Dear Daniel,
I will try to bear with you as your requested, but your style seems a bit polemical.
HOCNA is not Orthodox for two reasons:
1) Its leaders were condemned by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russian when it left for refusing to submit to a sex scandal investigation.
2) It does not maintain communion with the other Orthodox Churches, and since there is only one Orthodox Church which is maintained through Eucharistic communion, which they are not a part of, they are not Orthodox.
Another way to determine whether a local Orthodox Church is Orthodox is by determining if its faith is consistent with that of the earlier fathers and generations before it. If some divergence exists, this is evidence against Orthodoxy (such as the Old Believers, who created novel doctrines about Anti-Christ).
Originally posted by daniel n:
[QB] Who says that HOCNA is not Orthodox? By what authority are these things determined?
By authority of consensus. HOCNA's founders were disciplined and cut off by other Orthodox, and the rest of the Orthodox world accepted this.
I realize they are not mainstream, but my point is there is no authority to determine these things; every determination seems arbitrary.
How so? The authority is the Church's consensus. Communion. Maintaining the right faith. Obedience to leaders if they are not heretics. These are all guiding principles.
Is it communion with the Patriarch of Coonstantinople? Where is that in Holy Scripture?
No. It is communion with the Orthodox Church, which consists of the Churches that have maintained the Orthodox faith in a vertical communion with Christ throughout time, and in a horizontal sense with their fellow Orthodox believers. Your second question, where is that in scripture, sounds Protestant! Constiantinople has primacy because 1) Canon 28 of Chalcedon (not accepted by Rome) gave it equality with Rome, and 2) after Rome and Orthodoxy split, by Orthodox reckoning that left Constantinople in the number 1 position. But that could change. Authority structures in Orthodoxy are functional; the patriarchal system could be abolished and Orthodoxy would continue on.
And what about juristictions which are not in communion with him but are in communion with other churches that are?
Clearly an abheration, and something that needs to be addressed. Comparable to the situation existing during the Western Great Schism. A novel situation without precedence, which needs time to be thought out. The simplest answer is for the two sides to heal the schism.
There is in fact no universal way of determining who is or is not "Orthodox"; and there is no visible unity, that is why they are not One.
Things aren't neat and tidy like in Catholicism, and that's better because that is how reality is. There is visible unity: it is manifest in Euacharistic concelebration. The Eucharist makes the Church. Those who concelebrate it are one. Those who do not are outside of it.
Of course, the Orthodox will argue for an invisible unity, like the Protestants do, but as this unity, according to Christ, to be a witness to the world what good would it do to be invisible?
Nope, Orthodox would not argue for invisible unity. Because they already have visible unity around the common altar to the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the maintaining of the right (Orthodox) faith.
As Flannery O'Connor said of the idea that the Eucharist is symbolic, "then to hell with it."
What does that mean? Orthodox believe the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ.
I stated that the Orthodox Church is not Catholic because it is defined by national and ethnic boundaries. The existence of numerous Eastern Catholic jurisdictions is precisely an argument for the Church's Catholicity.
A huge double standard. If the Orthodox have multiple jurisdictions, they are divided. If Catholics do, it's because they are more multi-cultural. Rubbish. Orthodox are not divided on ethnic lines, except for an administrative problem in America, the same problem which almost befell the Roman Catholics in America. By the way there is a vicariate for Lithuanian Roman Catholics--does that mean division? No. The Eastern Catholic Churches are divided by ethnic boundaries and divisions in precisely the same way that the Orthodox are.
Nor is the existence of SSPX or the Polish National Church problematic. Unity in the Catholic Church is detemined by communion with the Pope of Rome and it is clear to the simplest of believers.
But members of the Polish National Catholic Church are allowed to commune in Catholic Churches so how are they in schism? And in Orthodoxy, there is a list called the diptychs that lists the heads of the Orthodox Church in union with one another. If your Church is on the list, you are Orthodox! Very simple!
anastasios
