THE CANONICAL PROBLEM
by Father Alexander Schmemann
| 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 |
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 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).
(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 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.
(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
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.
(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 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 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 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?
(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 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.
(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, 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.
(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 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 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 section�
especially 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 the
Catacomb Church of Russia, especially 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). For a complete List of canonical Orthodox
Churches in the world and more information on SCOBA, see:
http://www.svots.edu/directory/.
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." For more on this see
the "Resistance page."
-------------------------------------------------
This article was originally published in 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.
