THE HOLY BYZANTINE CATHOLIC ORTHODOX CHURCH (WHY AUTOCEPHALOUS)

THE HOLY BYZANTINE KATHOLIC ORTHODOX CHURCH
Le Saint Église Bizantine Katholique Orthodoxe

A TRADITIONAL COMMUNITY

To the primary Church the world was composed only of the Mid-east, Europe
and some parts of Asia and Africa the rest of the world was unexplored and
none existent.

These Patriarchates were independent (autocephalous) but united in faith.
The rites would come to reflect the diversity of its people in language, music
and art, and the church came to embrace them as the treasury of the Church.

Orthodoxy was not influenced by the errors of the Latin Church.

The Western Rite is not a modern innovation, it was part of the Church from
the beginning, and the Latin speaking Christians used it. When it comes to
England, Scotland and Ireland their rites were as Orthodox as the one used
in Constantinople. Later, because of the Great Schism in 1054 the errors of
the Roman Patriarchate were reflected in their rites.

These teachings of the Latin Patriarchate were so entrenched on their
believers that when the crusaders met the Orthodox Christians instead of
seeing them as fellow Christians they were subjected to an invasion and the
pillaging of Constantinople, leaving the Orthodox Christians weak and
defenseless thus allowing the Muslim hordes to invade, conquer and
subjugate the Orthodox Christians.

*********

In the New World, especially the United States, Orthodoxy arrived via
Alaska by Russian Orthodox Church (1794) and it is hard to believe it has
been over 200 years ago that Orthodoxy set foot in the New World and still
at this very moment most Americans have no idea of what the Orthodox
Church is all about. In other words the bringing of the message of the truth
of Orthodoxy has failed while Protestantism and Catholicism are triumphant
and are growing.

The reason for this failure is that as the Ethnic immigrations have arrived
they have set up what is called Ethnic Churches where to a certain extent
Orthodoxy has been maintained but as the children of the first wave of
immigrants are born and many do not learn the language of their parents and
enter into the American culture many leave the church and become
Protestants or Catholics. This is a tragedy because they are walking away
from the truth and into the arms of heresy.

This new generation sees Orthodoxy as something alien and indeed it is,
because it stopped reflecting the culture of the people it serves and has
remained connected to a language and nationality that is not theirs. The
reason Orthodoxy flourished in the Old World was because it embraced the
culture, language, art and music of the people it served.

Why then is the Orthodox Church not assisting in developing an American
Orthodox Church that reflects our culture, language, art and music? Sadly it
is due to greed. Foreign jurisdictions have found that the USA has great
wealth to gather and send back to the respective nations of these ethnic
churches who have come to economically depend on the Ethnic-American
Churches. They will never let go of this constant flow of economic support.
Money has become more important than bringing the liberating truth of
Orthodoxy to the people of this continent who are no longer ethnic but
American.

To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's
house into a market!" (John 2:16)

I would like to continue by bringing to mind a good example that is found in
our own history, the American colonies were extremely valuable to the
English, so they wanted to have English governors and the wealth of the
colonies to continue flowing back to England. When the colonies requested to
have representation in the governing of themselves then the English consider
it to be an act of treason, the colonist did not want to be apart from the
crown but simple wanted to have their own representatives and a Governor
but the English because of their greed and feeling of superiority would only
permit certain self rule of the colonies and when it came to self governance
and the right to have their own destiny as a people this was not permitted or
tolerated.

Unfortunately at this present time we have Americans that are being given
certain rights in self governance but when it comes to bishops and most of all
a Patriarch they are not allowed to follow their own destiny as a native
church, they are only allowed to be a carbon copy of the jurisdiction giving
them these so-called Canon Status.

Sadly we are to blame to a certain extent because just as the Tory's during
the American Revolutionary War could not see themselves apart from the
British Empire, with a king and English governors so do we in the United
States continue to think that without being under the jurisdiction of foreign
Patriarchs and Bishops we are not truly a church.

*********

We in the Autocephalous movement are constantly asked the following
questions:

‘To what Jurisdiction do you belong?’

St. Aftimios (Ofiesh) was elected to serve as the replacement of St. Raphael of
Brooklyn in 1915 in caring for the Arab Orthodox faithful in America under
the Church of Russia's canonical authority.

He was consecrated by Archbishop Evdokim (Meschersky) as an auxiliary
bishop in 1917 with the title of Bishop of Brooklyn. In 1923, in recognition
for his work in America, he was elevated by Metropolitan Platon
(Rozhdestvensky) of New York to the rank of archbishop.

In 1927, Aftimios was commissioned by the Russian diocese in America to
form an English-speaking American Orthodox Catholic Church, and during
this time, St. Aftimios consecrated three bishops for his new jurisdiction,
Sophronios (Beshara) of Los Angeles, Joseph (Zuk) and Ignatius (William
Albert) Nichols in September of 1932 as his auxiliary bishop of Washington.

Our Primate in the Holy Byzantine Katholic Orthodox Church has these
three lines in his succession and we believe that we are a Canonical Church of
America.

‘To what Jurisdiction are you in communion with?’

In spirit we teach that we are and will always be in communion with all
Orthodox Jurisdictions but until our sister churches (Jerusalem, Antioch,
Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople) accept that we have the canonical right to
have a native church with native Bishops and that our Liturgical Rite may
express our culture, language, art and music, until then physical and
intellectual communion may not be possible.

Also we find it extremely hypocritical that our Orthodox brethren accuse the
Roman Church of being legalistic and judgmental when they are legalistic in
demanding that as an American Orthodox Church we must be attached to a
foreigner jurisdiction to be truly Orthodox.

‘Did Archbishop Aftimios (Ofiesh) forfeit his
appointment when he got married?’

Orthodox theologians agree that the restriction on married bishops was an
attempt by the church to stop nepotism thus making it a matter of church
discipline rather than doctrine.

Therefore it could be changed and would require a consensus among a self-
governing Orthodox churches. St. Aftimios had every right to be married
because in the American Culture it was an acceptable condition.

The American Church had every right as an autocephalous church to change
this discipline but regrettably this was use by the unscrupulous ethnic
churches as an excuse to force and remove St. Aftimios as Hierarch of the
church.

These same ethnic jurisdictions to this day continue spreading calumnies
against St. Aftimios without any legal documentation to prove that St.
Aftimios walked away from his Bishopric. On the contrary, it was because of
the isolation and chastisement that St. Aftimios was not permitted to
continue his responsibilities as a bishop.

St. Aftimios suffered deeply because of the isolation, chastisement and
calumnies perpetrated against him and for this reason the American Church
has canonized him as a Saint of the American Orthodox Church. St. Aftimios
will always remind us in the autocephalous church that we are still suffering
from the same abuse from our brethren.

We in the Holy Byzantine Katholic Orthodox Church being autocephalous in
consensus agreed to have non-married bishops as a matter of church
discipline but not because it is church doctrine. We agreed as a church that at
this time in the American Culture the propensity for nepotism is great so we
have in consensus agreed for non-married Bishops.

St John Chrysostom on married Hierarchs.

'A Bishop then,' he says, 'must be blameless the husband of one wife.' This he does not
lay down as a rule, as if he must not be without one, but as prohibiting his having more
than one. [pg.438, First Series, Vol. 13, St John Chrysostom, Homily X, Homilies on
Timothy]

Saint Tikhon was not only a true visionary but a true Orthodox, he knew
that as Americans we had the right to have a Native Church and that is why
he examined the existing Anglican Book of Common Prayer and sent it to
the Holy Synod of Moscow for the restoration and correction of a truly
Western Rite. This Liturgy, derived from the ancient use of the Orthodox
West, and first expressed in English in the edition of 1549 by authority of
King Edward the Sixth of England, was corrected and approved by the Holy
Synod to be used by the Orthodox Church in the United States.

He understood the need and desire of people to have their own native church,
because the Russian Church also experienced this struggle. In 1448 the
Russian bishops elected their own Patriarch without recourse to
Constantinople, and the Russian church was thenceforth autocephalous. It
was by the unity of the Russian Hierarchy that they were able to create an
autocephalous church, a problem we in the USA have because of the multitude
of ethnic churches and any one that moves towards an autocephalous church
in the USA will be treated like they treated St. Aftimios, with isolation and
false allegations by the foreign jurisdictions.

After Saint Tikhon's death the Russian Church as well as other ethnic
churches have use the Western Liturgical Rite (Liturgy of Saint Tikhon) as a
carrot in order to appease the growing desire for complete self governance
from their American subjects. And I use the word subjects because that is
exactly how the American Orthodox Christians are viewed and treated by
these foreign jurisdictions. These poor well meaning Americans searching for
the good news of Orthodoxy have fallen victims to the greed and power
hungry foreign jurisdictions.

Saint Aftimios was also a true visionary, he had the heart of a missionary he
(like Patriarch Saint Tikhon before him) felt it was absolutely essential to
establish a Native American Church. In 1927, Saint Aftimios (an Archbishop)
became the first Ruling Hierarch of the Church when Metropolitan Platon
and the Synod of Bishops of the American Russian Orthodox Dioceses,
meeting in South Canaan, Pennsylvania, carried out the will of Saint Tikhon,
Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia and helped set up the (autocephalous)
American Orthodox Church.

Under Saint Aftimios, the Church in America was established and
incorporated on the basis of an excellent Constitution, designed to bring true
unity to American Orthodoxy, but unfortunately his efforts failed and
hopefully the following quotes from Fr. Serafim Surrency's book, The Quest
for Orthodox Church Unity in America (1973) will explain why.

Fr. Serafim's analysis of the failure of this church is as follows:

There can be no question that while the movers of the new Church were sincere and
highly motivated that nonetheless they were fostering an idea whose time had not yet
come, or to use more appropriate phraseology: Almighty God in his infinite wisdom did
not see fit to bless this first attempt to have an American Orthodox Church. On the
human level it is clear why the movement did not succeed. The Orthodox in America
where still in their own particular ghettos... [the church] was unable to attract or find
clergy theologically trained in the Orthodox tradition and able to communicate with the
young people with immigrant parents (p. 33).

Note: The Holy Byzantine Katholic Orthodox Church unlike this first
attempt to establish an American Orthodox Church is not interested in
communicating to the already orthodox but to the Americans that are of
other traditions that are searching for the truth of the Orthodox Faith. The
Greeks, Romanians, Syrians and so forth can stay in the ethnic ghettos and
continue to fail in bringing the truth of Orthodoxy to the western people.

External pressures on the movement also contributed to its demise: While the Russian
Council of Bishops gave initial support, it was only moral support, and the first person
elected to be a Hierarch of the new Church in fact turned down the nomination because
it was not possible to guarantee him any kind of salary which is indicative of another
primary deficiency of the movement, no adequate financing.... [The] new Church lost
its most important supporter, Metr. Platon, because of antagonism of the clergy
initiators towards the Protestant Episcopal Church.... [some of whose authorities]
resented the American Orthodox Church as being a challenge to... the “senior Orthodox
Church in America” [i.e., the Episcopal Church], and that pressure was put on Metr.
Platon to withdraw his support or the financial assistance he was receiving from the
Episcopal Church... would be cut off and perhaps he would be deprived of the use, on a
temporary basis, of Episcopal churches (pp. 33-34).

Note: The Holy Byzantine Katholic Orthodox Church will not encounter this
problem because of the following Canon Law.

Canon VII. (7)

…[In order to stop the abuse the of clergy with the tidings given by the faithful to the
Holy Church, the Holy Synod inspired by the Holy Ghost has decreed that no one will be
ordained until they first have a profession and are self-supported. The funds of the
Holy Church will never be used to give the clergy an exuberant lifestyle. The only
exception will be if a parish in general is willing to pay the clergy in order for them to
be full-time staff.]

“Paul went to see them, and because he was a tent-maker as they were, he stayed and
worked with them” Acts 18:3

By having a self-supported clergy the Church will never find itself in the
predicament of catering to any group in order to receive economic support
from them.

Our Clergy are also able to negotiate and rent the use of churches and in this
manner will always be able to maintain our independence without the
meddling of other jurisdictions that do not always have the best interest for
the Church in mind.

Nevertheless,

...it would be most unjust to blame the failure of the “Holy Eastern Orthodox Catholic
and Apostolic Church in North America” solely or even primarily on Protestant
Episcopal opposition. One can state it more strongly: the various Orthodox groups in
America at that time simply were not ready in terms of church consciousness for the
establishment of an American Orthodox Church
(p. 34).

Note: The Holy Byzantine Katholic Orthodox Church agrees that the failure
in bringing Orthodoxy to America is not to fall on the shoulders of the
Protestant Episcopal opposition or the Holy Eastern Orthodox Catholic and
Apostolic Church in North America, but on the approach of the this first
attempt. We feel that Orthodoxy would have been established years ago in
the west if only the American Church would stop trying to mimic the Eastern
Churches and speak to the west in their own language, art, music and culture.

We the Holy Byzantine Katholic Orthodox Church believe we are the living
spirit of Saint Tikhon and Saint Aftimios when it comes to bringing the
message of Orthodoxy to our brethren in the Unites States or any other
country that believes they have the right to have a native church with native
bishops. A church that reflects the culture of the people it serves.

The Western Rite Parishes represent a restoration of the legitimate Western
Liturgy of the Undivided Church of the first 1,000 years, by the Patriarchal
authority of Saint Tikhon, for the benefit of all Orthodox people.

Our Church is presently facing the stigma of the independent groups that
claim to be Orthodox and traditional and yet permit female priests and
openly gay clergy. This is presently one of the biggest obstacles we are facing
as a church. We are independent (autocephalous) but united in faith with all
Orthodox Churches and please understand that we are not seeking or need
the approval from any individual ethnic jurisdiction to be truly orthodox. It
is not by claiming to be orthodox that we are orthodox but that we live as
orthodox and profess it in our daily lives that make us true orthodox. It is
because of the false belief that we need the blessing and approval of a foreign
jurisdiction that has caused the western people to reject orthodoxy.

When will we as a people learn that it is not the messenger that holds the
truth but the message itself, for the message of orthodoxy is true, pure and
liberating but unfortunately the messengers (foreign jurisdictions) are false in
their intent, unclean in their approach and non-liberating in their
governance?

THBKC

ORTHODOXY has been the primary
Christian Church, for the first thousand
years of Christendom and all churches
were in communion with the five
Patriarchates (Jerusalem, Alexandria,
Antioch, Constantinople and Rome).

The reader needs to keep in mind that the
Holy Church was not destined to remain
with only five Patriarchates; rather, it
was understood that as the church would
grow, other Patriarchates would enter
the embrace of Orthodoxy.

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (Matthew
28:19)