www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Deep fissures develop in the Eastern Orthodox world

So the patriarchates are behaving not unlike they would have in the early Church...big deal.

In re. to the Ruthenian/Ukrainian question in the U.S., we forget that the Ruthenian hierarchy and upper clergy were overwhelmingly Hungarian in language and self-identification (one frequently embraced Hungarian culture once one achieved middle class status in the Carpatho Rus' region of Hapsburg Hungary). Unfortunately, sheer careerism influnces the behaviours of many upper clergy and at that time mixing with Galicians would have threatened the small piece of pie held by the Ruthenians. This division and enforced celibacy, i.m.o., really blew it for E. Slavic Greek Catholics.
(For full disclosure, I am half, in an obshcherusskost', sense Russophile Ruthenian, who also likes Ukraine a lot, but would feel disingenuous to call myself Ukrainian.)

Magyarism among the upper clergy certainly was an issue within he Rusyn Greek Catholic community and remained so through the 20s and played as role in the ACROD schism. Yet today, it is all but forgotten - along with the Hapsburgs.

At the risk of stating the obvious, that was rude.

I think you're reading more into recluse's post than he/she intended. You had said:
but perhaps you meant "... Byzantine/Ruthenian and Ukrainian"?

Sorry, yes. I was working from an old memory of something written by Ruthenian hermitess. So the division in the States is between the Ukrainian Greek Catholics and other Ukrainians from one segment of the Ukraine?

Oh, I am aware that Magyarism is old news...but there were until quite recently two bishops with Magyarized surnames and for some reason as late as 1990 the Hungarian primate visited the Seminary in Pittsburgh as if there were still a strong connection with Hungary (and I have nothing against Hunarians).

The only really practical reason for dividing Ukrainians and Ruthenians is their respectve music (prostopinie), i.m.o. -- and that is pretty weak.

We can look at it another way: Rome hides real doctrinal differences among Catholics in the name of unity. You have traditionalist Roman Catholics (not the SSPX) and Greek Catholics in formal "communion" with the "nuns in a bus" and the utterly heretical Dutch Dominicans.

The issues in the article are all old, decades old. Looks like it was written by a reporter with little knowledge of the issues.

What is overlooked in this thread is that in reality unity has been preserved among Orthodox despite these issues and 'quarrels'. The situation is actually better now, despite occasional rumblings. OCA and Constantinople now concelebrate, unlike a couple of decades ago. Moscow and Constantinople largely cooperate, despite their obvious differences. Have you forgotten what Constantinople did to the UOC-KP last year when the latter's Patriarch went to Canada? Only last week the Patriarchs of Serbia, Moscow and Constantinople concelebrated in Montenegro, and presented a united front against the breakaway "Orthodox" there.

Someone said in this thread that Antioch has broken communion with Jerusalem. That has not happened yet. Should it happen, we can expect it to be resolved quickly, like the temporary severing of communion between Jerusalem and Romania from 2011 to 2013, or between Constantinople and Athens in 2004, or between Constantinople and Moscow in 1996.

Mark, Mark, Mark, spoken like such a 21st century Christian - not a 19th century one.

I am old enough to have known plenty of those 19th century Greek Catholic/Orthodox Greek Catholics of both the Galician (now known as Ukrainian) and Ruthenian (now known as Rusyn, Russian, Rusin, Carpatho-Russian and Byzantine Catholic)persuasions. Simply stated, those old timers really did not like each other.

There was far more to what divided them in terms of administration than just their closely related chant systems would indicate. That can still be seen today in the Greek Catholic Church of Ukraine where the historical status of the Eparchy of Muchachevo as a self governing entity not part of the omophorion of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is as potent a symbol of the American division as it was a century ago. It remains alive and vibrant in Transcarpathia. (Those rights to self rule are something which are not granted to their Orthodox counterparts by the UOC-MP by the way.)

Simply stated, the old folks from one side of the Tatras really didn't like the old folks from the other side of the Tatras - for a lot of reasons - none of them particularly powerful to our modern point of view - but enough so that one Bishop, a man that history now views as a good man - Bishop Soter - who consecrated the first church building of my then Greek Catholic church in 1907 (and Orthodox since 1938) could not be accepted by the clergy of 'each side'. The political meddlers from the Russian empire, the Austro-Hungarian empire and those standing on the sidelines of the impending world war also did their best to meddle in the immigrant media and fraternal lodges, vying for influence in America for their foreign civil masters - the Tsar and the Emperor.

In Binghamton, by 1915 the Galicians had left to found a church under the protection of the Russian Mission since the Greek Catholics would not permit another congregation in the neighborhood. (That is now OCA) By 1923 the now self-identified Ukrainians left to start a Ukrainian Orthodox Church and by 1938 celibacy, property control and the whole 'borba' thing split what was left of the original Greek Catholic parish blessed by Bishop Soter. So, out of one came five - six if you count the ROCOR parish which split off of the Metropolia/OCA parish when they changed the calendar in the 1970's and seven if you count the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church founded after the war with some from the UOC parish and others relocated after the war.

Should it be th is way in a perfect world?

I am not answering the obvious, as we live in a fallen world - not a perfect one.

Fair enough. The church my mother's family belonged to is still a mission in the Met. of Pittsburgh and was cosecrated by Soter as well. I guess for reasons DMD illustrated my family, though hazy about our ethnicity, considered the Ukrainians a different nationality. It is a shame that both Greek Catholic jurisdictions are dyiing on the vine and if it were not for the influx of Ukrainian immigrants it would be far worse for the Ukr. Gk. Catholic Church in the US. And I am one to talk, since I attend ROCOR services, though I am still Catholic.
It is not entirely clear among people in Transcarpathia today who they are, from what I have heard. True, one hears people calling themselves Rusyns as reportred in Ruthenian church publications, but some of my seminary instructors (I attended Pittsburgh 1989-1990) who visited their relatives in the old country encountered the Ukrainian self-identification to a man. Half of the region is Orthodox, and even they have an arrangment similar to the Greek Catholics, except they fall directly under Moscow, instead of Kyiv, I think.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks is that Carpatho Rusyns have a harder time just saying who ther are.

there's more fun and games up ahead:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/1000001_10151913608410279_1566155874_n.jpg

said 'defrocked' priest was given the title 'illuminator of Indonesia' by the first Oecumenical Patriarchate metropolitan of the area, and has gone over to ROCOR. the defrocking was done *after* the transfer, and not recognized either by ROCOR or the MP (and by Serbs too, clearly).

Met Konstantinos is possibly also pissed that the Russians, having set up shop here in 2007, are moving to the same street that he's on. Met Konstantinos' community is renting (at a nominal fee) a conference room in the local RC Archdiocesan Education Centre, and the MP chose to rent a whole house - just three minutes' walk away.

his brother, the Metropolitan of Hong Kong, tried to 'suspend' an MP priest who was ministering to a new MP parish in Taipei. suspension of clerics not under one's omophorion... sigh.

the Metropolitian of Singapore's open letter (what else can you call it) may be found here:

http://byztex.blogspot.sg/2013/10/another-chapter-in-asian-territorial.html

the Metropolitan of Hong Kong, back in August, excommunicated a Filipino ROCOR hieromonk and called him a 'pretend' monk and clergyman:

http://byztex.blogspot.sg/2013/08/hong-kong-metropolitanate-continues-to.html

most unedifying.

Constantinople has picked quarrels with several Churches in the last few decades. A Church which feels its prestige and influence declining and is making erratic decisions?

Is the EP ailing and acting aberrantly? There are some who think so - even some of its leading hierarchs. The EP's actions around the globe are to the detriment of Orthodoxy .

Interesting tidbit from a thread on OrthodoxChristianity.net

[begin quote] "... the opinions I espouse are quite common and quite popular within the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Just read anything on the matter written by the Oecumenical Patriarch, or by the chief canonist for the Holy Synod, Metropolitan Panteleimon Rodopoulos,

I see that Rodopoulos quotes Zonaras in his "Ecclesiological Review of the Thirty-Fourth Apostolic Canon" and the implication seems to be that at the present time the Ecumenical Patriarchate is ailing in some way and acting aberrantly:

"Just as bodies, if the head does not maintain its activity in good health, function faultily or are completely useless, so also the body of the Church, if its preeminent member, who occupies the position of head, is not maintained in his proper honor, functions in a disorderly and faulty manner."

Now if this is the case and the EP is indeed acting in a "disorderly and faulty manner" - whether in the Ukraine or Estonia or in its contacts with Rome - then we must be cautious in our own contacts with it and not allow the EP's aberrations to affect the entire body of the Church. [end quote]

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:3PIJAgyeG1YJ:www.orthodoxchristianity.net/fo\
rum/index.php%3Ftopic%3D13487.45+%22Panteleimon+Rodopoulos%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3\
0&gl=nz

not belonging to either jurisdiction and hence having no horse in the race, so to speak, i will be fair and point out that Moscow's actions are also dishonourable.

while still the MP's PR man, the then-Metropolitan Kirill assured ŒP Metropolitan Nikitas of Hong Kong that SE Asia was Œcumenical Patriarchate territory and that the MP had no intention of violating that canonical agreement. shortly afterwards, the MP set up a parish in Singapore.

certainly China and Japan are legitimately Moscow's turf as they were there first, but then Moscow's been setting up parishes in Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and soon The Philippines.

sure, 'for the salvation of souls' demands we do all that we can but when done in such an underhanded manner, great scandal is given and the faithful are disgusted with the whole state of affairs.

but then why should i bother speaking of honour, when we are the origin of the term 'Byzantine'...

Another chapter in Asian territorial disputes


This is another chapter in the continuing story (see previous here) of the Greek Church's claims on all of Asia. Met. Nektarios of Hong Kong is claiming Southeast Asia as his exclusive territory and now Met. Konstantinos of Singapore has done the same with South Asia. To that end Met. Nektarios has in recent months not only spoken harshly of parishes from other Patriarchates that have been operating in the area for quite a long time, but has begun excommunicating people involved in founding more of these non-Greek parishes.

The existence of parishes from Antioch, Russia, and even the OCA before these hierarchs were even enthronedcombined with a Chambésy process that sees things quite differently makes this latest story equal parts lamentable and confusing. Below is Met. Konstantinos' latest letter expressing outrage that Patriarch Irinej of Serbia chose to visit a parish in the "diaspora."

http://byztex.blogspot.sg/2013/10/another-chapter-in-asian-territorial.html
and see
http://byztex.blogspot.sg/2013/08/hong-kong-metropolitanate-continues-to.html