The Russian Orthodox Elephant

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So we’ve all been very nice and rejoiced with our brothers and sisters, but Fr. Leonid Kishkovsky has the courage to say what we’ve all been thinking: There’s an elephant in the room.

Orthodox Christians can only welcome reconciliation and healing, rejoicing that estrangement and separation can be overcome. In a sense, the reconciliation of the ROCOR and the ROC [MP] represents the end of the Russian Civil War and the healing of the consequences of communist rule in Russia. Thus, the members of the Orthodox Church in America have accompanied the reconciliation process with sympathy and good will. Insofar as the estrangement has been within Russian Orthodoxy, it is clear that the estrangement must be overcome within the context of Russian Orthodoxy.

Nevertheless, there are other dimensions present – indeed quite obvious – in the real situation of ROCOR, ROC [MP], and Orthodoxy in America. While the ROCOR is present in many parts of the world, the core of its population is in North America. The Patriarchate of Moscow committed itself to the building up of Orthodoxy in North America as a self-governing Church by granting autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in America in 1970. What are the ecclesial implications of a ROCOR that is reconciled with the Moscow Patriarchate co-existing in North America with the Orthodox Church in America, which carries within it the vision of an autocephalous and united Orthodox Church in North America, as articulated by the Moscow Patriarchate in the Tomos of Autocephaly?

Read the rest: ROCOR/MP Reconciliation, by Archpriest Leonid Kishkovsky, OCA News Releases

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