Canon Law

¶ … Orthodox Church is indeed in a state of canonical disarray and this paper aims to put together a set of plausible arguments in favor of this statement. The best place to start is likely with Viscuso's study "A Quest for Reform of the Orthodox Church: The 1923 Pan-Orthodox Congress," which looks back at the 1923 as a quintessential moment in the process of reform that the Orthodox Church could have embarked on at the beginning of the 20th century.

This reform process could have positively affected the development of the church, including by making it more adaptable to the requirements of the 20th century. Some of the initiatives that Melenios put forward at the Congress were, in fact, targeting organizational needs. With the expansion of the Orthodox creed on new continents, including North and South America, his goal was to concentrate leadership in the hands of the Patriarch of Constantinople (Viscuso, 2006).

Beyond the fact that, at that time, this was him, the approach made a lot of sense from a political and organizational point-of-view: such centralization would have allowed for a unitary approach, in everything from canonical law to assigning functions within the church. However, this was not the case, leading to the Orthodox Church adapting itself to the characteristics of the American continents.

What are these characteristics that led to the disarray of the Orthodox Church in the United States? First of all, the size of the country and the spreading out of the population in a large territory have led to autonomy in small orthodox communities, with a noticeable parochialism. Second, the approach towards the church and religion in general in the United States is different than in Europe, for example, with a very distinctive separation between the Church and the State, as stipulated by the Constitution itself.

Saliba () rightly points out towards the church-state synthesis as an important component of the Orthodox Church. In his work, he analyzes the evolution of the Church-State synthesis of the Orthodox cult, starting with the relationship between the Church and the Byzantine state. He points out that "no institution can develop to its full potential in a heterenomous relationship of power" (page 189). This is certainly correct, but he also clearly mentions that the Church found in the powerful state a friendly ally and interlocutor.

Likely, the discussion can go even further with this: the synthesis between State and Church was so complete in the Byzantine world that, towards the end of the Byzantine Empire, the two simply overlapped, with religious figures taking over the government of the state. It is interesting to note that this was also the case in many of the Orthodox states, as far on as the 20th century.

In Russia for example, just like in the Balkans, the religious patriarch would occasionally assume a role in the government, including as a prime minister in several cases. Today, the synthesis between State and Church is transferred in the budgetary field: the Orthodox Church receives a generous part of the budget, as the official religion of the state (something that obviously brings complains from other religious groups that are not thus represented in the budgetary field).

The reason for this argumentation is that a strong relationship and cohesive synthesis between Church and State leads to fewer opportunities for the Church to enter a period of canonical disarray, as the Orthodox Church is in now. The reverse situation, such as the one happening with the Orthodox Church in the United States, will likely lead to the exact opposite situation. By extrapolation, the situation in the United States, to different degrees, can be replicated in the entire Orthodox world.

A separation of Church and State, even in traditionally Orthodox countries, lead to canonical disarray, as the Church strives to look for its identity in a new geopolitical context, in which support no longer comes from the state to the degree that it used to in the past. The preface of Viscovo's work emphasizes the necessity to deal with problems and issues in a unified manner and his work sees one of the purposes of the Congress in creating the appropriate framework for such decisions to be made.

An overly autonomous approach leads to decisions and hierarchies not being accepted by the other independent parochial bodies and structures. This overly autonomous approach persists today in the Orthodox world and has led to a detrimental hierarchical organization at a global level. As previously mentioned, the decentralization of the Church, including in North America, has resulted in a canonical disarray, a situation where the norms that Church bodies adopt are not implemented or accepted by existing members.

Going back to Viscuso and his study of the 1923 Congress, another important part of that gathering was to make the Orthodox Church more adaptable in the context of a new, more modern world. For this, the Patriarch was planning to tackle a significant number of issues, including the reform of the calendar. As mentioned, all these were necessary in the 1920s. Certainly, these are all the more necessary now.

One can only conclude that part of the state of canonical disarray is also due to the inability of the Church to make itself more viable in a new, modern context. A church cannot function as.