Fr Anastasios wrote:
An autocephalous Church is one which can provide a succession to its episcopacy (who will succeed Fr. Akakije if, God forbid, he were to repose now?) and can support its priests materially, and which can supply priests to serve its Diaspora communities. Your Church cannot do this, so it has no claim to being autocephalous. The problem here is that your whole argument is based on "canonical right" but not on practical reality: you cannot support yourselves, so your "autocephalous" Church is actually an illusion.
This are material and purely financial things... Support the priest materially is the task of the faithfuls and of the priests. As far as I remember, Saint Paul lived on producing tents and I think many priest have a secular job in many places.
Serving diaspora communities : diaspora is a Jewish concept, not an orthodox one. Any orthodox depends on the canonical bishop of the places. Moreover even in world orthodoxy, when there is more money, not all churches are able to satisfy the needs of emigrants.
My personal opinion on the thing is that saying that the Serbian church disappeared in 1945 is wrong. First because the GOC was in communion with the Free serbs that is a church of Serbia although in exile. Secondly, even if there is a single person like Saint Maximus said, it is still the church. In this question I see no difference between bishopless old calendarist in Greece and ROCOR. So I would have favoured that GOC without claiming an authority on Serbia give them a bishop. By the way, the cyprianist made a bishop for the tiny Bulgarian old calendarist community too. The question is when and who.
When :for me 200 faithfuls is a bit small for a bishop. It is less than in Congo for example! Maybe a chorbishop to begin with. But at the same time, if a bishop is a booster for missionary activity, why not.
Who : is the father Akakije the best? This is the great question. The coming years will tell us who he is. The bishop may not be of the nationality too. It could have been a resident Greek bishop too. In any case, visiting the parishes only 3 times in more than 10 years when Greece is so near from Serbia is surprising to me. As far as I remember, a bishop is an overseer...
One of the biggest problem for is that the consecration comes from RTOC whose canonicity is far from clear compared to ROAC.RTOC had this flip-flop attitude : Lazar of Odessa and Tambov left with Valentin of Suzdal to create ROCOR on a good canonical fact saying that ROCOR was not competent on Russian territory. Than he left (then called FROC) to come back to ROCOR. After that, he left ROCIE with the same first argument that ROCIE was not competent in Russia... So they may be a parasynagog from ROCIE or ROAC. That's the reason, Ive never supported union between GOC and RTOC.
I'm been reading these threads for many days and I think there is too much energy and time spent on these discussions (I hope the energy and time spent on this did not make you forget the pareclesis during this Dormition fast and your reader's services), all the more since now the persons are telling and retelling the same arguments! That's ok, we've understood the position of everybody. Now let's wait and see the fruits. No need to become infuriated on this. Good forefeast of Dormition to all.