Autocephaly was granted by Constantinople only to Churches that were part of the Patriarchate of Constantonople. Georgia was not part of this Patriarchate, and correspondingly this Church hasn't received its autocephaly by Constantinople. The same is true for the Church of the Czech and Slovak Lands. The Polish Church is the only exception to this rule because at the time Constantinople gave them autocephality, the Russian Church was suppressed by the communists so Poland (and the Churches of the Russian emigrants) were alone and de facto outside of any jurisdiction.
Non-existent canons. Canon=formal rule decided by an Orthodox council (or in some cases by an authoritative Saint).
Christian Smith
Truly a speech of peace Look, I blamed Kyrill for being a puppet of the Kremlin in all previous threads. I said it was normal for ukrainians to want to be free from the Patriarchate dominated by their russian enemy. But this is in no way different, this Patriarch seems to be Poroshenko puppet. Now we have two opposed bitches of the politicians. Politicized church is shit, no matter which side.
Ukraine was under Constantinople's jurisdiction until the 17th century, seized uncanonicaly by Moscow. So, if anything, canonic order was restored.
I agree, but bear in mind that this mess was created by both sides, people might still be mad. But this is the first step to clean it. Ukraine's situation couldn't keep going on forever. Many people was feeling betrayed and forgoten by the Orthodox church, now they have their chance.
Henry Robinson
I was writing about the general rules, not specifically about Ukraine. The theory about the prerogatives of Constantinople with respect to the autocephality was invented at the beginning of the 20th century when we had no useful precedents. But now we have several such precedents that show that any Church can separate part of itself as type 2 (unrecognized) autocephalous church and the role of Constantinople is mostly the coordination of the process of the transition from type 2 (unrecognized or only partially recognized) to type 3 (fully recognized) autocephality.
Jonathan Rivera
And duh, of course ukr. nationalists support this.
Nolan Fisher
What you are describing is not something good for the church neither something we must promote. The need for autocephaly was forced to the church by socio-political reasons and by forces outside of the church. To Greece by the Bavarians, to Bulgaria by the Ottomans, to Russia by their Tzar. You know that because of this mess Greeks and Bulgarians started ethnic cleansing each other in the Ottoman era? Constantinople then again stepped up and condemned ethnophyletism to stop the massacre. This is the role of that Patriarchate according to the canons of the 4th Ecumenical Cousil, to solve inner ecclesiological disputes between Orthodox. Otherwise we wouldn't be one church today but a bunch of national churches at war with each other. That's also why we need the canons and the Ecumenical Patriarch. His role is not decorative, as some people say for their own reasons, he is here to solve issues like Ukraine's. He tried talking, he tried begging Moscow to do something themselves, he tried ignoring the issue (condemning many souls who were leaving the church because of this) and in the end there wasn't anything else that he could do but take matters in his hands.
Nicholas Hill
Nevertheless, this is what has happened which means this is what God wanted to happen in his Church. We are only humans and any smart procedure we invent is going to be outsmarted by God.
There are many Orthodox canons, seemingly absurd from human point of view. I mean canons that would be literally self-destructive for any human organization (for example canon 15 of the council in Constantinople, year 861). And yet, here we stand. Why? Because we don't rely on human means for our unity but on the uniting force of the Holy Spirit. It is not an accident that the schismatics who leave the Orthodox Church (such as the Old Calendarists and so called True Orthodox) are fragmented into who knows how many mutually unrecognized "churches" and continue to multiply all the time.
Let us remember the words of our Lord "This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples: if you have love for one another." If we invent some human means to keep the unity of our Church, how the people are going to know that our unity is true unity based on love and not fictitious unity based on earthly authority (like the fictitious unity around the Roman pope)? How we will know where the true Church is in the times of the coming Antichrist when parts of the Church inevitably are going to fall into apostasy?
Let us have faith in the ability of Christ to preserve the unity of his Church. He can do this better than us.
The first national autocephalous Churches are from the medieval times (only temporarily abolished in the Ottoman era). There was no enmity between Bulgarians and Greeks during the Ottoman era, no ethnic cleansing and no massacres. The enmity was between the Bulgarians and the Phanariotes who had the strange idea to transform the Ottoman Empire into new pseudo-Roman Empire, the sultan being new emperor, and in order to achieve this suppressed any non-Greek Christian culture. But as in many other cases, God used bad things in order to achieve something good, for example thanks to this enmity now we have a perfect Slavonic adaptation of the Byzantine chant.
There is a funny thing about the ethnophyletism. Almost everyone who accuses someone in ethnophyletism doesn't notice that he himself is nationalist and therefore ethnophyletist. This was true in 1872 when Constantinople condemned the ethnophyletism, and this is true now. We look at the sins of our brothers but we don't want to look at our own sins.
Bentley Jackson
I don't disagree, we trust God's will for what is best for our church and the Holy Spirit to guide our action in unity. But we must also try ouselves to be united right? I can't start anathematising everyone and cut communion for no reason and then wait from God to keep the church united and if this doesn't happen to say "ok it was God's will". Of course there was and it all started with the creation of Bulgarian exarchate. Ottomans passed a law that said the Christian villages in the region will be under Constantinople if 2/3 or more of the population are Greeks and under the Bulgarian exarchate if 2/3 or more are Bulgarian. The issue was solved balkan style. I'm telling you this to show that autocephaly was not always an easy thing. Somerimes it involves politics and trouble. Now you're talking like Constantinople was the real ruler of the Ottoman empire, pulling the strings behind the scenes. The truth is that their task was even harder back then, as they had to keep the faith alive under Ottoman rule and by being the main representative of Christianity, the Ecumenical Patriarch was the first to be killed (usually by torture). Constantinople have a dozen of church's martyrs passed by the EP seat. That's why you see the Bartholomew taking his role always so seriously. It's not because of "papism" but because of historical responsibility.
Joseph Lee
duptriarchates btfo
Easton Brown
Where do you get this info? Aren't you guessing based on what we see in Ukraine?
Also this is very wrong: because there was no such enmity and the sad reality was:
See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phanariotes For the phanariotes the Patriarchy was nothing more than an instrument to achieve their agenda.
