Archpastoral Letter for the Great Fast 2017

Archpastoral Letter for the Great Fast 2017

Prot. No. 01-001/2017
Sunday, February 26, 2017

Dearly Beloved Members of our Diocesan Family:

Christ is in our midst! – He is and ever shall be!

Once again, the Church beckons us to begin the sacred season of Great Lent, providing us with the spirit with which we are to enter into it from the Vespers of Forgiveness Sunday: “Let us enter the Fast with joy, O faithful …”

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Archpastoral Letter: Supreme Court Ruling on Marriage - 06/26/15

In a letter addressed to the clergy and faithful of the diocese regarding the recent Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriages, Archbishop Michael provides instruction and guidance. In part, he writes: "Today we have heard the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States to overturn all bans of same-sex marriages by states.  In doing so, it has declared such unions as being a constitutional right.  This means that same-sex marriages can be legally performed in all states of our country. Despite this announcement, nothing has changed the teaching of our Holy Orthodox Church."

• read the Archpastoral Letter on Diocese of New York-New Jersey website

Statement of the Holy Synod of the OCA on Sincerely Held Religious Beliefs Regarding Marriage

Statement of the Holy Synod of the OCA on Sincerely Held Religious Beliefs Regarding Marriage

The following statement was approved by the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America during a session of the Holy Synod on June 16, 2016 at Dormition of the Mother of God Monastery in Rives Junction, MI. It is approved for posting and use by all dioceses, parishes, institutions and monasteries of the Orthodox Church in America.

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Ecclesiological notes

Ecclesiological notes

^{By Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann}

1. One of the greatest "ecumenical" difficulties the Orthodox Church has is that her thought forms and "terms of reference" are different from those of the West. And, since the ecumenical movement was shaped primarily by Western theological presuppositions and antecedents, its Orthodox participants were, from the very beginning, forced to express their positions and points of view within a theological framework alien to, or at least different from, the Orthodox tradition. This is especially true of ecclesiology. The Orthodox East has not been challenged either by the politico-ecclesiological controversies typical of the Western Middle Ages or by the Reformation. It remained free, therefore, from the "polemical" and "definitional" ecclesiology which underlies the Western De Ecclesia, whether in its Roman Catholic or Protestant form, and which conditions to a great degree the ecumenical debate on the Church. In our own "sources"– the Fathers, the Councils, the Liturgy – we do not find any formal definition of the Church. This is not because of any lack of ecclesiological interest and consciousness, but because the Church (in the Orthodox approach to her) does not exist, and therefore cannot be defined, apart from the very content of her life. The Church, in other terms, is not an "essence" or "being" distinct, as such, from God, man, and the world, but is the very reality of Christ in us and us in Christ, a new mode of God's presence and action in His creation, of creation's life in God. She is God's gift and man's response and appropriation of this gift. She is union and unity, knowledge, communion and transfiguration. And, since apart from the "content" the "form" has no meaning (cf. the reluctance of Orthodox theologians to discuss problems of "validity"), Orthodox ecclesiology rather than precise definitions or forms, conditions and modalities, is an attempt to present an icon of the Church as life in Christ – an icon which to be adequate and true must draw on all aspects and not only on the institutional ones of the Church. For the Church is an institution, but she is also a mystery, and it is mystery that gives meaning and life to institution and is, therefore, the object of ecclesiology.

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