Posted by Herman
on 8/3/2010, 11:21 am, in reply to "Re: Who Selects Your Bishop? Anyone you know?"
The reasons for non-growth are known, if not acknowledged. Let's just say that "growth" was not a priority for Church leadership for a number of years who were mostly interested in merely maintaining a low-profile status-quo for reasons that need not be gone into at this point.
That being said, I do feel a new "spirit" within Orthodoxy in America today, and hopefully it is from the Holy Spirit. Those who prefer the "status quo" are dying out, literally, that is why numbers have been going down. Something needs to happen, or the Church will die. We simply cannot keep on with the "status quo" which is decline.
Some ethnic enclaves remain (and even thrive) in major innigration centers, gvinging a false sense of life, but many older communities are dying. However, new more diverse parishes are being established all over the place. They are small, they are challenged but they are happenin' baby. Chambessy is really not much more than simple acknowledgement of this fact. The crowd has started moving and the mother Churches are finally trying to get out in front to look like they are leading it. Perhaps that is how the Holy Spirit works, I don't know.
A new dynamic is coming into play, old assumptions and old rules may no longer apply. It hasn't quite reached critical mass yet, it is perhaps not quite self-sustaining, but the kindling has been lit, I can see the smoke. May the fire of the Holy Spirit soon kindle many hearts thatthe real evangelization of America might begin.
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