The Society for Orthodox Christian History in the Americas
Posts tagged OCA
New York OCA Cathedral’s fight for religious freedom
9 months ago
by Matthew Namee
in Uncategorized
If you’ve read the last two issues of our SOCHA newsletter, you know that Holy Protection OCA Cathedral in New York City is in the middle of a fight with the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). Here’s how I described the situation in the most recent newsletter:
In last month’s newsletter, I mentioned the plight of Holy Protection OCA Cathedral in New York City. The cathedral community is in a fight with the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, which is trying to have the cathedral declared a historic landmark against the wishes of the cathedral itself and its diocesan bishop. If the Commission is successful, the cathedral will be forced to get government approval for any changes to the church exterior. They may also be forced to make “improvements” deemed appropriate by the city. This is an unacceptable infringement on the religious freedom of the cathedral community in the name of “historic preservation.” As I said last month, I’m (obviously) a huge supporter of preserving history, but we don’t need the government telling us how to do it. Here is an update from Fr. Christopher Calin, dean of the cathedral: “The Community Board #3 voted 32 to 9 to endorse the Landmark District which would include our Cathedral and other houses of worship in the EV [East Village]. We are currently working with a Local Faith Communities group to find alternatives to the forced landmarking of our buildings and have a meeting scheduled for 9/12 with the Commissioner of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) Tierney. There is support to NOT designate religious institutions as individual landmarks, but the well-funded and staffed preservationists are lobbying the LPC and city council members very hard.” We at SOCHA strongly and officially support the cathedral in its efforts to resist the coerced landmarking. In a future article, we’ll let you know how you can help.
As I indicated, Bishop Michael Dahulich has already voiced his disapproval of the forced designation of his own cathedral. In a letter to the chairman of Community Board 3, Bishop Michael wrote,
We are not against preservation or even an historic district designation for the East Village, but the forced individual landmark status of our cathedral and other houses of worship and will place time-consuming and costly demands on parishes to make application and receive permission from the Landmarks Preservation Commission every time the parishioners need to change a window, put in an air conditioner, paint a gate, install a new sign, or replace doors, roofs or steps.
But it’s actually even worse than that. The cathedral was originally a Protestant church. Fr. Christopher Calin told me that back when the then-Russian Metropolia acquired the building in the 1940s, it drew up plans for a complete redesign of the exterior. The plan called for a much more traditional Orthodox appearance, with cupolas and so forth. The plans have never been enacted, in part because of funding issues, but there’s still hope that the community will eventually raise the money for it. If the landmark designation is imposed, though, the cathedral would have to get government approval of the design before they could move forward. As I understand the process, that would involve a public hearing at which any citizen could come in and argue against the cathedral’s plans. So you could have the City of New York blocking the addition of Orthodox architectural elements (such as domes and icons) because they would alter the historic (Protestant) exterior of the building. In that case, “preserving history” would amount to preserving Protestant architecture and suppressing the Orthodox owners’ right to freely exercise their religion via Orthodox architectural expression.
In Orthodoxy, and indeed in nearly all religions, religious architecture is a religious matter. Domes, icons, crosses, the shape of the building; it’s impossible to separate these elements from our Orthodox faith itself. When I attended St. George Cathedral in Wichita, they added gorgeous mosaics to the exterior of the building. Had the cathedral been a historic landmark, the church would have needed government approval for those icons — and if the government thought that the icons unacceptably changed the original look of the church, then the church would have been prohibited from adding them. This is a blatant violation of religious freedom.
But it goes beyond the simple fact that church architecture is intrinsically religious. Take, for instance, the addition of an air conditioner. Should the church be prevented from adding the air conditioner of its choice, simply because it happens to be in an old building? Should it be forced to make a case to the government, and undergo a public hearing, simply to replace a broken window? This is what Historic Preservation does: it puts decision-making power over churches into the hands of government bureaucrats.
To those who say that one’s choice of air conditioning unit is not really an ecclesiastical matter, I ask this: who gets to decide whether an issue is ecclesiastical or not? Who is qualified to make that decision? As I’ve argued in the past, the question of whether something is ecclesiastical is, itself, ecclesiastical. And we absolutely, constitutionally, cannot have the civil government making those decisions.
Forced preservation has another problem: it violates the authority of the bishop. Ultimately, the proper authority over Holy Protection Cathedral is the OCA Bishop of New York, Michael Dahulich. Above him is the Holy Synod of the OCA. As long as the church architecture doesn’t present a safety problem, how on earth can the civil government justify usurping the bishop’s authority and dictating to a church what design elements are acceptable and what are not?
We’re not talking about the type of government justifications that most people accept — things like fire code, building code, etc. The government’s interest isn’t safety — it’s the nebulous concept of “history.” Why, exactly, is the City of New York the proper judge of what constitutes proper preservation of Orthodox Church history? As an Orthodox Christian historian, I would argue that the work of church history, including its preservation, is an inherently religious exercise. To compartmentalize it, and to divorce it from the life of the church, is contrary to Orthodoxy. But that is what the historic preservationists of New York are attempting to do: they’re attempting to place the final decision over church architectural design into the hands of the civil government. That, my friends, is both unconstitutional and just plain wrong.
And if you think this is just a minor issue for one community, think again. How old is your church? If it’s more than, say, 50 or 70 years old, it’s at risk of the same problem. We all have an interest in preserving history, but we have a greater interest in preserving religious freedom. We have an interest in preserving our freedom to preserve our religious history as we, as Orthodox, see fit. We do not need the government to tell us how to preserve our history, against our will. That does violence to the First Amendment and, indeed, to the actual preservation of history itself.
This article was written by Matthew Namee.
Friday Links
10 months ago
by Matthew Namee
in Links
This 19th century Alaskan Orthodox peg calendar will be auctioned on June 26.
I’m testing out a possible new feature here at OH.org — links to recent articles that might be of interest to readers of our website. Please let me know what you think of this feature, and if you have any suggestions for links to include in future “Friday Links” posts. You can email me at mfnamee [at] gmail [dot] com. Please include “Friday Links” in the subject line.
- If you haven’t done so already, be sure to peruse the list of short papers for our upcoming (and first-ever) symposium. I have to say, I’m really impressed with the diversity of topics that will be covered. I’ve read the abstracts, and they look excellent. I hope as many readers as possible will be able to attend!
- Tomorrow (June 26), a 19th century Alaskan Orthodox “peg calendar” will be auctioned. We mentioned this story on Tuesday.
- St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church of Waterloo, Iowa was honored with a historic preservation award for maintaining its 82-year-old church building. Unfortunately, parish membership has dwindled over the years, dropping from 100+ families to just 35 individual parishioners today.
- St. John the Baptist Orthodox Church (OCA) of Edwardsville, PA celebrated its 100th anniversary, although it appears to be one year late — the Edwardsville Times-Leader article says that the parish was founded in 1910, so this year would be anniversary #101. Bishop Tikhon of Philadelphia and 20+ clergy attended the event.
- The folks behind the Antiochian Archdiocesean website interviewed Chris Holwey, chairman of the Antiochian Department of Sacred Music. As part of the interview, they linked to Michael G. Farrow’s history of sacred music in the Archdiocese. Farrow mentioned that the earliest known Antiochian musical works in America were issued by Bishop Emmanual Abo-Hatab, with a surviving manuscript dating to 1926. Farrow notes that there surely were earlier musical arrangements, but “none are presently known to have survived.” We can add at least one to the list: in 1920, Metropolitan Germanos Shehadi published The Paradise, a collection of liturgical hymns in Western musical notation.
- Alabama’s unique “Malbis Plantation” and its Greek Orthodox church were placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The church isn’t home to a parish of the Greek Archdiocese; it’s a memorial church under the direct oversight of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It was built to memorialize Jason Malbis, a remarkable Greek immigrant who was raised in a monastery and went on to establish a Greek plantation in Alabama. The whole story is really fascinating and too long to tell in a bullet point, so I’d encourage you to read the article. Also, to see photos of the church and to learn more, click here.
- Earlier this month, Rose Haddad, who was quite possibly the oldest Orthodox Christian in the world, died at the age of 111. She was born in 1900 and immigrated to America with her family as a child. She was a member of St. John of Damascus Antiochian Orthodox Church in Dedham, MA.
- Our own Fr. Andrew Damick authored a piece at “Emmaus Patch,” a newsletter for Emmaus, PA. The article introduces people to Orthodoxy and promotes Fr. Andrew’s new book, Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy.
- Speaking of SOCHA directors, Fr. Oliver Herbel recently discovered that someone has plagiarized his work.
- Last weekend, the famed American historian David McCullough was interviewed in the Wall Street Journal. He said a lot of interesting things, including this interesting idea for teaching history to kids: ”I’d take one of those textbooks. I’d clip off all the numbers on the pages. I’d pull out three pages here, two pages there, five pages here—all the way through. I’d put them aside, mix them all up, and give them to you and three other students and say, ‘Put it back in order and tell me what’s missing.’”
This article was written by Matthew Namee.
ROCOR/OCA Episcopal Concelebration
11 months ago
Editor’s note: The following article was written by Christopher Orr.
Update (6/18/11): What follows is an updated version of the original article.
On May 24, 2011 – the feast of the holy Equals-of-the-Apostles, Sts. Cyril and Methodius, Enlighteners of the Slavs and the name day of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All-Russia – Metropolitan Jonah (Primate of the Orthodox Church in America) and Metropolitan Hilarion (First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia) concelebrated the Divine Liturgy at St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral (Moscow Patriarchate) in New York City.
This is the first concelebration between the first hierarchs of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) in decades. [1]
Also concelebrating was Archbishop Justinian of Naro-Fominsk (Administrator of communities in the USA directly under the Moscow Patriarchate), Bishop Tikhon of Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania (OCA) and Bishop Jerome of Manhattan (ROCOR), Igumen (Abbot) Sergius of St. Tikhon’s Monsatery in South Canaan, PA and the former Abbot of the St. Herman of Alaska Monastery in Platina, CA, Archimandrite Gerasim, as well as clergy of the Patriarchal Parishes in the United States, the OCA and ROCOR.
By way of background, the OCA and ROCOR have had a stormy relationship since the latter’s formation in 1921.
The OCA – known previously as the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America, or informally as the “Metropolia” – was the Russian Orthodox diocese for North America established well before the Bolshevik Revolution (1917). ROCOR – informally known as “the Synod”, the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCA), or the “Church Abroad” – saw itself as the duly constituted, representative body of all Russian Orthodox bishops, clergy and laity outside of Soviet Russia based on Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow’s Ukaze (Decree) 362. [2] The ROCOR hierarchy was primarily comprised of refugee bishops, their clergy and faithful fleeing Russia with the “Whites” who had lost the 1917-21 Civil War in Russia to the Bolshevik “Reds”. However, Metropolitan Platon (Rozhdestvensky) of the Metropolia and Metropolitan Evlogy (Georgievsky) of the Russian Orthodox diocese of Western Europe saw themselves as more ‘canonically established’ than the refugee bishops who had (uncanonically, but understandably) their dioceses in Russia and were without dioceses abroad. That is, Mets. Evlogy and Platon were bishops resident in their own dioceses whereas the ROCOR hierarchs were bishops of dioceses in Russia, which they were unable to occupy. [3] The Metropolia cooperated with the ROCOR bishops at first but severed relations with them in 1926 citing the Synod’s increasing claims of authority over the more ‘canonically regular’ American diocese. The Synod, for its part, suspended Metropolitan Platon of New York and his clergy for disobedience. However, in 1935, an agreement was signed that normalized relations between the Metropolia and ROCOR, and the Metropolia’s 6th All-American Sobor (1937) affirmed that the Metropolia remained autonomous while reporting to ROCOR in matters of faith.
Towards the end of World War II, ROCOR, which had been cooperative with the anti-Soviet forces of Nazi Germany, was forced to move its base of operations from Yugoslavia (the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church of Serbia) to New York City (the jurisdiction of the Metropolia).
In November 1946, soon after the close of WWII (in which America was allied with the USSR against Nazi Germany), the 7th All-American Sobor of the Metropolia (comprised of laity, lower clergy and bishops) met in Cleveland and severed ties with ROCOR so as to attempt a reconciliation with the USSR-based Patriarchate of Moscow whose relations with Stalin’s government were greatly improved (comparatively) during and immediately after WWII. Reconciliation between the Metropolia and Moscow was proposed with the stipulation that the Metropolia be allowed to retain its complete autonomy from the Soviet-dominated Church of Russia. When this condition was not met, the Metropolia continued as a self-governing Church in communion with neither Moscow nor ROCOR.
For its part, ROCOR viewed the Moscow Patriarchate as a puppet church controlled by the anti-religious, militantly atheistic Soviet state. ROCOR saw itself as the only free, legitimate part of the Russian Orthodox Church. Some within ROCOR even argued that the Moscow Patriarchate was “without grace”, i.e., no longer Church. ROCOR was constitutionally and culturally opposed to any reconciliation with the Soviet-controlled Moscow Patriarchate.
In 1968, the Metropolia and the Moscow Patriarchate again began informal negotiations meant to resolve their long-standing differences. Representatives from the Metropolia sought the right of sacramental independence and episcopal self-governance (autocephaly), as well as the removal of Russian jurisdiction from all matters concerning the American Church. Official negotiations on the matter began in 1969. On April 10, 1970, Patriarch Alexius I of Moscow and fourteen bishops of Moscow’s Holy Synod signed the official Tomos of Autocephaly, which reestablished communion between the two churches and granted the Metropolia complete autocephaly as the newly renamed Orthodox Church in America (OCA), the fifteenth autocephalous Orthodox Church according to Moscow’s reckoning. ROCOR was decidedly against what it viewed to be the OCA’s compromise with a Patriarchate they saw as being either created or controlled by the anti-religious USSR.
However, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the resurgence of free church life in the Russian Church, the canonization of the New Martyrs who suffered under Communism (including Tsar St. Nicholas and his family), repentance over the murder of the royal family, and a general thaw in relations in the first decade of the 21st century, the Russian Orthodox Church – Moscow Patriarchate and the the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia were reconciled in 2007. ROCOR became an autonomous part of the Russian Church.
While intercommunion of OCA and ROCOR laity and clergy has occurred following the 2007 reconciliation [3], full intercommunion between ROCOR and the Metropolia/OCA in the persons of the presidents of their respective Synods had not taken taken place prior to this historic, 2011 Divine Liturgy. [4]
“Behold now, what is so good or so joyous as for brethren to dwell together in unity!” (Psalm 132:1)
Adapted from materials found on oca.org, russianchurchusa.org, synod.com, Wikipedia and others, as well as the unpublished dissertation noted below.
Endnotes
1. No one seems clear on when ROCOR and OCA/Metropolia bishops last officially (or unofficially) served together in the altar prior to the 2007 reconciliation between Moscow and ROCOR.
2. See the unpublished M.Th. dissertation by Nikolaj L. Kostur, “The Relationship Between the Russian Orthodox Church in North America and the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad from 1920-1950″ (St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, May 2009), pp. 16-18.
3. As noted in a comment by Fr. Andrew Damick, Met. Platon was also a refugee who had abandoned his Russian diocese (Kherson and Odessa) and found refuge in America where he had previously been diocesan hierarch from 1907 to 1914. After his return to America as a refugee and the departure of Abp. Alexander (Nemolovsky) to Europe, Met. Platon was elected and confirmed as head of the Metropolia by Patriarch St. Tikhon. This appointment was rescinded by later decree of Patriarch St. Tikhon that many took to be written under Soviet duress to Soviet political ends. It became increasingly difficult for Russian hierarchs abroad to communicate with the Patriarchate – and to be sure the communications they received were authentic and freely given. This uncertainty and confusion fomented factionalism and chaos within the Church and emigre community abroad – which was the likely the intent of Soviet ‘meddling’. Met. Evlogy was thus the only hierarch resident in his diocese about which there was absolutely no question regarding his canonical standing, though Met. Platon and the other Russian bishops abroad would dissent the point on various, sometimes conflicting grounds.
The Russian bishops abroad found themselves in a bit of a canonical ‘no man’s land’ since they viewed themselves as refugees who would return home to Russia rather than as permanent residents abroad (or as missionaries). In some ways, with ROCOR being based in Karlovtsy, Serbia, the Russian bishops were hierarchs of the Serbian Church without traditional, geographically-defined dioceses – that is, except for the bishops of the previously established Russian Orthodox dioceses of Western Europe and North America.
This was a confusing time with competing narratives and facts. Time will tell the tale. Thankfully, due to the 1970 reconciliation between the Metropolia and Moscow, the 2007 reconciliation between Moscow and ROCOR, and the 2011 concelebration of ROCOR and the OCA’s first hierarchs the details are now moot outside of academic and historical questions.
4. While not concelebration proper, ROCOR and OCA bishops communed together during the 2010 Episcopal Assembly in New York City. The Liturgy was served by the Dean of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral (GOA) alone with the attending bishops communing in the altar.
5. It has been independently confirmed that individual bishops of ROCOR and the OCA have also served together prior to the May 24, 2011 Divine Liturgy, e.g., the enthronement of the OCA’s Met. Jonah (Paffhausen). It should also be noted that simply praying together – in the altar or anywhere – was an important step for ROCOR and OCA bishops given ROCOR’s stance on prayer with heretics and schismatics. The import of these common prayers was not well noted at the time.
Orthodoxy & the Courts: ecclesiastical questions are unavoidable
11 months ago
Until the early 1980s, some OCA parishes in the Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania used the Old Calendar. In 1982, then-Bishop Herman Swaiko of Philadelphia ordered all of his parishes to switch to the New Calendar. Predictably, this wasn’t universally well-received. The majority of St. Basil Orthodox Church in Simpson, PA jumped to ROCOR, and this led to a dispute over the parish property. The case, Mikilak v. Orthodox Church in America went to the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania in 1986.
The court reviewed the history of Russian Orthodoxy generally and St. Basil’s in particular. The parish was founded in 1904 as part of the Russian Mission, and originally, both the parish congregation and the ruling Russian bishop in America had legal control (by deed) of church property. The parish was formally incorporated in 1924, and the incorporation document stated that the property was “subject to the control and disposition of the lay members” of the parish. (No reference to any hierarchy or diocesan authority.) Three years later, a court transferred the bishop’s interest in the parish property to the parish itself, giving the congregation complete legal control over the property. In 1937, the parish adopted bylaws which again asserted that the property belonged “to all members of the parish.”
All this time – all the way up to 1956 – the parish hadn’t formally recognized any hierarchical authority: not ROCOR, not the Metropolia, and apparently not the Moscow Patriarchate either. I don’t know how this worked, as a practical matter. Who assigned the parish priest? Whose signature was on the antimens? Was the parish never visited by a bishop? Anyway, this is what the court tells us, and we’re further told that in 1956, the parish voted to affiliate with the Metropolia. The Moscow Patriarchate sued (this was just after Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, and Moscow wasn’t interested in losing control of any property), but the case settled and the parish kept its building. So from 1956 to 1982, St. Basil’s was a part of the Metropolia/OCA — but this was never put into the legal documents of the parish.
In Pennsylvania, courts use the neutral principles of law approach in church property disputes when there is “no inquiry into ecclesiastical questions.” The burden, said the court, is on the OCA to show either (1) a transfer of property from the parish to the OCA, or (2) “clear and unambiguous language” indicating that the parish created a trust in favor of the OCA. If there was a trust, the parish would remain the property owner, but it couldn’t just do what it wanted, without OCA consent.
As the court saw it, there was neither a transfer of ownership nor a trust. From 1927 (the court order noted above) onward, the parish property belonged solely to St. Basil’s congregation. The parish never created a trust in favor of the OCA. Even the OCA Statute (Article X, Section 8) supports this, said the court, since it asserts that “[t]he parish or parish corporation is the sole owner of all parish property, assets, and funds.” Yes, the Statute goes on to say that the parish officers must “act as trustees of God’s, not man’s, property” and other such ambiguous language. But there’s no creation of a trust. The only caveat is the stipulation that if the parish is abolished, the antimension, tabernacle, and sacred vessels must be surrendered to the diocesan bishop.
On the basis of these findings, the court ruled that the congregation could keep its property when it joined ROCOR, except that it must return the holy objects I mentioned above.
The court doesn’t really get into the obvious issue of defining the parish. It treats the majority as being the parish, but from the OCA’s perspective, the parish was really the minority of members that remained in the OCA. We’re not congregational, so what gives? The answer, according to the court, is that “St. Basil’s exercises congregational control and ownership over its church property.” And the hallmark of “congregational” churches is that the majority rules. So, even though St. Basil’s was a part of the hierarchical Orthodox Church, on the level of parish property, it was treated the same as a congregational church.
I’m sympathetic to the parish majority, who didn’t want to be forced to accept the New Calendar, but the outcome of this case raises some alarm bells. The court quite casually classifies this case as one not involving “ecclesiastical questions,” and it’s this classification that allows the court to employ the neutral principles approach. But the church calendar is an ecclesiastical question. For that matter, the deeper issue of a diocesan bishop’s authority is also an ecclesiastical question. The court was, quite frankly, wrong when it claimed that there were no ecclesiastical questions at issue.
Which gets to a broader point that I keep running into — there is no such thing as an Orthodox court case that doesn’t involve ecclesiastical questions. How could there be? The power of a bishop or synod, the identification of this or that group as the “true” parish — these are profoundly ecclesiastical questions, and they are inherent in every Orthodox property dispute I’ve seen. I’m not saying neutral principles shouldn’t be applied, or even that I disagree with the court’s decision (I actually take no position on it right now). I’m saying that the court was factually incorrect, and had it accurately recognized the ecclesiastical issues in the case, it would have been legally obligated to apply deference to the higher church authorities (in this case, Bishop Herman Swaiko).
Because all Orthodox court cases necessarily involve ecclesiastical questions, we will need to develop a framework more nuanced than the binary yes/no approach currently employed by the courts. We must admit, up front, that courts will decide ecclesiastical questions, in every case, whether they like it or not. It is unavoidable, regardless of whether they use deference or neutral principles. And because it’s unavoidable, we must accept it and develop some guidelines to ensure that judges can do their jobs without involving themselves too deeply in the affairs of the Orthodox Church.
I have no answers at this point, and if anyone out there has any helpful suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
This article was written by Matthew Namee.
NY Times article on Moscow-Metropolia Supreme Court case
11 months ago
From the New York Times, November 25, 1952, page 31:
U.S. COURT VOIDS ACT ON RUSSIAN CHURCH
State Law to End Communist Sway in Orthodox Cathedral Here Is Upset by Ruling
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM CITED
8-to-1 Decision Holds Action Violated 14th Amendment — Jackson Lone Dissenter
BY CLAYTON KNOWLES
WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 — The Supreme Court of the United States ruled today that a New York law, seeking to eliminate Communist influence in Russian Orthodox churches chartered in the state, fell into the realm of religious control barred by the Constitution of the United States.
Under the state law, the Rev. Benjamin Fedchenkoff, Archbishop of the church in North America by appointment of the Patriarch of Moscow, was removed from his pulpit at St. Nicholas Cathedral, 15 East Ninety-seventh Street, New York.
The Court of Appeals, highest tribunal of the state, upheld the validity of the state law under which the ouster was undertaken but the Supreme Court, reversing this finding in an eight-to-one decision, held that such a law violates the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing freedom of religion in this country.
The majority opinion, written by Associate Justice Stanley F. Reed, said a state Legislature “cannot validate action which the Constitution prohibits.”
Argument by Jackson
Registering his lone dissent, Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson held that the argument that the state law violated the Fourteenth Amendment safeguards of religious freedom was “so insubstantial that I would dismiss the appeal.”
“To me, whatever the canon law is found to be and whoever is the rightful head of the Moscow Patriarchate,” he wrote, “I do not think that New York law must yield to the authority of a foreign and unfriendly state masquerading as a spiritual institution.”
A bitter factional fight has raged at St. Nicholas Cathedral since 1917, when the Russian revolution brought changes in the central church. A faction, headed by the late Archbishop John S. Kedrovsky, got control of the cathedral in 1926 and kept it up to 1945, when a legal battle was begun over it.
Joined with Archbishop Fedchenkoff as an appellant in the present case has been the Rev. John Kedroff, a son of the late Archbishop. The basic fight has been between those supporting the mother church at Moscow and adherents of the Russian Church in America, recognized under New York law as having the authority over Russian Orthodox churches within the state. This latter group was set up in 1924.
It was on the basis of this law that officials of the cathedral sued to remove Archbishop Fedchenkoff, whose Moscow-bestowed title was Archbishop of the Archdiocese of North America and the Aleutian Islands.
The prevailing court opinion held that the New York law undertook to transfer control of the New York church from the central governing hierarchy and thereby “violates the Fourteenth Amendment by prohibiting in this country the free exercise of religion.”
Majority Opinion Stated
The Reed opinion took cognizance of the fact that the Court of Appeals felt that, since the Russian Government exercised control over the central church authorities, the state legislature had been reasonably justified “in enacting a law to free the American group from infiltration of such atheistic or subversive influences.”
“This legislation, in view of the Court of Appeals,” wrote Justice Reed, “gave the use of the church to the Russian church in America on the theory that this carry out the purposes of the religious trust. Thus, dangers of political use of church pulpits would be minimized.
“Legislative power to punish subversive action cannot be doubted. If such action should be actually attempted by a cleric neither his robe nor his pulpit would be a defense. But in this case, no probation of law arises. There is no action by any ecclesiastic. Here there is a transfer by statute of control over churches. This violates our rule of separation between church and state.”
In a concurring opinion, Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter stated that St. Nicholas Cathedral was “not just a piece of real estate . . . no more than is St. Patrick’s Cathedral or the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.” The cathedral, he maintained, was “an archiepiscopal see of one of the great religious organizations” in stating that the essence of the controversy was “the power to exercise religious authority.”
Finding Called “Sound”
Philip Adler, attorney for St. Nicholas Cathedral [actually, the attorney for the Moscow group], said last night that the position of the Supreme Court was “sound,” regardless of one’s attitude toward Soviet Russia. He emphasized that while he was uncompromisingly opposed to communism, “the church must be preserved.”
Ralph Montgomery Arkush, the opposing counsel [for the Metropolia group], said that he preferred not to comment until he had an opportunity to study the court’s opinion. He added, however, that there “still may be a remedy at common law.”
Editor’s note: That last line by Arkush, the Metropolia’s attorney, is important: that there “still may be a remedy at common law.” The Supreme Court struck down an act of the New York legislature, but the Metropolia didn’t give up. They went back to court, this time arguing that even if the legislature couldn’t decide the property dispute in the Metropolia’s favor, the New York courts could.
New York’s highest court agreed. It found, as a factual matter, that the Patriarch of Moscow was dominated by the secular authority of the USSR, and because of this, his appointed Archbishop could not, under New York common law, take possession of the Cathedral. It was a blatantly anti-Communist rationale, and the case made it all the way back to the Supreme Court in 1960, under the title Kreshik v. Saint Nicholas Cathedral. In an opinion far shorter than the 1952 case, the Supreme Court struck down the New York ruling, reasoning that it doesn’t matter whether the state violates religious freedom through the legislature or the judiciary — either way, you’ve got the state violating religious freedom, and that’s unconstitutional. “[O]ur ruling in Kedroff is controlling here,” reads the opinion, and once again Moscow won.
St. Nicholas Cathedral remains the property of the Moscow Patriarchate to this day. Any future dispute over the ownership of the Cathedral was put to rest by Moscow’s 1970 Tomos of Autocephaly, granted to the OCA, which stipulated that the Cathedral (among other properties) is “excluded from autocephaly on the territory of North America.” Today, the Cathedral is the official representation church of the Moscow Patriarchate in America.
