in the OCA in San Diego - for you Californians). I think it is signficant that what Vladyka Jonah says is nothing new for him. It is not the speech of a pompous hierarch quarrelling with another hierarch. No, what I am hearing is the vision grounded in realism that I have always found in him.

His Beatitude makes a few clear points, but I'll single out two for the moment: first of all, headship by a foreign patriarchate does not work - it is not a functional management system, and there are numerous reasons for that, and examples of evidence (e.g. the current Antiochian crisis). On the flip side, there is a need for headship - and the bishop at one level or another is the locus of unity. Where the Ecumenical Patriarch could, and should, serve as the primus, is in a permanent synod of primates of the local churches.

Canon 28 of the 4th Ecumenical Council is another issue that invariably comes into play here. The interpretation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate is rather idiosyncratic (and post Ottoman, as I understand). The text of the canon gives the EP jurisdiction over particular territories and the barbarians among them, not even barbarians in general. While application of canonical principles from one situation to another situation may be reasonable, it is only reasonable where there is a true analogy between the situations. I don't see such an analogy, so I don't see Canon 28 as applicable and I must return to the two points the Metropolitan made that I singled out above.

Foreign government does not work. It did not work in the American colonies, Canada, New Zealand, Australia or South America. It was totally unfeasible for the Orthodox Church of Russia. Forget imperial or ecclesiastical prerogatives, foreign government, however benign, doesn't work. The polity of local autocephalous churches is a functionally necessary one.

At the same time, as Archimandrite Elpidophoros duly points out, but wrongly asserts that Metropolitan Jonah rejects, primacy in the Church is found in the person of the bishop. I honestly have the impression that Father Elpidophoros failed to really read (or fully digest) Metropolitan Jonah's entire lecture. I'd not wish to accuse him of deliberately misrepresenting it. Metropolitan Jonah himself pointed to the need for overarching primacy and pointed to the need for a functional primacy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate - a functional primacy. He suggests, as I understood him, that a permanent synod, composed of the primates of the various local churches, be headed by the EP to actualize our unity with each other at that higher level.

Far from disrespecting the Ecumenical Patriarchate, my take on his primacy lecture is that His Beatitude would like to see the EP exercise a legitimate FUNCTIONAL primacy. I have heard him say a couple of times, including in this last sermon, that we should respect the mother churches and we need to support them. There is, however, a necessary line between showing love, support, and due respect, one the one hand, and submitting to claims based on ancient canons whose applicability to the current context is at least highly debatable, when the results will invariably be dysfunctional. To submit under those circumstances is to submit to imperialism, not humble submission to headship in Christ. There is a critical difference. I have no doubt that His Beatitude would fully support the latter while rejecting the former.

I believe that my confidence will be supported by the documentary evidence of his addresses and sermons, but I base it also on the continuity I hear between what he has said in recent times and what he said twenty years ago as a layman; that vision, grounded in realism.

Orthodox unity is the key to saving the church and christianity.

Met. Jonah has expressed in an uninhibited way his mind, not concealing his feelings. This is important for
people like myself, a "non American" cooped up here in Kuala Lumpur, so that I can sense the heart and also
limitations and prejudices of a person, thru no fault of his own due to the cultural confines of any particular
political or social order that one lives in.
He expresses typical "American" freedom ideals. There are two points that I wish to bring up.
(1)"This is an American Orthodox Church. Leave it alone."
We recall how Paul told Philemon that he "owed" his very soul to Paul. We also encounter the understanding of
the life of grace in Christ and the departure from the Jewish means to salvation in the New Testament writings;
but there was continuity of authority, even to the point of taking the instructions of the Jewish leaders
because they sit on Moses' seat. By analogy, there is the reverential paradousis that the Old World gave, and
the Apostolic succession and this cannot be taken away. And also the faith that we have is a continuation of the

faith and aspirations of our spiritual ancestors, as St Paul avers in several passages , apart from Philemon. So there cannot be any divorce from the past.

(2) On the other hand, the Jewish leaders devoured the homes of widows and ransacked properties; surely this
is true of the Old World and their understanding that the New Worlds (S Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the
Americas, N central and East Asia, and the minds of the confined peoples of Afro Asia etc...) were populated
by the Holy Roman Empire expansion and conquest, and the religious outfit there in the Old World feel
therefore the right to the spoils of colonization and the usurpation of property and substance of these New
lands (that were procured through conquest and murder).
The specialist books on politics and economics show clearly (see John Perkins- Economic Hitman and the other
book that he edited which is full of figures and facts that his own books lack) that American wealth and "freedom" as a time resource is based on

Empire and abuse of a subtle kind such as the bribing and setting up of corrupt governments, and destroying their educational and research infrastructure by putting Baboons in critical areas.. ..and the list of sabotage is long ...); and those living in the USA share in this corporate sin; the Islamic faith for instance is often
supported by various US agencies or their policies, and people fleeing it and other forms of oppression are not Saints when they turn up in the USA; and if they were, they would be ardent reformers of the lands that they came from in wishing to use the USA as a base to create a better world for others which they understand because they were there in all the misery that people in on a high chair could never experience; I do not see such types of people in the USA generally; opportunists mainly , yes, idealists, No, hardly
ever; and the few idealists did actually leave, like Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn.

I can see one beneficial role that the OCA could play if it wishes to be idealistic; and that is to be a
conscience to the world in creating again historical relations that were sabotaged in the whole of Afro-Asia for

instance due to US imperialism; like how Paul fulfilled in his body that which was LACKING in the sufferings of Christ. The OCA could also play the role of the begetter of new nations (ethnoses) on the planet, which is the
e role theoretically of the Church; this would go against the grain of the United Nations, and all the contained

pseudo-aggregates that we find on this horrendous planet due to the plans of murderers and opportunists,

whether Christian or otherwise.
My best wishes to Met. Jonah and many thanks for his emotional outburst.

Chrysostom (in Kuala Lumpur, outside AMERICA according to the United Nations)