WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th September, 2022) The soon-to-be elected First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCOR) should be bilingual and bicultural in order to keep the church's dual mission and embrace both Russians and converts, the abbot of St. Demetrios of Thessaloniki monastery near Washington, DC, Metropolitan Jonah (Paffhausen), told Sputnik.
The ROCOR hierarchs will choose the church's new leader on September 13 on the first day of the Bishops Council in New York. The position has become vacant after the previous primate, Metropolitan Hilarion (Kapral), died in May.
"Speaking of the new First Hierarch, we need somebody who is effectively bilingual and bicultural," Jonah said.
ROCOR carries a dual mission in the United States by serving Russians and those who converted to Orthodox Christianity from other denominations, he added.
"Now the old émigré community is all gone, but there is the new émigré community, which is full of the young people and young families who have bicultural and even bi-continental lives going back and forth. That is part of the reality of ROCOR," Jonah said.
At the same time, many parishes are mostly American and English-speaking, where people have no direct link to Russia, but share the vision of the faith and values of the Russian Orthodox Church, Jonah said.
"They value the leadership of the Patriarch and the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church," he said. "We feel the bishops are on the right track, and we feel they are strongest leaders of the Christian world in advocating traditional values."
The Metropolitan expressed confidence that the soon-to-be-elected First Hierarch should be able to understand the culture of the Russian emigres, those who came to the West after the fall of the Soviet Union, and those from different religions who converted to Orthodox Christianity.
"I believe ROCOR has a very important mission in the United States and in the Orthodox community because ROCOR does not compromise the faith, it does not compromise the practice, we are not trying to 'Americanize,' which usually means compromising the faith," Jonah said.
With respect to the challenges that ROCOR faces, Jonah noted they include temptations toward fundamentalism and traditionalism, as well as lack of attention to the English-speaking community. In this regard, establishing more churches and doing missionary work is the step in the right direction to address the challenges.
"We are Orthodox Christians and it does not matter what your ethnicity is and should not matter what your language is. We need to establish Spanish-language, French-language missions, we need to establish outreach in various places," he said.
Jonah also suggested avoiding focusing on ethnicity since second-generation Americans, or children of immigrants to the US, tend to leave so-called ethnic churches.
"Our calling is to have uncompromising adherence to the faith and values that have been passed on from the beginning, and not to allow random change, especially that is in contradiction to that," he said.
Asked about the ROCOR's challenges with respect to the current geopolitical situation, the Metropolitan said some people may not like the church's unity with the Moscow Patriarchate, but there is no ground for separation now.
"We are who we are and the reconciliation that happened in 2007 was really a recognition that ROCOR is an authentic part of the Russian Orthodox Church. There was a severing of the relationship for a while but the reasons for that severing were revealed and so, there is no reason for it," he said.
Jonah noted that the only thing that matters is the integrity of the Christian Orthodox faith and that is the very core of ROCOR that helped it overcome division and other challenges.
"Let's say, the only thing that overcomes all these very human divisions because it is not a human thing. It is Divine," he said.
On May 17, 2007, then-Patriarch of Moscow and All-Russia Alexy II and ROCOR First-Hierarch Metropolitan Laurus signed the Act of Canonical Communion of ROCOR with the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. The accord allowed the two parts of the church, which had been separated for several decades, to unite.
