www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West United Eastern Church in America?

Only too true (though I think that Msgr Ireland was clever enough to refrain from open (as distinct from covert) opposition to Pascendi. He was a leader of the "Americanists" and may have been among the reasons for the condemnation of the Americanist heresy (that "Americanism" is a heresy has often been used by anti-Catholics who usually neither know nor care what the word means in that context).

Fr. Serge

I suppose another question for Melkites, Ukrainian Greek Catholics and others (Maronites, etc.) with multi-continental hierarchies is why backpedal to a more local and limited structure instead of the continued support of the larger efforts of our respective particular Patriarchal Churches in worldwide evangelism?

I suppose another question for Melkites, Ukrainian Greek Catholics and others (Maronites, etc.) with multi-continental hierarchies is why backpedal to a more local and limited structure instead of the continued support of the larger efforts of our respective particular Patriarchal Churches in worldwide evangelism?

At some point, both the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches will have to tackle the shambles of their present ecclesiastical jurisdictions. It seems logical to me that the Church should be organized territorially, according to the principle of accommodation used in the patristic era; i.e., that ecclesiastical governance mirrors secular governance. Thus, at the very least, there should be distinct patriarchates for North and South America, East Asia and Oceania, India, Africa, Western and Eastern Europe, and that to the greatest extent possible, these should be assigned in accordance with the ancient patriarchal prerogatives; i.e., Western Europe would be assigned to the Church of Rome, Africa to the Church of Alexandria, the Middle East to the Church of Antioch (with the exception of Jerusalem), Anatolia and the Balkans to Constantinople, Eastern Europe north of the Carpathians to Moscow and/or Kyiv; and Asia to the Church of the East (which, after all, came within a hair of converting China).

That means only a couple of new patriarchates would have to be erected for North and South America, and this would, given the pluralism of these lands, be multi-ritual--a situation not uncommon in the patristic era before rites became freighted with political implications.

If that's the ideal end state, then one of the preliminary steps must be the establishment of independent Eastern and Western patriarchates in these places, meaning a single, integrated Orthodox Church in North America. Since the Greek Catholics will eventually merge back into the Orthodox Churches whence they came, we will have to wait upon the Orthodox to resolve their jurisdictional issues, and follow their lead. Thus, talk of a single united Greek Catholic jurisdiction in the U.S. is seriously premature. But I fail to see why the Ruthenian and Ukranian jurisdictions should remain separate, and it might be worthwhile to wrap up the Romanian and Russian Greek Catholics with them as well.

"But I fail to see why the Ruthenian and Ukrainian jurisdictions should remain separate, and it might be worthwhile to wrap up the Romanian and Russian Greek Catholics with them as well."

StuartK- That seems to me to be a very logical step here in the United States. There are only a couple of Russian Greek Catholic parishes and I believe they are under the local Latin Bishop, so It would make since to have them under an Eastern Byzantine Bishop. I am not sure why the Ukrainian and Ruthenians are separated in the first place, so if anyone knows I would appreciate learning why. I think if we did unite these four jurisdictions in America into a singe Metropolitan See that would really help us, we would have a pretty large synod of Eastern Byzantine Bishops in America, and when the reunion of Catholic and Orthodox churches does happen, and I pray it will, it will be easy to have us blend into a united Church in America.

I still don't see any sense in restructuring ancient patriarchal Churches that have had the success of extension of their particular Churches beyond the ancestral political or geographic boundaries of origin. Let them continue to grow, fluorish and evangelize on their own rallied around their patriarchs and Synods rather than reducing them to a lower level of "particularity". I doubt greatly there is any significant desire amongst either the Melkites or UGCC to establish any Patriarchates outside of the existing ones.

The really short answer is they don't like each other.

Uh, oh. And our parish council president is Ukrainian!

Before the pathetic new RDL, I would have said the idea of a "United Eastern Church in America" made sense. Not now! If such a thing were to come to pass what form of the DL would be used? I see a BIG PROBLEM here...