| THE HOLY BYZANTINE CATHOLIC ORTHODOX CHURCH A TRADITIONAL COMMUNITY |
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In the beginning of Christendom 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)
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, conquered
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
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 right to have there own destiny as a
people this was not 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 Catholic 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 that are Orthodox but until our sister churches (Jerusalem, Antioch,
Constantinople, Alexandria, Rome) 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, 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 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 Catholic 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 for Orthodox Church use 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 Catholic 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 Catholic 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 Catholic 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 Catholic 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
un-liberating in their governance.
THBCC
(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)
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, conquered
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
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 right to have there own destiny as a
people this was not 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 Catholic 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 that are Orthodox but until our sister churches (Jerusalem, Antioch,
Constantinople, Alexandria, Rome) 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, 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 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 Catholic 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 for Orthodox Church use 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 Catholic 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 Catholic 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 Catholic 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 Catholic 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
un-liberating in their governance.
THBCC
