St Olav Orthodox Church- [Western Rite]
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'English' Orthodox? What are they?
We are the first in a growing number of parishes made up of majority Americans, loooking for other like-minded independent parishes, who seek to reclaim their own Orthodox & catholic heritage, history, and culture, unburdened by foreign ethnic incursions. There are those who see 'orthodoxy' as faithfulness to an institution (such as the Ecumenical Patriarch) or a confederation of power and exclusion (i.e. SCOBA) and not to Christ. Both of these models are foreign to Holy Orthodoxy, and are more reminiscent of a caesaropapal mentality.
But the praxis of the Church, and the wishes of the First Orthodox Bishop of America, [St.] +TIKHON Belavin, were for an indigenous ANGLO-speaking American Orthodox Church. Such has not allowed by the "Ethnic" Orthodox, who took their isolationist stance from (Arab) Bishop Raphael Hawaweeny, who became the 'de facto' head of "ethnic American Orthodoxy" after St. Tikhon was recalled to Russia, there to be Martyred at the hands of the Internationalist Bolsheviks.
We, therefore, are fully self-conscious 'Orthodox of the Western Diaspora'- members of the "English Nordic Orthodox Church of North America:" (ENOCh-NA) While the name is new, the Faith, nor our unquestioned Orthodoxy is not!! We are committed to the vision of St. Tikhon in preserving/ fostering the English liturgical uses of the 'corrected' 1928 Book of Common Prayer: fully approved for use by Orthodox by Hierarchs at different times- both the Russian Synod (in 1907) and the Patriarch of Antioch (in the 1950's) have given it canonical status. It is not, as some claim, a liturgical rite that is dead or foreign- it is merely English Orthodoxy! Nor, as 'some' Orthodox use it, a means to 'Byzantinize' converts to Orthodoxy! The Western Rite IS Orthodoxy! And therefore it has *always been* totally within the saving enclosure of right-believing Orthodox Christianity, practiced as it was in Britain, centuries before Russia even heard of the Christian Faith!
While we allow for the St John Chrysostom rite in our parishes, our primary goal is to encourage the legitimate Western Rite. These liturgical rites, revered by English-speaking Christians for over 400 years, and used by English Orthodox for 1500 years before the reformation, are not only our ethnic heritage, but our country's as well. This means we use the KJV w/Apocrypha, the hymns, psalms and prayers loved by CS Lewis, TS Eliot, and John Wesley- but we do so not as innovators, severed from the vine, but as true Orthodox-the Church that has kept entire and unchanged the Gospel of Jesus Christ, according to the Apostolic traditions.[II Thess.2:15, I Cor.11:2, NKJV] We also use the available SARUM MISSAL for High Holy Days, published by the Orthodox St. Hilarion Press of Austin, Texas, as need demands.
In agreement with Holy Church's teaching from the beginning, we hold only those things that "have been believed by all, in all places, at all times" -St. Vincent of Lerins. Holding firmly to the fact (that the God-glorifying and right-believing Holy Orthodox Faith, taking root within the different countries where it has been planted, developed individual expression in each country) we note that One expression of right-believing Faith is that of the Anglo-Celto-Saxon culture/English Orthodoxy. To seek to adopt, therefore, a foreign liturgical expression as normative for the English-speaking citizens of America, (i.e. the Slavo/Byzantine rite) implicitly countenances phyletism- which is a heresy. The foes of honest American Orthodoxy know this - that is why we have had so many 'hits' - yet will they even admit this much? NO. Over 8000 hits, yet none of the 'ethnics' have contacted us. Amazing! It is not an accident that the word for overweening pride in English is a translation of a GREEK word, "hubris." God does not call us to become 'Byzantines', he calls us to become 'Christians'! While the Byzantine rite is normative in Russia, the Balkans, and Greece, it should not be made normative in Western Europe, Canada, Australia, or the US!
If you are interested in a federation of like-minded churches, and wish to talk of intercommunion, concordats, etc. Please contact our Apostolic Vicar, Fr. Columkille+, for more information via email.
What do we Believe? How are we different?
We of ENOCh-NA hold to: All the decrees of the Seven Ecumenical Councils; We ordain only men to Holy Orders; We follow the Fasts and Feasts of the undivided West, according to the only approved Orthodox calendar- i.e. Julian. We actively seek men and women called to the monastic vocation- we do not discourage this much needed part of Orthodoxy's lifeblood, as some modernists do. We hold the Holy Bible to be the True and Life-giving Word of God; Holy Tradition, and enlightened reason (nous) as needful in order to read the Fathers aright; Creation 'ex nihilo'; the BVM as Theotokos, (Mother of God) worthy of all honor, as Holy Tradition & Scripture give her; Sacraments as conveyors of Grace; the Sanctity of Life; the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Chrismation) and full sanctification (theosis) of the believer; AS WELL AS REPUDIATING THE FILIOQUE (the ...'and the Son') in the Creed, as being contrary to Scripture and the witness of the undivided Church; the threefold order of Ministry; the visible Church as the true Body of Christ.
We long for the eventual restoration of Western & Eastern Christendom. We are therefore 'different'(if one can call it that!) because we have actively chosen to 'remain the same' as the Apostles, Prophets, and martyrs of the Early Church!
We denounce as heresies: All 'one-world' unions/plans/congresses and their leaders as tools of Antichrist [and heirs of Bolshevism]: We denounce phyletism, the idea that only one culture's norms define Orthodoxy/orthopraxis worldwide: we also denounce Rome and her offspring (as consistent Orthodoxy has always done); the 'pan-heresy' of Ecumenism,(ROCOR, 1983) the WCC/NCC,(and SCOBA's continued participation in these heretical groups) and its secular counterpart, 'Multiculturalism'; 'New Calendarism, Liberalism, charismania, feminism, homosexuality.All of these are disobedient acts against the Law of God.
We proclaim: the Church (and ONLY the Church) as the 'Israel of God' (Gal.6:16) the triumph of Christ & His True Church throughout the world; the calling of the 'lost sheep of the house of Israel' [Matt.10:6]- not to be confused with the ruling elite in Occupied Palestine; the 'Symphony' of Church and State- that no country can, or ever has been,'religiously neutral'and rule righteously; right belief as leading to right action, (Lex orandi, Lex Credendi) and the unchanging moral Law of God. [Matt. 5:17]
We encourage disaffected Anglican/Episcopalians/Lutherans/ Traditionalist Catholics/Methodists, etc., who have seen the destruction of their traditions first-hand, to return to your OWN legitimate Western Orthodox heritage, freed from a purely Byzantine or Slavic Ethnic veneer- and help us in our pilgrimage for the restoration of our historic American Christian culture and for Holy Mother Church. God is calling you to return to your roots!
'Fram, Fram, Kristmen, Korsmen, Kongsmen!' [Forward, Christmen, Crossmen, Kingsmen!] -battle cry of Saint Olav on the Plain of Stiklestad, Norway. Olav, who died in 1030 defending an Orthodox Christian Norway from the rulers who wished to return to paganism, is our patron Saint. King Olav was canonized as the Patron Saint of the Orthodox Norse. St. Olav, ora pro nobis! We encourage you to'come home' to an honest, and true American Orthodoxy.
"At first we were confused. The East thought that we were West, while the West considered us to be East. Some of us misunderstood our place in the clash of currents, so they cried that we belong to neither side- and others that we belong exclusively to one side or the other. But I tell you, Irenaeus, we are doomed by fate to be the East in the West and the West in the East, to acknowledge only heavenly Jerusalem beyond us, and here on earth--no one." - St. Sava (of Serbia) to Irenaeus,
13th century
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