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Responses to OCA autocephaly

154 bytes added, 01:39, May 26, 2006
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Historical arguments
*The period of Russian Orthodox expansion out of Alaska is also the same period during which other Orthodox jurisdictions were established on American soil.
*The various Orthodox communities in North America did not always recognize Russian jurisdiction; they were often quite isolated and had no real contact with the Russian hierarchy. Thus, they saw themselves as beholden to their mother churches, not to Moscow.
*Greeks were the first to establish a presence on American soil in New Smyrna, Florida, in 1767, 26 years before St. Herman arrived in Alaska in 1794, which was not American at the time (being part of the Russian Empire). Nevertheless, these Greeks were not Orthodox but Catholic.
*The first Orthodox parish established on American soil was by Greeks in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1864, three years before Alaska became American and four years before the first Russian parish was established in American territory (in San Francisco).
*The claim that each autocephalous church may grant autocephaly to its daughter churches contradicts Russian history, in which Russia claimed independence for itself more than 150 years before Constantinople and the rest of the Church recognized it: "If the autocephalous status derives from Christ, why was the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America anathematized by you instead of being approved and praised for severing itself from its Patriarchate and its mother Church—as some other Churches did too—by right of its own will and against the Canons?" (p. 61). - This claim is also wrong, Georgia was granted autocephaly by Antioch, not by Constantinople.
===Practical arguments===
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