Chambesy Conference decisions of June 6-12, 2009

The Conference decided to create new episcopal assemblies in some regions of the world to order the question of the Diaspora, i.e. the Orthodox faithful installed in areas beyond the traditional boundaries of the local Orthodox Churches. The presidents of the Assemblies are bishops of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the given region, and in their absence, the bishops in accordance with the order of the Diptichs of the Churches. All the bishops of the Orthodox Churches who exercise their pastoral ministry in the communities existing in each of these regions are members of these Assemblies. The Episcopal Assemblies are for the mission to manifest and promote the unity of the Orthodox Church, to exercise pastoral diakonia to the faithful of the region and to render to the world their common witness.

So,

1. SCOBA would be redone to look like the all-inclusive Ligonier gathering in 1994;
2. The Greek Metropolitan of New York would be the permanent president of the "assembly."

Not specified is whether the new "assembly" would constitute a kind of local synod or whether it would continue in the manner of SCOBA (the "Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas") as a coordinator of external ministries in consulation with all the various representatives of the traditional "mother" or "local" churches. It seems evident from the above that the hierarchs in conference in Chambesy do not recognize the existence in any ecclesiological sense of a "local" church in North America. This is nothing new. The one church in our hemisphere of the world that has any real claim to such status is the Orthodox Church in America, but its character as a self-governing local church has not been recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and other "local" churches.

However, in the above arrangement, all of the bishops of the Orthodox Church in America would be participants in the new "assembly." While this would appear to raise the body of the OCA, through its individual bishops, to a more universally legitimate status, it also places the entire synod of the OCA (not to mention other local synods, Serbian Orthodox, Antiochian, the Romanian bishops of the Episcopate and Patriarchate, et al.) under the presidency of the first bishop of the Greek Archdiocese. In itself, I suppose there's nothing particularly troublesome or scandolous in that. It is only repulsive to Orthodox in North America in so far as the Greek Archdiocese currently doesn't seem to realize there ARE other Orthodox here. Perhaps if there were greater evidence from all sides of real love and interest in mutual benefit between the currently arranged cohesive units of the faithful (I don't care for the word "jurisdiction"; it describes nothing) -- i.e. the service of each toward all -- this proposed primacy of Istanbul via New York would be no troubling thing. But in the current climate it appears to most of us here, I believe, as mere subjugation.

"Let us love one another, that with one accord we may confess Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!"