ACNA+OCA=AOCANA?
ORD ON THE Street is that Mtr Jonah of the OCA told the new Anglicans that he would break off Ecumenical Discussions with ECUSA and take ‘em up with them.
I can’t find the transcript on the OCA site and can’t bring myself to listen. So maybe. (Although in the past not finding the transcript can mean the OCA is trying to hush it up. They do still get Ecumenical liberal moneys given to various of their charities.)
Does ACNA realise that the purpose of Orthodox ecumenism is NOT to recognise a protestant group as “church” but rather to make them Orthodox? As in, “Under the Omophor of Mtr Jonah”. Does the OCA realise that, despite their homophobia, the ACNA does let women preside and even allows for a level of Protestant Eucharistic “Memorialism” found in Baptist and other such circles? Does Jonah (who must need Neocon Money of Ahmanson REALLY bad) know what it means to crawl in bed with right wing American Protestants? If he’s followed the first generation of Evangelical Orthodox into their odd form of Antiochian convertitis, maybe?
I guess the answer to all of the above is yes. So there must be something else…
Happy Gay Pride weekend!
The rest of us will get on with our lives now.
Tags: anglicans, oca | Category: church geekery
Discussion: You came too late to this party
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http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09176/979788-84.stm
From what I have read it certainly seems as though Metropolitan Jonah is trying to prevent convertitis. The problem is that convertitis is not predictable. I have yet to be able to predict who will come down with it and who will not.
You’ve got a point there! And given that the OCA has come out opposed to the WR, this will be a long process.
how do we know that the OCA is against the WR?
If you would listen to Metr Jonah’s address you would find that he has no illusions about the issues that divide evangelicals like those in ACNA from the Orthodox Church. But at the same time he is serious about ecumenical dialogue, and not just for the sake of “friendly relations,” but with the goal of full agreement in the faith and consequent full communion in the sacraments.
“Does ACNA realise that the purpose of Orthodox ecumenism is NOT to recognise a protestant group as “church” but rather to make them Orthodox?”
If they did not realize it before, they certainly did after Metr Jonah finished talking (although the Metropolitan did NOT say, and has never said, that it is necessary to be under his omophorion). Metr Jonah gave a rather stark list of items the Protestants would have to yield on, in order to achieve unity (starting with acceptance of all seven ecumenical councils and going on from there). There is no doubt that any Church that agreed to the Metropolitan’s full list of items would, in fact, be Orthodox.
But notably absent from his non-negotiable list were two items: placing oneself under ++Jonah’s primacy; and use of the Byzantine rite. It may be that “the OCA has come out opposed to the WR” (though I’ve never seen anything “official” to that effect), but there is some evidence that Metr Jonah personally is not opposed to it.
I was particularly gratified to hear him (in the above linked article) state that Calvinisim is a defined heresy. And one of the happy Protestants says it works so well for some people.
Certainly Calvinism isn’t a defined heresy in the 7 Ecumenical Councils…. it was defined as such later – with as much authority as the Big Seven.
This leads me to two reactions:
1) Jonah is setting up a bait and switch (like most Orthodox Evangelists do). Orthodoxy is not the Church that was defined over 2 millennia ago. It is a church as up-to-date as the most recent parish life conferences last weekend. It is and continues to be in the midst of (a very slow) evolutionary change. When Jonah say “join us” he means not “join us in some imaginary body that stopped changing 1500 years ago.” but rather come, join us in the dynamic body of Christ. Sadly – what many of the Anglicans will hear is “the church that never changes” and, when the come into the fold, they will try to make it the church that never changes. They will imagine a liturgy that was first published in 450 AD and hasn’t evolved once, since then, ever. This, of course, is not what is there. Even the Jesus prayer developed post-schism, into a practice that was unknown in it’s fullness until recently (in Church time). And the Church is filled with myths and pious legends (like the painting of Icons by St Luke) that attempt to project backwards any current innovation.
Americans are unable to handle this weaving of non-factual (but patently truth-full) myths in with their fundamentalist faith. Such things must either be *really true* or else discarded.
This is the beginning of convertitis.
But Fr Ernesto is right: not everyone gets it – we need to keep ACNA from segregating out among themselves. This leads me to:
2) the right way to avoid convertitis is by sending reasonably smart folks off to the Schmemmanary or to Holy Cross to avoid fundamentalism that arises from many (but not all) who attend seminary elsewhere and never have their ideas about “conservative Orthodoxy” challenged.
My first hint of this came when I was still Orthodox and asked why so many Antiochian Seminarians were going to STOTs and none to SVOTS. I was told that St T’s is “closer to the fathers” and I shouldn’t be reading those other books… I then began to think of St V’s as a cure.
If & When the OCA considers WR, it will have to deal with such things as this:
http://www.holy-trinity.org/modern/index.html