The Western Rite, Saint John of SF, and ROCOR

[尼古拉前执事]

WESTERN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS

Who Are They?

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Both eastern and western Christians, on first hearing of Western Orthodoxy, often ask such questions as

[Serge]

Most interesting. Thanks.

Note: sad to say, the origins of the group that eventually became the Orthodox Church of France were in the Modernist heresy in the Catholic Church. Its founder was a priest and Modernist who left the CC because of that. The Orthodox Church in the Czech Republic has a similar dubious strain in its origin - a priest who broke away and formed a 'national church' after World War I. Like Louis-Charles Winnaert in France he eventually dropped anchor in an Eastern Orthodox jurisdiction and I hope both in his and in Winnaert's case had stopped being Modernist!

Anything in America that calls itself 'Old Catholic' is similarly suspicious (make that 'out and out fake' - only the Polish National Catholic Church in America is really Old Catholic) - I hope that group Met. Anthony of the Antiochians took in had cleaned up its act. All such groups are really ex-Catholics and ex-Anglicans playing games.

To give the Orthodox Church of France credit, I have some of their literature from the 1980s and it certainly does not sound vagante or Modernist but like standard, classic Eastern Orthodoxy. Most impressive. (They may still have been in the Romanian Church at the time.)

They were indeed Orthodox for a long time. Right now they're not - they seem adrift more because of church politics than anything else.

[romiosini]

http://www.antiochian.org.nz/spotlight/last.html

Wait... I thought Western rite isn't different vestement wise, but only practical wise...

[Priest Siluan]

Yes, he ordered, together with Romanian bishop of Paris Teofil (Ionescu) - who later in ROCOR was Bishop of Detroit, to Jean (Eugraph Kovalevsky) for the Orthodox Church of France of galican rite. Then bishop Jean was deposed by the synod of ROCOR in 1967. on that strange experiment, here there are pictures:

http://www.geocities.com/pro_ortodoxia/08/FRANCESA.htm

[Priest Siluan]

more about Jean of Saint-Denis and the stranger phenomenon...

http://www.orthodoxwiki.org/Orthodox_Church_of_France

http://www.orthodoxwiki.org/Jean-Nectai ... aint-Denis

[Jean-Serge]

Some precisions about this Western rite group. It is called ECOF (Eglise catholique orthodoxe de France, Catholic Orthodox Church of France). It claims it uses the Old liturgy of France called Liturgy of Saint Herman (Saint Germain) wich is certainly false because we lack complete old documents to restore this liturgy. In fact their liturgy borrows many things to Russian tradition and Catholic tradition before Vatican II...

It has un-Orthodox teachings and behaviours : giving the communion to a Mormon, receiving a Buddhist monk in the sanctuary. It has also at least a priest who is openly a free mason. The teaching would be quite esoterical. And on top of this, the Bishop secretely married. This was unveiled by some parishioners. But he kept his charge because legally he was the "owner" of the buildings...

[Priest Siluan]

Yes, they are not even orthodox, it is more they seem to be a sect lamentable product of some theosophic aftertastes filtered in the Orthodoxy in France and in which have fallen many Russian orthodox ones exile in France (some of them were the fathers of the Russian Exarchate in Paris and some were the fathers of this french church)