QUESTION:
2/4/2010: Hello,
Firstly, sorry for sending a second question so soon. You get a lot of them and I shouldn't be taking up so much time.
However, how would reunification of, say, the Catholic or Oriental Orthodox Churches with the Eastern Orthodox Church work? Specifically, if there is a Catholic Bishop, an Oriental Bishop, and an Eastern Bishop over the same territory, what would happen? The question could also be extended to the American scene, by asking what will happen to the many Bishops of various Orthodox jurisdictions (OCA, GOA, etc.) who share the same territory?
On a similar note, I believe that the OCA has Bishops without defined territory or at least overlapping territory with others (such as the Albanian diocese). If I am in fact right, what is the historical and canonical justification of this? |
ANSWER:
The situation you refer to regarding Orthodoxy in North America has no canonical justifications and must be corrected. In complex circumstances, the idea is that the bishop (and there should be one bishop in one city as the Council of Nicea insisted) can extend his altar far and in that sense "overlap" another bishop's extension.
In cases where there are multiple bishops, there are various solutions, such as taking on a local city that is not yet an episcopal see, such as Oakland for San Francisco or Portland for Seattle.
For more information on ecclesiology, refer to "His Broken Body" (sections on the schism at Antioch in particular) available at amazon.com
|
