Can any one name the bishop who originally consecrated this cathedral back in 1892? Did a bishop consecrate it?
Back in those days, there were no Bishops to consecrate Greek speaking Orthodox Churches.
The Consecration of my Church took place in 1938 which was 1 year after the Church relocated roughly 8 blocks West from its former location. Before 1938, no one was around to consecrate Churches especially those which were founded in the 1900's or before.
Isnt' this a little problematic? I mean, you need a bishop to consecrate a Church.
Is that what this was all about?
The third challenge of Orthodoxy in America concerns the manner of its ecclesiastical organization. The Orthodox faithful organized themselves in communities of lay people, who, in turn, became identified with the ecclesiastical community in the manner of the traditional organization of Christian communities. Thus, the parish (κοινότητα) being now governed by lay elected members, builds its own Church, school and other such institutions, and provides the priest’s salary. Such communal organization improves, as it is right and desirable, the role of laity in Church administration, and increases the sense of responsibility and participation in the life of the Church, offering thus the change to the Church to profit of its talented and able parishioners. On the other hand, however, four very concrete dangers lurk behind such a communal organization of the local Church:
a) That the priest might become alienated from his administrative duties, and from being the spiritual leader of the parish would become a clerk of the parish council,
b) That the parishioners would find it difficult to comprehend the rules according to which the Church is governed and instead they would follow their own secular reasoning,
c) That the structures of the parish would become influenced by the prevalent Protestant models and thus they would replicate and imitate practices that are foreign to the Spirit of Orthodoxy, and
d) That the parishes would degenerate into nothing more than membership clubs, invested with some ecclesiastical resemblance.
I notice that he avoided saying
ethnic clubs in the last point.
I wonder if with point c) does the millet model bother him. Perhaps not. On point b), has he been to Greece lately, in particular Athens.
Administrative duties? Is that like the father just having his children as wards?
