Posted on 06/21/2005 12:48:03 PM PDT by kharaku
Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia to join Moscow Patriarchate 12:59
MOSCOW, June 21 (RIA Novosti, Olga Lipich) - The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) is set to join the Moscow Patriarchate as a self-governed branch, similar to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
The union was envisaged by a draft act on canonical communication, which was published Tuesday on the official Web sites of the foreign ties department of the Moscow Patriarchate and ROCOR, along with other documents adopted by the cross commissions for the bilateral dialogue.
"These documents cover the key issues that ROCOR considered to be major obstacles on the way to a full dialogue," said Protopope Nikolai Balashov, the secretary for Orthodox ties of the Moscow Patriarchate.
Under the draft act, ROCOR will retain independence in terms of organization, but will still become part of the Moscow Partriarchate. By way of example, he cited the Ukrainian, Latvian, Moldovan and Estonian Orthodox Churches, all branches of the Moscow Patriarchate.
According to the draft act, "ROCOR is independent in terms of pastoral, enlightening, administrative, economic, property and secular issues."
The document also states that ROCOR bishops are members of the Local and Bishop Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, and can participate in the Holy Synod sessions. ROCOR will also receive its holy oil from the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The cross commissions for dialogue between the Moscow Patriarchate and ROCOR were established in December 2003. Metropolitan Laurus, the ROCOR Protohierarch, visited Russia in May 2004. Then the sides decided to begin the work of the commissions, and determined the range of issues to be discussed.
Since then, four joint sessions have been held.
"We are hopeful that the commissions will finish their work before the all-Foreign Council next May," Balashov said.
ping
Prayers from this Catholic for our brothers in the Orthodox Church.
"Big news for the Russian orthodox Church, and orthodoxy in general."thank you"kharaku"
Orthodox ping, get others.
Big news indeed. Thank you for keeping us informed about these remarkable developments in Russian Orthodoxy.
This reminds of an article that I read last year that reported a meeting of Orthodox seminarians at St. Vladimir's in New York. The list included St. Vladimir's, St. Tikhon's, Holy Cross in Boston, and Holy Trinity in Jordanville.
I saw the reference to Jordanville and almost fell over but the article in the OCA newspaper treated it as if it happened every week.
This is even bigger than the rift in the Serbian Church being healed.
Yes, we should not be surprised by painful events occuring as part of this process.
"(My Russian is good but my Slavonic is another story). "
I feel your pain. I've been speaking Russian for 21 years now and I still get my butt kicked when Old Church Slavonic gets tossed about!
I think this event represents a great healing and it's petty to talk only of future tradgedies. The sole reason for the ROCOR breaking from the Moscow Church was the revolution, the bolsheviks have been defeated and the Russian Church has been restored, it's overdue for the ROCOR to rejoin with it.
I'm glad to know somone else experiences that. :) I really love the sound of the liturgy in Slavonic and can follow a lot since the parts are mostly the same (save the ones the OCA omits), but it's a lot harder to focus.
I went through an interpreters course at DLI about 10 years ago - all of us were graduates of the basic course and the advanced courses. Part of the tasks we would do is to travel to various places and interpret for tour guides, etc. . On one excursion we went to San Fran and did a tour of the Russian Orthodox Church. The monk who gave us the tour decided to have some fun with us and switched into Slavonic. Talk about a real lesson! Not one of us could handle it - we even had 2 native speakers in our course.
I certainly wouldn't want to sound as if all I can see are the troubles ahead and ignore the greater tradgedies which are being overcome by this.
They will have to yet again wall themselves off.
Net effect? Not much.
Overall result? Very good. Now on to get the Johnny - Come - Latelies in order. (The Russians got here first.)
All this talk of "Russian" is ironic as the OCA and the ROCOR are mostly Carpatho Ukrainians that came to the US in the early 1900's when there was no immigration from Russia proper.
ROCOR was started long before the 1900s to carry out missionary work for the empire, it became seperated during the 1917 revolution. Even in the 1900s there was immigration. many now OCA churches were part of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1917 and attached the greek church only in lieu of word for Moscow. I think you need to study history and demographics a bit closer.
I suspect in most cases they will be joyous to rejoin the Russian church. There is precious little in the liturgy different between Russia and ROCOR. There are always some seperatists, however I don't suspect to see another schism as a result of this joining, the ROCOR is still seperatly self govorned.
The Russian churches certainly did preexist the immigration of carpatho ukrainians.
My point is that these immigrants swelled the ranks of these "russian" churches as they were the only game in town.
Do you deny that the typical coal mine town or mill town in Pa or Conn. has a "Russian" church that is 99% Lemko?
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