www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News OCA Searching for New Bishop of New York & New Jersey

OK, this is interesting--I went to the OCA online parish directory, and find that this shows the new organization of the OCA, with a Diocese of New York and New Jersey, and a separate Diocese of Washington. But the Clergy Directory [oca.org] still shows a combined Diocese of Washington and New York. Go figure!

If we go by the parish listing, then Father Anthony is correct about the number of parishes in the Diocese of New York and New Jersey, but it in no way correlates with the clergy listings, which must be lagging behind. Checking on the individual priests listed, all of them are in the territory of the new Diocese of Washington, none are in New York or New Jersey, so counting heads won't work.

The numbers for the Diocese of Washington aren't very encouraging--of the 23 priests and deacons, only four are unmarried.

In view of this, the number of candidates in the diocese would be somewhere around nine or ten, including deacons. Still not good, but better.

Agreed! I believe the new website for the recently restored/created OCA Diocese of New York and New Jersey is a work in progress. So its reliability for data can be called into question on this issue for the time being.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

The new arrangement calls into question the viability of the Diocese of Washington. With only eleven parishes and missions, it would seem its only purpose is to provide seat for the Metropolitan, putting him in a position analogous to that of the Ecumenical Patriarch. How well will his authority stand up against that of the other bishops, whose dioceses are much larger and wealthier than that of Washington, DC?

Probably a very good question and one that should be entertained as part of another thread devoted to that subject in the appropriate forum section, as to keep this thread on-topic regarding the OP.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+
Administrator

Is a shortage of celibate or widowed priests available for bishops a recent issue in Orthodox Diocese and is it one that comes up world wide or just in America?

OCANews.org [ocanews.org] has more on the selection process here [ocanews.org]: Personally I can't help feeling that it is a good thing that the candidates are being scrutinized, questions are being asked and debate is taking place. While I don't doubt that a good Nuncio can make excellent recommendations to Rome, the process in the OCA [oca.org] is already much more open and transparent than anything we have in the Roman Catholic Church.

Currently the OCA has at least three vacant dioceses: New York & New Jersey [nynjoca.org], The South [dosoca.org], and Alaska [dioceseofalaska.org]. It will be interesting to see how they will go about selecting Bishops in the weeks and months to come. Hopefully the OCA will begin to find ways to choose Bishops that correctly balance the rights and duties of hierarchs, clergy and laity in the selection process.

The winning candidate (+Melchizedek) was a monk who had been on Mt. Athos, amongst other places, so it was really no surprise that he won by a big margin. I don't see how this in any way reflects on Fr. David Mahaffey's ability to be a good bishop. We all would like to have pious monks fill every slot, but Fr. David is a caring, intelligent, and principled Orthodox priest and I suspect he would be a fine bishop.

I find it interesting after reading the biographies of the 3 candidates that one is a former Roman Catholic priest and the other 2 are widowers, one with children.

And that only one is cradle Orthodox.

I think that if I were one of the delegates, I would find it difficult to decide based only on these three autobiographies.

This will become common, not just here, but throughout the Orthodox world. As Bishop Kallistos (ooo-a convert!) said, the day is coming when no one will be an Orthodox Christian who does not consciously choose to be one.

No doubt that priest David is a good man. No one is stating otherwise. The problem lies much deeper, and really is at the core of all that is wrong with the American Metropolia. Why isn't there a pious monk to "fill every spot"? Bishops are drawn from the monastic clergy. Period. End of discussion. But what does one do when one has no monastic clergy? One is forced to look into oneself and see what is lacking. And in the case of the Metroplia, what is lacking is spiritual maturity. Not on an individual basis, but on a organizational one.
Let us look at the past leadership of the Metroplia.
The generation of the episcopate that was born in North America simply wanted, like the children of virtually all immigrants, to conform to the host-country, not wishing to stand out. (That is understandable, the USA especially is a very conformist country, no doubt because of its extremely narrow, Protestant culture).

It could be that many converts of the 60s and 70s never integrated the Russian Orthodox Tradition (they were not encouraged to do so) and preferred to think in their Protestant, conformist cultural conditioning. Therefore, they never abandoned the Tradition – they simply never had any Tradition to abandon. (An American Orthodox Tradition simply does not exist and it will not exist until there are American saints to give birth to it. The nearest we have so far is the ever-memorable Hieromonk Seraphim Rose, and he was not a member of the Metroplia and, as far as we know, God has not yet revealed him to be a saint to the Church).

The Metroplia's history has been one of stubbornness and self delusion. Twice the Metroplia came back to the canonical synod of bishops established after the Godless ones took over Rus, and twice they left to pursue their own agenda. Their very so called autocephaly was the result of backroom dealings with the communists and the betrayal of the Orthodox Church of Japan, and as a result, their autocephaly has not been recognized outside of the soviet sphere of influence. Now that the Godless ones are gone, they find themselves unsure as to where they stand. Moscow stands on the brink of revoking said autocephaly and at the same time, the current financial meltdown have taken the Metropolia to the brink of the abyss.

At the very core lies the kernel that all flows from. The Metroplia got it backwards. Instead of trying to convert America to an Orthodox mindset, it has repeatedly tried to Americanize Orthodoxy. And therein lies it's error.

So how do we fix it. Well, to start, the Metropolia needs to set aside the their coveted so called autocephaly. Rejoin the Russian Church. Work alongside ROCOR in setting up English speaking monasteries. Establish pockets of Orthodox mindset throughout North America. Return to the Orthodox Calendar and Traditions. Disassociate itself from the congregationalist mindset of many within it's ranks. Return to it's roots and recognize that the past 80 years were a failed experiment but a good learning experience. Grow in maturity under the eye of the Mother Church, and when the time is ripe for American Orthodoxy to be, it will. Mature, ascetic and God pleasing.

Alexandr

Dear Alexander,

What gives you the impression that the Moscow Patriarchate would welcome the "return" of the Metropolia?

Fr. Serge

I see that the calendar has the same talismanic fascination for Orthodox traditionalists that Latin does for Roman traditionalists. If the OCA has the kind of problems indicated, it will take more than moving Nativity to 7 January to fix them.


Alas! It does not matter who runs the Orthodox Church in America, because, well, it's a Church full of, um, Americans, not Russians. And just as Russia has a culture, so America has a culture as well. Samuel Huntington's observation about American Catholics ("Protestants who love Mary and the Mass") could hold just as true for American Orthodox (Protestants who love the Theotokos and the Divine Liturgy). Merely moving the OCA back under the omophorion of the Patriarchate will not alleviate problems that are cultural in nature. All it will do is drive many American Orthodox into another jurisdiction.

All of the OCA's bishops today are from the monastic clergy. Now, some non-monastic candidates are put up for a new diocese, and this suddenly represents a deep systemic problem in the entire OCA? Please.


If what you're saying is true, then the OCA today should look and feel a lot like a Protestant church, what with all the crypto-Protestants flowing in, the conformism, and the lack of Tradition. Whatever the problems of earlier decades- and they were considerable- they did not bereave the OCA of its tradition and I would say that the OCA is becoming increasingly grounded in Orthodox tradition. The talk of an American Protestant mindset has some truth to it, but it can only go so far before it just becomes mystification and caricature.


Evidence?


The abyss? Really? I mean, it was pretty bad, but... the abyss? What is the abyss anyway?

It's fun to make epic and ominous generalizations but it's not going to be very meaningful for folks who actually live through the events being described.



I'd be curious to hear some recent, specific examples of this backwards practice.

The OCA has its problems but revoking autocephaly won't fix any of them. It would simply increase the jurisdictional chaos in North America.


I'd like a closer cooperation with ROCOR too, but we already have English-speaking monasteries. We already have pockets of Orthodox mindset.


The calendar is a problem, but it's not a particularly American one.