Where does that leave the folks in the OCA?
(Who BTW I've had tell me off for suggesting there was every under any circumstance a valid reason to have a Slavonic liturgy, and that my wife should assimilate or leave the country)
I don't get the impression many in the OCA are real happy with their leadership either but a lot of them seem dedicated to the same goal some in the Antiochian church and some in the Greek church are of some sort of psuedo-Latinized English language all American church where immigrants are chased out lest they create 'ethnic barriers'.
"I don't get the impression many in the OCA are real happy with their leadership either but a lot of them seem dedicated to the same goal some in the Antiochian church and some in the Greek church are of some sort of psuedo-Latinized English language all American church where immigrants are chased out lest they create 'ethnic barriers'."
There are a whole bunch of issues here which most Orthodox parishes have to confront eventually. There is often an element, made up of ethnic cradles and converts, which becomes very, very anti whatever the traditional ethnicity of the parish happens to be. They fulminate that we are Americans, Americans don't celebrate (insert national holiday), Americans speak English, Americans eat hog dogs, Americans live with their girlfriends, how dare you refuse me communion etc etc. Another group are just ethnic Greek, Russian, Arab, Serb chauvinists and want to maintain their own little piece of the old country to the exclusion of the "foreigners" (Americans. We all have to deal with this because we don't yet have many non ethnic Americans who are Orthodox from birth. That's going to take a generation or more from now.
Language is a different issue. In my parish we have Greeks, Russians, Ukrainians, Serbs, Roumanians, Bulgarians, Albanians, Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians and all manner of Americans. Personally, I'd prefer the entire Divine Liturgy to be in Greek, like it was when I was growing up, but the fact of the matter is that the common language in our parish is English, not Greek. There are no other Orthodox Churches within a reasonable driving time of our parish so everyone comes to ours. What are we to do? Tell the non-Greeks they ahve to become Greeks to be part of the parish? I'll tell you a little story. A few years back I was involved in some probate litigation over the estate of a very old Syrian lady who had been a member of our parish for about 70 years. One of the beneficiaries of the will was a 90+ year old Syrian lady who likewise had been a member for 70+ years. While we were preparing her for the trial she got talking with an Antiochian priest monk who was on loan to our parish. She told how when she came to our town as a young woman, "We didn't have one of our churches so went went to the Greeks' church". Several days later I was with one of our young Lebanese couples at a party for his parents who were visiting from Lebanon. His Dad told me how happy they were that their son and his wife had such a wonderful parish to belong to. The son commented about "How wonderful OUR parish is"! I've heard the same and similar things from all the other groups too. The only complaints seem to come from some of those Greek chauvnists I mentioned before and some inquirers who find that our 40-50% Greek is too foreign for them.
In the end, every parish has to find its own place when it comes to the language of the liturgy. It all depends on who is in the pews.