January 16, 1924: Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow — former Archbishop of North America, and future canonized saint — issued an ukaz removing Metropolitan Platon Rozhdestvensky from his post as primate in America for “public acts of counter-revolution.” Of course, Tikhon was under pressure from the Soviet government. Really, “pressure” is an understatement; I have no doubt that he was compelled to issue that ukaz. Because this ukaz and stuff like it, later in the same year, the Russian Archdiocese declared itself independent from the Moscow Patriarchate.

January 17, 1869: Former Episcopal priest James Chrystal was ordained to the Orthodox priesthood in Syra (Greece). This would have been the eve of Theophany on the Old Calendar. Chrystal had only recently been baptized into the Orthodox Church, and very soon after returning to America, he left Orthodoxy, saying that he couldn’t tolerate the veneration of icons.

January 21, 1957: Greek Archbishop Michael Konstantinides delivered the invocation at President Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration. This was the first time that an Orthodox bishop was invited to participate in a presidential inauguration. In the years surrounding this event, Orthodoxy came to be recognized by dozens of states as the “fourth major faith,” along with Roman Catholicism, Protestantism (treated as a generic whole, in spite of its myriad divisions), and Judaism.

If you know of another major American Orthodox historical event that occurred between the 16th and 22nd of January, let us know in the comments!

Tags: 1869, 1924, 1957, America, Communism, converts, Greek, James Chrystal, Michael Konstantinides, Platon Rozhdestvensky, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Tikhon Belavin

After reading Matthew Namee’s recent post on the celebration of Christmas according to the New Calendar in Orthodox parishes and jurisdictions in America during the first half of the 20th century, I thought it appropriate to post an article that appeared in the pages of the New York Times  on December 25th, 1923.

I think it’s a rather unique picture of what Orthodox life was like in this era, especially given the political overtones of the repression of the Church of Russia, which we see in the first half of the article.  With their brothers and sisters in Russia experiencing the initial stages of a rather aggressive anti-religious campaign from the fledgling Bolshevik government, the North American Archdiocese were experiencing crises of their own in the wake of the Russian Revolutions of 1917.

In Russia, the Bolshevik government had instituted the national move to the Gregorian (New) Calendar on February 1/14, 1918 (February 1st became February 14th).  The Church of Russia resisted this change, and in discussions of the All-Russian Sobor of 1917-8 (in session as the calendar switch went into effect), determined to retain the Old Calendar.

By 1923, however, this would be tested by the rise to power of the Living Church, a reformist movement that had coalesced out of several radical factions within the Russian Church over the previous two decades.  Backed by the Bolshevik government, the Renovationists attempted to force the implementation of the New Calendar, and over time, the calendar issue became a distinct point of differentiation between the so-called “Renovationist” and “Tikhonite” factions within the Church of Russia.

In America, this differentiation, apparently, also resulted in a distinct rejection of the New Calendar within the North American Archdiocese.  In December of 1923, the Archdiocese was in the throes of its legal battles with the Living Church-backed John Kedrovsky, who had returned to America in October claiming to be the Archbishop of North America and the Aleutian Islands.  With confusing accounts coming out of Russia regarding the status of Patriarch Tikhon, reports of bizarre and troubling attacks against the Church and religious life by the Soviet government, and very real threats of the loss of St. Nicholas Cathedral and other church properties in American courts, the Archdiocese chose to reject the recent decision of the Pan-Orthodox Congress to institute the use of the Revised Julian (or New) Calendar.

Plainly, for many Orthodox Christians in America of Russian descent in this era, the New Calendar was not primarily associated with a Pan-Orthodox Congress, but with Bolshevism  and the repression of the beloved Patriarch Tikhon, who was obviously revered in all corners of Orthodox America.

The allowance for the use of the New Calendar within what would become known as the Metropolia would not come until the 13th All-American Sobor in 1967.  While some corners of the OCA have almost universally moved to the Revised Julian Calendar, there are yet still many parishes throughout the United States and Canada that will be celebrating the Nativity of Christ two weeks from now.  As Matthew outlined the other day, there is similar plurality across the other jurisdictions in America.  Yet regardless of when we observe this important day, it is with the same spirit of joy in the birth of Christ.

Tags: America, newspapers, OCA, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Tikhon Belavin

In the Supreme Court cases Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral and its successor Kreshik v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, the highest court in the country ruled against the Metropolia and in favor of the Moscow Patriarchate in a dispute over church property. But Moscow didn’t win all the time. The 1962 Ohio Court of Appeals case St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church of Lorain, Ohio v. Burdikoff had the opposite outcome, which is set forth in a fascinating judicial opinion.

At the outset, the court offers this introduction to the Orthodox Church as a whole:

The temptation is very great to detail the history of the Orthodox Greek Catholic Churches of the Eastern Confession. The historical development of Christianity in the eastern churches is a subject that is not stressed in our schools, yet out of the Greek Catholic Churches much of the early foundation of the Christian Church was formed. The lives of its saints, and writings of its scholars, are worthy of emulation and study.

Not exactly what you’d expect to read in a secular judge’s opinion, huh? Anyway, onto the case.

Ss. Peter and Paul Church in Lorain, OH was founded in 1912 under the Russian Archdiocese of North America, which in turn was under the Russian Orthodox Church. At the 1924 All-American Sobor, the Archdiocese declared itself to be autonomous of Moscow, transforming itself into the “Russian Metropolia.” The Lorain parish formally submitted to the Metropolia by 1925. In February of that year, the parish filed an action in court to transfer the title of its property from Archbishop Alexander Nemolovsky (who had been the Russian primate in America) to the parish corporation itself. The court agreed, and title was successfully transferred.

From 1925 until 1960, the Lorain parish was served by clergy under the Metropolia. The parish participated in the Metropolia’s sobors, sent contributions to the Metropolia, and otherwise behaved as a parish of the Metropolia. No one questioned or challenged this fact. The parish didn’t split into pro-Moscow and pro-Metropolia factions, and Moscow itself never tried to take control of the parish.

In 1957, Fr. George Burdikoff became rector of Ss. Peter and Paul. Burdikoff had previously been a priest of ROCOR, but he later joined the Metropolia. Upon arrival in Lorain, he apparently received a 10-year contract to serve as the parish priest. (Incidentally, was this a common thing? It seems really strange to give a priest an employment contract, but the court treats it as an established fact.)

At first, Burdikoff continued to serve under the Metropolia, but in 1960, he secretly switched his allegience to Moscow, whose archbishop then appointed Burdikoff as rector of the Lorain parish. In other words, with Burdikoff’s secret transfer, Moscow now began to claim authority over Ss. Peter and Paul Church.

The court was faced with two questions:

1. Who has the right to control the parish property – Moscow or the Metropolia?
2. Is the Lorain parish still bound to fulfill Burdikoff’s 10-year contract?

The biggest question is the first, and the court spends a lot of time addressing it. To begin with, the court reasoned as follows:

1. The Lorain parish was clearly founded under Moscow. (And I should note here that when the parish began in 1912, the Church of Russia was governed by a Holy Synod, rather than a Patriarch. I’ll refer to “Moscow,” but you should take that to mean “Church of Russia.”)
2. But in 1925, the parish submitted to the autonomous Metropolia, and Moscow did nothing (with regard to Lorain specifically).
3. In an interesting (and, to me, deeply flawed) argument, the court pointed out that Moscow and the Metropolia are both members of the World Council of Churches. The WCC only accepts autonomous churches as members; it follows, then (says the court) that by being a WCC member, Moscow must accept that the Metropolia is in fact autonomous.
4. “Thus for 35 years one autonomous church body has occupied the church building, received dues and other monies, supported its superiors, and the superior church body, the Metropolia. In all this time the church which formerly claimed spiritual and temporal jurisdiction [Moscow] has done nothing to oust the group which it calls schismatic from occupation and control of the Lorain Church. It now seeks to do so by the subterfuge of a priest who has switched allegience when it best served his personal interest.”

As a general rule, when a member parish withdraws from a hierarchical church, they can’t take church property with them. Moscow argued that this rule, combined with the Supreme Court’s opinions in Kedroff and Kreshik, means that they should win. The court disagrees. Kedroff and Kreshik don’t apply here, the court says, because in those cases the New York government (first the legislature and then the judiciary) tried to transfer church property from Moscow to the Metropolia. Here, that’s not happening — in fact, Moscow is trying to get the Ohio courts to support a transfer in the other direction, from the Metropolia to Moscow.

The court continually reiterates that the Lorain parish was under the Metropolia for “35 years” without a complaint from Moscow. This is important because it opens the door to the application of several legal principles:

• Adverse Possession. Let’s say that I own a piece of land, but a squatter moves onto that land and starts acting like an owner. I know about the squatter, but I don’t do anything to oppose him. If he does this for long enough, according to the common law principle of adverse possession, he can become the new legal owner of the property. It’s possible to apply this concept to the Burdikoff case — the Metropolia exercised control over the Lorain parish for 35 years, presumably with Moscow’s knowledge but without its opposition. Under adverse possession, if Moscow was the rightful owner, it isn’t anymore.
• Laches. Here, the basic idea is that you can’t wait forever to assert a legal right — an “unreasonable delay” in asserting your rights can be interpreted by the courts as a forfeiture of those rights. Here, if Moscow once had the right to control the Lorain parish, they forfeited that right by failing to assert it for 35 years (which fits any definition of “unreasonable delay”).
• Estoppel. Similar logic applies here. Moscow may be estopped (forbidden, basically) from asserting its rights over the Lorain parish because it waited so long and knowingly allowed the Metropolia to control the parish for 35 years.
• Waiver. More of the same — the idea here being that Moscow essentially waived its rights over the Lorain parish by tolerating the Metropolia’s control over it for so long.

Underlying all of these theories is the principle that you can’t just wait forever to assert a legal right. Whatever rightful control Moscow may once have had over the parish, it lost it by waiting so long.

It’s easier to dismiss Burdikoff’s claim that he had a 10-year contract with the parish. The court found that Burdikoff breached the contract when he submitted to Moscow: “he cannot now be heard to complain that he is deprived of a right under a contract which he himself repudiated.”

Long story short, this is a rare victory for the Metropolia over Moscow.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: civil authorities, Russian, Russian Metropolia

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.

Tags: 2011, OCA, ROCOR, Russian, Russian Metropolia

In May 1965, the Yale Law Journal published a paper entitled, “Judicial Intervention in Church Property Disputes: Some Constitutional Considerations,” by Dennis E. Curtis. (For the lawyers reading this, the citation is 74 Yale L.J. 1113.) This paper focuses primarily on Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, which we’ve been discussing at length here.

Curtis begins by laying out the legal history of church property disputes. The 1871 case Watson v. Jones (which I discussed in an earlier article) set forth separate rules for hierarchical and congregational churches. According to Watson, in property disputes involving hierarchical churches (such as the Orthodox Church), the civil courts are to defer to the decisions of the highest church authority. According to Curtis, “Watson v. Jones assumes that power [of the tribunal over church members] to be plenery.”

But Watson was not the last word on the subject. Other cases led to a modification of the Watson rule, best summed up by the renowned Justice Brandeis in Gonzalez v. Archbishop:

In absence of fraud, collusion or arbitrariness, the decisions of the proper church tribunals on matters purely ecclesiastical, although affecting civil rights, are accepted in litigation before the secular courts as conclusive, because the parties in interest made them so by contract or otherwise.

Curtis explains that, under Brandeis’ rule, courts must determine (1) the good faith of the church authorities (“absence of fraud, collusion”) and (2) whether the church tribunal has blatantly disregarded its own rules (“arbitrariness”). “Implicit in these cases was the concept that the consent of the members to be governed by the church authorities did not envision fraudulent, arbitrary, or collusive action by those authorities.”

The key question in hierarchical church property disputes, writes Curtis, is not who owns the property, but who has “the right to prescribe beneficial use.” In other words, what body gets to decide who can use the property? Who has the authority to make that decision? In a church like the Orthodox, the decision typically belongs to the highest church authorities — whatever that means.

Curtis points out, “The Supreme Court assumed that the right to prescribe the use of the New York churches lay with the Russian Church [i.e. Moscow]. This assumption allowed the court to categorize the New York Legislature’s action [of vesting control of Russian Orthodox properties in the Metropolia] as a displacement of one church administration with another.” Curtis admits that the legislature’s intent was indeed to vest control in the Metropolia, but “[w]hether Article 5-C did in fact transfer control of the church property, however, depends upon who had the right to prescribe use of the property, before the legislative action.” Was Moscow really the “highest church authority” with the right to prescribe use, or did that designation actually belong to the Metropolia?

The Supreme Court just took it for granted that Moscow had the right to prescribe use of St. Nicholas Cathedral. Justice Reed, in his majority opinion, says,

The record before us shows no schism over faith or doctrine between the Russian Church in America and the Russian Orthodox Church. It shows administrative control of the North American Diocese by the Supreme Church Authority of the Russian Orthodox Church, including the appointment of the ruling hierarchy in North America from the foundation of the diocese until the Russian Revolution. We find nothing that indicates a relinquishment of this power by the Russian Orthodox Church.

“This finding,” writes Curtis, “is the cornerstone of the opinion.” But the Court in Kedroff doesn’t seem to have really taken a hard look at the issue — it “simply assumed that the Russian Church [Moscow] had the right to control use of the property.” It is this assumption that led the Court to interpret the New York legislature’s actions “as an unconstitutional transfer of control of property.” Once you get past the issue of who can prescribe use, the rest of the case is pretty clear-cut. I mean, if Moscow has the right to prescribe use, then the Metropolia doesn’t, and the New York legislature illegally took Moscow’s property and gave it to the Metropolia. But if the Metropolia actually did have the right to prescribe use, then the New York legislature’s actions didn’t transfer ownership at all — they simply reinforced existing ownership rights. Curtis argues that, really, “The crucial constitutional clause should not have been the free exercise [of religion] clause but the due process clause.”

Curtis suggests that the Court may have been saying that the legislature “had no power to deterimine the ownership of religious property because the first amendment bars the state from taking any part in religious disputes.” After all, any state action along these lines involve the “establishment of the religion of the winner and an interference with the free exercise of the loser.” Curtis continues:

If followed to its logical conclusion, however, this argument would bar any court, including the Supreme Court, from deciding the case. The finding of Russian administrative authority may have been the Court’s way of restoring the status quo before New York’s action, but in restoring the status quo, the Supreme Court necessarily made a finding that the Russian Church was entitled to use of the Cathedral. Applying the same logic used to bar New York court action, the Supreme Court must have violated the freedom of exercise of the American Church [Metropolia] and established the Russian Church [Moscow].

To say that courts cannot decide religious disputes creates an impossible catch-22, in which any court action for either side is “establishment.”

One problem with the Kedroff decision is that the Supreme Court didn’t set forth clear criteria for how to determine who has the right to prescribe use. According to Curtis, “the Supreme Court’s assumption of control by the Russian Church obscured the actual first amendment issues in the case. The first amendment is relevant in the beginning — in determining the right to prescribe use of church property — not after that determination has been made or assumed.” In Kedroff, the Court side-stepped this problem by just assuming that Moscow had the requisite rights.

Curtis writes that state can take two general approaches to this problem: it can set up its own arbitrary rules, or it can defer to the property rules of the particular church in the case. Curtis then offers several options and evaluates the pros and cons.

Formal Title Doctrine. It would be incredibly simple for courts to just say that whoever holds formal title to the disputed property has the right to prescribe use. On the other hand, this approach is “an invitation to anarchy within the church government,” since the formal title-holders would have virtually unlimited power over church property. Rather than viewed as trustees holding the property for the benefit of the community, the title-holders would be treated as owners.

In practice, this is sort of the way that many early American Orthodox parishes actually behaved — the parish board of trustees exercised near-absolute authority over church property (and even, in many instances, hired and fired clergy). This made the election of trustees a major — and often contentious – event in parish life. I’ve found old newspaper articles that talk about violence at parish board elections. I think most Orthodox would agree that we don’t want to turn back the clock to those days.

Proportional Division Theory. The idea here is that each church member is a sort of part-owner of church property throughout the world. Disgruntled members could essentially be bought off by the majority. But proportional division theory, says Curtis, “would be almost impossible to implement.” To apply it, the court would have to (1) figure out whether the disgruntled party was actually a member, and (2) determine the dollar amount of the member’s share of the property. Another downside is that this approach would probably result in many, many more property disputes in the courts.

From an Orthodox perspective, this approach is totally unacceptable. The true “owner” of all Church property, according to our theology, is the Lord Jesus Christ. Orthodox Christians are members of his body, yes, but that doesn’t entitle us to temporal ownership of church buildings, land, and money. Such a view is completely foreign to the mind of the Church.

State-Imposed Congregationalism. A state could, theoretically, declare that all religious groups in its borders must follow a congregational model when it comes to church property. You’d have the simplicity of a majority-rules approach, but courts would have to decide who is actually a church member. Do we want courts coming up with their own criteria for church membership? That sounds pretty awful. They could look to each church’s rules for membership, but in hierarchical churches, that usually involves the hierarchy, and you’re right back to an argument about which hierarchy has the authority. And of course, as I’ve heard from more than one church leader, the Orthodox Church is not a democracy. The flip side is that we also aren’t an oligarchy, either, but it’s clear to me that state-mandated congregationalism would not work.

In any event, writes Curtis, state-imposed rules are simply unconstitutional. Rules like these would basically constitute the establishment of religion, since states would be making rules for religious government. In addition, if the state’s rules differ from the rules of the church, the state is in violation of church members’ free exercise rights. The bottom line is that states just can’t impose property rules on churches. Which leads to:

Looking to the Church’s Own Rules. This method is pretty easy to understand, and Curtis doesn’t actually spend a lot of time talking about it. But it’s not without its issues. Particularly in Orthodoxy, our “rules” aren’t always entirely clear. Sometimes, they’re contradictory. And sometimes, the hierarchy, applying the principle of oikonomia, will intentionally not abide by the letter of the law, for the good of the Church. Do we really want secular judges telling us what our rules are, and then trying to apply them? It would be preferable to avoid that sort of thing.

English Trust Theory. Curtis presents “trust theory” as a middle ground between state-imposed rules and an attempt to apply church rules. Underlying this theory is the idea that “the church property is impressed with a trust for the use and benefit of the church members.” Trust theory has been used in English courts (although I’m not sure if it’s still applied). In those cases, the English judges would look at both sides of a dispute and try “to determine which represents the faith of the founders.”

According to Curtis, one problem with trust theory is that it “stifles the natural development of church doctrine.” In Orthodoxy, this is less of a problem, since we don’t actually have a development of doctrine. But we do have a development of doctrinal language, which is apparent to anyone familiar with the Ecumenical Councils. Ultimately, though, I see trust theory as just being unworkable in most church property disputes. If a parish divides over, say, which calendar to use (Old or New), do we want a court trying to figure out which one is “right”? When even the Orthodox Churches themselves don’t have a uniform practice? But at least the calendar is vaguely “doctrinal” (and it’s not like we’ve got churches splitting over Trinitarian theology or something). What about a more typical case, where a parish decides it doesn’t like its bishop and wants to join a different jurisdiction? How does the whole “faith of the founders” standard apply there, when there isn’t even a dispute over the faith itself?

Modified Trust Theory. One solution to the problems posed by the English trust theory is to modify the approach. Here, “the courts would assume that actions of the church authorities were valid unless plainly ultra vires.” Ultra vires is a legal term of art which literally means “beyond the powers.” In this context, an act by church authorities is ultra vires if church rules, canons, etc. did not give them the power to take such an act. I would guess that most actions within a hierarch’s or synod’s jurisdiction would be allowed under modified trust theory. The problem would arise if a bishop tried to impose himself beyond his own diocese, or a synod beyond its own jurisdiction. But as Curtis explains, both English and modified trust theories are unconstitutional, since they establish religion. Which brings us to:

Doctrine of Review. This theory assumes that church members have consented to be governed by church rules, “as interpreted by the church authorities.” But we can’t assume that the consent is absolute. “It is unreasonable,” writes Curtis, “to assume that a member consented to have church rules interpreted unfairly or arbitrarily by the church authorities.” The role of secular courts would be to determine whether an action by church authorities was “patently unfair” or violated church laws “on its face.”

This approach might work where both sides of a dispute recognize a single church authority, but what about a case like Kedroff, where the rival groups each claim authority over the property? There, the court would have to “go back and find a time when the control of the property was undisputed.” Was there a point after that when that undisputed control was surrendered or lost? The answer to that question would determine which authority was recognized — but that’s just a first step, because the court would move on to ask whether the chosen authority’s actions were patently unfair or arbitrary.

Curtis brings up Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church v. Burdikoff, another church property dispute in Lorain, Ohio. According to the facts presented by Curtis, the Lorain parish had been under the Church of Russia until 1925, when it joined the Metropolia. Decades later, in 1957, Fr. George Burdikoff became pastor of the church. Soon afterwards, Burdikoff switched to Moscow’s jurisdiction, and tried to take the parish property with him. The Ohio Court of Appeals ruled against Burdikoff and Moscow, finding that for 32 years, the parish was a part of the Metropolia and Moscow asserted no right of control over it. Moscow couldn’t come along, all those years later, and try to claim jurisdiction.

Curtis admits that, even if a court defers to church decisions, there still might be constitutional issues, because the mere fact of a court enforcing a church decision could be seen as establishment. But Curtis rejects this logic, instead suggesting that the state should take a neutral position on religions, neither helping nor hindering any. He reasons that “the power of the churches to govern is derived from the consent of the members,” and by deferring to church authorities who follow church rules, the courts are “merely enforcing the original consent of the member.” Curtis then makes an important constitutional point:

If the church as a whole can claim a constitutional right to freedom of exercise, it must be derived from the members through the aggregate of their consent. Therefore the church can only claim the protection of the freedom of exercise clause so long as its decisions are made within the framework of its own rules.

The problem with Kedroff, says Curtis, is that the Supreme Court “failed to realize that no matter what methods are used to settle church property disputes, each one will be subject to first amendment attack.” There is an inevitable tension between free exercise on the one hand, and establishment on the other. The key, Curtis tells us, “is to treat the free exercise clause as paramount, and the establishment clause as primarily a means of safeguarding the freedom of exercise.”

This makes sense to me. Think about the Kedroff case: the Supreme Court rejected New York’s actions because they purportedly “established” the Metropolia and violated the free exercise of the Moscow group. But the Supreme Court ruling just reversed things, establishing Moscow (that is, putting the weight of the government behind Moscow) and violating the Metropolia’s free exercise rights (by taking from them property in which they had formal title and which they considered rightfully their cathedral).

In the end, there is no perfect answer, but I do think — at this point in my research — that courts should defer to church authorities, but that this deference should not be absolute or unconditional. If church authorities act in a manner that is utterly and completely at odds with church rules, courts should be able to make a determination. After all, we’re talking, not about dogma per se, but about property within the borders of the United States. We can’t completely escape state involvement when there is a dispute.

UPDATE: To read the full text of Curtis’ Yale Law Journal article, click here.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: civil authorities, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Supreme Court

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.

Tags: 1952, 1960, civil authorities, Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, New York, newspapers, OCA, primary sources, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Supreme Court

St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral, New York

To read my previous articles on the 1952 Supreme Court case Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, click here. For the full text of the Supreme Court opinions, click here.

In my last four articles, I summarized the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions in Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral. Here, I will offer my initial impressions of the case. Please keep in mind that these are initial — I may well change my position down the road. I’m quite open-minded about the whole thing, and I regard both sides of the case as having very legitimate arguments.

The crucial sequence of facts in this case, as I see it, is as follows:

• The Russian Orthodox Church (“Moscow,” for our purposes) had undisputed authority over the North American Archdiocese (the future Metropolia) up to at least 1917.
• In 1920, Patriarch Tikhon issued a decision which granted to the Metropolia “a large measure of autonomy, when the Russian ruling authority was unable to function, subject to ‘confirmation later to the Central Church Authority when it is reestablished.’” (Quoting from Justice Reed’s majority opinion, which in turn quoted from St. Tikhon’s decision.)
• In turn, at the 1924 Detroit Sobor, the Metropolia set itself up as a temporarily autonomous church.
• In 1945, Metropolia delagates went to Moscow for the election of Patriarch Alexy I. They were delayed and were thus unable to participate in the All-Russian Sobor as they had intended, but they later met with the Patriarch and Holy Synod and presented a request for autonomy.
• Rather than granting autonomy, the Patriarch and Holy Synod instead offered the Metropolia reunion with Moscow, subject to several stipulations (including a promise that the Metropolia abstain “from political activities against the U.S.S.R.”
• At the 1946 All-American Sobor in Cleveland, the Metropolia rejected Moscow’s offer.
• Even so, in 1952, the Metropolia still recognized Patriarch Alexy I as the legitimate Patriarch of Moscow.

It is because of this sequence of events that Justice Reed could assert, “The record before us [...] shows administrative control of the North American Diocese by the Supreme Church Authority of the Russian Orthodox Church, including the appointment of the ruling hierarch in North America from the foundation of the diocese until the Russian Revolution. We find nothing that indicates a relinquishment of this power by the Russian Orthodox Church.”

Now, imagine if things had been a little different. Imagine, for instance, that the Metropolia had gone to Russia in 1945 not to participate in the All-Russian Sobor as members of the Russian Orthodox Church, but only to attend as observers. Imagine if the Metropolia had not made a formal request for autonomy from Moscow, but rather had entered into negotiations with the aim of reuniting with autonomy (basically what ROCOR did a few years ago).

The point here is that the Metropolia did not have to officially recognize Patriarch Alexy and the Russian Synod as a legitimate “Central Church Authority.” The Metropolia could have recognized the Russian Church as truly Orthodox, but at the same time refused recognition of the purported Central Church Authority based on the argument that that Authority operated under constant duress from Stalin’s Soviet government.

Let me try this another way. St. Tikhon’s grant of temporary self-administration was subject to “confirmation” by the Central Church Authority “when it is reestablished.” Had the Metropolia withheld recognition of the Moscow authorities as a true Central Church Authority, they could have argued that St. Tikhon’s stipulation was not yet operative — that a real Central Church Authority hadn’t been established. But as soon as the Metropolia recognized the Moscow Central Church Authority, they activiated the “confirmation” element of St. Tikhon’s decision.

From a legal standpoint, in my opinion, the Metropolia’s strongest argument against Moscow’s claim of authority would have been that Moscow had no legitimate Central Church Authority, and thus St. Tikhon’s grant of self-administration was still in force. This would have given the Supreme Court the necessary justification for rejecting Moscow’s argument of hierarchical superiority — the argument that ultimately won the case, since the Court defers to the judgment of the higher authorities in a hierarchical church.

But given the actual circumstances — given that the Metropolia did recognize Moscow as a legitimate Central Church Authority — the Court’s hands were tied. The Metropolia’s recognition meant that the Metropolia was subordinate to Moscow, and even New York property law cannot trump Russian Church law when both parties are part of the Russian Church.

*****************************************

Given the Metropolia’s recognition of Moscow as a Central Church Authority, the only plausible argument I think could have been made for the Metropolia was Justice Jackson’s argument that this isn’t really a religious dispute at all — it’s a property dispute. From my article on Jackson’s dissent:

According to Justice Jackson, just because property is “dedicated to a religious use” does not make the property dispute into a deprivation of religious liberty. “I assume no one would pretend that the State cannot decide a claim of trespass, larceny, conversion, bailment or contract, where the property involved is that of a religious corporation or is put to religious use, without invading the principle of religious liberty.”

It’s a really compelling argument. The problem is this: that while the Metropolia had legal title to the Cathedral, Moscow could point to a church law which gave possession of the Cathedral to the Moscow-appointed Archbishop. Justice Jackson says that church law doesn’t trump New York law… but is that right? If the property in question was owned by a part of the Russian Orthodox Church, why wouldn’t Russian Church law apply? We’re back to the problem of the Metropolia’s recognition of the Moscow Central Church Authority. By extending that recognition, the Metropolia made itself subject to Moscow’s whims. The Metropolia couldn’t just disagree with Moscow and take refuge in New York law, once it activated the “confirmation” element of St. Tikhon’s self-administration grant.

Ultimately, had the Metropolia followed ROCOR’s lead and totally rejected Moscow’s legitimacy as a Central Church Authority, it probably would have retained St. Nicholas Cathedral. I am personally sympathetic to the Metropolia in this case, but, at this point in my analysis, I think that the Court came to the right legal decision.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: 1952, civil authorities, Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, New York, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Supreme Court, Tikhon Belavin

Justice Robert Jackson wrote the dissenting opinion in Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral

Lately, I’ve been analyzing the Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, a landmark 1952 Supreme Court case. For all the articles I’ve written on the case, click here. In this article, I am focusing on Justice Jackson’s dissenting opinion. (A brief note: in the past articles, I erroneously referred to Justice Jackson as Justice Black. I have no idea why I confused the two men. Justice Black actually agreed with the majority. Sorry for the mistake.)

Justice Jackson lets us know how he feels from the very beginning of his opinion: “New York courts have decided an ordinary ejectment action involving possession of New York real estate in favor of the plaintiff, a corporation organized under the Religious Corporations Law of New York under the name ‘Saint Nicholas Cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church in North America.’ Admittedly, it holds, and since 1925 has held, legal title to the Cathedral property. The New York Court of Appeals decided that it also has the legal right to its possession and control.”

This is something we haven’t heard before — that the Metropolia party (i.e., “Saint Nicholas Cathedral”) actually held legal title to the property. All the New York courts tried to do, in Justice Jackson’s view, is uphold that legal title. Justice Jackson continues:

The appellant [Archbishop] Benjamin’s defense against this owner’s demand for possession and the basis of his claimed right to enjoy possession of property he admittedly does not own is set forth in his answer to the ejectment suit in these words: ‘Said premises pursuant to the above rules of the Russian Orthodox Church are held in trust for the benefit of the accredited Archbishop of said Archdiocese, to be possessed, occupied and used by said Archbishop as his residence, as a place for holding religious services, and other purposes related to his office and as the seat and headquarters for the administration, by him, of the affairs of the Archdiocese both temporal and spiritual.’ And, says the appellant Benjamin, he is that Archbishop.

Again, this is information that wasn’t clear from the majority and concurring opinions we’ve already seen. On the one hand, the Metropolia group has legal title to the property. On the other hand, the Moscow group points to a claim that, by way of Russian Church rules, the property is held in trust for the Archbishop.

Justice Jackson goes on to offer his own perspective on the history leading up to the case:

I greatly oversimplify the history of this controversy to indicate its nature rather than to prove its merits. This Cathedral was incorporated and built in the era of the Czar, under the regime of a state-ridden church in a church-ridden state. The Bolshevik Revolution may have freed the state from the grip of the church, but it did not free the church from the grip of the state. It only brought to the top a new master for a captive and submissive ecclesiastical establishment. By 1945, the Moscow patriarchy had been reformed and manned under the Soviet regime and it sought to re-establish in other countries its prerevolutionary control of church property and its sway over the minds of the religious. As the Court’s opinion points out, it demanded of the Russian Church in America, among other things, that it abstain “from political activities against the U.S.S.R.” The American Cathedral group, along with others, refused submission to the representative of the Moscow Patriarch, whom it regarded as an arm of the Soviet Government. Thus, we have an ostensible religious schism with decided political overtones.

Justice Jackson argues that this case concerns “the ownership and possession of real estate” in New York, and “the vexing technical questions pertaining to the creation, interpretation, termination, and enforcement of uses and trusts.” These are matters for the states, not the United States Supreme Court. Justice Jackson writes, “This controversy, I believe, is [...] not within the proper province of this Court.”

Justice Jackson continues, “As I read the prevailing opinions, the Court assumes that some transfer of control has been accomplished by legislation which results in a denial of due process. This, of course, would raise a question of deprivation of property, not of liberty, while only the latter issue is raised by the parties.” In other words, everyone here is talking about freedom of religion and the First Amendment, but really, this is about property, plain and simple. The fact that the parties involved are religious groups is not really relevant.

In point of fact, says Justice Jackson, no religious freedom has been violated.

It is important to observe what New York has not done in this case. It has not held that Benjamin may not act as Archbishop or be revered as such by all who will follow him. It has not held that he may not have a Cathedral. Indeed, I think New York would agree that no one is more in need of spiritual guidance than the Soviet faction. It has only held that this cleric may not have a particular Cathedral which, under New York law, belongs to others. It has not interfered with his or anyone’s exercise of his religion. New York has not outlawed the Soviet-controlled sect nor forbidden it to exercise its authority or teach its dogma in any place whatsoever except on this piece of property owend and rightfully possessed by the Cathedral Corporation.

The above paragraph stands in direct opposition to Justice Frankfurter’s opinion (discussed in my previous article), which equated possession of the Cathedral with spiritual authority itself. In Justice Frankfurter’s view, the State of New York all but deposed Benjamin as Archbishop of North America when it awarded St. Nicholas Cathedral to the Metropolia. In Justice Jackson’s view, all New York did was uphold the Metropolia’s legal ownership of the Cathedral, while doing nothing to interfere with Benjamin’s position as Archbishop.

According to Justice Jackson, just because property is “dedicated to a religious use” does not make the property dispute into a deprivation of religious liberty. “I assume no one would pretend that the State cannot decide a claim of trespass, larceny, conversion, bailment or contract, where the property involved is that of a religious corporation or is put to religious use, without invading the principle of religious liberty.”

And furthermore, aren’t both sides in this controversy religious groups? “But if both claimants are religious corporations or personalities, can not the State decide the issues that arise over ownership and possession without invading the religious freedom of one or the other of the parties?”

Referring to Archbishop Benjamin as “the Soviet Ecclesiast,” Justice Jackson writes that the Archbishop’s claim, “denial of which is said to be constitutional error,” is that the Cathedral property is “impressed with a trust by virtue of the rules of the Russian Orthodox Church” — not by virtue of New York law. “To me, whatever the canon law is found to be and whoever is the rightful head of the Moscow patriarchate, I do not think New York law must yield to the authority of a foreign and unfriendly state masquerading as a spiritual institution.”

This, then, is the dichotomy: New York property law and a New York title, versus Russian Church law and a purported trust under that law. And in Justice Jackson’s mind, when New York property law conflicts with Russian Church property law, New York law wins.

I will offer my own intitial, tentative impressions in the next article.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: 1952, Benjamin Fedchenkov, civil authorities, Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, New York, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Supreme Court

Justice Felix Frankfurter authored a concurring opinion in Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral.

In my previous two articles (available here), I discussed the majority opinion in the 1952 Supreme Court case Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral. Today, I’ll discuss the concurring opinion of Justice Frankfurter. And just to be clear — “concurring opinion” means that Justice Frankfurter agreed with the ultimate outcome of the case (a victory for the Moscow Patriarchal jurisdiction), but differed to some extent in his reasoning.

The majority opinion, authored by Justice Reed, relied on the idea that the Russian Orthodox Church had undisputed jurisdiction over its North American Archdiocese until 1917, never relinquished that jurisdiction after 1917, and therefore still had jurisdiction in 1952. Thus the whole issue was an internal church dispute, and Moscow, as the higher church authority, had priority over the Metropolia.

Justice Frankfurter, concurring, begins by simply stating the problem. “[T]his proceeding,” he writes, “rests on a claim which cannot be determined without intervention by the State in a religious conflict. [...] St. Nicholas Cathedral is an archiepiscopal see of one of the great religious organizations. What is at stake here is the power to exercise religious authority. That is the essence of this controversy.” According to Justice Frankfurter, St. Nicholas Cathedral is not merely a piece of property — it is “the outward symbol of a religious faith.” Control of the Cathedral is a physical manifestation of religious authority; thus, determining who owns the Cathedral is tantamount to determining who has religious authority.

I find this logic questionable. Nobody was going to shift their loyalties from Metropolitan Leonty to Archbishop Benjamin, or vice versa, on the basis of who physically possessed the Cathedral building. I’m no theologian, but my understanding is that Justice Frankfurter’s logic has things somewhat backwards: it is the bishop who makes the cathedral, not the cathedral the bishop. After all, “cathedral” simply refers to the “cathedra” — the bishop’s throne, or seat. Metropolitan Leonty could — and did — make a different building his cathedral, and to this day, Holy Protection (not St. Nicholas) is the OCA cathedral for New York.

Citing Watson v. Jones (discussed in my previous post), Justice Frankfurter points out that, even in property disputes where secular courts must get involved, “the authority of courts is in strict subordination to the ecclesiastical law of a particular church prior to a schism.” So the courts can get involved to some limited degree, sometimes. On the other hand, “Legislatures have no such obligation to adjudicate and no power.” It would be one thing, says Justice Frankfurter, for the New York courts to deal with a dispute over ownership of St. Nicholas Cathedral. But that isn’t what happened; instead, the New York state legislature stepped in and passed a law, transferring property rights from Moscow to the Metropolia.

If this principle is allowed to stand, reasons Justice Frankfurter, it “would give each State the right to assess the circumstances, in the foreign political entanglements of its religious bodies that make for danger to the State,” and the power to “divest such bodies of spiritual authority and of the temporal property which symbolizes it.” Again, Justice Frankfurter returns to this notion that the cathedral makes the bishop — a notion which I consider theologically and ecclesiologically (not to mention legally) suspect.

However, Justice Frankfurter’s broader point is spot on. He writes, “Memory is short but it cannot be forgotten that in the State of New York there was a strong feeling against the Tsarist regime at a time when the Russian Church was governed by a Procurator of the Tsar. And when Mussolini executed the Lateran Agreement, argument was not wanting by those friendly to her claims that the Church of Rome was subjecting herself to political authority.” It is entirely possible that foreign governments could influence American citizens via religious institutions such as the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. But the state cannot be driven by these fears. Justice Frankfurter continues, “Such fear readily leads to persecution of religious beliefs deemed dangerous to ruling political authority. [...] The long, unedifying history of the contest between the secular state and the church is replete with instances of attempts by civil government to exert pressure upon religious authorities.” Thus, while states have a legitimate interest in combating Soviet ideology, and while the Soviets may exert an influence over the Russian Orthodox Church, “under our Constitution it is not open to the governments of this Union to reinforce the loyalty of their citizens by deciding who is the true exponent of their religion.”

But according to the Metropolia, “the present Moscow Patriarchate is not the true superior church of the American communicants. The vicissitudes of war and revolution which have beset the Moscow Patriarchate since 1917 are said to have resulted in a discontinuity which divests the present Patriarch of his authority over the American church.” Problematically, though, the Metropolia does recognize Patriarch Alexy as the “legitimately chosen holder of his office.” So do Alexy’s “co-equals,” the other Orthodox patriarchs (and even, adds Justice Frankfurter, “the present Archbishop of York”). The New York legislature can’t just step in and declare Alexy illegitimate.

Justice Frankfurter concludes that the New York legislature, in enacting a law in favor of the Metropolia over Moscow, “enter[ed] the domain of religious control barred to the States” by the Constitution.

This concurring opinion isn’t long, but it incorporates several arguments. In summary (as best I can figure):

1. The Cathedral is the symbol of spiritual authority, so to decide its owner is essentially to decide a religious question reserved for the church.
2. The New York state legislature doesn’t have the power to adjudicate church property disputes; that is a matter for the courts, and even those courts cannot override church law.
3. It’s extremely dangerous to let governments restrict churches based on fears of foreign political influence.
4. Everybody agrees that Patriarch Alexy is the legitimate head of the Russian Church, and as such, he has authority over the Russian Church in America.

Next time, we’ll unpack Justice Jackson’s very different dissenting opinion.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: 1952, civil authorities, Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, New York, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Supreme Court

Supreme Court Justice Stanley Reed, author of the majority opinion in Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral

Yesterday, I discussed Justice Reed’s majority opinion in Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, a landmark 1952 Supreme Court case pitting the Moscow Patriarchate’s North American jurisdiction against the Metropolia (today’s OCA). The dispute was about which group — Moscow or the Metropolia — was the rightful owner of St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York. The majority of the Court ruled in favor of Moscow.

Before moving on to the concurring and dissenting opinions, I wanted to touch on an aspect of Justice Reed’s opinion that I neglected yesterday. Justice Reed devoted a great deal of attention to Watson v. Jones, an 1871 case which served (and still serves) as important precedent in church-state relations. Here are the basics of Watson:

In 1865, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States denounced slavery and required its members to do the same. In Louisville, Kentucky, the Presbyterians were divided on whether to comply, and the Walnut Street Church ended up in the hands of proslavery members. The parish then joined the Presbyterian Church of the Confederate States. The US General Assembly condemned the proslavery party and, for all intents and purposes, excommunicated them from the Church.

In 1866, some antislavery members of the Walnut Street Church sued for control of parish property. According to Justice Reed’s summary, “The suit was to decide [...] which one of the two bodies should be recognized as entitled to the use of the Walnut Street Presbyterian Church.” The Court in Watson held that, “whenever questions of discipline, or of faith, or ecclesiastical rule, custom, or law have been decided by the highest of these church authorities to which the matter has been carried, the legal tribunals must accept such decisions as binding on them.” In this case, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church had already recognized the antislavery group as the legitimate owners of Walnut Street Church. The Supreme Court refused to override the decision.

The Court reasoned, in Watson, that if you unite yourself to a hierarchical church, you do so “with an implied consent” to the government of that church, “and are bound to submit to it.” You cannot, said the Court, appeal to secular courts when you don’t agree with a decision of your church. If you could, this “would lead to the total subversion of such religious bodies.”

Justice Reed found obvious parallels between Watson and the present case, Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral. According to Justice Reed, “This controversy concerning the right to use St. Nicholas Cathedral is strictly a matter of ecclesiastical government, the power of the Supreme Church Authority of the Russian Orthodox Church to appoint a ruling hierarch of the archdiocese of North America. No one disputes that such power did lie in that Authority prior to the Russian Revolution.”

In the end, this all seems to boil down to historical interpretation. As I discussed yesterday, the majority’s logic goes like this:

1. The Russian Orthodox Church had undisputed authority over the North American Archdiocese prior to 1917.
2. The Russian Orthodox Church never relinquished that authority.
3. Therefore, the Russian Orthodox Church still has that authority, and its decisions are binding upon the North American Archdiocese (that is, the Metropolia).

Now, it’s true that Patriarch St. Tikhon granted some measure of temporary self-government to the North American Archdiocese. But this grant was not at all clear. Justice Reed doesn’t get into it, but St. Tikhon issued multiple and contradictory decisions during that tumultuous period. And even the strongest, most pro-Metropolia of those decisions was subject to “confirmation later to the Central Church Authority when it is reestablished.” Whatever you think of the Central Church Authority between 1917 and 1945, certainly by 1945 the Metropolia recognized that a legitimate Central Church Authority existed in Moscow. And that authority refused to confirm St. Tikhon’s grant of temporary autonomy for America. Legally speaking, the Metropolia’s position was weak.

As promised, next time, I’ll focus on Justice Frankfurter’s concurring opinion.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: 1952, civil authorities, Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, New York, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Supreme Court

It’s been forever since I wrote an article here at OH.org. I’ve been incredibly busy, with my family, my local parish, and law school classes taking up all of my time. I’m in summer classes, as well, so there won’t be much reprieve over the next couple of months. Fortunately, I’ve found a way to mix law school and American Orthodox history. This summer, I am writing, for credit, a paper on Orthodoxy in the American courts. As best I can tell, there has been very little published on the subject, although awhile back one reader (a recent law school graduate) sent me a paper he had written on the very subject. I hope to publish my own paper at some point.

Right now, I’m up to my neck in case law, reading judges’ opinions from throughout the 20th century. There are two major US Supreme Court cases dealing with Orthodoxy — Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral (1952) and Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese v. Milivojevich (1976). Today, I’m going to share some thoughts on Kedroff. For the full text of the Supreme Court opinions, click here.

Kedroff deals with a dispute between the Russian Metropolia (today’s OCA) on the one hand, and the Moscow Patriarchate’s North American Archdiocese on the other. At issue is which group — the Metropolia or Moscow — should have possession of St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York City.

The basic history is as follows. Until 1917, all Russian Orthodox churches in America were under the authority of the Orthodox Church of Russia, which was governed by a Holy Synod. In 1917… well, a lot happened in 1917. First there was the February Revolution, which dethroned the Tsar. An All-Russian Sobor was then held, and St. Tikhon (formerly of America) was elected Patriarch of Moscow — the first such election since Peter the Great abolished the office of Patriarch. Just as this happened, the Bolsheviks swept into power and began to persecute the Orthodox Church.

On November 20, 1920, Patriarch Tikhon issued a document granting to the North American Archdiocese what Justice Reed (writing for the majority) refers to as “a large measure of autonomy, when the Russian ruling authority was unable to function, subject to ‘confirmation later to the Central Church Authority when it is reestablished.’” In 1924, the North American Archdiocese held an All-American Sobor in Detroit. American Orthodox historians typically view the 1924 Detroit Sobor to be the moment when the North American Archdiocese was transformed into the autonomous Russian Metropolia. Justice Reed writes, “This was followed by [...] a spate of litigation concerning control of the various churches and occupancy of ecclesiastical positions [...]”

Patriarch Tikhon died in 1925. In 1933, Metropolitan Sergius, locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, appointed Archbishop Benjamin Fedchenkov to head a new Russian Archdiocese in North America. A decade later, Sergius was elected Patriarch, but he died soon thereafter. Justice Reed: “After Sergius’ death a new patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexi, was chosen Patriarch in 1945 at Moscow at a sobor recognized by all parties to this litigation as a true sobor held in accordance with church canons.” I hadn’t realized this — that the Metropolia recognized the election of Patriarch Alexy I as canonical.

Representatives from the American Metropolia were supposed to participate in that 1945 Sobor that elected Alexy, but they were prevented. I don’t know what the story is there (Justice Reed doesn’t know, and he’s who I’m relying on right now), but I seem to recall reading something about that in an OCA history book somewhere… I’ll have to look. Anyway, when the Metropolia reps finally made it to Moscow, they presented to the Patriarch and Holy Synod a report on the Metropolia and a request for formal autonomy. A few days later (February 14 or 16, 1945), Moscow responded with an ukase, stipulating that, for Moscow and the Metropolia to reunite, the Metropolia must:

1. Promptly hold an All-American Sobor,
2. Express the decision of the American dioceses to reunite with Moscow,
3. Declare the agreement of the Metropolia to abstain “from political activities against the USSR,” and
4. Elect a Metropolitan subject to confirmation by Moscow.

The ukase stopped short of promising autonomy, instead suggesting only that the American Metropolitan “may be given some extended powers.”

At an All-American Sobor in Cleveland in 1946, the Metropolia rejected Moscow’s offer. Thus began the events which led to this 1952 Supreme Court case. The Metropolia was headquartered in New York, and in New York state, religious corporations are incorporated by acts of the state legislature. In fact, at about this time, the other major American Orthodox jurisdictions (e.g. the Greeks and Antiochians) incorporated in New York. So too was the Metropolia incorporated by a legislative act. Justice Reed explains the act thusly:

The purpose of the article was to bring all the New York churches, formerly subject to the administrative jurisdiction of the Most Sacred Governing Synod in Moscow or the Patriarch of Moscow, into an administratively autonomous metropolitan district. That district was North American in area, created pursuant to resolutions adopted at a sobor held in Detroit in 1924. This declared autonomy was made effective by a further legislative requirement that all the churches formerly subject to the Moscow synod and patriarchate should for the future be governed by the ecclesiastical body and hierarchy of the American metropolitan district.

The majority of the Supreme Court found this act to be unconstitutional. Justice Reed: “We conclude that Article 5-C undertook by its terms to transfer the control of the New York churches of the Russian Orthodox religion from the central governing hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch of Moscow and the Holy Synod, to the governing authorities of the Russian Church in America, a church organization limited to the diocese of North America and the Aleutian Islands. [...] Such a law violates the Fourteenth Amendment. It prohibits in this country the free exercise of religion.” In other words, the New York legislature can’t do that! They can’t modify or cut off Moscow’s jurisdiction — and, as Justice Reed explains, “Nothing indicates that [Moscow] relinquished that authority [over Russian Church in America] or recognized the autonomy of the American church.”

Furthermore, the legislative act requires the New York churches to conform to Orthodox doctrine, etc. This sounds fine and good, but, says Justice Reed, “their conformity is by legislative fiat and subject to legislative will. Should the state assert power to change the statute requiring conformity to ancient faith and doctrine to one establishing a different doctrine, the invalidity would be unmistakable.”

Of course, all this legislation was taking place at a tension-filled time in American history. This was the McCarthy Era, the Red Scare, when even a hint of Communist sympathies could ruin your life. Justice Reed agrees with the need to curtail Communist sentiments, saying, “Legislative power to punish subversive action cannot be doubted. If such action should actually be attempted by a cleric, neither his robe nor his pulpit would be a defense. But in this case no problem of punishment for violation of the law arises. There is no charge of subversive or hostile 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.”

The rationale of the majority is pretty straightforward: this is an internal church dispute in which the government may not interfere. In the view of the majority, Moscow never surrendered its authority in America. Of Article 5-C, Justice Reed concludes, “By fiat it displaces one church administrator with another. It passes the control of matters strictly ecclesiastical from one church authority to another. It thus intrudes for the benefit of one segment of a church the power of the state into a forbidden area of religious freedom contrary to the principles of the First Amendment. [...] Article 5-C directly prohibits the free exercise of an ecclesiastical right, the Church’s choice of its hierarchy.”

It’s remarkable, isn’t it, that in 1952, the Supreme Court of the United States decided a case against a local American church and in favor of a church widely regarded as under Soviet influence? But, in the majority’s eyes, they had no choice. Next time, we’ll look at Justice Frankfurther’s concurring opinion, which takes a somewhat different approach but reaches the same ultimate conclusion (that is, that Moscow wins and the Metropolia loses). After that, we’ll discuss Justice Jackson’s dissenting opinion.

I should say (and probably should have said at the beginning) that this analysis of mine is a work in progress. I’m definitely not an expert on this stuff, and I’m learning as I go. It’s entirely possible that I’ve butchered the analysis, and I’ll be revisiting everything many times before I complete my paper. I would appreciate any feedback my readers might have, and I’d especially love to hear what the lawyers out there think of the Kedroff case. These articles I’m writing are really just my own notes and impressions, but I thought readers might find the case interesting. I hope you’ll all forgive me for the inadequacies of my initial analysis. Consider yourself forewarned.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: 1952, Benjamin Fedchenkov, civil authorities, Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, New York, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Supreme Court

We’ve tried this before. Over the past century or so, there have been no fewer than five attempts to bring the various ethnic Orthodox jurisdictions in America into some measure of administrative unity. Next week, from May 26-28, we embark upon a sixth effort — an effort which, compared to its predecessors, seems remarkably promising.

St. Tikhon's vision called for overlapping ethnic dioceses united under Russian authority

First, of course, there were the Russians. In the early 20th century, the Russian Archdiocese envisioned itself as the platform for Orthodox unity in America. Its sainted archbishop, Tikhon Bellavin, articulated an innovative vision to deal with the unprecedented diversity of ethnic Orthodox Christians in the New World. He proposed that the Russian Archdiocese be organized, not along territorial lines, but according to ethnicity — a bishop for the Russians, another for the Syrians, another for the Serbs, still another for the Greeks. St. Tikhon realized that the different ethnic groups needed their own ethnic hierarchs, and his first step in implementing this plan was to consecrate St. Raphael Hawaweeny as bishop for the Syrians. Separate, overlapping administrative units were created for the Serbs, and later for other groups (e.g. the Albanians), but St. Tikhon’s overall plan was never fully enacted. The tenuous unity that existed among the Russians, Serbs, and Syrians soon fell apart, and by 1920, any notion of American Orthodox unity under the Russians was dead.

Dead, but not forgotten. When St. Raphael, the Syrian bishop, died in 1915, he left no obvious successor. His flock divided into warring camps, one party favoring continued subordination to the Church of Russia, the other submission to the Patriarchate of Antioch. Eventually, the Russian Archdiocese consecrated Aftimios Ofiesh to be St. Raphael’s replacement. And, whatever else one might say of Archbishop Aftimios, he was nothing if not a visionary. In 1926, he proposed the idea of an autocephalous jurisdiction, the “American Orthodox Catholic Church,” which would transcend ethnicity and embrace all the Orthodox in America. The Russian Metropolia — successor to the Russian Archdiocese, and predecessor to the OCA — granted Archbishop Aftimios his wish in 1927. Archbishop Aftimios went around acting like he was the head of an autocephalous Church, but few paid any attention to him, and even the Russian Metropolia soon withdrew its support. As hopeful an idea as the AOCC might have been, it never had any real chance of uniting all the Orthodox in America.

Gov. Thomas Dewey of New York signs the bill creating the Federation

Archbishop Aftimios effectively destroyed his already fringe jurisdiction in 1933, when he married a girl young enough to be his daughter. But two of his top assistants, the convert priests Michael Gelsinger and Boris Burden, continued to dream of a united American Orthodox Church. They spearheaded a 1943 effort that resulted in the “Federation,” which was to SCOBA what the League of Nations was to the UN. The Federation included the primary Orthodox jurisdictions in America (Greek, New York Antiochian, and Moscow Patriarchal, along with Serbian, Ukrainian, and Carpatho-Russian), with the glaring exceptions of the Russian Metropolia and ROCOR. In its short life — measured in months, as opposed to years — the Federation achieved some modest but still significant accomplishments. It managed to get Orthodoxy recognized by the Selective Service, exempting Orthodox priests from military service and allowing Orthodox Christians in the military to put “Eastern Orthodox” on their dog tags. Just as significantly, the Federation led to the legal incorporation of several jurisdictions. My own Antiochian Archdiocese is still governed by that legislation, from the 1940s.

In the end, though, the Federation fell apart. There were probably dozens of reasons for the failure, but, in my view, the biggest was simply that the bishops involved in the Federation weren’t committed enough to its success. Well, most of them. One man who was deeply committed to the vision of the Federation was the Antiochian Metropolitan Antony Bashir. He kept the Federation going, on paper only, through the whole of the 1950s. In 1960, the Federation was reborn as SCOBA, the Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas. The “big three” jurisdictions — Greek, Antiochian, and Russian Metropolia — were led by three larger-than-life figures, Archbishop Iakovos Koukouzis, Metropolitan Antony Bashir, and Metropolitan Leonty Turkevich. Among many, the unification of all the American Orthodox jurisdictions seemed imminent.

Metropolitan (later Patriarch) Pimen presents the "Tomos of Autocephaly" to then-Bishop Theodosius Lazor in 1970

A decade later, though, there was still no administrative unity. The Russian Metropolia had entered into talks with the Moscow Patriarchate, and in April of 1970, Moscow issued a Tomos, granting autocephaly to its formerly estranged American daughter. The Metropolia became the “Orthodox Church in America” — the OCA, and in the words of an official brochure published at the time, “invite[d] all of the national Orthodox church ‘jurisdictions’ in America to join with it in unity.” This marked the fifth major attempt to unify the various jurisdictions.

Today, of course, there is still no administrative unity. Five decades have passed since SCOBA was created, and four since the Patriarchate of Moscow granted autocephaly to the OCA. SCOBA has been useful — it has fostered cooperation, if not actual administrative unity, and its many agencies are doing great work. For its part, the OCA did bring in Romanian, Albanian, and Bulgarian jurisdictions, although in every case the OCA group has a non-OCA counterpart jurisdiction. I think it’s safe to say that, despite the best efforts of many great people, neither SCOBA nor the OCA will be the platform for future administrative unity.

Before we get to Attempt No. 6, we should ask — why did all five past attempts at unity fail? Why could neither the Russian Archdiocese, nor the American Orthodox Catholic Church, nor the Federation, nor SCOBA, nor the OCA, succeed in bringing all the jurisdictions together into a single ecclesiastical entity? The answers, of course, are many and complex, but several common threads are apparent. The Russian Archdiocese, the AOCC, and the OCA were all unilateral efforts, led by a single group which tried to get the others to join it. The Federation and SCOBA were “pan-Orthodox” endeavors, but the leaders lacked a common vision, and, worse, the support of their “Mother Churches.” Yes, the Mother Churches may have granted permission for their American jurisdictions to join SCOBA, but they certainly didn’t share a vision of administrative unity in America.

There are two really big lessons from all these failures: you can’t have unity without getting broad-based support at home, here in North America, and you can’t have unity without the explicit support of the Mother Churches. Never, in the history of Orthodoxy in America, has an attempt at administrative unity had both of these necessities.

Until now. The Episcopal Assembly, which holds its first meeting this coming week, includes every single Orthodox bishop in America — every one. No jurisdictions are left out. And the Episcopal Assembly not only has the blessing of the Mother Churches; it was actually mandated by the Mother Churches. It wasn’t “our” idea, over here, like the Federation and SCOBA were. The Episcopal Assembly was created by the Mother Churches themselves, who essentially told us, “Get your house in order.” And the end goal is clear and explicit: “The preparation of a plan to organize the Orthodox of the Region on a canonical basis.” (Article 5:1:e of the Rules of Operation) This is not just SCOBA Part II. For the first time in history, the Mother Churches are, openly and in unison, calling for us to unite administratively.

There is no guarantee that the Episcopal Assembly will succeed, and if it does, it’s not clear whether that will be in 5 years or 15. But one thing, to me, is certain: all of us — all who share a desire for canonical unity in America — should throw our support and prayers behind the Assembly, and beg the Holy Spirit to guide its work, just as he guided the work of the Ecumenical Councils themselves. Because, make no mistake — this is the best chance we’ve ever had, or may likely have for many decades to come. May it be blessed by God.

[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]

Tags: Aftimios Ofiesh, American Orthodox Catholic Church, Antiochian, Antony Bashir, Assembly of Bishops, Boris Burden, early unity, Federation, Greek, Michael Gelsinger, OCA, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Tikhon Belavin

Fr. Alexander Schmemann in 1963

Fr. Alexander Schmemann was one of the observers at Vatican II, the landmark 1960s council of the Roman Catholic Church. His reaction to the event is priceless — Schmemann took the “opportunity to thank God” that he was Orthodox. Here’s the story, from the New York Times (11/16/1963):

A Russian Orthodox theologian-observer at the second session of the Vatican Council said Thursday that the gathering in Rome was “sobering from the Orthodox point of view.”

The Rev. Dr. Alexander Schmemann, dean of St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary in Tuckahoe, N.Y., said that he had “no doubt the actions of the council thus far are good for the Roman Church itself.” But, he added, “the reality, unfortunately, is that they are far from ecumenity.”

Dr. Schmemann delivered his report on the council at the quadrennial sobor, or convocation, of the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America. The sobor, at the Holy Virgin Protection Cathedral, 59 East Second Street, ended yesterday.

Dr. Schmemann, who was also vice chairman of the sobor, emphasized that he had not gone to Rome as an official delegate for his denomination but rather as a special guest.

He explained that the Moscow Patriarchate of Russian Orthodoxy had several official delegates at the council, as had the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. The Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church severed administrative relations with the Moscow Patriarchate in 1924 and regarded the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia as a splinter group.

In his report to his denomination, Dr. Schmemann said he did not bear “any bad will” to Roman Catholicism. But, he said, considering the actions of the council in their ecumenical aspect, he had “opportunity to thank God” that he was Orthodox.

Dr. Schmemann’s objections to the council’s discussions were based on the Roman Catholic view of the papacy. “What builds a wall between the Roman Church and Eastern Orthodoxy is the doctrine of papal infallibility,” he said.

“There may be democritization going on,” the theologian added, “but so much of the Catholic Church is built on reverence of the Pope.”

He said that even the collegiality of the bishops was defined purely in its relationship with the papacy.

“In 17 lines of definition of the bishop in the schema on the church,” he went on, “the word ‘pope’ appears four or five times.

“In Eastern Orthodoxy it is our understanding that teaching about the Pope should be balanced with teachings about the bishops.”

Now, I’m no expert on Vatican II or Orthodox-Roman Catholic relations in general, so I don’t really have any commentary to add. But I stumbled upon this article in my collection and thought it might be of interest to others, so I figured I’d publish it here.

Tags: 1963, Alexander Schmemann, newspapers, primary sources, Roman Catholic Church, Russian Metropolia

L to R: Future Metropolitan Germanos Polyzoides, Bp Alexander Demoglou, Met Platon Rozhdestvensky, Patriarch-elect Meletios Metaxakis, Abp Alexander Nemolovsky, Bp Aftimios Ofiesh, and Archdeacon Vsevolod Andronoff

Back in July, Fr. Andrew wrote about the above photo, which depicts a gathering of American Orthodox bishops in the early 1920s: Greeks Meletios and Alexander, Russians Platon and Alexander, and Syrian Aftimios. At the time of Fr. Andrew’s original post, no one knew exactly when this photo was taken, or what occasion brought all these hierarchs together. Fr. Andrew wrote, 

This photograph was found in the archives of the Library of Congress. As yet, there have been no official documents that have surfaced detailing what this 1921 meeting must have entailed. It might have been only a courtesy call, with a photo op at the end. 

Fr. Andrew went on to observe that, based on the photo, the other bishops appear to have regarded Metaxakis as “first in seniority among them.” To read the rest of Fr. Andrew’s post, click here. 

Why am I bringing all this up again? Becasue I believe I now know when and where this photo was taken, and why all these bishops were in the same place. On December 9, 1921, Abp Meletios Metaxakis was elected Patriarch of Constantinople. He was in New York at the time, having been deposed from his previous position as Archbishop of Athens. With Bp Alexander Demoglou, Metaxakis had come to the US to organize the Greek-American churches into a unified archdiocese. The New York Times (12/10/1921) announced that one of Metaxakis’ first acts as Patriarch would be to appoint Alexander as bishop of North and South America. 

The Times also reported, “This morning at 10 o’clock the Most Rev. Alexander, Archbishop of the Aleutian Islands and North America for the Russian Church, will formally call upon the Patriarch-elect and officially present the felicitations of the 100,000 Russians who are in the Western Hemisphere, who are his spiritual subjects.” 

The Russian goodwill towards Metaxakis’ election was not limited to Abp Alexander Nemolovsky. Archimandrite Patrick Mythen, the powerful convert priest, hastily organized a special ceremony. December 19 was the St. Nicholas day, the patronal feast of the Russian cathedral in New York. Invitations were sent out, in the names of both Met Platon and Abp Alexander. Besides the two Russian and two Greek bishops, the guest list included the Syrian Bp Aftimios and four Episcopalian hierarchs. Representatives of the new African Orthodox Church were also present, as well as the “Hungarian prelate [...] Bishop Stephan of Pittsburgh.” I think this was Bp Stephen Dzubay, a former Uniate who converted to Orthodoxy in 1916 and became the Russian Archdiocese’s Bishop of Pittsburgh. (Dzubay returned to Roman Catholicism in 1924.) 

After the Divine Liturgy, there was a buffet luncheon for the clergy at the neighboring parish house. The above photo must have been taken during or after this luncheon. Here is another, nearly identical photo, which appeared in the New York Evening Telegram on December 20, 1921: 

This photo, of the December 19, 1921 gathering of Orthodox bishops, appeared in the New York Evening Telegram the following day.

Comparing the two photos, it’s quite clear that they were taken at the same event, probably within moments of one another. The Evening Telegram photo doesn’t include the non-bishops, Polyzoides and Andronoff, but it’s possible that they were just cropped out before publication.

The event itself, the pan-Orthodox liturgy, is evidence of the rather friendly (or at least cordial) relations between the Greek and Russian hierarchy in 1921. Speaking to the Evening Telegram (12/19/1921), Fr. Patrick Mythen expressed what must have been on the minds of the Russian bishops as well: that Metaxakis’ election as Ecumenical Patriarch marked the first time since the fall of Constantinople that the Patriarch was elected without the consent of the Turkish sultan. He would thus be “politically free and will rule the Church as a priest and not as a politician.” Mythen meant that Metaxakis would not be bound to the Turkish state, but I’m sure many today would find his words ironic, Metaxakis being the controversial Church politican that he was.

Tags: 1921, Aftimios Ofiesh, Alexander Demoglou, Alexander Nemolovsky, America, Episcopalians, Germanos Polyzoides, Greek, Meletios Metaxakis, New York, newspapers, Patrick Mythen, Platon Rozhdestvensky, primary sources, Russian Metropolia, Stephen Dzubay, Vsevelod Andronoff

Archimandrite Theoclitos Triantafilides is one of the most remarkable figures in American Orthodox history. An ethnic Greek, he served as tutor to the future Tsar Nicholas II and went on to establish the multiethnic parish of Ss. Constantine and Helen in Galveston, Texas, under the Russian Mission. His story has been mostly untold, until now. The following article, by Milivoy Jovan Milosevich, is the fullest and best work yet done on the life of Fr. Theoclitos and the history of Ss. Constantine and Helen Church. It originally appeared on the Galveston Orthodox Community website, which is run by Fr. Serge Veselinovich, the current pastor of Ss. Constantine and Helen. SOCHA has received permission to reprint the article here at OrthodoxHistory.org.   

Archimandrite Theoclitos Triantafilides

This picture of the Right Reverend, Most Venerable Archimandrite, Fr. Theoclitos Triantafilides is the only one I am aware of. He was the first Orthodox Priest in Texas. The picture did hang with Honor in the Church Congregation Hall of Saints Constantine and Helen Church in Galveston, Texas. It has been saved from “Hurricane IKE’s Destruction” (September 12, 2008), and will hang there again when the new hall is constructed soon. I live in Galveston, and I have been a part of the Church congregation since Baptism. My Mother was baptized by Arch. Fr. Theoclitos and was very proud to tell people of that fact until her death in 2001. I have studied everything I can find on this wonderful Priest over the years, including his Last Will, the Galveston Daily News archives, Immigration Records, the Rosenberg Public Library of Galveston, the Church records (Slavonic, long-hand written in Cyrillic), the Internet and greatly on the local “folklore” stories told of him.   

IT’S HAS BEEN SAID….   

His father was an Athenian Greek. When the first outbreaks of Greek Independence from the Ottoman Empire started on the Peloponnese Peninsula, his father, a fisherman crossed onto the peninsula to join the forces of famed Greek General Theodoros Kolokotronis, also an Athenian. Eight years later, when Independence was achieved (with great help from the Allied Russian, English and French Forces); he settled in Egio (one of the oldest cities in the Balkans), Peloponnese Peninsula, Greece.   

Born in November of 1833, young Theodoros was named for the famed Greek General. They called him “Theos” and he celebrated his Name Day each September 22nd (Julian Calendar in the 1800′s), on the Feast Day of St. Hierotheos, the Student of Saint Paul, the Apostle, who in 53 A.D. became the First Bishop of Athens. Theodorus grew up fishing with his father, and spending time around the port; while his mother (a native of the Peloponnese Peninsula) pushed him to the Church. The era after Greek Independence was wrought with economic problems and the Armenians and Bulgarians had replaced the Ottomans as bankers and merchants, allowing our young Theos to become ever more acquainted with other cultures. Two-thirds of the population had vanished and the land was devastated.   

His early schooling was in the Church of Panagia Trypiti that is built inside a cavity of the cliff just 150 stair steps above the Port of Egio and he helped the Priests with all their duties, occasionally traveling into the local mountains to visit Agia Lavras Monastery, about 20 miles south and up in the mountains. Greek Independence had started there with Bishop Germanos Declaring Independence with his blessing of the troops. Later the Ottomans burned the Monastery, but it was reconstructed with help from the Russian Orthodox Church. Many of the Icons there were gifts from the Russian Monastery Panteleimon on Holy Mt Athos and the Be-jeweled Gospel in the Monastery was printed, signed and given by Catherine the Great of Russia. History and multi-ethnic cultures literally surrounded him. As a young adult, he was Tonsured a Monk and was given the name Theoclitos. He soon traveled to Mt Athos where he was accepted as a resident of the Panteleimon Monastery, where he became fluent in Slavonic and studied Russian language and customs; and made regular visits to the Serbian Monastery Hilandar learning the Serbian language and customs. He had become fascinated with languages.   

He was invited to complete a formal education and become a teacher at the Slavic Greek Latin Academy and Theological Seminary at Holy Trinity – St. Sergius Monastery, better known today as the Moscow Theological Academy, just outside Moscow, Russia. After under-graduate, a Graduate Degrees in Theology and a few years of teaching; he was called upon by the new Danish born King of Greece, George I, to tutor his son Prince George. Later, the King’s brother-in-law, Tsar Alexander III of Russia called upon him to tutor the Royal Family’s 6 children specifically in other Orthodox cultures including the Greek language. So, he became a Greek cultural teacher to the future Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, who was Canonized a Martyr Saint of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1991. It is also said, Fr. Theoclitos was one of the 30 or so clergyman serving at the wedding of Nicholas II and Alexandra Fyodorovna, who was Canonized a Martyr Saint of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. The Parishioners of Galveston would later call him, “The Priest of Three Kings.”   

It is known that with the outset of the American Civil War, a group of multi-ethnic Orthodox Christians were having regular prayer meetings in Galveston, as early as 1861, and they called themselves “the Parish of S.S. Constantine and Helen.” Galveston is a seaport, and its citizens were accustomed to our Eastern European and Mediterranean People. Our Eastern Orthodox Christians were always around the port. There were those that came, returned home and came back again. The first known Serbian in America lived in Galveston for a long time; his name was Djordje Sagic (aka: Djordje Ribar and/or George Fisher). He came to Texas in the late 1820’s after “jumping ship” (because of indentured servitude) in Philadelphia, and became the first Port Director of the Port of Galveston under the Mexican Government. He then became a Major in the Texas Revolutionary Army under General Sam Houston. He served in public office as City Councilman in Houston, Texas and Justice of the Peace in Harris County after the Texas Revolution. Sagic had studied for the Priesthood in Karlovci Serbia, but left the seminary to join the last efforts of the first Serbian uprising against the Ottoman Empire in 1813, lead by Serbian leader, Karageorge Petrovitch. He left the area in 1850 to ultimately retire in San Francisco, California as a Justice of the Peace and retained the status of the Official Greek Government Consul there until his death, in 1873. He knew 13 languages.   

The First known Greek in Galveston participated in the Parish Church group. He called himself only by the name of Captain Nicholas. Captain Nicholas joined the notorious Privateer Jean Lafitte in New Orleans, when Lafitte sailed for Galveston, as Capitan of Lafitte’s prize schooner the Mirabella. Captain Nicholas sailed away from Galveston with Lafitte after burning everything they left behind. Captain Nicholas returned to Galveston after Lafitte’s death, becoming a farmer on west Galveston Island and recounting old pirate stories at the waterfront. He lived more than 100 years and is believed to have died in the Hurricane of 1900. Some have said that with Lafitte came the first of many nationalities to Galveston, but I am unable to corroborate any other Orthodox Christians. During the late 1880′s and early 1890′s these Orthodox Christian Serbian, Russian, Greek, Bulgarian, and Arab (Lebanese) immigrants to Galveston had organized and started gathering moneies for a church. Aside from the religious group, they each started several individual nationalistic groups. Each had separately written many petitions to their former Bishops back home for a Parish Priest and had received only denials; justified by the facts of distance and costs, but these denials were in some cases including the suggestion that they petition the Russian Orthodox Mission Diocese in North America. So the culture in Galveston was ripe for the addition of an Eastern European & Mediterranean Priest of Arch. Fr. Theoclitos’ stature.   

Nicholas II became Tsar of Russia on November 26, 1894. The Romanov Royal Family had created and supported the Russian Orthodox Mission into North America through Alaska since 1794. At that time, because of the Romanov family’s truly un-matched wealth, the Russian Mission into America was the only Orthodox jurisdiction on the continent prior to 1922.   

So, the Slavs, headed by Risto Vukovich; and the Greeks headed by Athurs Menutis gathered and decided to petition the Russian Mission Diocese. They sent three telegrams written in Cyrillic and signed by Vukovich, Christo Chuk, and Milosh Porobich which explained the diversity of the parishioners to; (1) the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, (2) Tsar Nicholas II personally, and (3) His Grace Bishop Nicholas in Sitka, Alaska. A short time later the parish board received a telegram personally from Tsar Nicholas II, stating his acceptance of their plea. The Tsar had a large Gospel Printed, all the Vestments and Liturgical necessities including a signed Antimins, and all the Icons for an Iconostas painted and assembled including the icon to be used for the name day of the future Church (His own Namesake, Saint Nicholas); and he chose his teacher Fr. Theoclitos to go to Galveston, telling him “Let there be an Orthodox Church in Galveston.”   

By this time, Fr. Theoclitos was 61 years of age, and was a well traveled man and spoke more than a dozen languages: Greek, Russian, Serbian, Slavonic, Latin, Bulgarian, Arabic, Hebrew, Danish; and some Spanish, English, French, German, and Romanian. The Ambassador of Russia to the United States acquired US Citizenship for him even before he left Russia. Prior to leaving Russia, Fr. Theoclitos was given the heavy cross he always wore by Tsar Nicholas II and he was elevated to the rank of Right Reverend Archimandrite, because he would soon be the Priestly leader of a flock of Christians so far away with little known chance of a visiting Bishop anytime soon. His journey to the far off land of Galveston, Texas began with six companions. With him were; the Very Reverend Archimandrite Raphael Hawaweeny (Glorified a Saint in March of 2000 by the Orthodox Church in America) and his three Deacons Constantine Abu-Adal, Istvan Moldowanyi and John Shamie (later Shamie was a Priest in Galveston); and Archimandrite Fr. Theoclitos’ two Russian Deacons, Theodore Pashkowsky and Joakim Zubkowsky, and his Romanian Deacon Pavel Grepashewsky; and Fr. Peter I. Popoff. The first leg of the trip was by train to Berlin, serving liturgy there at the Russia Embassy Church; then on to the Port of Bremen. Next leg was by passenger ship to Southampton for a change of ships, then on to New York aboard the passenger ship, S.S Havel out of South Hampton, as a United States Citizen. Only 82 passengers sailed that day. Although a group of Priests were at the port of New York to greet them on the Morning of November 14, 1895, they were required by customs to spend one night in Quarantine. The next morning, they were joined in New York by Bishop Nicholas Ziorov of the Russian Orthodox Mission in America to consecrate the First Arab-Syrian Orthodox Church in America under the Russian Mission’s jurisdiction, and to install Archimandrite Raphael as Pastor, with his three deacons. A few days later, Arch. Fr. Theoclitos, his three Deacons; and Fr. Popoff traveled with Bishop Nicholas by train to Washington D.C., then to western Pennsylvania, where Fr. Popoff was to serve and then on to Kansas City. At this point, it was decided that only the Romanian Deacon Grepashewsky would travel to Galveston with Arch. Fr. Theoclitos; and Bishop Nicholas and the other two Deacons would go on to San Francisco. Arch. Fr. Theoclitos stopped in Hartshorne, American Indian Territory, Oklahoma to have Liturgy for a group of Russian Miners, just outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma before reaching Galveston.   

The distances from Galveston to either San Francisco or New York are about 1600 miles. Although his rightful rank was high, which gave him the right to consecrate his own chapel including the right to wear a Mitre (Crown, but with a flat, not standing Cross on top) and carry a Pastoral Staff (Bishop’s Staff); he lived his life in Galveston as a meager Monk, teacher, and Pastoral Priest. The Church Congregation never paid Arch. Fr. Theoclitos, because he received his pay directly from the Tsar (1500 rubels a month and 500 rubels as expenses; about $120 total, at that time) until Arch. Fr. Theoclitos passed away in 1916, a year and a half before Tsar Nicholas II and his Family were murdered.   

The Trustees of The Existing Congregation Board (Chris Vucovich, Chris Chuoke, Athurs Menutis and Mitchael Mihaloudski) formally received their State Corporation Papers on January 13, 1895 and subsequently purchased a 43’ wide x 120’ deep property that is at 4107 Avenue L, Galveston, Texas on December 15, 1895. They started to build a rectangular wood frame Orthodox styled Church, and when Arch. Fr. Theoclitos arrived, in January of 1896, he directed the finishing of the Church. The congregation was astonished to be blessed with an Archimandrite and a Deacon, not just a Priest, and best of all he was somewhat of a linguist.   

In Galveston, all properties faced either North-west or South-east, so they had chosen property that leaves our Church unusually facing South-east. And, although the Icon of Saint Nicholas was placed in the Iconostas to Honor Tsar Nicholas II as the Patron of the Church; it was Arch. Fr. Theoclitos’ decision to use the name S. S. Constantine and Helen Church, because the congregation that started on its own should be remembered. Bishop Nicholas was invited and he accepted; and the Consecration of our church occurred on June 3rd 1896, the feast day of Sts Constantine and Helen. Arch. Fr. Theoclitos’ decision on the name of the Church, was not unusual with him. He was known to have baptized children with names other than their parents had asked for. My mother’s name was to be Ruza, Serbian for Rose, but he baptized her as Sophia which her parents accepted without question, and gave my mother and others an unusual lifelong connection to their Archimandrite. But then, his guidance and decisions were always accepted by his congregation. There have never been any questions of his guidance that were ever passed down through the years even though we Eastern Europeans have always loved a good argument. He had services in the Slavonic, Greek and Arabic languages. It was as though his congregation was standing with a Saint.   

In 1897, Arch. Fr. Theoclitos purchased a 36 plot track in the Lake View Cemetery as a gift to his Congregation. He buried his flock in the next consecutive plot, without regard to couples or children or any Relationship, because he saw them as one congregational family.   

In early 1897, Bishop Nicholas replaced Deacon Grepashewsky with a young Russian Monk, Fr. Mikhail Kurdinovski to allow Arch. Fr. Theoclitos time to travel and invited Arch. Fr. Theoclitos to San Francisco to speak in the Greek language on the mounting losses of the Cretan insurgents in their revolution against Ottoman rule. Bishop Nicholas had to be acutely aware that his Archimandrite was the highest ranking Greek born Clergyman in America. While in route, we know that he also served Liturgy again in Oklahoma; and in Denver, Colorado. After his sermon in San Francisco he was asked to traveled with Fr. (later, Archimandrite) Sebastian Dabovich (currently being considered for Canonization as a Saint), to Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington, where they served Liturgy in Slavonic, Greek and Arabic in both cities. He again traveled to San Francisco in 1898, to participate in the installation of Bishop Tikhon Bellavin, as the new Bishop, replacing Bishop Nicholas of the Aleutians and Alaska (Diocesan name was changed in 1900 to Diocese of the Aleutians and North America). Although little is known about it, Bishop Tikhon visited our parish in 1899, for the first of two visits.   

It’s known that Arch. Fr. Theoclitos traveled extensively on the Gulf Coast going as far east as Mobile, Alabama, as far south as Corpus Christi, Texas, and into the interior north to Ft. Worth, San Antonio, San Angelo and Austin Texas, performing Marriages and Baptisms and serving Liturgy where ever he found our Orthodox Christians. In 1897, The Wiemar, Texas newspaper had an article about him; where he borrowed the local Catholic Church in LaGrange, Texas to perform the wedding of a Greek Couple. The writer (obviously Protestant) posted the short article that follows.   

Weimar Mercury, 29 Jan 1898: “LaGrange, Tex., Jan. 25, –Married today, Mr, Abraham John to Miss Zeche Nemer, both Greek, at the Catholic Church by Rev. Theoclitos (Archimandrite of the Orthodox Church), Galveston, Tex. A very large crowd attended the ceremonies, which were ‘somewhat of a novelty,’ no such ceremonies having ever been performed here.”   

Our Church Board additionally purchased a like adjoining property west of the Church doubling the size of the property in early 1900. But, in his 66th year, on September 8th 1900, Galveston Island was hit by the greatest natural disaster in United States history when the massive Hurricane of 1900 came ashore. The Island was almost totally destroyed (est. of 8,000 to 12,000 deaths of a population of 30,000, which included 24 members of the congregation. Arch. Fr. Theoclitos and Fr. Mikhail spent 30 hrs in the church praying and giving refuge to parishioners and neighbors that sought safety in the church. After the storm had passed, the Church structure was still standing although it had floated to the west about 10 feet partially onto the additional property just purchased. Those that were with him in the church believed Arch. Fr. Theoclitos and his church had truly saved their lives. The congregation gathered and raised the Church, repaired the damage and early in 1902 petitioned Bishop Tikhon, who had since moved the headquarters of the Diocese to New York, to visit and Re-consecrate their repaired Church. Bishop Tikhon accepted and arrived shortly before services on June 3rd 1903. This event made Arch. Fr. Theoclitos and his congregation’s church not only patronized by, but also consecrated by future Saints of Orthodoxy. By order of Tsar Nicholas II, Bishop Tikhon bestowed on Arch. Fr. Theoclitos the Royal Honors of (1) the Order Of St. Vladimir and (2) the Order of St. Anne (in his picture, the ribbon and cross like medallion around the neck to his right side is the order of St. Vladimir, the ribbon and medallion around the neck to his left side is the Order of St. Anne and the necklet with the large medallion was awarded him upon attaining his Graduate Degree in Theology from the Moscow Theological Academy.   

While in Galveston, Bishop Tikhon visited the cemetery, and became aware that it was filling fast. As a gift to the Congregation, Bishop Tikhon,who was later made Patriarch of Moscow, purchased 27 additional plots next to the original cemetery track. Arch. Fr. Theoclitos and the Church continued with a new influx of immigrants coming to Galveston each year, even purchasing another 21’ to the west of the Church. Although he did keep constant communications with the Diocese, it is not clear whether he ever met with Archbishop Platon of New York, who replaced Bishop Tikhon.   

He was known to include the Romanov Royal Family each week in the Liturgy, as: (1) word of Tsar Nicholas II’s son, Alexander’s affliction with hemophilia began to spread, (2) World War I was building and (3) talk of revolution against the Tsar was in the news from time to time. Also, because of our multi-ethnic culture in Galveston, the shot by Serbian Gavrilo Princip that assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, (believed to be the shot that started World War I, was heard loudly in our Church making the War and the assassination more than an important issue.   

On weekly trips to the business district, the neighborhood children would gather on the church steps and wait for his return. He would always have a large bag full of fruit and the latest sweets for them, saving a large portion for his parish children. He became acquainted with many people during his years in Galveston and was thought of respectfully, while they became somewhat enchanted with his customary meager but stoic Orthodox Monastic ways. He was a constant visitor to St. Mary’s Infirmary (the local Catholic Hospital) and John Sealy Hospital at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Following his heart, as the Apostle St. Paul guided him through his Name Day St. Hierotheos, he was known to give Confession, Baptizism and Communion to anyone who professed to be Christian. He truly became a friend to many families, who felt his visits to their loved ones in the hospital made those loved ones better. He converted to Orthodoxy many of these families: the Dambido family, the Matthews family and the Lelirra family to name a few.   

In 1911, the Galveston-Houston Inter-Urban Train was instituted, allowing many of our Orthodox Christians in Houston (50 miles north and largely Greek and Lebanese) an ease of access to Galveston for Sunday Liturgy. The trains were one or multiple electric cars that ran from downtown Houston to downtown Galveston, and you could get on or off at any time. So, our members could get off, then on again, less than 800 feet north of the Church on the main road into Galveston. It was still a 75 minute trip, one way, but it was an inexpensive way for our Houston parishioners to get to church from time to time. It was later discontinued in 1936.   

And then, in his 81st year, the Island was hit by another devastating Hurricane in August of 1915. Again, Arch. Fr Theoclitos and others prayed in the Church. This storm was even more tenuous for them, but never was anyone in the church lost in any storm. The Church floated to the north about 50 feet into the street, and the front wall was torn open and the Gospel given by Tsar Nicholas II was found by parishioner George Mandich another 200 feet away in the city cemetery across from the Church, miraculously with very little water damage. The congregation repaired the Church and moved it back into place with mule and muscle.   

The parish again, needed more future graves. This time, as a religious benevolent society, they purchased their own private Cemetery in the western part of the city, about a quarter mile from the other cemetery. The land was far larger (would easily accommodate about 300 graves) and would meet their needs for long years into the future. But they also divided it into two sections, the Greeks to one side, and the Serbians and other Slavs on the other.   

Later in the following year, the Church was hit by the loss of their 21 year life with Arch. Fr. Theoclitos, just short of his 83rd year, on October 22nd 1916. He had become gravely ill six weeks before. He somehow knew his time was near, and had the Diocese notified of his illness, and he asked parish leaders to find a way for them to bury him under the Altar of the Church. It was his belief that his grave would, by its nature, cause the Church to continue at the location for centuries into the future. He passed to his Creator at 8:15 in the evening, in St. Mary’s Infirmary Hospital. With the help of Church leaders, his body was prepared by Malloy & Sons Funeral Home, but the parishioners then took the body to the church and stood vigil over his remains continually, until his Funeral. The New Archbishop Evdokim of New York ordered his Diocesan Secretary, Archpriest Fr. Peter I. Popoff (who had been one of Arch. Fr. Theoclitos’ companions on the trip from Russia), and two others of his Diocesan Council members; Fr. Louniky Kraskoff of Denver, Colorado (whom he had visited with on trips to San Francisco) and Hieromonk Fr. Paul Chubaroff of Hartshorne, Oklahoma to immediately travel to Galveston so that Our Beloved Archimandrite would be religiously cared for. They finally arrived in Galveston six days later, on the morning of October 28th. Hierarchical Funeral Services were held that afternoon at 2:00 P.M. During the six week wait, the Parish Board had received permission from the County Judge to place his remains under the Church’s Altar and workers prepared the Concrete Vault that was required by the Judge for his casket to be encased, where it remains today. As Arch. Fr. Theoclitos requested in his will, his Cross and Medals were all taken to Archbishop Evdokim by Archpriest Popoff.
+Memory Eternal+   

In the following years our Church was served by numerous short-term or as they were called in those days, traveling Priests. In 1929, the parishioners, spear-headed by Petar B. Kovacevich, built a wood frame Hall (32’ X 75’) with a parish home above, in hopes of having a Priest and his family, stay in Galveston. It helped, but, in 1933, our Greek brethren gathered and purchased their own Church, The Assumption of The Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church. Our parishes have helped each other thru the years, whenever either was without a Priest or there was a time of need, as our Arch. Fr. Theoclitos would expect of us.   

The Hierarchs of the Church in those years were Archbishop Alexander, Metropolitan Platon, and Metropolitan Theophilus.   

In 1934, Fr. Alexis Revera and his family arrived in Galveston and stayed for 27 years. In 1948, the parish decided it was time for the Church to receive some upgrades, mainly in the form of cosmetics. Wing additions were added to the elevated Altar area, the interior was totally painted, Stain Glass windows were added, hard wood flooring, a new roof coving, and the old siding was covered with a light brown brick; work was completed in 1949. The parish petitioned the Diocese, and in 1950, the newly elected Metropolitan Leonty, traveled to our fare city to re-consecrate the Church. Air-conditioning was added in the 1960.   

In 1962, it had become apparent that the community was almost totally made up of Serbians. Metropolitan Leonty and Bishop Dionisije (right) of the Serbian Diocese met and sealed an agreement that put our beloved Church under the Serbian Diocese, while the Russian Diocese would receive under its control the Church in Billings, Montana, which was started by Serbian Bishop Nikolai (Canonized a Saint by the Serbian Orthodox Synod in 2003,) and Archimandrite Fr. Sabatian Dabovich; but had over the years become almost totally Russian. They further agreed to guide these two parishes to remain multi-ethic and services were to be in both English and Slavonic and should include a litany of any other languages when needed for other ethnic parishioners.   

In 1964, the Texas Highway Department was working on plans to expand the street next to the cemetery into a 6 lane highway. They were intending to put an over-pass over the Serbian Section. Two parish leaders, Ilija P. Kovacevich and John N. Milosevich went to the highway department with their plan to move the Serbian Section at the Highway Department’s expense. The Highway Department agreed. So, it became the work of parishioners; lead by local Constable and parishioner Sam Popovich to get every relative of a loved one in the Serbian section to sign the necessary papers. The highway department would provide 6 times the land they were taking and would bare all expenses of exhumation and reburial; where a solid caskets or a vault was not found, the earthen material would be placed in a vault to be transported; and the Priest would attend and be paid for a service of exhumation and re-burial for each grave. The new cemetery is much like a Church with a center aisle and rows of graves to each side; with small side-walks between the rows and an Alter table at the front.   

In 1978 our Parish came under the Jurisdiction of one of its own, Serbian Bishop Christopher. The First American Born Bishop to serve an American Diocese. He was born and raised in Galveston and had been ordained a Priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1949. With his leadership, the congregation has prospered through the past 30 years, with him becoming Metropolitan in 1991.   

Now we have been hit by another devastating Hurricane “IKE,” which came ashore on September 12, 2008. Our Church sustained minor damage with only a few inches of water inside and some wind damage (no doubt that our Arch. Fr. Theoclitos mystically was riding out the storm in his Sanctuary). But our Hall was in 3 feet of water. The old wood frame structure was left structurally unsound. The Parish decided to fix the Church first. We then had the old hall destroyed, and are planning to break ground on a new hall in early 2010. Our Greek Brothers and Sisters didn’t fare as well; their beautiful Church was inundated with 8 feet of sea water. The masonry of the Church and hall structurally survived, but the interiors didn’t make it. They are without a Priest, but have managed to somewhat re-do their Church and are working to completion. During this time, they have attended Liturgy on Sundays with us, and now that their Church is presentable, our priest Fr. Srdjan Veselinovich has liturgy on Saturdays for them.   

In 2009 our parish was placed under the jurisdiction of His Grace, Serbian Bishop Longin, ending an over 40 year schism in the Serbian Orthodox Church in America. Interestingly, His Grace Bishop Longin and Arch. Fr. Theoclitos, both received Graduate Degrees in Theology from the Moscow Theological Academy at Holy Trinity – St. Sergius Monastery (name changed to Zagorsk Monastery in 1930).   

And so, 168 years after the first parish meeting in Galveston, Texas, we beseech Our Archimandrite Father Theoclitos Triantafilides; his friends Archimandrite Saint Raphael Hawaweeny and Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich; Our Patrons Saints Tsar Nicholas II and Saint Trazistza Alexandra, Our First Metropolitan and Patriarch Saint Tikhon Bellavin, our first Serbian American Bishop Saint Nikolai Velimirovich and all those who with the Saints have guided our Parish in their goodness, to intercede on our behalf for yet another Century of existence.   

From 1895 -2010, the Church-School Congregation of SS. Constantine and Helen was served by the following priests:   

Archimandrite Theoclitos (Greek) 1895-1916
Father Michael Andreades (Greek) 1916-1918
Father John Shamie (Lebanese) 1918-1920
Father George Palamarchuk (Serbian) 1920-1925
Father Marko Dimitrieff (Greek) 1925-1926
Father Pavel Markovich (Serbian) 1927-1928
Father George Milosavljevich (Serbian) 1928-1929
Father Joakim Tkoch (Russian) 1929-1934
Father Alexis Revera (Russian) 1934-1961
Father Damaskin Susjnar (Serbian) 1961-1965
Iguman Mitrofan Kresejovich (Serbian) 1965-1968
Father Jovan Trisich (Serbian) 1968-1969
Father, Dr. Tihomir Pantich (Serbian) 1969-1971
Father Constantine Pazalos (Serbian), (Greek Born) 1971-1982
Father Svetozar Veselinovich (Serbian) 1982-1985
Father Zarko Mirkovich (Serbian) 1985-1987
Father Dragan K. Veleusic (Serbian) 1987-1992
Father Oleg Vifliantsev (Serbian), (Russian Born) 1992-1994
Father Dane Popovich (Serbian) 1994-1994
Father Dejan Tiosavljevich (Serbian) 1994-1995
Father Srdjan Veselinovich (Serbian) 1995-Present   

Fr. Theoclitos performed Marriages and Baptisms, and Celebrated Liturgies in the following locations in America:   

City/Town and Approx. Distance from Galveston   

New York, New York 1416 miles
Washington, D.C. 1213 miles
Hartsborne, Oklahoma 380 miles
Dallas, Texas 269 miles
Ft. Worth, Texas 281 miles
San Angelo, Texas 363 miles
New Braunfels, Texas 199 miles
La Grange, Texas 132 miles
Galveston, Texas 0 miles
Houston, Texas 50 miles
Beaumont, Texas 90 miles
Eagle Lake, Texas 93 miles
Seattle, Washington 1937 miles
Portland, Oregon 1881 miles
San Francisco, California 1686 miles
Denver, Colorado 928 miles
New Orleans, Louisiana 287 miles
Lake Charles, Louisiana 117 miles
Mobile, Alabama 414 miles
Biloxi, Mississippi 362 miles
Port Lavaca, Texas 122 miles
Polacios, Texas 86 miles
Corpus Christi, Texas 181 miles
San Antonio, Texas 216 miles
Waco, Texas 209 miles
Austin, Texas 191 miles
Cameron, Louisana 81 miles
Rockport, Texas 154 miles
Indianola, Texas 35 miles
Brazos, Texas 60 miles
Sabine, Texas 75 miles   

Approximate total missionary miles of work: over 25,000 by train or horse and buggy. 31 locations in 11 States in 21 Years.   

Extreme Post Script:   

In retrospect, this writer remains in awe, that The Right Reverend, Most Venerable Archimandrite Father Theoclitos Triantafilides may truly be “The Forgotten” First Greek-American saint. He was the answer to our predecessors’ every prayer. He traveled extensively on a global basis to serve the religious needs of many. He provided the “Connecting Link” for our multi-ethnic American lives, and through the teachings of Orthodoxy and his God-Given Art of Language, he lead us on the path of Saint Paul, the Apostle, past the ever separating ethnic divide.

Tags: America, civil authorities, early unity, Galveston, Greek, language, Missions, newspapers, Online Sources, parishes, primary sources, Raphael Hawaweeny, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Saints, Serbian, Theoclitos Triantafilides, Tikhon Belavin

Every ten years, from 1906 to 1936, the US Census Bureau compiled a Census of Religious Bodies. These censuses are gold mines of information on early American Orthodoxy. Also, unlike so many of the inflated numbers that you’re likely to see floating around, the census data is reliable. With its considerable resources, the Census Bureau was able not only to work with the jurisdictions themselves, but to contact individual parishes for precise information. The result is a thorough, well-researched, and generally unbiased collection of statistics and other information.

What can we learn from the censuses? Loads of things. For instance, we can track the growth of the various Orthodox groups and jurisdictions in the United States:

The Russian spike in 1916 was most likely caused by Uniate conversions. Overall, the Orthodox population grew from about 130,000 in 1906 to almost 350,000 thirty years later:

• 1906: 129,606
• 1916: 249,840
• 1926: 259,394
• 1936: 348,025

As you can see, the 1916-1926 period was rather stagnant; in fact, aside from the Albanians and Romanians, every jurisdiciton declined in that period. World War I probably had something to do with it, as well as the new immigration quotas imposed by the US government in 1924. It’s also likely that the various jurisdictional schisms of the 1920s – Russy-Antacky, Royalist-Venizelist, Metropolia-Living Church — affected the ability of the Census Bureau to collect data. (That is, there were probably more Orthodox than were reported in 1926.)

One of the things I’ve found most interesting about the census data are the gender ratios. In 1906, men represented 85% of all American Orthodox Christians. That is, for every woman, there were almost six men. Here are the percentages of women in each year:

• 1906: 15%
• 1916: 28%
• 1926: 40%
• 1936: 46%

By 1936, every group was between 42 and 51 percent female. For most of this period, the Greeks were the most overwhelmingly male jurisdiction (with female percentages from 1906-36 of 6, 17, 34, and 43 percent). Until ’36, the Syrians were the most balanced group, with 40% women in 1906, and 45, 49, and 47 percent in the years that followed.

The Serbian male population actually declined considerably from 1906-26, due most likely to the Balkan Wars and then World War I, but the female population (not just the percentage) increased dramatically:

• 1906: 2,228 women (14%)
• 1916: 3,301 women (23%)
• 1926: 6,421 women (47%)

The census also kept data on Sunday schools. In 1906, there were just 7 Sunday schools in all of American Orthodoxy. By 1916, there were 162 (of which 126 were Russian). The Russians actually closed a lot of their Sunday schools in the next decade (dropping to 90), but the Greeks and Romanians added a lot more, pushing the total number up to 198 by 1926. By 1936, there were 294 Orthodox Sunday schools in the United States, of which 129 were Greek and 101 were Russian.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s available in the censuses. In the future, we’ll continue to unpack the data.

Tags: 1906, 1916, 1926, 1936, Antiochian, Bulgarian, Greek, primary sources, Romanian, Russian Metropolia, Serbian, Statistics

To our New Calendar readers: Christ is born!

The following article was originally published on August 21, 2009. If you’re interested, you might check out the comments to that original posting. We’ll be back with brand-new material on Monday, December 28.

As you might expect, most American Orthodox parishes in 1916 used foreign languages. From that year’s Census of Religious Bodies, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, we find the following unsurprising information:

• Both of the Albanian parishes used exclusively Albanian.
• The four Bulgarian parishes used Bulgarian and Slavonic.
• The 87 Greek parishes used exclusively Greek.
• Both of the Romanian parishes used exclusively Romanian and Slavonic.
• 166 of the 169 Russian parishes used exclusively Slavonic. Of the other three, two used a combination of Slavonic and English, and one used exclusively English.
• 11 of the 12 Serbian parishes used exclusively Slavonic and/or Serbian. One Serbian parish used exclusively English.

In total, there were 276 parishes in the United States in 1916, not counting the Syrians. 272 of those 276 (98.55%) worshipped entirely in foreign languages, and just two used English only.

None of this should come as a surprise. The vast majority of American Orthodox Christians in 1916 were either immigrants, or the children of immigrants. And the vast majority of American Orthodox clergy were also immigrants, most of whom had been educated and ordained in the Old World.

Now we come to the Syrians… and as we’ve seen before, the Syrians are an outlier. This is what the 1916 Census has to say:

Of the 25 organizations, 13, with 4,361 members, reported services conducted in English only; and 12, with 7,230 members, reported services conducted in foreign languages alone or with English. Of these, 4 organizations, with 1,230 members, reported the use of Arabic alone or with English; 5, with 2,900 members, Arabic, Greek, and English; and 3, with 3,100 members, Arabic, Greek, Russian, and English. In 1906 all the organizations then represented reported the Syro-Arabic language only.

This is stunning. Ten years earlier, in 1906, the Syrians were like everybody else, worshipping exclusively in their native tongue. In 1916, everybody else was pretty much the same — 98.55% foreign. But in just a decade, the Syrians had changed dramatically. By 1916, at least 21 of the 25 Syrian parishes (84%) used at least some English in their church services, and over half (13 of 25) were entirely in English.

How on earth did this happen? I don’t have a clear answer; however, there is one clue. In 1905, an Episcopal priest named Ingram Irvine converted to Orthodoxy. He was ordained by Ss. Tikhon and Raphael, took the name “Fr. Nathaniel,” and for about two years, he served in the Russian Mission. His purpose was “English work.” He wrote articles in English, published a couple of small books, and conducted an English-language Vespers service on Sunday nights. He also helped St. Tikhon with English-language administrative work, and advised him on Anglican-Orthodox relations.

Irvine is one of my favorite figures in American Orthodox history, and we’ll talk about him in great detail in the future, but for now, it’s enough to know that he transferred to St. Raphael’s jurisdiction after St. Tikhon returned to Russia in 1907. And Irvine’s transfer also meant the transfer of the “English work.” Now, his English articles appeared in the otherwise all-Arabic Al Kalimat (The Word). He made it his special mission to reach out to the English-speaking children of Arabic immigrants to America. He taught Sunday School, ghostwrote letters for St. Raphael, and generally promoted the use of English in the Syrian Mission. He did this at the direction and with the encouragement of St. Raphael; when St. Raphael died in 1915, Irvine wrote, “With Bishop Raphael’s death ended the initiatory Chapter of English Orthodox Church work in America.”[*]

I don’t think Irvine alone was responsible for the great proliferation of English in the Syrian Mission in the years 1906-1916, but he must have played a major role. Just thinking out loud, another factor may have been the weaker national identification with Orthodoxy among the Syrians. What I mean is this: to be a Russian, a Greek, or a Serb was to be Orthodox. National identity and religious affiliation were intimately intertwined, to the point that they were one and the same. But it was not so among the Syrians. They came, not from their own nation-state, but from the Ottoman Empire. And they also came from a region of great religious pluralism — back in Syria, they lived alongside Melkites, Maronites, Muslims, and Druze. In other words, while Slavonic, Greek, and Serbian culture (and language) was closely identified with Orthodoxy, the same could not be said of Syro-Arab culture and language. And it’s possible (though I can’t prove it) that this distinction was a major factor in the spread of English among the Syrians, while the rest of American Orthodoxy was still firmly attached to foreign languages.

Finally, Fr. John Erickson offered this comment upon seeing the language data:

In light of the very large number of parishes St Raphael’s Syrian mission that used only English or predominantly English, another question that might be interesting to explore would be the extent to which, in the years immediately following, the “Antacky” advocated the use of Arabic or otherwise resorted to identity politics.

At present, I don’t have any idea whether the Russy-Antacky divide involved language, but it is a question I will have to explore (and if anyone wants to help, please let me know!)
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[*] Ingram N.W. Irvine (Fr. Nathaniel), “Bishop Raphael, In His Relation to the English Work of the Archdiocese of North America,” Russian Orthodox American Messenger 19:5 (March 15, 1915), 72.

Tags: 1916, Albanian, America, Antiochian, Bulgarian, converts, Greek, language, Nathaniel Irvine, primary sources, Raphael Hawaweeny, Romanian, Russian Metropolia, Serbian, Statistics

At the Funeral of St. Raphael of Brooklyn: L to R: Archim. Aftimios Ofiesh, Adn. Emmanuel Abo-Hatab, Abp. Alexander Nemolovsky

On today’s podcast on AFR, we discuss the American Orthodox Catholic Church, an early attempt at multi-ethnic jurisdictional unity in the United States. One of the issues brought up was that, within about a year after the creation of the AOCC by Russian Metropolia authorities in February of 1927, the Metropolia’s head, Metr. Platon Rozhdestvensky, withdrew his support from the new jurisdiction. Indeed, even within just a few months, Platon wrote to Aftimios telling the latter to cease his “steppings out” against the Episcopalians—some of Aftimios’s priests were publishing excoriating comments against the Episcopalians, who had been providing the Russian Metropolia with financial support (hoping, most likely, eventual recognition of the validity of their holy orders). Platon wrote: “I must attest before Your Eminence that without their (American Episcopalian) entirely disinterested assistance our Church in America could not exist.”

On October 29, 1928, Abp. Aftimios Ofiesh wrote a letter complaining of the withdrawal of support, including Platon’s refusal to let Aftimios consecrate Fr. Leonid Turkevich as the first auxiliary for the AOCC. (Read the full letter here.) Here are some interesting excerpts, showing how distressed Aftimios was and the strong sense of the betrayal he felt at his treatment by Platon:

It is with the deepest grief and pain that I enclose a copy of a telegram which persistent reports have forced me to send to His Grace Bishop Theophilos [Pashkovsky] since I was unable to discover your address even by telephoning to the Archimandrite Benjamin in New York. I am most deeply and sadly disappointed in having to call to the attention of Your Eminence injurious reports which I had preferred to ignore. Even in the face of the fact that Your Eminence forbid Bishop-Elect Leonid Turkevich from accepting Consecration after Your Eminence had yourself proclaimed his election and given order for his Consecration. I have wished to believe it impossible that Your Eminence should secretly attempt to destroy the work of your own hands in the creation of an American Orthodox Catholic Church founded by your order and committed by Your Eminence and the other Russian Bishops into my charge and authority. As a son to his father, I turn to Your Eminence now asking an explanation of your attitude and a final setting at rest of the ugly rumors which are a disgrace to our mutual work for our Holy Orthodox Church and Faith.

Not only was Platon apparently working against Aftimios’s new jurisdiction, but it seemed that he may also have been interfering in the parishes under Aftimios which still remained under the Syrian Mission:

At all times I have defended Your Eminence loyally and labored without ceasing for the Church and for the position of Your Eminence as Head of the Russian Archdiocese in America. Yet I hear repeated rumors that Your Eminence is dissatisfied and I do not know why. Finally it comes to me that Your Eminence has received some unauthorized and rebellious letters and requests from a few with whom I have trouble in my Diocese of Brooklyn and Syrian Mission or in the new American Orthodox Church and that Your Eminence will answer favorably these irresponsible troublemakers and will take action interfering in the Diocese of Brooklyn and Syrian Mission. I can not believe that Your Eminence will do so or that it is your intention. But I am forced to ask that Your Eminence give me formal assurance in this matter and put a stop to the rumors and reports which interfere with the peace and unity of our work together for Holy Church.

No doubt the need for money and other kinds of material support from the Episcopalians was not the only reason for Platon’s reversal on his support for Aftimios, but whatever the case, it’s clear that Platon’s loyalty to his heterodox supporters and to his own agendas was greater than his investment in the new jurisdiction he had signed into being. Aftimios, as may be imagined, reacted quite badly.

Tags: Aftimios Ofiesh, American Orthodox Catholic Church, Episcopalians, Leonty Turkevich, Platon Rozhdestvensky, primary sources, Russian Metropolia

Abp. Kyrill Yonchev, 1964-2007

The OCA’s Bulgarian diocese, like one of its other ethnically defined dioceses (the Romanian), had its origins in a schism within the American jurisdiction of an Orthodox church based in a then-Communist nation. In both cases, there were factions dedicated to remaining within the canonical purview of the mother churches, but there were also factions who felt that such a stance represented capitulation to Communism, which had, to one extent or another, compromised the church authorities in the homeland. Communism split not only the Bulgarians and Romanians in America, but also the Russians and Serbs. (Of these, only the Serbs have subsequently reunited.)

In the case of the Bulgarian diocese, the dissent against Metr. Andrei Petkov, the bishop aligned with the homeland, was led by one of his clergy, an archimandrite named Kyrill Yonchev. During World War II, Andrei broke relations with authorities in Bulgaria, and then in the late 1950s petitioned the Russian Metropolia (itself then on bad terms with its mother church) for admission, but was rebuffed. In 1964, he regularized his relations with the homeland. This latter move stirred significant rancor in the Bulgarian-American ranks, and Kyrill broke relations with the aging Andrei and persuaded several parishes to follow him.

Kyrill was subsequently consecrated by the ROCOR, renowned for its anti-Communist feelings, to serve as the head of the Bulgarian Diocese in Exile. His career as a ROCOR bishop came to an abrupt end, however, when in 1976 he led his diocese of nine parishes into the OCA, where he served until his death in 2007, acquiring a second diocese (Western Pennsylvania) in 1978. At the time of this development, in the wake of the Metropolia’s reconciliation with Moscow and subsequent independence as the OCA, ROCOR/OCA animosity was perhaps at its apex.

In 1976, the energy from the OCA’s newly-proclaimed autocephaly was still flowing freely, and the entry of the Bulgarian Diocese in Exile into its ranks was regarded as another sign of the inevitability of the OCA as a catalyst for American Orthodox unity, particularly at the OCA’s Fifth All-American Council that year, which also elected Theodosius Lazor to be the new OCA primate.

St. George Bulgarian Orthodox Cathedral, Toledo, Ohio

Update Dec. 26, 2009: Fr. Alexander Lebedeff writes with some corrections to this post:

Archbishop Antony (Sinkevich) of the ROCOR was consecrated Bishop of Los Angeles in August 1951 and served until he was retired in 1995. He reposed July 31, 1996. He was a bishop for 45 years.

Of course, Metropolitan Vitaly (Oustinoff) of the ROCOR was made bishop in 1951 and retired in 2001 after celebrating 50 years as a bishop (he reposed in 2006). However, he did not come to North America until 1955. Still, 1955-2001 is 46 years. There are those in offshoots of the ROCOR who consider him to have continued being First Hierarch of the ROCOR up to the point of his repose. In any case he was a bishop for 55 years and a bishop in North America for 51.

Tags: 1964, 1976, Andrei Petkov, Bulgarian, Communism, Kyrill Yonchev, OCA, ROCOR, Russian Metropolia, Theodosius Lazor