The ROCOR seems always happy to remind the faithful that we are in communion with the JP. I deduce, therefore, that the ROCOR is somewhat more attracted to the JP. Why not then submit to the JP for Patriarchal leadership?
What about the Serbian Church?
Can we PLEASE have a Patriarch now and be a regular Church!?
Sincerely:
Joseph
I think if ROCOR were willing to make a couple of concessions, the MP would capitulate. The problems we face as a jurisdiction (yes, I still profess to be in ROCOR, albeit grudgingly at times) are not new. We find examples of separation, reconcilliation, and even adoption in the Septuagint and the New Testament as well as in Greek, Roman and Byzantine (and therefore Russian) history. I think the MP would be willing to consider very seriously putting into practice the suggestions (or demands[?], rather) of ROCOR were she confident that to do so would not obscure her own multiplex primacy.
Also, I see no reason why to join the MP would mean the end of ROCOR's own particular identity and heritage. Under this same logic then, to submit to the JP as an ecclesiastical jursidiction separate from the JP mission would seem rational, and would therefore fall in line with Bishop Gabriel's criteria, though admittedly the JP is guilty of a sort of hollow ecumenism in the WCC and, in the Holy Land, she shares an altar with RC and Monophysite priests (but this is not apparently a problem to Bp. Gabriel?).
The perfect ecclesiology may not be perfect in logic, which is fine. But, when we use foul logic not for the mystical reconciliation of opposites but to provide a measure for the judgement others, and expecially Church hierarchs, we place ourselves under that same judgement; for rational measure, be it spiritual or legal, has no bias when articulated properly. By this standard then it may be shown that our faith, being prelatistic in nature, always posits us under the discresion of a protopope whose office must needs be legitimate. Saints alone discharge their duties without any equitable charge of error, but undue expectation of live sainthood in leaders leads to the proliferation of protopopes and therefore of competing sects, which is useless even to our salvation. May the Lord show us the way.
Sincerely:
Joseph
Also, I see no reason why to join the MP would mean the end of ROCOR's own particular identity and heritage.
Because the whole things ROCOR has been wanting for over 80 years has been one Russian Church. Not a Russian Church with MP parts and some catacomb flavor here and Americanized ROCOR diocese there. It would be one Russian Church: one hierarchy, one (sub-culture), moving in one movement to wherever the wind or the Holy Spirit leads it. I do not think an OCAesque throwing together of various groups with differing "identities" is what they have in mind. And the heritage would be a shared one: the MP would have to admit that Met. Philaret, etc. were really Russian Orthodox hierarchs. In other words, all that was good in ROCA would become part of the one Russian Church, and in a very real way two would become one, but while two becoming one between local Churches can allow for cultural differences, in this case I think the aim is a single Russian Church, not a Church of various identities and (sub-)cultures. I could very well be wrong, but this is what I've gotten since even before I became ROCOR. It was one of the things I mentioned to every ROCOR priest I talked to before I became ROCOR, for I felt rather like an outsider joining a Church whose aims I didn't particularly mean to follow. Thus I have always thought of myself as a sojourner within the ROCOR, for my own wants for a Church (an American Church) are not the same as those of Russia, and I didn't want to be seen as imposing my own views on the Church.
If I'm wrong, I'll certainly have egg on my face!
Dear Esteemed Moderator Justin Kissel:
I do not see that our two views are irreconcilable, in fact I see each as complementary to the other. The heart of mysticism (and of poetry and song too) is tied up in a theory called "reconciliation of opposites." The ROCOR, even as a wholly Russian Church in every sense of the word, cannot deny her American prize, a small army of devoted converts to Christian Orthodoxy who may care a whit more for their own nation and culture than a foreign one. If this "sprititual property" interest does not argue my point strongly enough, then simply consider the real estate investment made by the ROCOR! The Church Abroad of America, if you will, has quite a reckoning of domestic (and interbred and otherwise naturalized) flock and fold alongside the purely Russian one. If the ROCOR counts us proselytes all as nothing more than simply non-Russians or would-be Russians, then she in fact counts us as simply chaff among the wheat, or maybe just Rye among the Wheat then ; (which may be a source of small anxiety to a number of convert clergy too, just to add another bit of narrowly inflamatory conjecture).
Or it may be that the ROCOR does care for our souls, even if we are of a non-Russian, that is, a Gentile miscellaneous variety in the main -- please only take that as soft sarcasm, I don't really mean it in hostile way. I am just trying to demonstrate that if the ROCOR were to take a militantly, eccentrically Russian position in all things, high and low, it would in the end amount to a species of idolatry, which I do not believe the Church is capable of.
At the close of it all, the prospectively -- we pray -- reformed MP may have the final say in the matter of the American and miscellaneous non-Russian flock, and perhaps the ROCOR is content to disolve the conscience of her obligation thus. If such were the de facto or else esoteric view of the ROCOR hierarchs and other [presumably Russian?] clergy, then we non-Russians might detect here and there in the discourse a subtle (or perhaps not so subtle) laissez-passer attitude regarding our attendance to another parish or jurisdiction. Does anyone feel this sort of alienation? I suspect that some non-Russian clergy may occasionally sense a cold disinterest for their ministry on the part of some Russian laity. Is it so hard to imagine that a clique of Russian hierarchy may feel the same way toward non-Russian laity? Not really. But would they conspire to pervert the Gospel for spite of us? Oh I very seriously doubt it.
If a legacy of Sergianism and Ecumenism are the only hinderances to the MP's recognizing Met. Philaret as a genuine hierarch of the Russian Church, it does not seem to me that there is an hinderance too formidable. The as yet unbaptized Emperor St. Constantine presided over the First Ecumenical Council even while still cultivating an elaborate worship of the sun-god. I am not marking this fact as precedent, but I think it is suggestive. Now is not the Church's golden age, let us do what we can to not make it worse with insane episcopal cults and the proliferation petty, schismatic protopopes. What we want to see is the increasing legal protection of Orthodox faith and jurisdiction from insidious malefactors, including renegade bishops and their curiae. Sound familiar?
Sincerely:
Joseph
