Posted by David Adrian
on 6/9/2009, 12:43 am, in reply to "Re: Pre-Conciliar Consultation "
Al:
You make my case. If you want a Greek parish complete with a Greek Typicon, of course you're choice is limited to GOA parish. I.e., as I told Tom, in the absence of any hard data, my guess is that most American Orthodox who fall under the jurisdiction of a foreign patriarch accept his rule passively, not actively.
I haven't seen or heard +Jonah's statement, so I can't knowledgeably comment on it. In response to your and Tom's comments, however, I offer the 1981 remarks of the Very Rev. Leonidas C. Contos, as quoted by the AOI Blog at http://www.aoiusa.org/blog/:
"For so long as we are conditioned, in our polity and in our cultural life, by the diaspora complex, however subconsciously, we will be inhibited in the fullest realization of our ‘church-hood.’ More importantly, so long as we are perceived from without as a diaspora—a branch, an offshoot, a transplant, an emigration—by the Mother Church (and, if the truth be told, by the Mother Country), our maturity will never be acknowledged; our uniquely formed destiny in the West, never adequately comprehended; our freedom to shape our future as the Orthodox Church in this hemisphere, never fully realized."
As a public relations consultant, as well as a convert to Orthodoxy with no ethnic skin in the game, I say, in the ineffable words of Rodger O. Riney, CEO of Scottrade, Inc., "Rodger that!"
Personally, I would hate to arrive at the Pearly Gates bearing responsibility for this state of affairs. I can just hear St. Peter saying, "David, you've got a lot of 'splaining to do!"
David
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