Problems of Orthodoxy in America

By Fr. Alexander Schmemann

I. The Canonical Problem

[St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly, 1964, Vol. 8, # 2, pp. 67-85.]

An Uncanonical Situation False ideas of Canonicity The Meaning of Canonicity National Pluralism and Canonical Unity The Solution: Episcopatus Unus Est The Solution: Ecclesia in Episcopo The Solution: The Parish Notes

1. An Uncanonical Situation

No term is used—and misused—among the Orthodox people in America more

often than the term canonical. One hears endless discussions about the "canonicity"

or the "uncanonicity" of this or that bishop, jurisdiction, priest, parish. Is it not in

itself an indication that something is wrong or, at least, questionable from the

canonical point of view in America, that there exists a canonical problem which

requires an overall analysis and solution? Unfortunately the existence of such a

problem is seldom admitted. Everyone simply claims the fullness of canonicity for his

own position and, in the name of it, condemns and denounces as uncanonical the

ecclesiastical status of others. And one is amazed by the low level and cynicism of

these "canonical" fights in which any insinuation, any distortion is permitted as long

as it harms the "enemy." The concern here is not for truth, but for victories in the

form of parishes, bishops, priests "shifting" jurisdictions and joining the "canonical"

one. It does not matter that the same bishop or priest was condemning yesterday what

today he praises as canonical, that the real motivations behind all these transfers have

seldom anything to do with canonical convictions; what matters is victory. We live in

the poisoned atmosphere of anathemas and excommunications, court cases and

litigations, dubious consecrations of dubious bishops, hatred, calumny, lies! But do we

think about the irreparable moral damage all this inflicts to our people? How can they

respect the Hierarchy and its decisions? What meaning can the very concept of

canonicity have for them? Are we not encouraging them to consider all norms, all

regulations, all rules as purely relative? One wonders sometimes whether our bishops

realize the scandal of this situation, whether they ever think about the cynicism all this

provokes and feeds in the hearts of Orthodox people. Three Russian jurisdictions,

two Serbian, two Romanian, two Albanian, two Bulgarian. A split among the Syrians .

. . The animosity between the Russians and the Carpatho-Russians... The Ukrainian

problem! And all this at a time when Orthodoxy in America is coming of age, when

truly wonderful possibilities exist for its growth, expansion, creative progress. We

teach our children to be "proud" of Orthodoxy, we constantly congratulate ourselves

about all kinds of historic events and achievements, our church publications distill an

almost unbearable triumphalism and optimism, yet, if we were true to the spirit of our

faith we ought to repent in "sackcloth and ashes," we ought to cry day and night

about the sad, the tragical state of our Church. If "canonicity" is anything but a

pharisaic and legalistic self-righteousness, if it has anything to do with the spirit of

Christ and the tradition of His Body, the Church, we must openly proclaim that the

situation in which we all live is utterly uncanonical regardless of all the justifications

and sanctions that every one finds for his "position." For nothing can justify the bare

fact: Our Church is divided. To be sure, there have always been divisions and conflicts

among Christians. But for the first time in history division belongs to the very

structure of the Church, for the first time canonicity seems strangely disconnected

from its fundamental "content" and purpose—to assure, express, defend and fulfill

the Church as Divinely given Unity, for the first time, in other terms, one seems to

find normal a multiplicity of "jurisdictions". Truly we must wake up and be horrified

by this situation. We must find in ourselves the courage to face it and to re-think it in

the light of the genuine Orthodox doctrine and tradition, no matter what it will cost

to our petty human likes and dislikes. For unless we, first, openly admit the existence

of the canonical problem and, second, put all our thoughts and energies into finding

its solution, the decadence of Orthodoxy will begin—in spite of the million-dollar

churches and other magnificent "facilities" of which we are so justly proud. "For the

time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us,

what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?" (1 PET. 4: 17).

2. False Ideas of Canonicity

We must begin with a clarification of the seemingly simple notion of canonicity. I

say "seemingly simple" because it is indeed simple enough to give a formal definition:

"canonical is that which complies with the canons of the Church". It is much more

difficult, however, to understand what this "compliance" is and how to achieve it.

And nothing illustrates better this difficulty than certain assumptions on which the

whole canonical controversy in America seems to be grounded and which are in fact a

very serious distortion of the Orthodox canonical tradition. There are those, for

example, who solve the complex and tragical canonical problem of Orthodoxy in

America by one simple rule, which to them seems a self-evident one: to be

"canonical" one has to be under some Patriarch, or, in general, under some

established autocephalous church in the old world. Canonicity is thus reduced to

subordination which is declared to constitute the fundamental principle of church

organization. Implied here is the idea that a "high ecclesiastical power" (Patriarch,

Synod, etc.) is in itself and by itself the source of canonicity: whatever it decides is

ipso facto canonical and the criterion of canonicity. But in the genuine Orthodox

tradition the ecclesiastical power is itself under the canons and its decisions are valid

and compulsory only inasmuch as they comply with the canons. In other terms, it is

not the decision of a Patriarch or His Synod that creates and guarantees "canonicity",

but, on the contrary, it is the canonicity of the decision that gives it its true authority

and power. Truth, and not power, is the criterion, and the canons, not different in this

from the dogmas, express the truth of the Church. And just as no power, no authority

can transform heresy into orthodoxy and to make white what is black, no power can

make canonical a situation which is not canonical. When told that all Patriarchs have

agreed with the Patriarch of Constantinople that Monotheletism is an Orthodox

doctrine, St. Maximus the Confessor refused to accept this argument as a decisive

criterion of truth. The Church ultimately canonized St. Maximus and condemned the

Patriarchs. Likewise, if tomorrow all Patriarchs agree and proclaim in a solemn

"tomos" that the best solution for Orthodoxy in America is to remain divided into

fourteen jurisdictions, this decision will not make our situation canonical and this, for

the simple reason that it does not comply with the canonical tradition or the truth of

the church. For the purpose and the function of the Hierarchy is precisely to keep

pure and undistorted the tradition in its fulness, and if and when it sanctions or even

tolerates anything contrary to the truth of the church, it puts itself under the

condemnation of canons, [1] And it is indeed ironical that in America the canonical

subordinationism, exalted by so many as the only source and guarantee of

"canonicity", is being used to justify the most uncanonical situation one can imagine;

the simultaneous jurisdiction of several bishops in the same territory, which is a

betrayal of both the letter and the spirit of the whole canonical tradition. For this

situation destroys the fundamental "note" of the Church: the hierarchical and

structural unity as the foundation and the expression of the spiritual unity, of the

Church as "unity of faith and love." If there exists a clear and universal canonical

principle it is certainly that of jurisdictional unity [2] and, therefore, if a peculiar

"reduction" of canonicity leads to the de facto destruction of that principle, one can

apply to it the words of the Gospel: "Ye shall know them by their fruits" (Matth. 7,

16). "Canonical subordinationism" is the best indication of how deeply "westernized"

we have become in our canonical thinking. Canonicity has been identified not with

truth, but with "security.'' And nothing short of a real canonical revival can bring us

back to the glorious certitude that in Orthodoxy there is no substitute for Truth.

Destructive of the Church's unity, "canonical subordinationism" leads necessarily to

the destruction of the Church's continuity. There is no need to prove here that the

continuity in faith, doctrine and life constitutes the very basis of Orthodox

ecclesiology and that the focal principle of that continuity is the Apostolic succession

of the Episcopate; through it each local church manifests and maintains her organic

unity and identity with the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, the Catholicity

of her life and faith. But whereas in the genuine Orthodox tradition the "subject" of

continuity is the Church, i.e. the real continuity of a living and concrete community

with the whole tradition and order of the Church, continuity of which the succession

of the Episcopate is the witness and the bearer, here in the theory of "canonical

subordinationism" the reality of the church is reduced to the formal principle of

"jurisdiction," i.e. subordination to a central ecclesiastical power. But then the

meaning of the Apostolic succession is deeply changed as is also that of the Bishop

and his function within the Church. In the original tradition, a Bishop through his

consecration by other bishops, becomes the "successor'' not to his consecrators but,

first of all, to the unbroken continuity of his own Church. [3]

The "Church is in the Bishop" because the "Bishop is in the Church", in the:

"organic unity with a particular body of church people.'' [4] In the system of canonical

subordination, however, the Bishop becomes a simple representative of a higher

jurisdiction, important not in himself, not as the charismatic bearer and guardian of

his Church's continuity and catholicity, but as means of this Church's subordination to

a "jurisdiction." It is difficult to imagine a more serious distortion and, indeed,

destruction of the Orthodox conception of continuity and apostolic succession. For

the Church cannot be reduced to "jurisdiction." She is a living organism and her

continuity is precisely that of life. The function of the Episcopate and of "power" in

general is to preserve, defend and express this continuity and fulness of life, but it is a

function within and not above the Church. The ministry of power does not create the

church but is created by God within the Church, which is ontologically prior to all

functions, charisms and ministries. [5] And "jurisdiction" when it is divorced from the

real continuity of the Church can become, and in fact often becomes, a principle of

discontinuity and schism...

A sad but typical illustration of this is the painful story of the Russian ecclesiastical

conflicts in America. Orthodoxy was implanted in Alaska in the 18th century, by

Russian missionaries. Since then the Church here grew organically: from a mission

into a diocese, and then into a group of dioceses, or a local church. The normal

jurisdictional link between the American Church and the Moscow Patriarchate was

broken de facto by the tragical events of the Russian Revolution. There was no

schism, no quarrel, no conflict. The Bishop appointed from Moscow went to Russia

and did not return. Deprived of material support from the Mother-Church, poisoned

by revolutionary propaganda, the Church in America was in a great spiritual danger.

In this tragical situation [6] the decision of the Sobor of Detroit in 1924 to proclaim

the temporary autonomy was not only fully justified, it was indeed an act of real

continuity, i.e. of the Church's faithfulness to her organic growth. It was moreover an

act of the whole Church: Bishops, [7] clergy and laity; and its motivation was

profoundly and exclusively ecclesiastical: to assure, under new circumstances, the

continuity of life, faith and order. [8] But the Moscow Patriarchate condemned the

American Church as "schismatic," and in 1933 established here its own "jurisdiction"

in the form of the Exarchate. [9]

We have here a clearcut clash between the two "canonical logics." On the one hand,

there is the logics of organic continuity in a Church which knows herself to be a

reality, a body, a living continuity and which, for the very sake of that continuity and

growth, dares to take steps best suited to that purpose. And there is, on the other

hand, the legalistic logics in which the whole Church life is nothing but a system of

jurisdictional subordination. The creation of the Patriarchal Exarchate is, from this

point of view, a very interesting phenomenon. It implies that a Church can be created,

so to speak, ex nihilo, by the simple fact of the arrival to the U.S.A. of Bishop

Benjamin. It implies also, that in the Muscovite thinking the continuity of the Church

in America lies not in her long and organic development, but exclusively in her

jurisdictional dependence of Moscow. And it is really astonishing how many people,

even those who claim to "understand" and "justify" the Metropolia, but mainly for

non-ecclesiastical reasons, fail to realize that by the standards of a genuinely Orthodox

canonical and ecclesiastical tradition, the only real schism was originated by the

declaration of Metropolitan Sergiy of Moscow that Archbishop Benjamin had

"organized in New York a Diocesan Council and that our North American Diocese

has begun official existence.'' [10] This act broke the real continuity of the American

Church, introduced division among Orthodox people, weakened the discipline which

was restored with such pain after Detroit, opened the door to endless controversies

and accusations and, in general, contributed to the canonical chaos in which we live

today. And if Apostolic succession has been established for the sake of unity and

sobornost, and must never become the vehicle of exclusiveness and division, if, in

other terms, a schism is an act of division, a break in the real continuity of the

Church, it was the establishment of the Exarchate that provoked a schism, and a

rupture of canonicity.

We mention the Russian tragedy because, as the time goes on, it becomes more and

more: obviously a kind of "pattern" for the whole canonical tragedy of American

Orthodoxy. What happened to the Russians is happening mutatis mutandis to the

others, the Serbians, the Romanians, the Bulgarians, the Syrians, and for the same

fundamental reason: the growing discrepancy between the real situation, the real

continuity, the real needs of Orthodoxy here and the various "situations" in Bucharest

or Damascus, Istanbul or Moscow. If the jurisdictional dependence of American

Churches on these centers in the early, formative period of Orthodoxy here was a

self-evident form of its continuity, it has become today, paradoxically as it sounds, the

cause of discontinuity and division. It is a significant fact that, with some very few

exceptions, the schisms and conflicts which poison our life here and obstruct all real

progress, are rooted not in the American situation itself, but precisely in this formal

"dependence" on ecclesiastical centers located thousands of miles away from America

and radically alienated from the real needs of the Church in America. A Bishop

virtually without parishes is recognized as "canonical" because he is "recognized" by

his Patriarch, but a Bishop of the same Church with a flourishing Diocese and with

organic roots in the real continuity of the Church here is declared "uncanonical" for

lack of such recognition. An unnecessary and vicious split in a relatively small

Archdiocese is declared "canonical," because ten Bishops in the Middle East have

decided so. A priest in trouble in his own diocese is always welcome in some other

jurisdiction. We are constantly told that something is "canonical," because it is

"recognized" as canonical by such or such Patriarch or Synod. But, once more, in the

Orthodox teaching canonical is that which complies with the canons and the canons

express the truth of the church. We must openly reject the "romanizing" theory that

something is true because some infallible authority has decreed that it is true. In the

Orthodox Church truth itself is the supreme authority and criterion. At one time the

Patriarch of Constantinople "recognized" as Orthodox and canonical the so-called

"Living Church" in Russia. This did not make it either Orthodox or canonical.

No Patriarch, no Synod—be it in Moscow or Belgrade or in any other place—has

the infallible charisma to understand the needs and the truth of the American

situation better than the Orthodox people who constitute the Church here. In fact, it

is their lack of genuine pastoral interest in the real needs of the Church in America, it

is their "recognitions" and "excommunications'' that made the Orthodox Church here

a pitiful chaos. Obviously, as long as we believe that the Holy Spirit acts in America

only via Damascus or Sofia, Bucharest, or Moscow, as long as our Bishops, forgetting

the real content of the doctrine of Apostolic succession which makes them the

representatives of God and not of Patriarchs, think of themselves as caretakers of

interests having nothing to do with the interests of Orthodoxy in America, as long, in

other terms, as we reduce the Church, her life, her unity, her continuity to blind and

legalistic subordination, thc canonical chaos will continue, bearing with it the fatal

deterioration of Orthodoxy.

Finally, all this leads to (and also in part proceeds from) the harmful and un-

Orthodox reduction of canonicity to an almost abstract principle of validity. When a

man has been consecrated bishop by at least two other bishops, he is considered as a

"valid" bishop regardless of the ecclesiastical and ecclesiological content of his

consecration. But Orthodox tradition has never isolated validity into a "principle in

itself," i.e. disconnected from truth, authenticity and, in general, the whole faith and

order of the Church. It would not be difficult to show that the canonical tradition,

when dealing with holy orders and sacraments, always stresses that they are valid

because they are acts of, and within, the Church which means that it is their

authenticity as acts of the Church that make them valid and not vice-versa. To

consider validity as a self-contained principle leads to a magical understanding of the

Church and to a dangerous distortion of ecclesiology. Yet in America, under the

impact of the multi-jurisdictional chaos this idea of validity per se appears more and

more as the only criterion. There grows around us a peculiar indifference to

authenticity, to elementary moral considerations. A Bishop, a priest, a layman can be

accused of all sorts of moral and canonical sins: the day when he "shifts" to the

"canonical" jurisdictions all these accusations become irrelevant; he is "valid" and one

can entrust to him the salvation of human souls! Have we completely forgotten that

all the "notae" of the Church are not only equally important but also interdependent,

and what is not holy—i.e. right, moral, just, canonical, cannot be "apostolic"? In our

opinion nothing has harmed more the spiritual and moral foundations of Church life

than the really immoral idea that a man, an act, a situation are "valid" only in function

of a purely formal "validity in itself." It is this immoral doctrine that poisons the

Church, makes parishes and individuals think of any jurisdictional shift as justified as

long as they "go under a valid bishop" and makes the Church cynical about and

indifferent to, considerations of truth and morals.

3. The Meaning of Canonicity

The canonical chaos in America is not a specifically "American" phenomenon.

Rather, Orthodoxy here is the victim of a long, indeed a multi-secular disease. It was a

latent disease as long as the Church was living in the old traditional situation

characterized primarily by an organic unity of the State, the ethnic factor and the

ecclesiastical organization. Up to quite recently, in fact up to the appearance of the

massive Orthodox diaspora, ecclesiastical stability and order were preserved not so

much by the canonical "consciousness," but by State regulations and control.

Ironically enough it made not much difference whether the State was Orthodox (The

Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Greece), Roman Catholic (Austro-Hungary) or

Muslim (the Ottoman Empire). Members of the Church could be persecuted in non-

Orthodox States, but Church organization—and this is the crux of the matter—was

sanctioned by the State and could not be altered without this sanction. This situation

was, of course, the result of the initial Byzantine "symphony" between Church and

State, but after the fall of Byzantium it was progressively deprived of that mutual

interdependence of Church and State which was at the very heart of the Byzantine

theocratic ideology. [11] What is important for us here and what constitutes the

"disease" mentioned above is that this organic blend of State regulations, ethnical

solidarity and Church organization led little by little to a divorce of the canonical

consciousness from its dogmatical and spiritual context. Canonical tradition,

understood at first as an organic part of the dogmatical tradition, as the latter's

application to the empirical life of the Church, became Canon Law: a system of rules

and regulations, juridical, and not primarily doctrinal and spiritual, in their nature and

interpreted as such within categories alien to the spiritual essence of the Church. Just

as a lawyer is the: one who can find all possible precedents and arguments that favor

his "case", a canonist, in this system of thought, is the one who, in the huge mass of

canonical texts, can find that one which justifies his "case," even if the latter seems to

contradict the spirit of the Church. And once such "text" is found, "canonicity" is

established. There appeared, in other terms, a divorce between the Church as spiritual,

sacramental essence and the Church as organization so that the latter ceased in fact to

be considered as the expression of the first, fully dependent on it. If today in America

so many of our laymen are sincerely convinced that the parish organization is an

exclusively legal or "material" problem and ought to be handled apart from the

"spiritual," the root of this conviction is not only in the specifically American ethos,

but also in the progressive secularization of canon law itself. And yet the whole point

is that canons are not mere laws, but laws whose authority is rooted precisely in the

spiritual essence of the Church. Canons do not constitute or create the Church, their

function is to defend, clarify and regulate the life of the Church, to make it comply

with the essence of the Church. This means that in order to be properly understood,

interpreted and applied, canonical texts must be always referred to that truth of, and

about, the Church, which they express sometimes for a very particular situation and

which is not necessarily explicit in the canonical text itself.

If we take the canonical area which interests us more particularly in this essay, that

of ecclesiastical organization and episcopal power, it is evident that the basic reality or

truth to which all canons dealing with bishops, their consecration and their

jurisdiction point and refer, is the reality of unity, as the very essence of the Church.

The Church is unity of men with God in Christ and unity of men one with another in

Christ. Of this new, divinely given and divine unity the Church is the gift, the

manifestation, the growth and the fulfillment. And, therefore, everything in her

organization, order and life is in some way or another related to unity, and is to be

understood, evaluated and, if necessary, judged by it. The dogmatical or spiritual

essence of the Church as unity is thus the criterion for the proper understanding of

canons concerning Church organization and also for their proper application. If the

canons prescribe that a bishop must be consecrated by all bishops of the province (cf.

Apostolic Canon 1, 1 Oecum, Canon 4) and only in case of "some special reason or

owing to the distance" by two or three, the meaning of the canon is obviously not that

any two or three bishops can "make" another bishop, but that the consecration of a

bishop is the very sacrament of the Church as unity and oneness. [12] To reduce this

canon to a formal principle that there must be at least two bishops for a "valid"

episcopal consecration is simply nonsensical. The canon both reveals and safeguards

an essential truth about the Church and its proper application is possible, therefore,

only within the full context of that truth. And only this context explains why canons

which apparently are anachronistic and have nothing to do with our time and

situations are not considered as obsolete but remain an integral part of Tradition. To

be sure the Melitian schism which divided Egypt at the beginning of the fourth

century has in itself no great importance for us. Yet the canons of the First

Ecumenical Council which defined the norms for its solution keep all their

significance precisely because they reveal that truth of the Church in the light of

which, and for the preservation of which that schism was solved. All this means that

the search for canonicity consists not in an accumulation of "texts," but in the effort,

first, to understand the ecclesiological meaning of a given text, and then, to relate it to

a particular and concrete situation.

The necessity for such an effort is especially obvious here in America. The American

ecclesiastical situation is unprecedented in more than one respect. Enough time and

energy have been spent in sterile attempts simply to "reduce" it to some pattern of the

past, i.e. to ignore the real challenge it presents to the canonical conscience of the

Church.

4. National Pluralism and Canonical Unity

The unprecedented situation of American Orthodoxy is that the Church here,

different in this from all other parts of the Orthodox world, is multinational in its

origins. Since the Byzantine era, Orthodoxy was always brought to and accepted by

whole nations. The only familiar pattern of the past, therefore, is not the creation of

mere local churches, but a total integration and incarnation of Orthodoxy in national

cultures; so that these cultures themselves cannot be separated from Orthodoxy but,

in their depth, are genuine expressions of Orthodoxy. This organic unity of the

national and religious is not a historical accident, much less a defect of Orthodoxy. In

its positive expression it is the fruit of the Orthodox concept and experience of the

Church as embracing the whole life. Catholicity means for an Orthodox more than

geographic universality; it is, above everything else, the wholeness, the totality of life

as belonging to Christ and sanctified by the Church. In this respect, the situation in

America is radically different from the whole historical experience of Orthodoxy. Not

only the Orthodox Church was brought here by representatives of various Orthodox

nations, but it was brought as precisely the continuation of their national existence.

Hence the problem of canonical or ecclesiological unity, which as we have seen is a

self-evident requirement of the very truth of the Church, encounters here difficulties

that cannot be simply reduced to the solutions of the past. And yet, this is precisely

what happens much too often.

On the one hand, there are those who believe that the old pattern of national and

religious unity can be simply applied to America. The Church is Greek in Greece,

Russian in Russia, therefore it must be American in America—such is their reasoning.

We are no longer Russians or Greeks, let us translate services in English, eliminate all

"nationalism" from the Church and be one. Logical as it sounds, this solution is

deeply wrong and, in fact, impossible. For what, in their cheerful but superficial

"Americanism," the partisans of this view seem completely to overlook is that the

rapport between Orthodoxy and Russia, or Orthodoxy and Greece, is fundamentally

different from, if not opposed to, the rapport between Orthodoxy and America.

There is not and there cannot be a religion of America in the sense in which

Orthodoxy is the religion of Greece or Russia and this, in spite of all possible and

actual betrayals and apostasies. And for this reason Orthodoxy cannot be American in

the sense in which it certainly is Greek, Russian or Serbian. Whereas there, in the old

world, Orthodoxy is coextensive with national culture, and to some extent, £r the

national culture (so that the only alternative is the escape: into a "cosmopolitan," viz.

"Western" culture), in America, religious pluralism and therefore, a basic religious

"neutrality," belongs to the very essence of culture and prevents religion from a total

"integration" in culture. Americans may be more religious people than Russians or

Serbs, religion in America may have privileges, prestige and status it has not had in the

"organic" Orthodox countries, all this does not alter the77fundamentally secular

nature of contemporary American culture; and yet it is precisely this dichotomy of

culture and religion that Orthodoxy has never known or experienced and that is

totally alien to Orthodoxy. For the first time in its whole history, Orthodoxy must live

within a secular culture. This presents enormous spiritual problems with which I hope

to deal in a special article. What is important for us here, however, is that the concept

of "Americanization" and merman Orthodoxy is thus far from being a simple one. It

is a great error to think that all problems are solved by the use of English in services,

essential as it is. For the real problem (and we will probably only begin to realize and

to face it when"' everything is translated into English) is that of culture, of the "way of

life." It belongs to the very essence of Orthodoxy not only to "accept" a culture, but

to permeate and to transform it, or, in other terms, to consider it an integral part and

object of the Orthodox vision of life. Deprived of this living interrelation with culture,

of this claim to the whole of life, Orthodoxy, in spite of all formal rectitude of dogma

and liturgy, betrays and loses something absolutely essential. And this explains the

instinctive attachment of so many Orthodox, even American born, to the "national"

forms of Orthodoxy, their resistance, however narrow-minded and "nationalistic," to

a complete divorce between Orthodoxy and its various national expressions. In these

forms and expressions Orthodoxy preserves something of its existential wholeness, of

its link with life in its totality, and is not reduced to a "rite," a clearly delineated

number of credal statements and a set of "minimal rules." One cannot by a surgical

operation called "Americanization" distill a pure "Orthodoxy in itself," without

disconnecting it from its flesh and blood, making it a lifeless form. There can be no

doubt, therefore, that in view of all this, a living continuity with national traditions will

remain for a long time not only a compromise ' meant to satisfy the "old-timers," but

an essential condition for the very life of the Orthodox Church. And any attempt to

build the unity of Orthodoxy here by opposing the "American" to the traditional

national connotations and terms will lead neither to a real unity nor to real

Orthodoxy.

But equally wrong are those who from this interdependence of the national and the

ecclesiastical within Orthodoxy draw the conclusion that, therefore, the ecclesiastical,

i.e. "jurisdictional unity of the Orthodox Church in America is impossible and ought

not even to be sought. This view implies a very narrow and obviously distorted idea

of the Church as a simple function of national identity, values and self-preservation.

"National" becomes here "nationalistic'' and the Church—an instrument of

nationalism. One must confess that one gets tired of the frequent exhortation to

"keep the faith of our fathers." By the same reasoning a man of Protestant descent

should remain Protestant and a Jew a Jew, regardless of their religious convictions.

Orthodoxy should be kept and preserved not because it is the "faith of our fathers,"

but because it is the true faith and as such is universal, all-embracing and truly

catholic. A convert, for example, embraces Orthodoxy not because it is somebody's

"father's faith," but because he recognizes in it the Church of Christ, the fulness of

faith and catholicity. Yet it is impossible to manifest and communicate that fulness, if

the Church is simply identified with an ethnic group and its natural exclusiveness. It is

not the task or the purpose of Orthodoxy to perpetuate and "preserve" the Russian or

the Greek national identity, but the function of Greek and Russian "expressions" of

Orthodoxy is to perpetuate the "catholic" values of Orthodoxy which otherwise

would be lost. "National" here has value not in itself, but only inasmuch as it is

"catholic," i.e. capable of conveying and communicating the living truth of

Orthodoxy, of assuring the organic continuity of the Church. Orthodoxy, if it is to

remain the vehicle and the expression of a national "subculture" (and in America

every exclusive ethnical nationalism is, by definition, a subculture), will share the

latter's inescapable disintegration and dissolution. Orthodoxy as the natural solidarity

and affinity of people coming from the same island, village, geographical area or

nation (and we have, in fact, "jurisdictional" expressions of all these categories) cannot

indefinitely resist and survive the pressure of the sociological law which condemns

such solidarities to a sooner or later death. What is required, therefore, is not only

unity and cooperation among various national "jurisdictions," but a return to the real

idea of unity as expressing the unity of the Church and the catholicity of her faith and

tradition. Not a "united" Church, but the Church.

The unprecedented character of the American Orthodox situation results thus in a

double requirement. The Church here must preserve, at least for a foreseeable period

of time, its organic continuity with the national cultures in which she has expressed

the catholicity of her faith and life. And she must, in order to fulfill this catholicity,

achieve its canonical unity as truly One Church. Is this possible?

5. The Solution: EPISCOPATUS UNUS EST

The answer to this question is in the doctrinal and canonical tradition, but only if we

look for its depth and truth, and not for petty and legalistic "precedents" of a situation

that has none.

The canonical solution of which, in these concluding paragraphs, we can give only a

very general and preliminary sketch, presents itself on three levels, which although

they are levels or aspects of the same ecclesiastical structure must nevertheless be kept

distinct.

There can be no doubt that the unity of the Church, as expressed in her canonical

structure, is expressed, first of all, in and through the unity of the Episcopate.

Episcopatus unus est, wrote St. Cyprian of Carthage in the third century. This means

that each local or particular church is united to all other churches, reveals her

ontological identity with them, in its bishop. Just as every bishop receives the fulness

of his episcopate from the oneness of the Episcopate: expressed in the plurality of the

consecrators, this fulness includes, as its very essence, his unity with the whole

Episcopate. In the preceding pages we have spoken enough of the distortions implied

in canonical subordinationism. It must be strongly emphasized, however, that it is the

distortion of a fundamental truth: the unity and the interdependence of the bishops as

the form of the Church's unity. The error of canonical subordinationism is that it

understands unity only in terms of subordination (of a bishop to his "superiors")

whereas, in Orthodox ecclesiology, subordination or obedience is derived from the

unity of bishops. There: is indeed no power above the episcopal power, but this

power itself implies the bishop's agreement and unity with the whole Episcopate, so

that a bishop separated from the unity of bishops loses ipso facto his "power." [13] In

this sense a bishop is obedient and even subordinated to the unity and unanimity of

bishops, but because he himself is a vital member of that unity. His subordination is

not to a "superior," but to the very reality of the Church's unity and unanimity of

which the Synod of bishops is the gracious organ: "The bishops of every nation must

acknowledge him who is first among them and account him as their head, and do

nothing of consequence without his consent. hilt neither let him. do anything without

the consent of all; for so there will be unanimity" (Apost. Canon 34).

The fundamental form and expression of episcopal unity is the Synod of bishops

and it would not be difficult to show that all subsequent forms of ecclesiastical and

canonical structure (provinces, metropolitan districts, autocephalous churches) grew

from this fundamental form and requirements of the canonical tradition. The various

modes of groupings of local churches may have varied. Thus, the present structure of

Orthodoxy as a family of "autocephalous churches" is by no means the original one.

Yet what cannot change is the "Synod of bishops" as the expression of the Church's

unity. It is very significant, however, that whenever and wherever the spirit of

canonical subordinationism'' triumphs, the idea of the Episcopate's unity and,

therefore, of the Synod of bishops becomes dormant (without, of course,

disappearing completely). When, for example, the Russian Church under Peter the

Great was given the status of a "Department of Orthodox Confession" with, as its

result, a bureaucratic system of administration through subordination, the Russian

Episcopate did not have a plenary Synod for more than two hundred years! And, in

general, since "canonical subordinationism" became more or less the working system

of the Church's government, the bishops themselves felt no need of Synods and

"sobornost." They were satisfied with "Patriarchal" or "Governing" Synods, which,

although retaining something of the original ecclesiological idea, were in fact, the

products of the secular principle of "centralized administration" rather than of the

ecclesiastical norm of episcopal unity. But it is very important that we understand the

difference between a "central administration," even if it is called "Synod," and the true

ecclesiological nature of an episcopal Synod. A central administration may consist of

bishops (as the Russian Holy Synod, or the Patriarchal Synod of Constantinople), but

its very function and nature is to supply the Church with a "high power" not only not

derived from the unity of bishops, but meant to be a power above them. Not only is it

not the expression of the power of the bishops but, on the contrary, it is understood

as the source of their power. But this is a deep distortion of the very nature of power

in the Church, which is the power of the bishops united among themselves and united

with their respective Churches as their priests, patrons and teachers. In the Synod of

bishops properly understood, all Churches are truly represented in the person of their

bishops and, in the early tradition, a bishop without a Church, i.e. without the reality

of his episcopacy, is not a member of the Synod. The Synod of bishops is the "higher

power" because it speaks and acts in and for the Church and takes from the real,

living Church the truth of its decisions.

In the canonical tradition the normal context of the Synod of Bishops is a

"province" i.e., a geographical, territorial group of churches, forming a self-evident

"whole." While the Ecumenical, universal Synod remains an "extraordinary" event,

made necessary by a major crisis, local provincial Synods are to be held at regular

intervals (cf. Apost. Can. 37; First Nicean, Can. 5; Chalcedon, Can. 19; Antioch, Can.

20, Second Nicean, Can. 6; Carthage, Can. 27; Apost. Can. 37). And again, if the

precise definition of a "province" has greatly changed in Church history and, by its

very nature, depends on a great variety of factors, the idea implied in these canons, i.e.

that of a group of churches forming a local church, united by territory and common

concerns, is quite clear. It is that part of the Church Universal, which has all the

necessary and sufficient conditions for a truly catholic existence, in which all churches

are in a real interdependence and share in the same historical "situation."

All this brings us to the first "dimension" of the American canonical solution: the

unity of the Orthodox Church of America is to be achieved and expressed, first of all,

on the level of the Episcopate. There hardly can be any doubt that America is a

"province" in the canonical sense of this term, that all Orthodox churches here,

regardless of their national origin, share in the same empirical, spiritual and cultural

situation, that the life and the progress of each one of them depends on the life and

the progress of the whole. So much has been already acknowledged by our bishops

when they established their Standing Conference. But this Conference is a purely

consultative body, it has no canonical status whatsoever, and useful and efficient as it

is, it cannot solve any of the real problems because it reflects the division of

Orthodoxy here, as much as its unity. The bishops must constitute the Synod of the

Orthodox Church of America and this, prior to any other "unification." For this

Synod will reveal and manifest in itself the unity of the Church which up to now exists

in the defective multitude of mutually independent "jurisdictions.'' And they must and

can do it simply in virtue of their Episcopate which already unites them. It is, in other

words, not something new that is required from them, but the self-evident

manifestation of the truth that Episcopatus Unus Est, of the very essence of the

Episcopate which cannot belong to torches, but always belongs to the Church in her

indivisibility and oneness. One can almost visualize the glorious and blessed day when

some forty Orthodox Bishops of America will open their first Synod—in New York,

or Chicago, or Pittsburgh—with the hymn "Today hath the grace of the Holy Spirit

assembled us together .... "and will appear to us not as "representatives" of Greek,

Russian or any other "jurisdictions" and interests, but as the very icon, the very

epiphany of our unity within the Body of Christ; when each of them and all together

will think and deliberate only in terms of the whole, putting aside for a while all

particular or national problems, real and important as they may be. On that day we

shall "taste and see" the oneness of the Orthodox Church in America even if nothing

else is changed and the various national ecclesiastical structures remain for a while in

operation. But, in fact, much will be changed. Orthodoxy in America will acquire a

center of unity, of cooperation, a sense of direction, a "term of reference." We do not

have to enumerate here all problems that face us and which, at present, cannot be

solved because no "jurisdiction" is strong enough to do it by itself. What is even more

important, this center of hierarchical unity will eliminate the numberless frictions

among "jurisdictions" which result in consecrations of new and sometimes very

dubious bishops. If the duty of the Synod according to canon law, is to approve all

episcopal consecrations "and let those who are absent signify their acquiescence in

writing" 1 Ecum. Canon 4), the very existence of a Synod will bring order into our

jurisdictional chaos, transform it into a truly canonical structure.

6. The Solution: ECCLESIA IN EPISCOPO

The first stage described above is so self-evident that it requires no lengthy

elaboration. The next one has never been really discussed and yet, if given some

thought, appears to be as obvious. It deals with the second level of unity which is that

of the Diocese. At this point, some statistical data may be quite relevant: in the State

of Ohio, to take but one example, there exist at present 86 Orthodox parishes. They

belong to 14 different jurisdictions, which means that every group is very small and,

of necessity, extremely limited in its educational, charitable and any other "extra-

parish" activities. There is no Orthodox Bishop in Ohio, no center of unity except the

local "clergy fellowships." It is not difficult to imagine what could be the possibilities

of all these parishes if they belonged to one local ecclesiastical structure. Deprived of

it, each parish lives "in-itself," without any real vision of the whole. And yet there are

scores of colleges in Ohio with an urgent need for Orthodox programs, there are

obvious educational and charitable needs, and there is, above everything else, the need

for a common Orthodox witness in a non-Orthodox world. But is it not the very

purpose and function of a Diocese to keep the parishes together, to make them living

parts of a greater whole, indeed, the Church? A parish, left to itself, can never be truly

catholic, for it is of necessity limited by the concerns and interests of its people. And

it is maybe one of the greatest and the deepest tragedies of American Orthodoxy that

the parishes have been, in fact, left to themselves and have become selfish and self-

centred institutions. But how can a Bishop living in New York be a living center of

unity and leadership in Ohio, especially if his power is limited to a group of scattered

parishes? No wonder our people grow in an almost complete ignorance of a Bishop's

function in the Church and think of him as a "guest speaker" at a parish celebration.

But suppose we have a Bishop of Ohio. Suppose a diocesan center is established

which guides and centralizes all common concerns of the Orthodox Church in Ohio,

which—instead of being, as it is today a principle of division, becomes a principle of

unity and common life. Is it really necessary to even argue in favor of such a solution?

Is it not a self-evident one? To be sure there are difficulties. The Church is

multinational: to what nationality will the Bishop belong? But is it an absolute

difficulty? Can it not be solved if some goodwill, some patience and, above all, some

desire for unity is shown? Is it very difficult to work out a diocesan constitution which

will incorporate and foresee these difficulties? There could be provisions for a

multinational council to assist the Bishop, a system of rotation of "nationalities," a set

of cheeks and balances. The experience of Orthodox which have almost

spontaneously mushroomed all over thc country shows that a basis already exists for

such a common structure, both spiritually and materially, and that it needs only to be

crowned with its logical, canonical consequence.

7. The Solution: The Parish

Finally, the third level: the parish. It is here that the national cultural unity, which,

whether we like it or not, still constitutes a vital necessity for American Orthodoxy,

fulfills its ecclesiastical function. It is probable that for quite a while the parishes will

remain predominantly, if not exclusively, colored by their national background. This,

of course, does not exclude the establishment of "pan-Orthodox" parishes wherever a

national group is too weak to maintain its own (in new suburbia, for example). But, as

a general rule, a parish cannot live by an "abstract" Orthodoxy. In reality it is always

shaped by this or that liturgical tradition and piety, belongs to a definite "expression"

of Orthodoxy. And it is good that it be so. At this stage of the history of Orthodoxy

in America it would be spiritually dangerous—and we have explained why—to break

this organic continuity of piety and culture, of memory and custom. There are some

among us who dream of "uniformity" in everything, thinking that uniformity and

unity are identical. But this is wrong and it reflects a very formal and not a spiritual

understanding of unity. It may be the source of many blessings for the growing

Orthodox Church in America that it will profit: by the best in each national culture,

will "appropriate" the whole heritage of the Orthodox Church. For through its unity

with parishes of all the other national backgrounds within the Diocesan framework,

each national parish will share its "riches" with the others and, in turn, receive from

the others their gifts— and this is indeed the real catholicity! The national culture of

one group will cease to be a principle of separation, of exclusiveness, of self-

centeredness and, will cease, thus, to deteriorate into a psychological and spiritual

"isolationism." And maybe it is in America that God wants us to heal the multi-secular

national isolation of Orthodox Churches, one from another, and this not by

abandoning all that made the spiritual beauty and meaning of Greek, Russian, Serbian

and all other "Orthodoxies," but by giving each of them finally their catholic and

universal significance. It is here that we can all share and consider as truly our the

spiritual legacies of the Greek Fathers, the paschal joy of St. Seraphim of Sarov, the

warm piety hidden for centuries in the Carpathian mountains. Then and only then

Orthodoxy will be ready for a real encounter with America, for its mission to America

....

In the last analysis the requirements of our Orthodox canonical tradition, the

solution of our canonical problem coincides, strange as it may seem, with the most

practical solution, with common sense. But it is not strange. For Tradition is not a

dead conformity with the past. Tradition is life and truth and the source of life. "Ye

shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free."— free to follow the glorious

Truth and to fulfill in this great country the mission of Orthodoxy.

Notes

[1]"The duty of obedience ceases when the bishop deviates from the Catholic norm, and the people have the right to accuse and even to depose him," G. Florovsky, "Sobornost—The Catholicity of the Church" in The Church of God, London, 1934, p. 72. [2]Cf. John Meyendorff, "One Bishop in One City" (Canon 3, First Ecum. Council) in St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly, 1961, vol. 5, 1-2, pp. 54-62. [3]In all early documents the lists of bishops show their succession on the same "cathedra" and not through their consecrators; cf. for example, Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. V, VI, 1-2; Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. III, 3, 3. On the meaning of episcopal consecration by several bishops, cf. my essay, "The Idea of Primacy in Orthodox Ecclesiology" in The Primacy of Peter, London, 1963, pp. 40 ff., and also G. Florovsky, "The Sacrament of Pentecost'' (A Russian view on Apostolic Succession) in Sobornost, March 1934, pp. 29-35: "Under normal conditions of Church life, Apostolic succession should never become reduced to an abstract enumeration of successive ordainers. In ancient times Apostolic succession usually implied first of all a

succession to a definite cathedra, again in a particular local sobornost. Apostolic Succession does not represent a self-sufficient chain, or order of bishops." [4]G. Florovsky, op. cit., p. 32. [5]"On the day of Pentecost the Spirit descends not only on the Apostles, but also on those who were present with them; not only on the Twelve, but on the entire multitude (compare Chrysostom’s Discourses and his Interpretation of Acts). This means that the Spirit descends on the whole of the Primitive Church, then present in Jerusalem. But though the Spirit is one, the gifts and ministrations of the Church are very varied, so that while in the sacrament of Pentecost the Spirit descends on all, it is on the Twelve alone that He bestows the power and the rank of priesthood promised to them by our Lord in the days of His flesh. The distinctive features of priesthood do not become blurred in the all-embracing fulness of Pentecost. But the simultaneity of this Catholic outpouring of the Spirit on the entire Church witnesses to the fact that priesthood was founded within the sobornost of the church," G. Florovsky, op. Cit., p. 331. [6]For a description of that situation cf. D. Grigorieff, "The Historical Background of Orthodoxy in America" in St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly, vol. 5, 1961, 1-2, p. 3 ff. [7]There were 3 Bishops at the Sobor of Detroit. [8]Cf. Grigorieff, op. cit., pp. 19 ff. and A. Bogolepov, Toward an American Orthodox Church, New York, 1963, pp. 78 ff. [9]Cf. Bogolepov, op. cit., p. 81 and especially Grigorieff, op. cit., pp. 29-32. [10]Quoted in Grigorieff, op. cit., p. 32. [11]Cf. A. Schmemann "Byzantine Theocracy and the Orthodox Church" in St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1953. [12]"In the ordination of a bishop no separate bishop can act for himself as a bishop of a definite and particular local Church He acts as a representative of the sobornost of co-bishops, as a member, and shares of this sobornost... In addition to this it is implied that these bishops are not separated and indeed are inseparable from their flocks. Every co-ordainer acts in the name of Catholic sobornost and fulness... Again, these are not only canonical, or administrative, or disciplinary measures. One feels that there is a mystical depth in them. No realization or extension of Apostolic Succession is other-wise possible apart from the unbreakable sobornost of the whole Church." G. Florovsky, op. cit., p. 31. [13]Cf. my essay "The Idea of Primacy in Orthodox Ecclesiology" cited above and also my essay "Towards a Theology of Councils" in St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 4, 1962.

II. The Liturgical Problem

[St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly, 1964, Vol. 8, #4, pp. 164-185.]

The Situation The Linguistic Reduction The "Rubristic" Reduction The Western Rite The Real Problem Liturgical Teaching Liturgical Restoration Liturgical Translation The Liturgical Problem and "American Orthodoxy"

1. The Situation

The liturgical problem of American Orthodoxy can be formulated as a double

question: how much of our liturgical tradition can be preserved here and how well can

it be preserved? The first question is a quantitative one. An Orthodox born and

educated in America probably does not realize that, of the tremendously rich and truly

"all-embracing" liturgical treasure of the Church, a very small part is really used on the

parish level. The fact must be stated bluntly: from the liturgical point of view we are

rapidly becoming a Sunday Church and even our Sunday worship is drastically

curtailed. To a great, if not overwhelming, majority of our people the liturgical life of

the Church is limited to Sunday morning and two or three additional "must" days:

Christmas, Epiphany, Holy Friday . . . All that, which was so vital, so central, so

essential in the liturgical piety of the past: the feasts and their eves, the "bright

sadness" of the Lenten services, the unique celestial beauty of the Mariological cycle,

the warm, almost personal, commemoration of the Saints, the long and solemn

crescendo of the Holy Week—all this, although it is still dutifully listed in ecclesiastical

calendars—is virtually absent from the real liturgical life. Neglect? Lack of time?

Certainly not, for, at the same time a parish is filled to capacity with activities of all

kinds. In a normal urban community something is "going on" every night: a meeting,

a youth or adult group, a lecture, a dinner, a get-together. But all this is for the parish

hall, not for the Church. During six days the parish is in fact a secular institution—

busy, well-organized, smoothly run, but a liturgical. Worship here is approached and

considered in terms of a "required minimum" and, to be sure, minimum it is.

Therefore, one must ask—is this situation to be taken for granted, as the normal

"adjustment" of Orthodoxy to America, as something not to be questioned any more?

The second problem—how well—is a qualitative one. And by quality I certainly do

not mean beautiful vestments and elaborate musical "numbers,'' the amount of gold

and silver on icons or the money paid for the altar. What I mean is the power of the

liturgy, first, to impress on the soul of man the Orthodox vision of life and, second, to

help him live in accordance with that vision. Or, to put it in simple terms, the

influence of the liturgy on our ideas, decisions, behavior, evaluations—on the totality

of our life. This was for centuries and centuries the real function of the liturgy in the

Orthodox Church: to immerse the man in the spiritual reality, beauty and depth of the

Kingdom of God and to change his mind and his heart. By revealing and manifesting

the "bridal chamber adorned" the liturgy was revealing to man his exile and alienation

from God and thus was bringing him to repentance, to the desire to return to God

and do his commandments. It was both judgment and inspiration, condemnation and

transformation. I do not mean that the Orthodox man of the past was more "moral"

or led a better life. But, at least, he knew he was a sinner and in the best part of

himself he had a nostalgia for the "peace and joy" of the Kingdom; he referred his life

to it and judged it by Christian standards. He knew, and he knew' it by and through

the power of worship, that God wants him m be a saint and that he is not a saint.

Today, however, this power of worship has all but vanished. Worship is something

one must attend and even enjoy, it is a self-evident "obligation" for the religious man,

but it has lost all relevance for the real life. Not that our modern Orthodox is a greater

"sinner," but his whole approach to "sin" and "righteousness," to "right" and "wrong"

has radically changed. It is no longer rooted in the total vision of life as revealed in

worship, but somewhere else—in the "common sense," the "golden rule," the "ideal

of moderation," etc. The Orthodox of the past could lead a miserable life, full of

greed and material preoccupations, but he knew that, as a Christian, he was wrong,

and he knew it because he lived in a world shaped morally and spiritually by the

liturgical experience, by this constantly renewed vision and gift of another Reality, of

the inaccessible, yet desirable, beauty of the Kingdom. The modern Orthodox has lost

this desire and this nostalgia. All he wants from the Church is the acknowledgement

that he is in "good standing," that he has fulfilled his religious obligations and can,

with a free conscience, give himself to the "pursuit of happiness." There exists today a

wall between worship—its spirit, its "message" and "call," and the community, which

in theory exists in order to worship God. And this wall is especially obvious in the

radical "sectarianism" that dominates in fact the daily life of the parish. All problems

of parish administration, management, property, etc. are discussed and understood as

if the two hours spent in Church together, the participation in the Litourgia—a

common and corporate act of worship, sacrifice, love, dedication and reconciliation—

had nothing to do with these problems, were not even meant to have any application

to the "practical" needs and responsibilities of life.

How much, how well…The time has come to face, to ask these questions even if

we do not have immediate and final answers to them. If we are to speak of American

Orthodoxy, we must, first of all, care about it being Orthodox. But Orthodoxy has

always had its heart, its criterion and its power in its worship. And if I am right in

describing our present situation as a deep liturgical crisis, it is here—in an attempt to

understand and to overcome it—that begins our truly responsible preoccupation with

the future of Orthodoxy in America.

2. The Linguistic Reduction

Before we reach the heart of the matter, however, we must give some attention to

the various "reductions" of the liturgical problem, popular among those who care

about the liturgy and are concerned about our present liturgical crisis. I use the term

reduction because the common feature of all these approaches is that instead of

seeing the problem in all its complexities and depth, they reduce it to one aspect,

however important, and consider this aspect as the whole problem. A critical analysis

of such "reductions'' will show, I hope, their insufficiency for the understanding and

treatment of the real issues.

The first and by far the most popular "reduction" can be termed linguistic. Here the

solution to all liturgical difficulties and deficiencies is seen in translating everything

into English. When people will understand the words of the liturgy they will, so to

speak automatically, come back to its true meaning and recover its power—such is, in

a simplified form, the basic affirmation. And of course, no one can really defend the

perpetuation of the liturgical celebration in a foreign tongue, no one can deny the

necessity of translations and the self-obvious need for understanding. And yet, when

all this is granted there remains something which, in spite of all its evident truth,

makes this whole approach only half-true. This something is precisely the reduction of

the whole liturgical problem to its linguistic dimension, the claim that translation

constitutes a panacea against all evils of our present liturgical situation. And this

reduction becomes even dangerous when, in their enthusiasm for a quick translation,

its partisans seem to overlook the tremendous difficulties implied in the very notion

of liturgical translation, or more explicitly, the very problem of liturgical language.

Most of our translators seem to forget that the basic "key" to the liturgy is primarily of

aesthetical and not of rational, nature. Liturgical texts are not mere statements --

theological or ethical -- whose only purpose is to convey and communicate an idea, a

commandment, a knowledge. Or, rather, it is their purpose, but they fulfill it by means

different from those of theology or preaching. The aesthetical element in the liturgy:

in liturgical poetry, music and rite—is not accidental but essential; it is rooted in the

very nature of cult, so that when deprived of it, liturgy ceases properly to fulfill its

very function, which is not simply to communicate ideas about God, but to reveal

"heaven on earth," to put man in direct contact with Reality, of which cult is the

adequate and efficient symbol. In our liturgical tradition this aesthetical structure of

worship is absolutely essential because it is rooted in the Orthodox concept and

experience of the Church as the manifestation in this aion, in this world, of the

Kingdom which is to come, of that ultimate Reality which the Church not only

announces, but of which she makes us partakers. To be sure, liturgy has a didactic or

educational function, one can even say that in a sense the whole of worship is

teaching, is theology, is preaching, yet this teaching not only is not separated and

distinguished from "beauty," but "beauty" is its very content and means of

communication. And it is here that the problem of liturgical translation acquires its

real significance. Two-thirds of all liturgical texts in our tradition are hymns—i.e.

poetry meant to be sung. And poetry is by definition untranslatable for its meaning

lies in the organic blend of the order, the rhythm and the music of words. The

difficulty is increased by the fact that the very complex and sophisticated pattern of

Byzantine hymnography, its whole "genius" is extremely different from the "genius"

of the English language and the patterns of English poetry. One points sometimes to

the success of the Slavonic translations of Byzantine texts. But this success was indeed

unique and can hardly serve as a precedent, because the Slavonic liturgical language

was somehow created in the process of translation and, for all practical reasons, is an

almost miraculous replica of the Greek.

All these difficulties are simply ignored by our translators. They go by the naive

assumption that if one "knows" Greek, Slavonic and English there should be "no

problem" in producing the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete or the Acathistos Hymn —

masterpieces of very subtle and refined poetry! The results, to be quite frank, are

sometimes disastrous. At the best, they provide us with dull, confused and "queer"

(from the point of view of the English language) texts like: "... Boast not, for thou art

flesh, and thrice thou shalt deny Me, Me, Whom all creation blesses, and glorifies to

all ages." or —"... Thou wilt fail me, O Simon Peter, saith the Lord, as soon as the

word is put to thee, although thou art persuaded, and the maidservant approaching

very hastily will dismay thee . . ." At the worst we have simply horrible verses like this

one: "The heifer mourned beholding the Calf elevated on a Tree!"

Needless to say, such translations, although they may have some usefulness in the

classroom where one studies what is meant in this or that liturgical service, are

virtually useless within the liturgy itself where they remain doubly "alien": alien to the

poetical power of the original and alien to the poetical possibilities of the English

language. And the spontaneous and chaotic process of translations that is going on

almost everywhere today, without plan, without supervision, without qualifications

and, what is much more serious—without even the discussion of the problems

involved in translation, can do an almost irreparable harm to the future of American

Orthodoxy. In reality, the question of translation can be answered only within a wider

question—that of the liturgical continuity of Orthodoxy in America. We shall deal

with this question later — in the "positive" part of this article. Now we must turn to

the next—the "rubricistic"—reduction.

3. The "Rubricistic" Reduction

This reduction consists in solving all liturgical problems in terms of "right" and

"wrong" practices, in referring them in a formal and almost juridical way to the

"rubrics" of the Typikon. We must restore services in all their Orthodox purity and

this means, first of al!, that we must fight the numerous Western, Latin, Uniate or

Protestant distortions that have crept into them. Once these distortions are eliminated

all problems will be solved ipso facto. In fact, a few isolated issues (kneeling on

Sunday, Typika, immersion at Baptism, lace in sacerdotal vestments) were selected

and constitute a favorite battleground where accusations and counter-accusations,

denunciations and condemnations provoke on both sides a complex of superiority,

self-righteousness and bitterness. And here again, there can be no doubt that certain

openly non-Orthodox practices must be denounced and fought. But the question is—

in the name of what and how are they to be fought? One can easily imagine a parish

from which all these distortions would be completely eliminated and where everything

will be done in accordance with the "rubrics." Will this formal rectitude by itself and

itself make this parish more "Orthodox" in the sense alluded to at the beginning of

this article' really open to the whole spirit and power of the liturgy, permeating its

whole life with it, and not simply abiding in the self-righteous satisfaction: "we here

do the 'right' things"? And then that whole notion of what is "right" and what is

"wrong," that reference to rubrics—is it all absolutely clear? The Typikon itself, and I

have tried to show it else-where, [1] is far from being "self-explanatory," for it

represents and reflects a peculiarly complicated liturgical development in which many

different strata are sometimes even in contradiction with one another and which

needs to be understood and applied in an effort of reflection and thought. Many of

our practices—those that are universally accepted as "right," are questionable from

the point of view of the genuine liturgical tradition of the Church' the isolation of

Baptism from the Eucharist and its transformation into a private service, the approach

to Communion in terms of a "required minimum," the transfer of Vespers to the

morning and that of Matins to the evening to mention but a few examples. One

should read, for example, the opinions of the Russian Bishops, written in preparation

of the Sobor of 1917 to realize how many liturgical problems were raised by them,

how dissatisfied they were with the liturgical practices of their time. and how pastoral

(and not formal or juridical) they were in approaching all these questions. Simply to

"transplant" the liturgical "situation" of Russia or Greece of the nineteenth century to

America is neither possible nor wise. It is not possible because much of that

"situation" was rooted in and justified by, local conditions which no longer exist; and

it is not wise because not everything then was "right" or "correct" from the truly

liturgical point of view, and the liturgical decay in the Orthodox Church began long

before its appearance in America. The Orthodox Church needs a liturgical revival and

renewal not less than the Christian West and the lasting success and a certain

"absolutizing" of books like Bulgakov's Desk-Manual for Pastors—books totally

deprived of theological, historical and spiritual perspective and even elementary

liturgical knowledge, only indicates how far we still are from the real concern for the

"right" things in liturgy.

Similar to "rubricisticism" is the widely spread obsession with uniformity. For

several centuries the Orthodox Church happily lived with a certain pluralism of

liturgical customs and traditions, pluralism which in no way diminished its

fundamental liturgical unity. The student of the early Church knows what a wonderful

and rich variety of liturgical expressions existed in the "golden age" of Christian

liturgy. No doubt a certain degree of uniformity—especially here, in America—is

necessary and, therefore, desirable. But that it has become a real obsession, that one

can for decades discuss the "Orthodox" form of the Cross or the cut of priestly

vestments—is the sign of an unhealthy and dangerous preoccupation with the

externals at the expense of the meaning of worship. "In things necessary unity, in

things dubious—liberty, in all things—charity"—this axiom seems to have been

completely forgotten and the level of liturgical interests and debates remains

incredibly low. And, of course, the tragedy again is that uniformity for uniformity's

sake does not solve any real problem and only obscures its true scope.

4. The Western Rite

A few years ago I had the opportunity to express my views on the Western Rite in

the American Orthodox Church and since my convictions have not changed. I can

only repeat here what I wrote in my answer to Father W. Schneirla's brilliant and

thoughtful defense of the Western rite. [2]

In my article I wrote: "Let me first of all make it clear that theoretically I find myself

in basic agreement with Father Schneirla. The unity of rite in the Orthodox Church is

comparatively a late phenomenon and the Church never considered liturgical

uniformity a conditio sine qua non of her unity. No one who knows the history of

Christian worship will deny the richness of the Western liturgical tradition, especially

that of the old and venerable Roman liturgy. One may even ask whether the liturgical

unification performed by Byzantium and which deprived the Orthodox East of the

wonderful liturgies of Alexandria, Syria, Mesopotamia, etc. was in itself a wholly

positive achievement. Last, but not least, it is obvious that in case of an eventual

return of the West to Orthodoxy, the Western Church will have her own Western

Liturgy and this will mean a tremendous enrichment of the Church Universal. In all

this and thus far my agreement with Father Schneirla is complete.

"My doubts concern not the theoretical, but the practical aspect of the whole

problem. Yet by practical, I mean something much more important than the simple

question of prerequisites which would make a definite rite formally acceptable as

'Orthodox.' No doubt, in advocating the Western Rite, Father Schneirla is ultimately

moved by practical, i.e. missionary considerations: its acceptance by the Church

should make conversion to Orthodoxy easier for Western Christians. Such is also the

main motivation of Metropolitan Antony's Edict it (i.e., the Western Rite) might serve

the, purpose of facilitating the conversion of groups of non-Orthodox Western

Christians to the Church...' Maybe it is unfair to point out that the scholarly and

objective analysis by Fr. Schneirla of the various Orthodox experiments in the western

Rite hardly substantiates this optimistic assertion that some future experiment can

achieve a greater measure of success in such corporate conversion. The center of my

doubts is not here. For me, the only important question is: What exactly do we mean

by conversion to Orthodoxy? The following definition will, I presume, be acceptable

to everybody: it is the individual or the corporate acceptance of the Orthodox faith

and the integration in the life of the Church, in the full communion of faith and love.

If this definition is correct, we must ask; can the 'conversion' of a group or a parish,

for which its spiritual leaders have signed a formal doctrinal statement and which has

retained its Western rite, however purified or amended, can such a 'conversion'—in

our present situation, i.e., in the whole context of the Orthodox Church as she exists

in America today – be considered as a true conversion? Personally, I doubt it very

much. And I consider this growing interpretation of conversion in terms of a mere

jurisdictional belonging to some Orthodox Diocese, of a 'minimum' of doctrinal and

liturgical requirements and of an almost mechanical understanding of the 'Apostolic

Succession' as a very real danger to Orthodoxy. This means the replacement of

Orthodoxy of 'content' by Orthodoxy of 'form,' which certainly is not an Orthodox

idea. For we believe that Orthodoxy is above all, faith that one must live, in which

one grows, a communion, a 'way of life' into which one is more and more deeply

integrated. And now, whether we want it or not, this living faith, this organic spirit

and vision of Orthodoxy is being preserved and conveyed to us mainly if not

uniquely, by the Orthodox worship. In our state of national divisions, of theological

weakness, in the lack of living spiritual and monastic centers, of unpreparedness of

our clergy and laity for more articulate doctrinal and spiritual teaching, of absence of a

real canonical and pastoral care on the part of the various jurisdictional centers, what

holds the Orthodox Church together, assures its real continuity with tradition and

gives the hope of a revival is precisely the liturgical tradition. It is a unique synthesis of

the doctrinal, ethical and canonical teachings of Orthodoxy and I do not see how a

real integration into the Orthodox Church, a genuine communion of faith and life

may be achieved without an integration into the Orthodox worship.

"I agree with Fr. Schneirla and I have said it on several occasions, that our liturgical

tradition has to be purified from many local, antiquated and sometimes utterly un-

Orthodox elements and practices. Nevertheless, it stands at present as a living bond

of unity and koinonia.

"And then the last question: is it quite correct to define our rite as 'East-em' and

therefore 'foreign to all the Western Christians have known' to quote the Edict? I

would like to suggest a rather sharp distinction between 'Eastern' and 'oriental.' No

doubt there are many oriental features, oriental ingredients in our liturgical life. No

doubt also, that for many Orthodox this 'orientalism' seems to be the essential

element. But we know that it is not essential and we know that progressively all these

'orientalisms' are being eliminated in a very natural and spontaneous process of

adjustment of our cult to the American life. But then what remains and what can be

described as 'Eastern' is nothing else but the Biblical and Patristic, and therefore, it is

'Eastern' in exactly the same measure in which the Bible and the Fathers, or rather,

the whole Christianity can be termed 'Eastern.' But have we not proclaimed time and

again in all our encounters with our Western brothers that it is this 'East' precisely that

constitutes the common and the catholic heritage of the Church and can supply us

with a common language which has been lost or distorted? The Liturgy of St. John

Chrysostom or the Easter Canon of St. John of Damascus, are, I believe, much closer

to that common171and Catholic language of the Church than anything else in any

Christian tradition. And I cannot think of any word or phrase in these services that

would be 'foreign' to a Western Christian and would not be capable of expressing his

faith and his experience if the latter would be genuinely Orthodox.

"These considerations, however fragmentary and incomplete, lead to the following

conclusion: I think that in the present situation of the Orthodox Church in America,

the Western Rite, theoretically justified and acceptable as it is, would, instead of

'facilitating conversion,' dangerously multiply spiritual adventures of which we have

had too many in the past, and which can but hinder the real progress of Orthodoxy in

the West."

5. The Real Problem

But what then is the real problem and what are the ways to its solution? It is my

deep conviction that the roots of our liturgical crisis are to be found not in any

particular "deviation"—although there are many of them; not in the linguistic

barrier—although, to be sure it is a very serious one, but first of all in the totally new

and unprecedented situation of Orthodoxy in America and within the "American Way

of Life." Deviations and, to some extent, even the linguistic "conservatism" are not

the causes but the result of that situation, which, in my article dealing with canonical

problems, I described as shaped primarily by the secularism of Western culture in

general and of the "American Way of Life" in particular. For the first time in her long

history, the Orthodox Church is to live within a culture, a "way of life" to which she is

deeply alien, and this, not because of her "oriental-ism" or a difference in ethnical

background, but, because of her fundamental theological and spiritual

presuppositions, of her whole "worldview." Secularism is a complex phenomenon and

it is impossible, of course, to analyze it here in all its aspects. For our purpose it is

sufficient to define it as the autonomy of the secular, i. e. worldly life of man and

society from religion and its scale of values, a radical distinction between the religious

and the secular "sectors" of life. Secularism is not necessarily anti-religious: America,

for example, is both deeply religious and deeply secularistic. It may sincerely proclaim

the need for religion, give it a place of honor and cover it with many privileges. But

this coexistence, cooperation and even mutual inspiration does not alter the

fundamental dichotomy of religion and life. Religion can supply life with ethical

standards, with help and comfort, but it cannot transform life into religion, make it a

religious life whose very content is God and His Kingdom. Thus, for example, a

businessman can believe in God and in the immortality of the soul, he can pray and

find great help in prayer, but once he has entered his office and begun working, this

work itself is not even supposed to be "referred to" the fundamental religious realities

of Creation, Fall and Redemption, but is indeed "self-sufficient" or autonomous.

But the Orthodox "worldview" excludes secularism, for it is indeed the central and

all-embracing idea and inspiration of Orthodoxy that the whole life not only belongs

to God, but is to be made God-like and God-centered, transformed into communion

with God, and, therefore—no "sector" of human activity or creativity, be it the most

"secular" or "profane" can be neutral, not capable of being sanctified, i. e.

transformed into communion with God. This is not naive optimism, for Orthodoxy

knows and affirms that the fulfillment of all sanctification is in the Kingdom which is

beyond this world. It knows and affirms that there is no other way to that fulfillment

but the "narrow way" of renunciation and self-denial. Yet, it affirms with equal

certitude that in the Incarnation, Death, Resurrection and Glorification of the Son of

God the whole life and not its "spiritual" or "religious" part, was returned to God and

made again life in God.

And the means of this sanctification of life and the world is precisely the liturgy. For

in liturgical worship we are not only put "in contact" with God, but are given the

vision of the Kingdom of God, as fulfillment in Him of all that exists, of all that He

has created for Himself, and also we are made partakers of that new Reality. And

having seen and tasted of the "heaven and earth as full of His glory" we are then to

relate all life, all activity, all time to this vision and experience, to judge and to

transform our life by it. Thus the very "other-worldliness" of the liturgy makes it a real

power of transformation in "this world." This has always been the liturgical

experience within Orthodoxy . . . Not that this experience has always and

automatically led to positive results and really transformed human existence—there

were probably as many sins and deficiencies in the "Orthodox" societies as in any

other society—but, as I wrote elsewhere: "... self-satisfaction was not one of them.

Toward the end of the Byzantine period, it was as if the whole Church were decked in

black monastic garb and had taken the road of repentance and self-condemnation.

The stronger the outward victory of the Church and the more solemn, rich and

magnificent the outward forms of Christian Byzantinism became, the more strongly

sounded this outcry of repentance, the entreaty for forgiveness: 'I have sinned, I have

transgressed' · .. The surpassing beauty and splendor of St. Sophia; the holy rhythm,

seeming to measure eternity, of the liturgical mystery that revealed heaven on earth

and transformed the world again and again into its pristine cosmic beauty; the bitter

sadness and reality of sin, the awareness of constant downfall—all this was the

ultimate profundity of this world and the fruit of the Church within it. [3] It means

that, the whole life was at least seen and judged in the light of the Kingdom as

manifested in the liturgy; it means also that there was within that world a hunger and

thirst not only for the "right things" but for the total perfection announced by the

Gospel, and last but not least, the certitude that if not for the weakness and sinfulness,

that perfection is the only destiny worthy of man, the "image of God's ineffable

glory."

Our tragedy here, in America, is that the liturgy ceased to be thus related to life in its

totality, to serve in the true sense as Sanctification of life. And this was not because of

any greater sinfulness or laziness of our communities, but precisely because of

secularism's philosophy of life which is "taken for granted" without our clergy or

people even being aware of it. Secularism is not the product of any special

indoctrination; it is the very way of life of the American society. It comes to us by

thousands of channels: through schools, through publicity, through magazines,

through the whole "ethos" of our society. And yet it is a consistent, closed and very

powerful philosophy of life which, unless it is challenged and questioned as a whole,

not only cannot be overcome but even seen and understood as something radically

alien to Orthodoxy. Maybe nowhere can one better realize to what degree secularism

has invaded our Orthodox communities than in the pattern of our parish life. We

constantly discuss the relationship within the Church of clergy and laity, their

respective "rights" and "obligations" in the administration of parish affairs. Yet what

is never seriously discussed in this whole debate is the nature of these "parish affairs,"

their relation to the whole purpose and nature of the Church. For, indeed, if the main

"content" of Church administration is to "count money"—i. e., to care for the

material "success" of a parish, one does not see very well (and here the laity certainly

have a point) why a priest should do it better or more competently than a group of

"professional'' men. And if the priest simply proclaims and affirms his right to do it,

there is not one single chance that this conflict will be ever solved in a Christian

Orthodox way. For as long as "counting money" remains unrelated to the "offering"

and the "offering" to the Eucharist and, finally, the Eucharist to the whole life, as

long, in other terms, as it has not been transformed into a religious act ~ and to

perform this transformation is exactly the duty of the Priest because he offers the

Sacrifice of the Church to God, makes our life sacrifice—as long as all this is not

comprehended, the parish remains a secular society and it is irrelevant, in the last

analysis, who "presides" at its meetings—a priest or a layman. But, I repeat, this

ultimate question is not raised on either side—the clerical or the lay—because in fact

both sides have accepted a secularistic idea of administration, "fights," "obligations,"

etc., because in their own consciousness all this is related in no way to the two hours

spent together—as the Church of God—"upstairs," in the Eucharistic gathering. But

if even within the Church herself, a vital "sector" of her life is viewed entirely in

secular terms and all reference to the meaning of the Church as revealed in the liturgy

is simply and radically ignored as irrelevant, how can one even speak of the liturgy's

impact on the really secular life? In fact, all aspects of our life—be it family,

profession, relaxation or education —~ are shaped and governed by principles and

standards which no one has even tried to "reconsider" in the light of the "worldview"

communicated to us in the liturgy. The latter becomes thus an engine not connected

to the wheels, producing an energy which nowhere becomes motion, light or warmth.

And in this situation it becomes inevitable that the approach to the liturgy, its

fundamental comprehension undergoes a radical transformation. The question, which

underlies the whole liturgical experience of Orthodoxy, "what does it reveal about me

and my life, what does it mean for my activity and my relation to men, nature and

time," is replaced little by little by all entirely different question: "how much of the

liturgy is needed to put me in 'good standing' "? And where religion becomes a matter

of obligation and good standing, there inevitably all questions concerning the "right"

and the "wrong" practices acquire a kind of independence from their moral,

existential, truly religious implications. The priest is satisfied if he celebrates the

"correct" liturgy, the people are satisfied if they know exactly the amount of their

religious obligations, the whole parish is proud of its beautiful church and beautiful

services—but that which, from the very beginning was the real fruit of the Liturgy,

that unique mixture of joy ("We have seen the true light") and deep dissatisfaction or

repentance ("I see thy bridal chamber adorned but I have no garment to enter it"),

that challenge to my whole life, that call to perfection, that nostalgia for a change, a

transformation, a transfiguration — all this is absent. The liturgy is still the center of

our Church life, unquestioned, unchallenged, unopposed. But it is in fact a center

without periphery, a heart with no control on blood circulation, a fire with nothing to

purify and to consume, because that life which had to be embraced by it, has been

satisfied with itself and has chosen other lights to guide and to shape it.

6. Liturgical Teaching

Having stated all this we seem to find ourselves in a vicious circle. For on the one

hand, if it is secularism—i.e. the alienation of the way of life from the Church's vision

of life that conditions our liturgical crisis, by depriving the liturgy from its relevance

and, therefore, power, no translation, no restoration of the "right practices" will by

themselves cure the disease. It is the language of the Church in the deep all-

embracing, and not only linguistic, meaning of the word that man and society do not

hear or understand, the language which includes the texts and the rites, the whole

rhythm and the whole structure of worship. For man had adopted, without even

knowing it, another way of looking at himself and at his life and this makes him truly

blind and deaf to the liturgy which he dutifully attends. Yet, on the other hand, only

liturgy can—and we have explained why—break through this all-pervading

secularism, for it has always been the proper function of worship to communicate and

to convey to man that vision which alone can instill in him the desire for change, the

nostalgia for the ineffable glory of his vocation, that true repentance (metanoia—

change of mind) which alone can judge, redeem and transform.

But it is good that we have reached what looks like a dead-end. For only now can

we see the real problem in all its complexity and cope with it without reducing it to

pseudo-solutions. It is indeed the eternal logics of Christianity that it wins only when

it faces reality, when it sees the truth about each situation and calls things by their

names. And once we have adopted this attitude we understand that, in fact, there is no

vicious circle, no dead-end, but the same and eternal conflict which each Christian

generation must rediscover for itself, for it is the very Christian condition in the

world. We understand that instead of giving orders and prescribing, we must start

working; this work will be a difficult and thankless one, and finally its success will

depend on our patience and our readiness to go to the very bottom of the difficulties

we face.

The beginning of all Christian work is always in teaching. And we must realize that

we have no liturgical teaching, if by liturgical teaching one means precisely the

consistent explanation of the liturgical language of the Church, the initiation of man

into the mystery of the Church's worship. Such teaching may have not been necessary

as long as the Church and the world spoke the same language, i.e. referred themselves

to the same values, had the same vision of the ultimate meaning of things, as long, in

other terms, as the world, in spite of all its "worldliness," was not secularistic. Today,

however, such initiation is an absolute necessity, the very condition of any liturgical

restoration or, rather, of the restoration of liturgy to its proper function and meaning

in the Church. But the real liturgical teaching and it is here that we approach the heart

of the whole matter- is precisely the explanation of the liturgy in its connection to life,

revelation of its "existential" power. As such, this liturgical teaching is almost

diametrically opposed to the popular and extremely superficial "symbolical"

interpretation of rites, interpretation which "fits" very well the secularistic mentality

because it does not challenge, judge or question anything in it. To say, for example,

that the "Little Entrance" in the Divine Liturgy "symbolizes" Christ going to preach is

to satisfy a natural inclination for religious pageantry, of which the "secular" man is

very fond (cf. his love for ceremonies, processions, rehearsals of weddings, etc.) but

certainly not to raise questions about himself and his own life. To explain it, however,

as something that 176 happens to him and to the whole Church, as the real (and not

symbolical) movement of the Church entering into the Presence of God, summoned

to His throne, separated from the world, lifted into a totally other dimension of

reality, immersed in the very Holiness of God ("Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy

Immortal..." of the Trisagion) is to challenge the man not only with his own

participation in the liturgy but also with the truly "awful" implications it has for his

whole life. [4] For if indeed as a Christian I am the one who has been given access to

the heavenly things, united to God and made participant of Christ's entrance into the

Kingdom, then the words of the Apostle are applicable to me: "for it is impossible for

those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were

made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the

powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again and again

unto repentance; seeing they crucify the Son of God afresh and put him to an open

shame" (HEB. 6.4). All of a sudden the liturgy ceases to be a "venerable,'' "ancient,"

"colorful" and "beautiful" rite and becomes a terribly serious thing. All of a sudden

my whole life is questioned and everything in it is seen under this terrifying possibility:

"to put the Son of God to an open shame." And this possibility is here because the

liturgy reveals to me who I am, what I am given, it puts me face to face with the glory

of the Kingdom and, therefore, reveals the exile and alienation from God of my

whole life...

The water of baptism, the anointment of the body, the bread and wine of our

eucharistic offering, the dates and hours of our calendar—all this makes our liturgy

very "real," very "material"—connects it with the real life, the real matter, the real time

of our world in order to give them a new meaning, and put into them a new power.

The tragedy of secularism is precisely that it "disconnects" these two orders of

existence and makes "food," "love," "time," "matter," "money" entities-in-themselves,

incapable of transformation, closed to grace. And, therefore, secularism is very happy

with the "sacred symbolism" so often offered as Christian teaching because it leaves

intact and unquestioned the self-sufficiency of the "real life." But the one who has

understood, be it only partially, that all food and, therefore, all life as maintained by

food, is directly related to the great mystery of the Eucharist ("eat... drink...") is already

beginning to look at the world in a new way, to see in it what he has seen before. And

this precisely is for secularism the beginning of its end.

Thus the liturgical teaching can be defined as making explicit the Christian

philosophy of life or way of life implied in the liturgy. Let us not be mistaken: this

teaching is to be created almost ex nihilo, because for centuries, in fact since the

disappearance of the catechumenate in its early form, it was simply non-existent.

Neither theology nor piety paid much attention to this "existential" aspect of the

liturgy. Theology—because, under the Western influences which pervaded it since the

end of the patristic age, it adopted a purely intellectual structure, [5] and piety,

because, as said above, in the "organic" Orthodox worlds of the past, secularism was

only beginning to creep in and to undermine the "wholeness" of the Orthodox vision

of life, and piety thus remained, in spite of possible deficiencies, liturgical in its

essence and inspiration. To create such teaching, to find for it right words and the

right perspective is an urgent task—for theologians and pastors, for all those who are

concerned with religious education. This is the first—the "theoretical"—step towards

the solution of the liturgical crisis.

7. Liturgical Restoration

But it is only this theory, the effort to create a consistent understanding of the

liturgy and its meaning for life that can provide us with a "blueprint" of a real liturgical

restoration. The deficiency of the "rubricistic reduction" discussed above is that in its

goal for restoring and defending the "right" things it mixes things essential with those

that are non-essential, wants to restore practices which may be secondary and omits

or overlooks issues of primordial importance. What is absent here is the pastoral, and

this means, the truly liturgical approach to, and interest in, the liturgy as concerned

primarily with the life of man, with its churching [6] and not as a "correct-thing-in-

itself." And it is only when we begin to think in these pastoral terms that it becomes

possible to plan a real, and not nominal, restoration of the liturgical life, for the plan

itself is then rooted in our real needs, in the difficult fight for human souls.

It is impossible to give here more than a few isolated "hints" of what such a

"blueprint" ought to contain. There can be no doubt, for example, that the first and

the most important revelation of the Christian vision of life in all its aspects: cosmical,

social, personal, ecclesiological, spiritual, material and eschatological, has always been

given and communicated in the liturgy of baptism, which in the past constituted,

together with the Eucharist, the "focal" point of the whole liturgical life of the

Church. [7] Yet it is not only difficult, it is impossible to reveal and to communicate

this all-embracing and decisive meaning of Baptism, if the latter is virtually absent

from the liturgy of the Church and has become a private family ceremony. How can

an adult Christian, who, of course, does not remember his own baptism, realize that

his own life as Christian and the life of the whole Church are rooted in that great act

of rebirth and renewal, that made him a citizen of heaven and, therefore, has given a

wholly new dimension to his life in the world? How can he "experience" the Church

as indeed created and recreated through Baptism if he simply does not see it

performed as an act of the Church? And yet properly understood, taught and

performed, the Liturgy of Baptism is, indeed, the very first challenge to secularism,

the very key to our life as Christians in "this world."

The liturgical restoration must then begin at the very beginning: with the restoration

of Baptism as the liturgical act concerning the whole Church, as the very source of all

liturgical piety which, in the past, was first of all a baptismal piety, a constant reference

of the whole life to this mystery of its renewal and regeneration through the baptismal

death and resurrection. This means, first, the celebration of Baptism within the

eucharistic gathering of the Church. It is enough simply to read the texts of baptism

and chrismation to understand that they organically lead to the fulfillment of the

sacrament of initiation in the sacrament of the Church, that they are the entrance into

the eucharistic fulness and fulfillment of the Church. It means also the preparation of

the whole community (and not only of the immediate relatives) for the baptism, a

"baptismal preaching" in which the liturgy of baptism: exorcisms, blessing of water,

anointment with the "oil of gladness," immersion, the white garment and chrismation

would be revealed again in their "existential" meaning for the whole Church as the

community of baptized men, would ~ referred to life. And this means, finally, the

explanation in terms of baptism of repentance which is the fundamental dimension of

the Christian life, its openness to Divine judgment, its ability to be transformed by

grace.

The second area of liturgical restoration is certainly that of our eucharistic piety. Of

the many important problems involved here, the most urgent one is that of the proper

understanding of communion. From its reduction either to a "religious obligation" to

be performed once a year, or to an individual act of piety, completely disconnected

from the liturgy as a corporate act, we must return to its true liturgical nature, and,

first of all, to its relation to the Eucharist as offering and thanksgiving. The present

eucharistic piety can very well exist within a perfectly secularistic worldview because it

is nowhere related to life as a whole. It is a contact with the "super-natural" that has

nothing to say to, or about, the "nature." And only if we rediscover that the bread and

wine of the Eucharist are, first of all, our very life, our "nature," our whole work and

its whole matter .... offered to God in Christ, returned to God in order to become

again what God meant it to be from the very beginning—communion with God, only

if we thus relate our whole life to the Eucharistic offering, can we understand the act

of communion as God entering our life in order to fill it with His transforming grace.

To take the same example—when a "Church Committee" will understand that its

meeting is a direct continuation of the Divine Liturgy, its fulfillment in life, and not a

"business session" dealing with the "material" problems of the parish, radically distinct

from the "spiritual" ones which were dealt within the service, our piety will begin to

undermine secularism. But what an effort, what a real conversion of our whole

liturgical consciousness is needed to achieve this!

Then, the whole liturgical experience of time, so obviously central in the structure

of worship, in its rhythm of preparation and fulfillment, fast and feast, liturgical

seasons, etc., must be "deciphered," i.e. understood and explained in their relation to

the real time of our life, to all time, [8] and not only to the "sacred" hours we spend in

Church. I have said above that we are rapidly becoming a "Sunday" Church, but even

if we succeed in adding to Sunday a few more "days of obligation," this by itself will

not change the secularistic view and experience of time, its total autonomy from the

days and hours of worship. For the liturgy is sanctification of time and not of certain

moments of time. And it sanctifies time by referring it—by means of the liturgy of

time—to that event, the Coming of Christ, which transformed time, made it a

meaningful pilgrimage towards the Kingdom of God. The liturgy of time has always

had a double rhythm: that of repentance, preparation, effort, expectation—and this in

liturgical terms, is the function of fasts, eves, vigils; and that of fulfillment and joy—

and this is the feast. They represent and convey to us the two fundamental

dimensions or experiences of Christian life. It is rooted, first of all, in the joy of

knowing Christ, of being with Him, of remembering Him. And it is rooted, also, in

the "bright sadness" of repentance, in the experience of life as exile and effort. Both

are extremely essential and to restore the liturgy of time is, therefore, to restore this

basic rhythm. It is not true that people do not come to Church on holy days because

they have no time. One always has time for what one enjoys. People do not come to

Church because they quite literally do not enjoy it and they do not enjoy it because the

very reality of joy is absent from our teaching and preaching, from the way we present

the liturgy in terms of obligations, of musts and must-not. I mentioned before, that

there is always something going on in the evening in the parish hall. Yet evenings have

always been the basic liturgical "time" in the Church. And if, by a slow and patient

effort, we could restore—in ourselves, first of all—the joy of this "liturgy of time,"

reveal and "put across" its heavenly beauty, be it the beauty of penitential services, the

spiritual beauty of repentance, or the beauty of joy, as revealed in the feasts, not only

will people "come back," but they will understand the importance of these services for

their "secular" life as well.

The true liturgical restoration will come not from a blind compliance with the

"rubrics" but from their understanding. And this requires a tremendous effort of

entering into the spirit of the worshipping Church.

8. Liturgical Translation

This brings us back to the problem of translation. There can be no doubt that if

Orthodoxy is to become truly American, it will be an English-speaking and an

English-praying Orthodoxy. But precisely because of the tremendous importance of

this linguistic integration and of all that we have said about the function of the liturgy

in our "secularistic" predicament, the mere notion of translation is not sufficient. I

have explained why, for as long as American Orthodoxy is only translated it is neither

fully American nor fully Orthodox. It is not fully American because the literal

translations of Byzantine or Russian texts (and these are the only translations we have

so far) remain odd and alien to the genius of English language, result in—to say the

truth Greek or Russian services in English, but not English services. And it is not fully

Orthodox because what gives these texts their real power and fulfills their liturgical

function—their beauty, is simply lost in these literal renderings. But again a situation

which seems hopeless is hopeless only as long as we do not dare to take the problem

in all its seriousness and apply to it the only remedy: the faith in the Church which

"never grows old but always renews her youthfulness." And it means, in this particular

case, that the true continuity with the living Tradition of the Church requires from us

more than translation: a real re-creation of the same and eternal message, its true

incarnation in English. One example will help to understand what I mean. Recently

the diary of Dag Hammarskjo1d—a deeply poetical and mystical document in which

the late Secretary General of the United Nations expressed his religious life, was

translated from Swedish into English by the poet W. H. Auden. In his preface, Auden

confesses that he does not know one single word in Swedish. He used a literal

translation—but he recreated it and gave it, so to speak, a value and an existence,

independent from the Swedish original. Yet he could do it only because he was in

"sympathy" with the content of Hammarskjo1d's book, understood from "inside" his

religious experience. Mutatis mutandis this example can be applied to our situation.

The problem is not just to translate but to give again the hymns and the texts of the

Byzantine liturgy the power they have in the original and which is rooted in the

organic unity of meaning and "beauty." Yet to achieve this, one must go beyond the

literal meaning and understand the place and the function of a given text or series of

texts within the whole, their relation to the entire message of the service of which they

are a part. Here again, the understanding of the whole precedes and conditions the

real under-standing of any part of this whole. It provides us, first, with the criterion by

which to judge what-in this particular "whole"—is essential and must be preserved

and what is merely accidental, repetitious and of doubtful liturgical quality. It will,

then, provide us with a method of translation which is not necessarily a blind

"faithfulness" to the original' it may be that in order to convey the meaning and the

power of the original, one has to paraphrase it and shorten it, rather than try to

"squeeze" into the sober English the luxurious and untranslatable "richness" of the

Byzantine text.

Thus, for example, if one understands the meaning of Palm Sunday as being the

great messianic feast, the solemn liturgical affirmation of Christ’s Lordship in the

world, and, therefore as the inauguration of the Holy Week, which is the fulfillment of

Christ's victory over the "prince of this world," if one has, in other words, the vision

of the whole—the interdependence of the Lazarus Saturday, the Palm Sunday and

Pascha, one has the key to the proper "recreation" of the liturgy of Palm Sunday. One

sees, first of all, the central position and function within the service of the messianic

greetings: "Hosanna" and "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord," the

theme of Jerusalem as the Holy Sion, as the place where the history of salvation is to

find its fulfillment, the constant reference to Zachariah’s dichotomy: "King" and

"lowly" as reference to the Kingdom of peace and love which is being inaugurated,

and, finally, the leit motiv of the whole service "Six days before the Passover" by

which this feast is set as the "ante-feast" of the Holy Week, the real entrance of the

Messiah into His glory. Then having "seen" all this, having truly entered the mind of

the Church as she celebrates this feast and the mind of those who expressed this

celebration, one will not simply translate, but, indeed, express the same celebration,

although maybe in texts somewhat different from the original, shortened here,

paraphrased there, omitted or even replaced in certain places. I do not claim to be a

specialist in English, which is not my native tongue. But, as a very "tentative" example

let me once more hint at what I mean by "re-creation." Here is one stichera of Palm

Sunday in literal translation:

"Six days before the Passover, thy voice, O Lord, was heard in the depths of

Hades, by which Thou hast risen Lazarus of four days; as to the children of

Israel, they were shouting 'Hosanna'; O our God glory to Thee."

If we remember that this text is to he sung, and yet heard as a whole, all these "by

which," "for which cause," "as to," the endless genitives, the heavy forms such as "for

which cause, the Hebrew children, bearing branches of trees in their hands, exalted

him with the shout," not only create an anticlimax to music (as if someone were

singing a paragraph from a newspaper), but they simply do not communicate the

synthetic image underlying these words. The structure of Greek language is different:

there "for which cause," or "in which" never acquire the phonetical independence

which they have in English: they frame the main word or symbol without burdening it

to such a degree that it is completely lost in this heavy gravy. A first requirement,

therefore, is to cut the Byzantine period into short affirmative (kerygmatic!) sentences,

centering each in one clear image and by-passing all words or even images, that "fit"

into the Greek, but dissolve the English sentence. A possible rendering could be then

something like this:

Six days before Pascha

Thy voice was heard in Hades.

It raised Lazarus.

Hosanna, glory to thee..."

Another stichera from the same service in literal translation:

"When Thou was entering the Holy City sitting upon an ass, Thou was

speeding to come to suffering in order to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. As

to the Hebrew children, foretelling the victory of the Resurrection, they met

Thee with branches and palms, saying, Blessed art Thou O Saviour, have mercy

on us…"

Possible translation:

"Entering the Holy City

Riding upon an ass,

He was coming to suffer,

To fulfill the Law and the Prophets.

The palms and the branches

Announced the victory of the Resurrection.

Blessed art Thou, O Saviour,

Have mercy upon us."

Needless to say, this work of "re-creation" cannot be amateurish. The whole point

of my thought is that it requires a very serious liturgical and theological study of the

liturgy, of its structure, of its connotations. We need, indeed, a liturgical movement:

the rediscovery of the meaning first, then its "reincarnation" in adequate words and

categories. But nothing short of that serious and patient work will make our liturgy

again what it has always meant to be and to fulfill in the Church.

9. The Liturgical Problem and "American Orthodoxy"

I hope I have made it sufficiently clear that the future of "American Orthodoxy"

depends, to a large degree, on our proper understanding and proper treatment of the

liturgical problem. At present this future is viewed in two mutually exclusive ways.

There are those, on the one hand, who in the name of Orthodoxy reject its

"Americanization" and there are those, on the other hand, who are ready, in the name

of "Americanization" to give up much of Orthodoxy. For the first group, the future

of Orthodoxy in America can only mean the perpetuation of Greek or Russian

Orthodoxy and the attitude, here, is that of a pure negativism: the whole world is in

Apostasy and the Church, to preserve Orthodoxy, must simply isolate herself in an

artificially recreated past. In the second group, by far the most numerous, acceptance

of America and "Americanization" may mean a simple surrender to secularism;

recently a group of lay parish leaders took an Encyclical addressed to the parishes and

signed by several bishops to a non-Christian lawyer in order to "check" whether the

episcopal text offers sufficient guarantees to the "rights" and the "property" of their

communities. At this point one can only wonder how much "Orthodoxy" is left and,

more particularly, what it may mean in the minds of those Church officials. What does

not seem to be realized on both sides, by the supporters of both attitudes toward

"Americanization," is that one cannot reduce it to either pure negativism or pure

acceptance. Both attitudes, paradoxically enough have something in common: they

both consider "America" as a reality which is either to be rejected or accepted, but not

as one upon which Orthodoxy has to act. But the fundamental affirmation of this

article is that it belongs to the very essence of Orthodoxy to be in a creative tension

with the world in which it lives, and this means—to question all its "values" and "ways

of life" and, by relating them to the Truth of the Church—to "re-evaluate" and to

change them. Therefore, whether one puts the emphasis on American (acceptance) or

Orthodoxy (rejection) neither of these "realities" is real as long as it is mere rejection

or mere acceptance. Orthodoxy which lives by "negativism" is no longer Orthodox,

and Orthodoxy which simply "accepts" has also ceased to be Orthodox. Yet this

seems to be the truly tragical choice facing us on all levels of Church life: canonical,

liturgical, spiritual, etc. And the first thing we must do is to reject this choice as a

wrong, indeed a heretical one. What we have to do is neither accept nor reject but

simply face the world in which we live, and face it as Orthodox Christians. This

means: to see everything in it and the whole of it as related to our faith, as an object

of Christian evaluation and judgment and as capable of being changed and

transformed. This is what secularism rejects, but this is, therefore, the only way to

overcome secularism. Secularism agrees to have a marriage "blessed" by the Church,

but understands the content of marriage in terms radically alien to that very blessing.

And as long as we simply insist that the marriage be properly solemnized in the

Church, but do not convey to those whom we marry what happens to their marriage

in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, we, in fact, surrender ourselves to secularism...

America may mean secularism; but, it also means freedom. We are free, as Americans,

to fight and to denounce the very "American way of life" inasmuch and insofar as it is

identified with secularism. This is the true mission of Orthodoxy in America and to

America and, only by fulfilling this mission shall we preserve Orthodoxy and make it

truly American.

And it is here that the liturgical problem acquires its true significance, for it is

primarily in and through worship that the Church acts upon the lives of her members

and through them—upon the world in which they live. It is in and through liturgy that

the Kingdom of God "comes with power" (MARK 9.1) —power to judge and to

transform. It is liturgy which, by revealing to men the Kingdom, makes life and

history, nature and matter a pilgrimage, an ascension towards the Kingdom. It is

liturgy, in short, that is the power, given to the Church, to overcome and destroy all

"idols"—and secularism is one of them. But liturgy is all this only if we ourselves

accept and use it as power.

Notes

[1]Cf. my Introduction to Liturgical Theology, Paris 1962 (in Russian), shortly to appear in English.

[2]Cf. Rev. W. S. Schneirla, "The Western Rite in the Orthodox Church," St. Vladimir's Seminary

Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 2, Spring 1958, pp. 20-44; Rev. A. Schmemann, "The Western Rite," ibid. Vol.

3, No. 4, Fall 1958; Rev. W. S. Schneirla, "The Western Rite," Ibid. Vol. 3, No. 1, Winter 1959. I

quote here from the article indicated above: pp. 37-38.

[3]The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy, New York, 1963, pp. 196-7.

[4]Cf. my article on worship in For Better Teaching, published by The Orthodox Christian

Education Commission, 1959, pp. 65-103.

[5]Cf my article "Theology and Eucharist" in St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 4. 1961,

pp. 10-23.

[6]I have in mind here the Russian word votzerkovlenie which is wider and deeper than "churching".

It implies the idea of an integration into the church and also that of a change.

[7]Cf. my forthcoming book on Baptism (Lectures in Liturgical Theology, I, St.Vladimir's Seminary

Press, to appear in 1965).

[8]Cf. my article, "Fast and Liturgy" in St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly, 1959, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 2-

9.

III. The Spiritual Problem

[St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly, 1965, Vol. 9 , #4, pp. 171-193.]

"Impossible" Orthodoxy

The Roots of the Crisis

An Unconscious Surrender

The Secularistic Reduction of the Person

The Secularistic Reduction of the Parish

The Way to a Solution

Orthodoxy and America

1. "Impossible" Orthodoxy

THE PROBLEMS we have discussed so far lead us to that ultimate one which is

the spiritual problem. It can be formulated very simply: what does it mean to be

Orthodox in America in the second half of the twentieth century and how can one

truly be it? To many Orthodox, most likely to an overwhelming majority, such a

problem does not seem to exist. If faced with it they would probably answer: what's

the problem? Build "bigger 'n better" churches and all kinds of "facilities," keep your

congregation busy and happy, serve the prescribed services, constantly affirm that

Orthodoxy is the true faith. And since all this is being done rather successfully the

very existence of any deep problem is therefore denied. It is neither pleasant nor easy

to sound like a prophet of doom, especially in our atmosphere of an almost

compulsory official optimism which regards every word of criticism and self-criticism

as subversive and criminal. Yet, at the risk of shocking many good people I cannot, in

all honesty and sincerity, conceal my firm conviction that Orthodoxy in America is in

the midst of a serious spiritual crisis which endangers its very existence as Orthodoxy.

In my previous articles I analyzed the most obvious expressions of the crisis: the

canonical chaos which deepens every day and leads inescapably to an openly

professed canonical cynicism among clergy and laity, and a less obvious yet equally

real disintegration of the liturgical life of the Church. These, however, are the

expressions, not the substance of the crisis, which, as every religious phenomenon,

has spiritual roots and spiritual content. It is this spiritual substance that we, must

now try to understand.

Nothing probably reveals better the nature of the crisis than the impressive amount

of doctrines, rules, teachings and customs which, although taken for granted for

centuries as essential for Orthodoxy, are by a wide consensus declared to be

"impossible" here, in America. Speak to a Bishop,, then to a priest, be he old or

young, speak finally to an active and dedicated layman and you will discover that in

spite of all differences between their respective points of view they all agree on the

same "impossibilities." Thus you will learn that it is impossible to enforce here the

canonical norms of the Church, impossible to preserve from the wonderfully rich

liturgical tradition of the Church anything except Sunday morning worship and a few

"days of obligation" common in fact to all Christian "denominations," impossible to

stop non-Orthodox customs and practices, impossible to interest people in anything

but social activities, impossible. But when you add up all these and many other

"impossibilities" you must conclude, if you are logical and consistent, that for some

reason it is impossible for the Orthodox Church in America to be Orthodox, at least

in the meaning given this term "always, everywhere by all."

And please notice that I speak of the Church and not merely of Orthodox

individuals. At all times many Christians, if not a majority, were luke-warm in their

faith, minimalistic in fulfilling their religious obligations, lazy, selfish, etc. Christian

writings from St. Paul to Father John of Kronstadt are full of exhortations addressed

to such people and aimed at reforming their deficient Christian life. And, of course,

every Christian, when judging himself in the light of the Christian ideal, knows how

weak, sinful and unworthy he is. If this were the case there would be no problem

except that of the perennial, never-ending fight against human sins and deficiencies.

But the point is that such is not our case. In fact our churches here are better attended

than in the "old countries," people care more about them, contribute more, are

incomparably more involved and interested in parish affairs and probably more

anxious to do the "right things." Yet it is precisely these good, active generous and

church-minded people, it is indeed the Church and not the "lost sheep", that find and

declare it "impossible" to accept much of the canonical, doctrinal, liturgical and primal

tradition of Orthodoxy. At the same time, however, they ,claim that they are perfectly

Orthodox and are indeed acknowledged as such by their pastors and hierarchy. This is

the radically new fact of our existence. For again there have always been

"compromises" in the Church, there have always been minimalistic attitudes among

clergy and laity. But they were always recognized as such, never accepted as the norm.

A Christian could think it impossible for him to live by Christian standards, but it

never entered his mind to minimize the demands of the Church. But when well-

intentioned and responsible people in all sincerity declare that these demands are

impossible because they do not fit into the "American way of life", when a substantial

majority of Bishops, priests and laymen agree with them, when, furthermore, what is

declared impossible is not something secondary and historically conditioned—as, for

example, the long hair and specific clerical garb of the priests—but belongs to the

very essence of Orthodoxy (e.g., the place of the Priest in the parish), then the time

has come to ask: what is the mysterious obstacle which makes it impossible for

Orthodoxy to be Orthodox?

2. The Roots of the Crisis

I named that obstacle before: It is the peculiar disease of the society and the culture

to which we belong and whose name is secularism. Secularism, as I tried to show, is a

world-view and consequently a way of life in which the basic aspects of human

existence such as family, education, science, pro-lesson, art, etc., not only are not

rooted in or related to, religious faith, but the very necessity or possibility of such

connection is denied. The secular sphere of life is thought of as autonomous, i.e.

governed by its own values, principles and motivations—different by nature from the

religious ones. Secularism is more or less common to the whole West, but the

particularity of its American brand the one which concerns us in this article that here

secularism not only is not anti-religious or atheistic, but on the contrary implies as its

almost necessary element a definite view of religion, is in fact "religious". It is, in other

terms, a "philosophy of religion" as much as a "philosophy of life." An openly

atheistic society such as Soviet Russia or Red China cannot even be termed

"secularistic": the ideology on which it is based is a totally integrated and all-

embracing view of the world and man and this total "world-view" simply replaces

religion leaving no room for any other "world-view". But it is a characteristic feature

of American secularism that it both accepts religion as essential to man and at the

same time denies it is an integrated world-view permeating and shaping the whole life

of man. A "secularist" is usually a very religious man, attached to his church, regular in

attending services, generous in his contributions, acknowledging the necessity of

prayer, etc. He will have his marriage "solemnized" in church, his home blessed, his

religious "obligations" fulfilled, all this in perfect good faith. But all this will not in the

least alter the plain fact that his understanding of all these spheres: marriage, family,

home, profession, leisure, and, ultimately, his religious "obligations" themselves, will

be derived not from the creed he confesses in church, not from the Incarnation,

Death, Resurrection and Glorification of Christ, the Son of God become Son of man,

but from "philosophies of life", i.e., ideas and convictions having nothing to do with

that creed, if not directly opposed to it. One has only to enumerate some of the key

"values" of our society: success, security, affluence, competition, status, profit,

prestige, ambition—to realize that they are at the opposite pole from the whole

"ethos" of the Gospel. But does this mean that this religious secularist is a cynic, a

hypocrite and a schizophrenic? Not at all. It means only that his understanding of

religion, of its function in his life and of his very need for it, are rooted in his

secularistic world-view and not vice-versa. In a non-secularistic society (the only type

of society Orthodoxy knew in the past) it is religion, its total "vision" of the world,

that constitutes the ultimate criterion of all life, a supreme "term of reference" by

which man and society evaluate themselves even if they constantly deviate from them.

There man also may live by the same "worldly" motivations, but they are constantly

challenged by religion, be it only by its passive presence. The "way of life" may not be

religious, the "philosophy of life" certainly is. In the secularistic society it is exactly the

opposite: the "way of life" includes religion, the "philosophy of life" virtually excludes

it.

Acceptance of secularism means, of course, a total transformation of religion itself.

It may keep all its traditional forms but inside it is simply a different religion. In

secularism, when it "approves" of religion and even declares it necessary, it does so

only inasmuch as religion is ready to become a part of the secularistic world-view, a

sanction of its values and a help in the process of attaining them. No other word

indeed is used more often by secularism in reference to religion than the word "help."

"It helps" to pray, to go to church, to belong to a religious group ("... and I don't care

what it may be" said President Eisenhower, who can be considered as truly the "icon"

of a religious secularist), it "helps" in short to "have religion." And since religion

helps, since it is such a useful factor in life, it must in turn be helped. Hence the

tremendous success of religion in America, attested by all statistics. Secularism accepts

religion, but on its own, secularistic terms, assigns religion a function, and provided

religion accepts this function, it covers it with wealth, honor and prestige. "America",

writes W. Herberg, "seems to be at once the most religious and the most secular of

nations. Every aspect of contemporary religious life reflects this paradox: pervasive

secularism amid mounting religiosity. The influx of members into the churches and

the increased readiness of Americans to identify themselves in religions terms

certainly appears to stand in contrast to. the way Americans seem to think and feel

about matters central to the faith they profess..." They are "thinking and living in

terms of a framework of reality and value remote from the religious beliefs

simultaneously professed."

It is this American secularism which an overwhelming majority of Orthodox

wrongly and naively identify with the American way of life that is, in my opinion, the

root of the deep spiritual crisis of Orthodoxy in America.

3. An Unconscious Surrender

Is there any need to state once more that Orthodoxy, her whole tradition, her whole

vision of God, man and world, is radically incompatible with the secularistic approach

to religion? Is it necessary to affirm that Orthodoxy is diametrically opposed to

secularism because the Truth which she claims to have preserved in fulness and by

which she claims to live implies precisely a total and all-embracing way of life and a

total and "Catholic" world-view; i.e., a way of looking at life and a way of living that

life?

The spiritual crisis of Orthodoxy in America consists, therefore, in the fact that in

spite of this absolute incompatibility, Orthodoxy is in the process of a progressive

surrender to secularism and this surrender is all the more tragic because it is

unconscious. The truly mortal danger facing them is concealed from the majority of

the Orthodox, on the one land, by the very "success" of religion so typical of

American secularism and, on the other hand, by total lack of spiritual and intellectual

leadership.

For, paradoxical as it may seem, the first to accept and to propagate the secularistic

philosophy of religion and thus to deepen the internal surrender of Orthodoxy to

secularism are the clergy. The external success measurable in terms of attendance at

services, popularity, parish affairs, building programs etc., makes them blind to the

actual drifting away from Orthodoxy, from her vision of life, of the human soul

entrusted to them. It is the clergy who are responsible for that reduction of

Orthodoxy which, in turn, opens the doors of the Church to secularism. I have

mentioned some of these reductions. It may be a reduction to a formal "canonicity"

or to an external liturgical "rectitude" or, finally, to "success" as such. But in each

case—-and there are many other types of "reduction"—Orthodoxy is identified with

something external at the expense of the internal or, to put it more bluntly, at the

expense of life itself which is not even considered as an object of action and influence

for Orthodoxy. The latter is both preached and understood as a creed, to be formally

subscribed to, a cult to be attended, a minimal set of prescriptions, mainly negative

(no socials on certain days, etc.) to comply with, all this within the framework of some

national tradition also understood in its most superficial "folkloric" expression

(balalaika orchestra rather than Dostoyevsky). But—and this is the whole point—

neither the creed nor the cult prescriptions are related to life, communicated and

accepted as the foundation, the spring, the framework of that new life which is the

only ultimate preoccupation of the Gospel. We have, to be sure, "rigorists" and

"compromisers" among the clergy. But the difference and opposition between them is

quantitative rather than qualitative, it concerns the scope of "reduction" and not the

content of Orthodoxy.

But what some of the clergy do not seem to realize is that the secular and non-

religious attitudes of which they so often accuse the laity, especially when these

attitudes concern the parish administration or the "rights" of the priests, are the

natural and the inevitable result of a more general secularization, which they

themselves by their "reductions" of Orthodoxy help to propagate. If Orthodoxy does

not apply to the totality of life, does not judge, challenge, enlighten and help to change

and transform all of its aspects, then "life" is inevitably governed by another

"philosophy of life," another set of moral and social principles. And this is what has

happened to our Church in America. Generation after generation, year after year, our

people have been taught that Orthodoxy consists in a regular attendance at services,

whose meaning is not disclosed; in keeping a minimum of purely external rules; and,

above everything else, in contributing to their Churches. No wonder that they have

naturally accepted for everything else in their life that "philosophy of life" which is

common to the whole society in which they live and work. That this optimistic,

progressive and fundamentally hedonistic world-view might be in conflict with their

religion does not even enter their mind because no one has ever mentioned the very

possibility of such a conflict to them. On the contrary their religious leaders

themselves have fully sanctioned it, provided the above mentioned religious "duties"

are fulfilled, provided that nominal Orthodoxy be kept.

In reality, however, a simple coexistence of religion and a "philosophy of life" alien

to it is impossible. If religion does not control the "philosophy of life", the later will

inevitably control religion, subdue it from outside to its set of values. One cannot be

Orthodox in the Church and a "secularist" in life. Sooner or later one becomes

secularist in the Church also.. It is thus in all sincerity that people do not understand

why the democratic process and the "majority rule" which seem to work so well in

their public life could not be applied as such in the Church. It is in all sincerity that

they think of a parish as their "property" and are scandalized by the attempts of the

hierarchy to "control" it. It is in good faith that they see in the Church an institution

that should satisfy their needs, reflect their interests, "serve" their desires and above

everything else, "fit" into their "way of life." And it is, therefore, in good faith that

they reject as "impossible" everything in the Church which does not "fit" or seems to

contradict their basic philosophy of life.

And as long as we will not face this unconscious surrender to secularism as the very

source of all our difficulties and will not make an effort to deal with what is the real

source of all our problems and difficulties, all our attempts to preserve Orthodoxy will

suffer from an internal handicap. The real question, therefore, is: can this spiritual

problem be solved, and what are the possible ways to its solution?

4. The Secularistic Reduction of the Person

To answer this question, he it only in a most general way, we must begin with

something quite forgotten and certainly out of fashion today: the fundamentally

personal character of Christianity. One of the greatest dangers of modern secularism

is the reduction of man, of his life and his religion to history and sociology. The

historical reduction results in relativism: what was true in the past may not be true

today and vice-versa, for the very concept of truth is a historically conditioned one. As

to the sociological reduction, it consists in viewing man as entirely determined in his

ideas, ideals and behaviour, by his sociological environment—be it "middle class",

"modern world", or "technological age". A relative truth attained by statistics: such is

the formula of secularism. And it is this double reduction inasmuch as it is accepted

by the Orthodox, that conditions and provokes the spiritual crisis of Orthodoxy

described above, the so-to-speak natural rejection by the American Orthodox of all

that which does not "fit" into their "American way of life" and is therefore declared to

be "impossible." It is very typical that this rejection is never professed as a personal

conviction. Very seldom will you hear: "I do not believe in this and I reject it because

such is my conviction." The pattern would be, rather: "Our people won't accept this",

or "It is not for our American people." Whoever says it sounds as if he personally

could and would accept "this", were it up to him; but since "our people won't have it,

you just can't go against the people." In this reduction of Orthodoxy to the

"commonly acceptable" there is very little difference between the clergy and the laity.

Recently an old and respected protopresbyter flatly stated in a written report to his

Bishop that the Parish Statutes adopted by his whole Church and embodying, in a

very mild form, the most obvious and elementary norms of Orthodox canon law,

were "unacceptable" due to "conditions of life in America."

It is at this point that one must forcefully state that Christianity deals not with

"cultures", "societies", and "ages", and even not with "people"—but it is based on a

concept which precisely is not reducible to history and sociology. This does not mean

that Christianity is limited to personal or individual salvation. On the contrary, its

scope is indeed cosmical and catholic, it embraces in its vision the whole creation and

the totality of life, it has always been preached and believed as the salvation of the

world. It means only that the salvation of the world is announced and, in a sense,

entrusted to each person, is made a personal vocation and responsibility and

ultimately depends on each person. In the Christian teaching man is always a person

and thus not only a "microcosm" reflecting the whole world, but also a unique bearer

of its destiny and a potential "king of creation." The whole world is given—in a

unique way—to each person and thus in each person it is "saved" or "perishes." Thus

in every Saint the world is saved and it is fully saved in the one totally fulfilled Person:

Jesus Christ. And within this perspective evil ("... and we know . . . that the whole

world is in the power of evil" 1 John 5: 19) is precisely the surrender of man, of the

human person to the "impersonal" nature and thus his reduction to, and enslavement

by it. It is the triumph of "nature" over the "person," a triumph which results in a fatal

deterioration or fall of both nature and person, for the very calling of the person is to

possess and thus to fulfill the nature. Hence the fundamentally personal character of

Christian faith. It is preached to the world but in the person of man. Its fruit is unity,

communion, love, but it is unity of persons, communion of persons, love among

persons. In the Orthodox doctrine of Church no "belonging", no "participation'', no

external "membership" is as such a "guarantee" of salvation; i.e., of the true belonging

to Christ and to the new life, but only a truly personal "appropriation" and fulfillment

of all these gifts. And, in a sense, a sinful Christian does not belong to the Church,

and this in spite of all formal "belonging."

To remember this personal character of Christian faith is very appropriate when one

discusses the situation of the Church in any' "society", "culture'' or "age", its

relationship to any "way of life". For the whole Orthodox tradition takes two radically

different views on what is "possible" and "impossible'' for Christianity depending on

whether it considers a person or the impersonal entities such as "society" and

"culture" which it includes in the general concept of "this world." However strong

and overwhelming the modern emphasis on the "social" orientation of Christianity,

no one can deny that in regard to "this world" Christianity is basically "pessimistic."

And the very category of "this world" in the Gospel is by no means a temporary one,

is not to be identified with some aspect of the world (paganism, communism, atheism,

segregation). It applies to the "Christian world" as well, and the triumph of

monasticism, i.e., world-renunciation, within the Christianized medieval world is the

best proof of this. Yet Orthodoxy is basically optimistic about the possibilities of a

person. What is impossible for "this world" is possible for the one who believes in

Christ; "truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I

do; and greater works than those will ye do" (John 14: 12). "I can do all things in Him

who strengthens me" (Philip. 4: 13). Here is what eternally remains "foolishness" for

"this world", that precisely which "secularism" in all its forms, including the religious

one, cannot and will never accept: "this world" always claims that everything is

possible for it and requests, therefore, the "reduction" of a person to it. To this,

Christianity answers: it is impossible. The man, in his weakness, always says—it is

impossible for me, and is tempted to accept his reduction to the world. To this,

Christianity responds: it is possible.

All this finally means something very simple and very practical for the solution of

our spiritual problem here, in America. It means that as long as we ourselves

constantly "reduce" this problem to its "impersonal" dimensions and speak about the

American Man, the American Culture, etc., not only do we find ourselves in a vicious

circle, but we posit the whole question on an utterly non-Orthodox framework. For in

a very real sense no general "man"—be he American or any other—no "society", no

"culture'' has at any time truly accepted Christianity and from this point of view there

is nothing radically new in our American situation. But at all times and in all "cultures"

there were persons who did accept it and have lived by it and, although it was not

their "motivation" or preoccupation, they have always and everywhere left a deep

impact on the "society" and the "culture" to which they belonged and have truly

changed it from inside. Thus the early Christian martyrs did more for the ultimate

victory of Christianity than the "apologies," and kept the Christian society Christian at

least in inspiration; the monks did more than "Christian" governments.

My mention of martyrs is not merely rhetorical. For if one takes Christianity

seriously, be it only for one minute, one knows with certitude that martyria, or what

the Gospel describes as the narrow way is an absolutely essential and inescapable part

of Christian life. And it is a narrow way precisely because it is always a conflict with

the "ways of life" of "this world." From the very beginning to become and to be a

Christian meant these two things: first, a liberation from the world, i.e., from any

"reduction" of man, and such has always been the significance of the Christian rites of

initiation. A man is set free in Christ because Christ is beyond and above all

"cultures", all reductions. The liberation means thus a real possibility to see this world

in Christ and to choose a Christian "way of life." In the second place, Christianity has

always meant an opposition to and a fight with this world—a fight, let me stress it

again, which is primarily, if not exclusively, a personal fight, i.e., an internal one—with

the "old man" in myself, with my own "reduction" of myself to "this world." There is

no Christian life without martyria and without asceticism, this latter term meaning

nothing else, fundamentally, but a life of concentrated effort and fight.

In very simple terms all this means that in order to overcome the creeping

secularism of American Orthodoxy we must, while there is still time, turn from our

constant preoccupations with the "American man" and the "American way of life" to

Christian persons who constitute American Orthodoxy. At present almost all

organized efforts of the Church are split between the attempt to keep the "American

Orthodox" as Russian or as Greek as possible and the attempt to make the "Russian"

or "Greek Orthodox" as American as possible. In the last analysis both attempts are

wrong because both deal not with the "content" but the "form" of Christian life and

both, in fact, leave the door wide open for secularism to become precisely the content

of life. Ultimately a "value" is to be accepted or rejected, lived by or fought, not

because it is American or "foreign"-Greek, Russian, etc., but because it is either true

or wrong. But this acceptance and rejection must be preached, this choice must be

presented, first of all, on a personal level. For, as I have said above, what seems

"impossible" when reduced to the demands or particularities of a "culture" or "way of

life" becomes perfectly possible when a person accepts it. It is useless to discuss, for

example, whether the Saturday evening service (which most certainly belongs to the

very essence of the Orthodox "experience" of Sunday) is "acceptable" or not,

"possible" or not, within the "American way of life" in which Saturday night is

traditionally reserved for "fun." For the ultimate problem is not how we can

"squeeze" into life a minimum of Orthodox obligations within a maximum of

"Americanism", and thus to show how, in fact, everything is "compatible" (the

evening service and "fun" if only it could be moved to some other time). The ultimate

problem is whether the very idea of "fun" can be changed, deepened, transformed.

For the one who has discovered the meaning of that Saturday service, who has made

it part of his life it has become—and here is the whole point—"fun" in the deepest

sense of the word, or—to use the term which signifies the "redemption" of "fun"—it

has become joy. The path to that joy, however, is a "narrow way." It begins if one

accepts the initial "incompatibility" of the ways of this world with the demands and

the promises of the Christian life, if one accepts then a necessary sacrifice or

renunciation of these ways, if one, finally—in obedience and humility—accepts the

ways of the Church. Now, this can never be a "collective" way because the essential

elements and stages of that way: "liberation", "opposition", "renunciation", "sacrifice",

"fight", and finally, "victory" are spiritual realities, "not reducible" to collective and

external actions. This is a very minor example but the same pattern can be applied to

everything: to marriage and sex, professional ethics and entertainment, indeed to the

whole life and the whole of the "way of life." On the one hand the "spiritual problem"

of American Orthodoxy is solved, or at least on its way to solution every time an

Orthodox person gives up general considerations about the "American way of life"

and strives to make his life as Orthodox and as Christian as possible, every time—to

use the same symbol—he decides to go to Church on Saturday, without asking

himself whether it fits or not into the "American way of life" in general. And, on the

other hand, it is never solved and no degree of its external solution—about which I

will speak later—can be taken as final.

The real problem, therefore, is not that of general and abstract "possibilities" or

"impossibilities" but that of a personal reorientation of our pastoral and educational

work. For, as I said already, the first to encourage de facto a secularistic reduction of

Orthodoxy are clergy themselves. And they do it primarily precisely by always dealing

with "people" and not "persons", with externals rather than the internal, with the

"common" and "general" rather than the personal and particular. Furthermore they

themselves measure their work only in terms of external success, numbers, formal

compliance with rules and regulations; they themselves—from inside—subordinate

the life of the Church to the categories of prestige, acceptance, security, etc. An old

Bishop, himself a holy and lovable man, once told me the story of his pastoral visit to

one of the big parishes. Everything "went fine"—the solemn service, the banquet in

the best hotel, the visit with the Mayor, Congressman and other local powers. But

then, he said, something strange happened. A young woman asked him for an

appointment and wanted him to tell her about spiritual life. The old bishop was

deeply astonished—so obviously this incident was out of pattern, out of touch with

his whole experience as pastor, administrator and bishop. Yet the incident is very

revealing. In fact not only do we have nothing to satisfy the spiritual thirst and hunger

of a human person, but we react to them as something almost abnormal, as disrupting

the well-oiled routine of "parish activities" tailored for the average "member in good

standing" and aimed at keeping him smiling, happy and "proud of Orthodoxy." In

reality we encourage him in his secularism for the religion we preach to him is in no

way incompatible with his "way of life," is literally a cheap religion: it does not cost

much money and certainly not much effort. Thus a real reorientation of our

leadership is the first condition for the solution of the spiritual problem. And this

leads us to the second answer, or rather to the second dimension of the same

answer—that of the parish.

5. The Secularistic Reduction of the Parish

The parish constitutes the main battlefield of the war between Orthodoxy and the

growing secularization of the American Orthodox. It is here that the spiritual crisis is

made obvious by the progressive lack of communication and understanding between

clergy and laity, on the one hand, and by the impoverishment of the liturgical and

spiritual content of Orthodoxy on the other hand. And as time goes on, it becomes

also obvious that mere formal "victories", be they canonical or liturgical, are not

sufficient. For neither a formal restoration of the hierarchical principle: obedience of

the laity to the clergy; nor that of "correct" services, important and desirable as these

victories are, can by themselves resolve the crisis and save us from secularism. A very

"hierarchical" priest may at the same time be a very "secularistic" one and instill into

his flock a perfectly secularistic spirit, just as "correct practices" in worship can very

well coexist with a consistently non-Orthodox world-view. One must, therefore, go

much deeper and raise the question of the ultimate meaning of the parish itself. For

our current controversies deal almost exclusively with the form and structure of the

parish, but not with its life and the meaning of its life. The basic question: what is a

parish? has not yet been even raised, at least in Orthodox terms.

What I have to say here may come as a shock to the great majority of Orthodox.

Yet it is a self-evident fact that the parish as we understand it now—i.e., as an

organization with officers, by-laws, finances, property, dues, meetings, elections, etc.,

is a very recent phenomenon and exists in fact almost exclusively within the Orthodox

"diaspora". This is to say that what we take for granted as the only normative and

natural form of the Church's existence is not at all so clearly "granted" and may be not

at all so normative. This recent phenomenon requires at least an evaluation in the light

of the total Orthodox tradition.

For many centuries—virtually since the conversion of the Roman Empire to

Christianity—the parish was identified primarily with a Church, i.e., a temple, a place

of worship serving as the religious center of a more or less "natural" community: a

village, a district of a city etc. This "natural" community was, of course, a Christian

community, i.e., consisting of people professing Christian faith. Within this

community thc Church had no other function, but that of literally making Christ

present: in preaching, sacraments, worship, education—and of making the life of

"parishioners" as Christian, as permeated with Christ, as possible. Those who were

selected, ordained, set apart to carry this work of the Church were the "clergy"—and

not so long ago the clerical status included not only "ordained ministers" but also

psalm-readers, prosphora-makers, etc. To govern and to administer the Church, both

spiritually and materially, was not their "right" but their sacred obligation, the very

reason for their being "set apart". Similarly the sacred obligation of all other

"parishioners", called laity, was to receive the teachings of the Church as diligently as

possible, to worship God together, to contribute "according to the will of their heart"

to the needs of the Church, and, finally, to live as much as possible by the precepts of

Christian religion. Anyone who felt the vocation to dedicate himself entirely—not to

God and Christian life, for to dedicate oneself to God is a common precept for all

Christians—but to the needs of the Church could, after an appropriate training, join

the "clergy" and fulfil thus his special vocation. There was no specific "organization"

of the parish because it really had no purpose: one does not need an organization in

order to go to Church, to listen to the Gospel, to receive "with the fear of God, faith

and love" the grace of the sacraments and to contribute gladly and generously to the

Church which supplies one with all this; one does not need to be organized to lead a

Christian life, fight sin and immerse oneself in the peace and joy of the Holy Spirit.

And thus there were no meetings, no. officers, no voting, no elections. There was also

no question of "rights" and "control" because it was obvious to every one, that given

the purpose' of the Church, those who were ordained to govern it had to do it and

those who were not ordained to do it had to accept this government. People gave

money in order not to acquire rights to govern, but to be led along the path of tree

Christian faith and true Christian life by those whose special obligation in the Church

was precisely to govern.

There is no need to idealize the past. There were plenty of deficiencies and

weaknesses in the Church of all ages. There were greedy priests and stingy laymen.

There were periods of decay and corruption, and, then, those of revival and

renovation. The preaching of the Gospel may have been weak and the understanding

of Christian life, responsibilities and goals narrow and one-sided. The doctrine and the

liturgy of the Church may not have been understood in all their implications and there

may have not been enough concern for justice and charity. But there can be no doubt

that throughout all that time the Church stood for and represented something

ultimately serious in the eyes of both clergy and laity, of the whole membership of the

Church. She referred, be it only by her presence, the whole life of man to the ultimate

issues of eternal salvation and eternal damnation; she reminded him of death, Divine

judgment and eternity; she called him to repentance and offered him forgiveness and

the possibility of a new life and she was here for this purpose and for nothing else.

And whether she was successful or not, she was understood, accepted and rejected in

these terms and no other. To meet a priest was considered sometimes as "bad luck"—

yet even in this vulgar reaction there is more "respect" for the Church than in the

modem identification of the minister with an optimistic salesman of reassurance and

"peace of mind" . . . In short, the parish was the Church—the other, the ultimately

serious pole of life, which one could minimize, by-pass or even reject personally, but

which no one could reduce to his own image and "needs."

In the light of all this it becomes obvious—and this may come as a second shock—

that the "parish" as we know it today is, in spite of all its religious connotations, a

product of secularization, or, rather, that in the process of its development within the

American way of life it has accepted a secularistic basis which little by little dissolves

the ultimate seriousness of that which it claims to serve and to express; i.e., the

Church. To understand this one must briefly analyze the genesis and the development

of the Orthodox parish in America.

The first thing the Orthodox immigrants did as they settled in America was to build

Churches. The Church was a self-evident, organic part of their life in the old country.

It became their first need in the new one. It was a need for the Church—for worship,

sacraments, for the possibility to baptize, marry and bury—and not for a "parish", or

rather for a parish in the old and traditional sense of the word—as a place where one

could worship together and have a religious "term of reference" for the entire life. All

early documents support this view: the "organization" was something secondary, it

was forced, so to speak, on the immigrants by purely external factors. In a Russian or

Greek village no one ever asked: who is the owner of the parish Church? And even

retroactively it is difficult to answer this question. It was literally the property of God

for which everyone had to care but which belonged to no one in particular. Here,

however, in a completely different legal framework the land and the Church on it had

to be purchased and owned by a corporation. The latter was hastily constituted,

usually by some energetic and Church-minded people, but, as the same documents

clearly show, with no other idea than to make the Church possible. It was a purely

pragmatic development—but it introduced almost subconsciously a first radical

change into the old idea of the parish—that of the parish as owner of property and

this idea became little by little a real obsession. Then, came the second change. The

immigrant parish was poor and to have even a humble Church, together with

supporting a priest, was costly. Hence, a constant preoccupation with fund raising, a

permanent fear: how to make ends meet, a fear which put money and finances at the

very heart of the parish's life. In fact the parish as organization was born as a material

support for the Church, the Church and not the parish remaining, at first, the goal

and the justification of the parish. But an organization, when it is born and whatever

the reason for its birth, follows almost inevitably a logic of development which sooner

or later makes its own "ultimate value." And in America nearly everything contributed

to this logic and to that development: the democratic, i.e., basically anti-hierarchical

ideal of society, the cult of "free," i.e., private, enterprise, the spirit of competition, the

evaluation of everything in terms of "cost", the emphasis on security and saving, the

constant exaltation of the "people" and their will, needs, interests as the only criterion

of all activity and especially the pragmatic character of American religion—in which

activity and efficiency are the main religious values. Finally the Orthodox parish

became what it is today—an end in itself, an organization whose whole efforts and

energies m-e directed at forwarding its own good—material stability, success, future

security and a kind of self-pride. And it is no longer the parish that serves the Church,

it is, indeed, the Church that is forced more and more to serve the parish, to accept it

as its "goal" so that a priest, the last sign and representative of the "Church" in the

"parish", is considered good when he entirely subordinates the interests of the Church

to those of the' parish.

The third and the most important change was the inevitable result of the other two:

the secularization of the parish and the corresponding loss of religious seriousness. A

modern American parish may have many good aspects but any deeper analysis must

admit that it lacks seriousness in the sense we used this term above. More than that: as

organization, i.e., as "parish" it in fact opposes this kind of seriousness, for it knows

by instinct and from experience that the success it wants and seeks is precisely

opposed to religious seriousness. To be "successful" one has to refer and to. cater to

human pride (the right hand not only knowing what the left one is doing but spending

most of the time acknowledging and publicizing it) the instinct of gain (bingo being a

more efficient way to fill the parish treasury than any appeal to religious maximalism),

vainglory (the best, the greatest, the most expensive...). And since all this is done "for

the Church"—it is thereby justified and glorified as "Christian." To. be exact, a parish

organization lives by standards and principles, which, when applied to an individual,

are condemned outright by Christianity as immoral: pride, gain, selfishness and self-

affirmation and even the constant preaching in terms of the "glory" of Orthodoxy is a

rather ambiguous substitute for the glory that according to the Gospel is due to God

alone. The parish organization has replaced the Church and, by the same token, has

become a completely secular organization. In this it is radically different from the

parish of the past. It has ceased to be a natural community with a Church as its center

and pole of "seriousness." It has not become a religious community, i.e., a group

united by and serving a common religious ideal. As it exists today it represents the

very victory of secularism within American Orthodoxy.

6. The Way to a Solution

Can this situation be changed? Can this alarming trend towards the secularization of

our Church be reversed? Can Orthodoxy be Orthodox in America? My answer is

yes—but only if a radical reorientation of our thinking, of our whole vision of

"American Orthodoxy" takes place on all levels—the hierarchical, the pastoral, the

liturgical, the educational, etc.

First of all this reorientation concerns the clergy. A leader—it is obvious—must

lead. But in our Church today the hierarchy and the clergy are, in fact, prisoners of a

system which ironically they themselves have helped to establish, they are literally

crushed by a construction in which they have invested so much of their energy, heart

and love. Their surrender to the two fundamental secularistic "reductions": that of the

Church to the "parish" and that of the Christian person to a "parishioner" may have

not been a conscious one for, as I have said, the parish in its new organizational,

secular and legal form appeared at first as the only way to support the Church in a

radically new situation. But the fact remains that progressively the clergy themselves

were "reduced", i.e., have become the servants and the promoters of the "system" and

of its "needs", so that today it is mainly through them that the "Church" serves the

"parish" and not vice-versa. Not all Bishops and priests realize this, but more and

more do, and the growing disillusion of our clergy is probably the most disturbing yet

also the most hopeful sign of our time. It is a hopeful sign, however, only if the

priests realize what a tremendous responsibility is theirs and what an effort—spiritual,

pastoral and, I dare say, prophetic—is to be made.

The necessary condition for that effort, the first challenge to the secularized

"system" is, of course, the canonical restoration of leadership within the Church.

From this point of view the acute crisis provoked in the Russian Metropolia by the

adoption in 1955 of the new Statutes transcends the narrow "jurisdictional"

boundaries and concerns the whole Church in America. It is a real tragedy that so

many hierarchs do not seem to understand this and, blinded by their petty

jurisdictional passions and loyalties are even ready to give a helping hand to the

parishes opposing the Statutes. For these Statutes are the first attempt, however

imperfect and inadequate, to subordinate the "parish" to the Church, i.e., to reverse

the situation in which the Church has become the servant of the parish. But this

restoration of leadership is, I repeat, only a condition—-which, by restoring the priest

to his real position in the parish, makes the spiritual reorientation possible; but it is, by

no means, an end in itself. Understood as an end in itself (canonical reduction),

disconnected from the pastoral and spiritual perspective in function of which it is to

be achieved, it could lead to another clerical and legalistic "reduction" which is as alien

to true Orthodoxy as the "democratic" and "anti-hierarchical" one. Its only goal thus

is to make possible spiritual and religious restoration in the two areas, where, as we

have seen, secularism has all but triumphed: the parish and the parishioner. Let us

begin with the parish.

When I speak of the religious and spiritual restoration of the parish, I have

something very definite in mind. For it is very, fashionable today to think that to be

"re-vitalized" and "re-Christianized" a parish must be involved in all kinds of social

and philanthropic projects, be connected organically with the "secular world" and its

needs: racial integration, social justice, anti-poverty programs, urban renewal, etc. I

dare to dissent very radically from this view, being deeply convinced that neither of

these concerns is the concern of the parish as such. One must be very careful here: I

have no doubt that these are concerns for Christians, but not for the parish. Its

function and purpose is different and purely spiritual and only inasmuch as the parish

remains faithful to this spiritual function can it inspire Christians with their secular

responsibilities. In other words, the very success of Christians "in the world" depends

on their being "not of this world" and the essential function of the parish is precisely

to root them in their "supernatural" calling and being. Secularism in all its forms,

including the "religious" one is, in the last analysis, the loss of the experience of God

which has always stood at the very heart of religion. And the theologians of "secular

religion" are in a way quite consistent when they speak of the "death of God"; they

openly admit that which the numberless "conservative" and "traditional" Christians

hide in their subconscious—namely, that their religion is not interested in God and

has in fact "this world" as its real object. Our parishes, being Orthodox, would

certainly not accept the "death of God" theology. But they should realize that lip-

service to God within a framework of purely secularistic interests and "activisms"

amounts to the same "death of God" even if traditional creeds, liturgical splendors

and spiritualistic phraseology supplies them with a religious "alibi" ("we do it for the

church").

"My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God . . ." (Ps. 42:2): this and only this is

religion. And the parish as parish, i.e., as Church has no other task, no other purpose

but to reveal, to manifest, to announce, this Living God so. that men may know Him,

love Him and then, find in Him their real vocations and tasks. Once more it is for the

sake of the world that the Church, i.e., the parish, must be different from and even

opposed to, the world and its cares, and this means that its proper and unique

function is purely and exclusively religious: it is prayer and sanctification, preaching

and edification, it is, above everything else, communion with the Living God. The

tragedy is not, as some people affirm, that Churches and parishes were too religious,

too detached and thus "lost" the world. The tragedy is that they let the world in,

became worldly and set the "world" and not God as their basic "term of reference."

And thus they lost both God and the world and became a vague and indeed

"irrelevant" religious projection of secularism and an equally irrelevant secularistic

projection of religion. Of this double betrayal the modern parish is the very "locus"

and expression.

The spiritual restoration consists therefore in an absolute and total priority of

religion in the parish. Its secularistic reduction must be counteracted by a real religious

reduction and it is here that the priest must recover his unique place and function. He

must literally stop playing the game of the parish, he must cease to be the "servant"

and the "organization man" of secular interests and become again what he was when

people considered it bad luck to meet him, what he eternally is: the man of faith, the

witness of the Absolute, the representative of the Living God. "It is his (the priest's)

faith that the world needs"—wrote Francois Mauriac—"a faith which does not wink

at the idols. From all other men we expect charity, from the priest alone we require

faith and not faith horn out of a reasoning, but a faith born from the daily contact and

a kind of familiarity with God. Charity, love we can receive from all beings; that kind

of faith only from the priest."

The first level of that religious restoration is, without any doubt, the liturgical one.

Our Church need not be ashamed of her identification with liturgy, of her reputation

as the liturgical Church par excellence, even if, in Western categories, this is

understood as a lack of concern for the social and activistic aspects of Christianity.

For the liturgy was always experienced and understood in our Church as precisely the

entering of men into, and communion with, the reality of the Kingdom of God, as

that experience of God which alone makes possible everything else—all "action", all

"fight." And in this sense the less pragmatic and "world-oriented" it is—the more

"useful'' it is. In my article on the Liturgical Problem I tried to describe the main

aspects of what I understand as liturgical restoration. Let me repeat here only that it

consists fundamentally in the recovery by the Church of the true spirit and meaning

of liturgy, as an all-embracing vision of life, including heaven and earth, time and

eternity, spirit and matter and as thc power of that vision to transform our lives. But

in order to recover this the priest who is, above everything else, the celebrant of the

liturgy, its guardian and interpreter, must cease to consider the liturgy and the

liturgical life of the parish in terms of "attendance", "needs", "possibilities" and

"impossibilities''. The reasoning: "since no one comes to church on Saturday night,

why have a service?"—is the very type of reasoning that must be radically rejected.

For, as we have seen, the only real justification of the parish as organization is

precisely to make the liturgy, the cult of the Church as complete, as Orthodox, as

adequate as possible, and it is the liturgy, therefore, that is the basic criterion of the

only real "success" of the parish. Let the Saturday service—this unique weekly

celebration of Christ's resurrection, this essential "source" of our Christian

understanding of time and life, be served week after week in an empty church—then

at least the various secular "expressions'' and "leaders" of the parish: committees,

commissions and boards, may become aware of the simple fact that their claim: "we

work for the Church" is an empty claim, for if the "Church" for which they work is

not primarily a praying and worshipping Church it is not "Church", whatever their

work, effort and enthusiasm. Is it not indeed a tragic paradox: we build ever greater

and richer and more beautiful churches and we pray less and less in them? Is it not the

only real measure of our "success" that today one may easily be a "Church-member"

(and even a "president of the Church") in good standing spending some fifty-two

hour's in Church per year? And finally, are the massive and complex organizations

known as "parishes" and which spend an infinitely superior number of hours

discussing their "fund raising" really necessary for those fifty-two hours of corporate

prayer? The liturgy—which is the sole responsibility of the priest, his "area" par

excellence—must become again the measure, the criterion, the judgment of the

"parish life." All conversations about people being "busy" and "having no time" are

no excuses. People were always busy, people always worked, and in the past they

were, in fact, much busier and had more obstacles to overcome in order to come to

Church. In the last analysis it all depends where the treasure of man is—for there will

be his heart. The only difference between the present and the past is—and I have

repeated this many times—that in the past a man knew that he has to make an effort,

and that today he expects from the Church an effort to adjust herself to him and his

"possibilities". The liturgical restoration must be thus the first challenge to secularism,

the first judgment on the all-powerful "prince of this world."

The second religious task and justification of the parish is education. At present it is

limited almost exclusively to children and teenagers and constitutes a specialized

department within the parish, very often not even under the direct guidance of the

priest. What I have in mind here is something much more general: it is the concept of

the Christian life as "discipleship" and "education", and thus the understanding of the

whole parish as an unceasing education. Virtually all our difficulties, crises and

conflicts have as their principle cause the almost abysmal ignorance by our people of

the very elements of Christianity. A recent survey shows that more than seventy-five

percent of parishioners in "good standing" have never read the Gospel—except what

they hear in Church on Sunday—not to speak of the Old Testament. If one adds to

this that even some of our hierarchs think that a formal theological education is not a

real "must" for a priest, and that a substantial number of our priests do not consider

teaching their flocks to be their sacred duty—one has the peculiar image of a Church

disinterested in the very object of her being. But the Christian concept of faith

includes both—the act of believing and the content of belief and one without the

other makes a faith dead.

Finally the third essential dimension of the religious restoration in the parish is the

recovery of its missionary character. And by this I mean primarily a shift from the

selfish self-centeredness of the modern parish to the concept of the parish as servant.

We use today an extremely ambiguous phraseology: we praise men because they

"serve their parish", for example. "Parish" is an end in itself justifying all sacrifices, all

efforts, all activities. "For the benefit of the parish" . . . But it is ambiguous because

the parish is not an end in itself and once it has become one—it is, in fact, an idol

condemned as all other idols in the Gospel. The parish is the means for men of

serving God and it itself must serve God and His work and only then is it justified

and becomes "Church". And again it is the sacred duty and the real function of the

priest not to "serve the parish", but to make the parish serve God—and there is a

tremendous difference between these two functions. And for the parish to serve God

means, first of all, to help God's work wherever it is to be helped. I am convinced,

and it is enough to read the Gospel just once to be convinced, that as long as our

seminaries are obliged, year after year, literally to beg for money, as long as we cannot

afford a few chaplains to take care of our students on college campuses, as long as so

many obvious, urgent, self-evident spiritual needs of the Church remain unfulfilled

because each parish must first "take care of itself"—the beautiful mosaics, golden

vestments and jeweled crosses do not please God and that which does not please God

is not Christian whatever the appearances. If a man says "I won't help the poor

because I must first take care of myself" we call it selfishness and term it a sin. If a

parish says it and acts accordingly we consider it Christian—but as long as this

"double standard" is accepted as a self-evident norm, as long as all this is praised and

glorified as good and Christian at innumerable parish banquets and "affairs", the

parish betrays rather than serves God.

But having said all this one can hear the question: "All this may be right and good,

but how does one even start one of these 'restorations'?" Is not all this the best

illustration of precisely those "impossibilities" which were mentioned at the beginning

of this article? And it is here that I will remind my reader of the other—the "personal"

dimension of Orthodoxy. I am fully aware that the parish as organization, cannot be

"converted" to any of these ideals, except perhaps theoretically. In fact, none was in

the long history of the Church, which begins with the terrible words addressed to one

of the oldest "parishes": "I know your works, you have the name of being alive and

you are dead" (Rev. 3:1). Conversion and faith are always personal, and this means

that although the priest must preach to all, it is always some who hear and receive and

accept the Word and respond to it. As I said above the greatest tragedy and the

surrender to secularism consist precisely in the fact that the parish—as organization,

as an impersonal majority, as ail—has virtually concealed from the pastor the person,

who is the ultimate object of God's love and saving grace. We are so obsessed with

the social that not only do we neglect the person but we simply do not believe

anymore that it is the social that depends on the personal and not vice versa. But

Christ preached to the multitudes, to all, yet he chose the twelve and spent most of

His time teaching them "privately". Mutatis mutandis, we must follow the same

pattern and it is the only way to the solution of our spiritual problem. Speaking of the

liturgical restoration I mentioned the empty Church. In reality, however, it will not be

empty—and if "two or three" attend and participate and "enjoy" the service we have

not labored in vain. If but a handful of men and women will discover the sweetness of

the knowledge of God, will meet to read and to understand the Gospel, to deepen

their spiritual life—we have not labored in vain. If a few will decide to organize a little

missionary group, to direct their attention to the needs of the Church—we have not

labored in vain. The priest must free himself from the obsession with numbers and

success, must learn to value the only real success: That which is hidden in God and

cannot be reported in statistics and credited to him at parish affairs. He must himself

rediscover the eternal truth about "a little leaven which leavens the whole lump" (I

Cor. 5:6)—for this is the very essence of Christian faith. For these few will—whether

they want it or not—become witnesses and sooner or later their testimony will bear its

fruit. The parish may be improved but only a person can be saved. Yet his salvation

has a tremendous meaning for all and thus for the parish itself. Once more—what is,

indeed, impossible for a parish, is being constantly revealed as possible for a person

and, in the last analysis the whole meaning of Christianity is the victory, made possible

for man by Christ, over the impossibilities imposed on man by the "world."

7. Orthodoxy and America

We may now return to Orthodoxy in America. All that I tried to say, ultimately,

amounts to this: we should stop thinking of Orthodoxy in terms of America and

begin to think of America in terms of Orthodoxy. And, first of all, we should

remember that in these terms, "America" means at least three things, three levels of

our life as Orthodox.

It is, first, the personal destiny and the daily life of each one of us; it is my job, the

people whom I meet, the papers I read, the innumerable decisions I have to take. It is

my "personal" America and it is exactly what I make of it. America, in fact, requires

nothing for me except that I be myself and to be myself for me, as Orthodox, is to

live by my faith and to live by it as fully as possible. All "problems" are reduced to this

one: do I want to be myself? And if I invent all kinds of major and minor obstacles, all

sorts of "idols" and call them the "American way of life" the guilt is mine, not

America's. For I was told: "You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you

free"—free from all idols, free to make decisions, free to please God and not men.

This problem thus is fully mine and only I can solve it by a daily effort and dedication,

prayer and effort, a constant effort to "stand fast" in the freedom in which Christ has

set me (Gal. 5: 1).

In the second place, "America" is a culture, i.e., a complex of habits, customs,

thought forms, etc., many of which are either new or alien to Orthodoxy, to its history

and tradition and it is impossible simply to "transpose'' Orthodoxy into the American

cultural categories. To become the "fourth major faith" by decree and proclamation is

a poor solution of this difficult problem and the day Orthodoxy will feel completely at

home in this culture and give up her alienation she will inescapably lose something

essential, something crucially Orthodox. There is, however, in American culture, a

basic element which makes it possible for Orthodoxy not simply to exist in America

but to exist truly within American culture and in a creative co-relation with it. This

element is again freedom. In a deep sense it is freedom that constitutes the only truly

"American way of life" and not the superficial and oppressive conformities which

have been consistently denounced and castigated by the best Americans of all

generations as a betrayal of the American ideal. And freedom means the possibility,

even the duty, of choice and critique, of dissent and search. Superficial conformity, so

strong on the surface of American life, may make the essentially American value the

possibility given everyone to be himself, and thus Orthodoxy to be Orthodox look

"un-American"; this possibility nevertheless remains fundamentally American.

Therefore, if one moves from the personal level to a corporate one there is nothing in

the American culture which could prevent the Church from being fully the Church, a

parish truly a parish, and it is only by being fully Orthodox that American Orthodoxy

becomes fully American.

And finally "America", as every other nation, world, culture, society, is a great search

and a great confusion, a great hope and a great tragedy, a thirst and a hunger. And, as

every' other nation or culture, it desperately needs Truth and Redemption. This

means—and I write these words knowing how foolish they sound—that it needs

Orthodoxy. If only Orthodoxy is what we believe and confess it to be, all men need it

whether they know it or not, or else our confession and the very word Orthodoxy

mean nothing. And if my words sound as an impossible foolishness, it is only because

of us, Orthodox. It is our betrayal of Orthodoxy, our reduction of it to our own petty

and selfish "national identities," "cultural values," "parochial interests" that make it

look like another "denomination" with limited scope and doubtful relevance. It is

looking at us, Orthodox, that America cannot see Orthodoxy and discern any Truth

and Redemption. And yet it is clear to every one who wants to see that there are today

around us thousands of ears ready to listen, thousands of hearts ready to open

themselves-not to us, not to our human words and human explanations, not to the

"splendors" of Byzantium or Russia, but to that alone which makes Orthodoxy, which

transcends all cultures, all ages, all societies, and which makes us sing at the end of

each Liturgy: "We have seen the true Light, we have received the heavenly Spirit, we

have found the true Faith..." And if only we could understand this and take it to our

hearts and our will, day after day, there would be no problem of Orthodoxy, but only

a mission of Orthodoxy in America.