These titles sound a little misleading. Isn't the GOAA the only canonical presence in the US according to the EP?
No, where did you get that idea? Especially since I am of one of the patriarchal jurisdictions, I am interested to know.
Over the last 5 years and more the Patriarch of Micklegarth and his servants abroad have been making increasingly assertive claims to control of the entire "diaspora", under their own idiosyncratic interpretation of Canon 28. I think that the rest of the Orthodox world is coming to the realisation that this is not a chest thumping exercise by Constantinople. They are deadly serious. For example,
Bishop Basil Osborne in the UK (who had been in the Russian Church for 30 years) gave testimony last year in the British High Court that the EP is the one and only canonical authority in Western Europe and the Russians, Serbs and Antiochians in W.Europe are uncanonical interlopers tolerated by Constantinople. Presumably the same claim would be made by the EP with regard to America.
See Paragraph 37 and Paragraph 38
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2009/1250.htmlSee also the speech of the Secretary of the Sacred Synod Archimandrite Elpidiphoros who was sent from Constantinople to Holy Cross seminary Boston in March last year to preach the Constantinople claims of suzerainty over the American Orthodox, whether the Homogenia or the extra-Homogenia.
"American Diaspora Must Submit to Mother Church"
http://www.aoiusa.org/blog/2009/03/ecumenical-patriarchate-american-diaspora-must-submit-to-mother-church/Incredible as it is to us non-Greeks, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew interprets Canon 28 of Chalcedon as giving him canonical authority over all territories around the globe except those belonging to existing autocephalous and autonomous Churches. As such all the Americas belong to him, and not even Rome should have jurisdiction since these countries did not constitute the traditional territory of the Church of Rome at the time when we were united and no Council has granted them to Rome.
One has heard that an uncontrollable desire to collapse into laughter seizes some people when they think of this claim. However, contemplating the claim with a serious mind, we may better understand why some Orthodox are resolutely opposed to this interpretation of Canon 28, as also to the newly invented role of a "Protos" or "Primus" within Orthodoxy and also opposed to Belgrade 2006, Ravenna 2007, and what some are now calling the "Cretan Unia" (the position paper developed on Crete in 2008 and presented to but not approved by the Joint International Catholic-Orthodox Meeting on Cyprus 2009.)
The submission of Western Orthodoxy to the Patriarch of Constantinople will involve not simply the desired canonical unity but it will, unfortunately, provide a great impetus to the EP's claims to universal hegemony and the introduction of a new thing, an aberration, into orthodox ecclesiology, a new creature called the "Protos," As such, submission should be resisted
Nor wanting to cause conniptions in any advocates for an EP-based unity, after all your proposal is a valued one to be considered, and nor do I want to attract violence against my ideas. . . These are just a few thoughts I am mulling over...