Source: Byzantine, TX One wonders if a schism in Ukraine means a complete destruction of the careful harmony of the Church in America. If the EP and Russia break communion, does that mean OCA priests and GOA priests will no longer concelebrate? Will the many non-EP clergy serving for diminished pay in GOA parishes be forced to stop and leave smaller Greek parishes priest-less? Will The Antiochian Archdiocese cut the GOA out as well? The Serbs? What happens to pan-Orthodox events? Do we walk separately at the March for Life? A thousand questions present themselves. What will Orthodoxy look like…
Browsing: Governance & Unity Commentary
Child of Governance
Source: OINOS Educational Consulting By Frank Marangos, D.Min., Ed.D., FCEP “By doing good with his money, a man, as it were, stamps the image of God upon it, and makes it pass, current for the merchandise of heaven.” ~ John Rutledge The rare British Guiana 1c magenta is considered the most valuable stamp in the world. Cut in the shape of an octagon, the stamp is the only one of its kind known to exist. Issued in limited numbers in 1856, the rare impress was discovered in 1873 by a 12-year-old Scottish schoolboy among his uncle’s letters. Since its initial rescue, the…
1. Clergy Retirement Account The following options are possible strategies for repaying the funds that were not placed in the Clergy Retirement Fund. The Archdiocese will have to manage its operations with less. The alternative – retiring clergy families will have to manage with less. Option 1: Each year all parishes should split their Archdiocesan assessment by ½. Each year ½ should be sent to Archdiocese Each year ½ should be sent to a professionally-managed pooled investment account Interest on the pooled account will be placed in the Clergy Retirement Account until account is up-to-date. The principle of the Pooled…
The new demand for Archbishop Demetrios’s resignation shows the Patriarch’s institutional impasse: he lacks the canonical legitimacy to force the resignation. Archbishop Demetrios must stay and lead the Church to a new phase. By Nick Stamatakis A new big “NO” was the response by Archbishop Demetrios to the renewed “urging” by Patriarch Bartholomew to resign “to save the Church’s prestige”. This time the Patriarch’s call was performed in the most official way, inside the Holy Synod’s regular meeting at Constantinople on August 29. The repeated call (the previous one was done on May 31st of this year) is rather…
Source: Orthodox Christian Laity It is time for the Orthodox Christian laity to speak up and to act. We come to the end of the ecclesiastical year and the beginning of a new one. This is a time for serious reflection concerning canonical leadership and responsibilities related to church governance. What do we expect from the Assembly of Bishops? We begin the new ecclesiastical year with the meeting of the Assembly of Bishops which will take place in Cleveland on October 1-4, 2018. As of late August, there is no information on the Assembly’s web site about the meeting. The…
Source: The National Herald By Ari Stone, Special to TNH “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone” (John 8:7). For Greece, the 19th century witnessed a successful war of independence following four centuries of oppressive Ottoman rule. The Ottomans left Greece in economic tatters, with industrialization inching along at a snail’s pace. Over 80% of Greece’s population resided in rural regions tending to an agrarian mostly self-subsistence economy. By the late 1800s, Greece called upon a generation of young Greek men to immigrate outside of Greece to find opportunity with the compact that funds…
Editor’s note: Required Reading for all Boards of Trustees of Orthodox Christian Educational Institutions…Helpful advice for Hellenic College/Holy Cross Seminary Board Members, Brookline, MA Source: The Wall Street Journal By Allen C. Guelzo For everyone from kindergartners to collegians, the aisles at the big-box stores are filling up with back-to-school pens, calculators, paper and notebooks. But there is one educational contingent that won’t find much help in the pens-and-paper department: incoming college trustees. Only about half of public institutions provide training for newly arrived board members. Here’s some unsolicited advice from someone who has spent a few decades with wing tips on…
Source: Estiator Magazine Conspiracies, Forgeries, and Lies! Metropolitan Apostolos of Derkon, Patriarch Bartholomew’s representative at the Clergy-Laity Congress in Boston, stated in his address to the Archons that the Church of America is “a creation of the Mother Church of Constantinople – ‘bone of its bones and flesh of its flesh!’ It is not merely one of its eparchies, but an offspring and piece of its soul.” This is a major lie. The truth is that our Church was self-made and operated Autonomously and independently between 1922-1930. However, the Patriarchate, and the Church of Greece, which had already declared its…
Source: The New Yorker By James Carroll Pope Francis will make a fate-laden journey to Ireland this weekend. On Sunday, when he addresses a throng of Catholics in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, he will recall the last papal visit to Ireland, that of John Paul II, in 1979. But another papal address of that year should also come to mind. In June of 1979, John Paul II spoke to more than a million Poles in a field outside of Krakow and set in motion events that changed history. But that was then. Nowhere is the difference between what the Polish Pope confronted and…
Source: The New York Times By making monasteries, of a sort, of our homes and hearts, we may develop the spiritual disciplines necessary to endure this seemingly endless trial. By Rod Dreher Mr. Dreher is the author of “The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation.” I have a Catholic friend who lives in an exceptionally bad diocese and who for years has been heaving rocks up mountains to keep his faith strong and his family in church. His resilience has amazed me. Yesterday, after a grand jury report revealed that bishops and other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church…
Source: OINOS Educational Consulting By Frank Marangos, D.Min., Ed.D., FCEP “It is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.” ~ I Corinthians 4:2 Looking through binoculars while on expedition to a hard-to-reach location in the Alps, a group of botanists discovered a rare flower growing out of the side of a deep ravine. To successfully reach the exotic blossom, however, someone would have to carefully descend into the gorge. Noticing a local youngster standing nearby, the botanists asked if he would allow himself to be lowered with a rope along the side of the dangerous canyon. Excited,…
OCL comment: Are there parallels here that apply to the Orthodox Church hierarchy? Should the laity exercise its oversight responsibilities in more meaningful ways to enable changes to take place? Isn’t that the responsibility and role of the laity in the life of the Church? Source: The Stream By JOHN ZMIRAK This is not a banner year for Catholic Church. We learned last month that Theodore McCarrick, former Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, D.C. was an aggressive homosexual. He preyed on seminarians, promoting those who succumbed to his advances, and punishing those who refused them. (His former bedmates he called “nephews,” and they called…