The tell tale sign on this matter is if ROCOR recognized OCA autocephaly we would be commemorating Met. Jonah at all services. We don't.
Not an argument.
Some of our priests are
still not commemorating the Russian Patriarch liturgically. This is being tolerated by both Moscow and New York as a transitional thing. But I hope you won't argue that this non-commemoration is a telltale sign that we have not yet achived full union with Moscow !! ??
It would be good if people stopped trying to use ROCOR to prove anything. ROCOR's structure was always 'irregular', ROCOR itself always admitted that. Both the Metropolia and ROCOR were attempts to deal with an unprecedented situation--there are no canons defining how missionary dioceses and bishops-in-exile are supposed to operate when the main body of the Church is held captive by an anti-religious government which not only persecutes but attempts to infiltrate the Church, corrupt its communications, etc, etc. One can criticize many aspects of how one or the other (or both as well as the MP) responded to the situation, but everyone--including the other autocephalous churches recognized that the actions were being taken in an extraordinary context.
The Communists had some 8 decades to disrupt the life of the Church. Since their fall, it took almost a decade-and-a-half for not only the situation in Russia to normalize but for both sides to get past the anger, suspicion, fear, regret, resentment in order to start to normalize their relationship. And as Father points out, even now so the ROCOR still lost some members who couldn't see past the history and the situation is still not completely normalized.
The ROCOR and the OCA are going to take a similar amount of time to heal all the wounds committed over the 80 years. And the two couldn't even really start until the ROCOR and MP had normalized their relationship. Thankfully, all our bishops seem to be approaching this in a pastoral manner. Hopefully, eventually, the bishops will all sit down and work out how to normalize the canonical relationship of the ROCOR and OCA. But it is a lack of charity to assume that it has to happen NOW NOW NOW. Let the healing of the split between ROCOR and the MP have a chance to fully set in, and then the OCA-ROCOR issue can be addressed--yes, it's uncanonical, but that's why we have shepherds and not judges as bishops.
What a wonderful post. Thank you!
