Some odd news from back home...
TOWN OF OWEGO -- Several national and international bishops of the Orthodox Church will be guests Monday at a Feast Day celebration for the namesake of a small parish in the Town of Owego.Source
Archbishop Kallinikos of Athens and all Greece will officiate at the Divine Liturgy, including the Eucharist, at 9:30 a.m. Monday at Saint Maximus the Confessor Orthodox Church on Gaskill Road.
Kallinikos will be accompanied by two bishops from Greece, a visiting bishop from Russia, as well as four bishops from the United States.
"This is an unprecedented gathering in the history of our small parish and for the Southern Tier -- to have so many bishops together at one time -- especially in rural Tioga County," said Dr. Lazarus Gehring, warden at St. Maximus parish. "There will be many visiting clergy and laity also."
Kallinikos, who was elected archbishop in October 2010 by the Church of Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece, has scheduled a three-week visit to the United States and Canada, starting Thursday and continuing until Oct. 20.
Besides the Feast Day in Owego, the archbishop will preside at various religious services in Long Island, New York City, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Portland and Detroit.
Kallinikos was likely drawn to visit the Owego parish because of its unique stature among Orthodox Churches, said the Rev. Thomas Marretta, pastor.
St. Maximus was built in the mid-2000s as closely as possible to the design and detail of the 9th and 10th century Orthodox churches of Asturias in northwestern Spain.
About 70 people are members of the local parish, which falls under the aegis of the Hellenic Orthodox Traditionalist Church of America, Marretta said.
"There was a general interest in how we did what we did," Marretta said. "It's possible to put up a really traditional Orthodox church in this country."
Owego is about a half hour from Binghamton and is where my mother currently lives. I have never been to the church in question, but have heard that it is something of an architectural wonder. It was built of stone and mostly by hand over several years. I seriously doubt that the author of the story has even the smallest clue about the divisions within the Orthodox Church. Nor I am sure did the people at this parish point out that their "church" probably has no more than a few thousand adherents worldwide and that they are not in communion with any of the dozen or so Orthodox parishes that are within an hour's drive.
There are few things as tragic as schism. Rome has the SSPX and we have our Old Calendarists. Though I doubt either would appreciate the comparison they have a great deal in common.
4 comments:
Considering the overwhelming majority of canonical practising Orthodox in the world would be, by a broad definition, "Old Calendraists" (ie Russia), that really is a gross oversimplification...
Anonymous,
I think you are confusing being "on the old calendar" with "old caledarism." The former certainly covers the vast majority of Orthodox Christians. The latter however is a heavily splintered schismatic movement that condemns the "new calendar" as heretical. That certainly does not apply to the Russian Church or any other canonical church. All of which said, I am sympathetic to the old calendar and think the manner in which the new one was rammed down everyone's throat was uncannonical. No one should have the right to unilaterally alter the Church's calendar. Not the Pope in Rome, nor the Ecumenical Patriarch in New Rome.
But that's not the same thing as saying it's heretical.
In ICXC
John
You are correct about these 'Old Calendarist' people and the Catholic counterparts the 'SSPX' and a few other small splinter groups. All very sad.
I have often thought of the comparison you make between this and similar groups and the SSPX.
Like the SSPX, they do have their positives. Within Catholicism, the SSPX do have a sense of Tradition similar to that of Orthodoxy, and hold Tradition to be more important than organizational structure or magisterium.
Their devotion is often admirable, and that is also true for the specific group of which you speak. I watched the building of their church in a cowpasture with wonder from its beginnings. At first I thought maybe it was to be the chapel of a cemetary to be started in the cowpasture. Then I met the mason, who explained a bit about it, although he had the century it was from wrong. Then someone told me the name of the MD who was having it built. And finally I went up to his house, introduced myself, and got a tour. I have pictures of it in my FB folder.
John Ad Orientem, if your mother lives in Owego, perhaps we could meet when you come to visit her?
By the way, how did she make out in the flood? We had 3' of water in our first floor, which is now gutted. We are living upstairs.
I would have like to go to this service but was unable to do so because I took off so much time from work because of the flood.
Susan Peterson
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