A quick scan around the Internet will reveal many so called “Independent Churches” that have a presence on the net. The ones I like best are the ones that use Geocities or one of the other free website places. I guess they cannot afford the $8.50 that Yahoo charges to host my parishes website.
Anyway one of the best things about these churches is that everyone gets to be a bishop. Almost everyone of them is a bishop or better yet metropolitan archbishop. I guess if for some reason you cannot be a priest in a church one can just start one of their own. What does it mean be to canonical anyway. For the Orthodox this is a big deal, and I know for our Roman Catholic friends it is just as important. For us if you are not canonical you are not orthodox.
I think its funny that if you surf to anyone of these churches their case for Apostolic Succession is right there on the first page. However, if you surf over to any Roman Catholic Diocese or any Orthodox diocese you would be hard pressed to find such a thing. Why is that?
So where does that leave us? Just be careful when looking around for a church. If your Orthodox then SCOBA is the place to start. The Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas is the group of, dare I say “REAL” orthodox bishops in the United States. These are the guys that rule over the Canonical Jurisdictions in the US. If a church is under one of them you are good to go, if not, shake the dust off your sandals and move on. Sorry to be so blunt, but this has gone on long enough. We need to start speaking out about these one and two person churches with 47 bishops.
Okay, rant is over for the day!
I do agree that not all who claim a title are what they claim… But SCOBA does not equal canonical. ROCOR and the Jerusalem Patriarchate are, last I checked, fully Orthodox. To allow for scruples, certainly the JP, if not ROCOR.
I think “in communion with” might be a good place to start, but even that is strained: all the Old Calendarists are still in communion with each other. What’s to say they are wrong and we are right? Of course most of the Indy churches are not in communion even with each other so it may be a moot point: but it’s not so cut and dry.
I agree the “in communion” is a better choice or words.