Orthodox Churches in America Compared

1. Why America Has Several Orthodox Churches

The Eastern Orthodox Church in the United States is organised into overlapping jurisdictions, each with its own bishops, each attached to a mother church abroad or governing itself, and all of them holding the same faith. Four of them are the largest, and they are the ones a Catholic is most likely to meet: the Orthodox Church in America, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. A Catholic looking at that list for the first time usually assumes these are denominations in the Protestant sense, competing bodies with different doctrines. They are the same Church under different administrations.

The arrangement grew out of immigration. Orthodox Christianity arrived in North America in 1794, when monks from Valaam in Russian Karelia landed on Kodiak Island in Alaska and began preaching to the Aleut and Alutiiq peoples. That mission produced the first American Orthodox saints, among them Herman of Alaska. When Russian America was sold to the United States in 1867 the mission stayed, moved its see to San Francisco and later to New York, and became the sole Orthodox diocese in the country. Every Orthodox Christian in the United States, whatever their homeland, was under one Russian bishop.

The Russian Revolution destroyed that unity. After 1917 the Moscow Patriarchate could not fund, appoint or communicate freely with its American diocese, and it was soon under a regime that imprisoned and shot bishops. Greeks, Syrians, Serbs, Romanians and Ukrainians in America each turned to their own patriarchates for oversight, and their patriarchates sent bishops. What had been one diocese with many nationalities became many jurisdictions in one territory.

The Orthodox themselves regard this as an anomaly. Orthodox canon law assumes one bishop for one city, and the situation in the United States, Western Europe and Australia is described in Orthodox documents as an irregularity of the diaspora awaiting resolution. The 2016 Council of Crete and the pre-conciliar consultations before it addressed it directly, and the episcopal assemblies set up after the 2009 Chambesy meetings, including the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America, exist precisely to move toward a single canonical order. No Orthodox bishop in America defends the present overlap as ideal.

A second cause deserves mention because it involves Catholics directly. In the 1890s and 1920s large numbers of Carpatho-Rusyn and Galician Greek Catholics, Eastern Catholics in full communion with Rome, left the Catholic Church for Orthodoxy. The trigger was Latin bishops in America refusing to accept their married priests and their Byzantine customs. The best known case is Alexis Toth, a Ruthenian Greek Catholic priest turned away by the Archbishop of Saint Paul in 1889, received into Orthodoxy in 1891, and afterwards the leading figure in bringing Greek Catholic parishes with him. Roman decrees restricting married Eastern clergy in America, Ea Semper in 1907 and Cum Data Fuerit in 1929, accelerated the movement. The Orthodox Church in America glorified Toth as a saint in 1994. Any honest Catholic account of Orthodox America has to include this, because a large share of the OCA's older parishes were Catholic parishes within living memory. The background is set out in our guide to the Eastern Catholic Churches in communion with Rome.

2. The Orthodox Church in America (OCA)

The Orthodox Church in America is the autocephalous Orthodox Church of the United States, Canada and Mexico, meaning it governs itself and elects its own primate without reference to any patriarchate abroad. Its head bears the title Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America and Canada, and its Holy Synod meets in the country it serves. Its chancery is in Syosset, New York.

Where it came from

The OCA is the direct continuation of the original Alaskan mission of 1794 and of the Russian diocese that grew out of it. Cut off from Moscow after the Revolution, the American diocese, then commonly called the Metropolia, declared temporary self-government at a council in Detroit in 1924 and lived for decades in an unresolved relationship with the Russian Church. That was settled on 10 April 1970, when the Moscow Patriarchate issued a tomos of autocephaly recognising the Metropolia as a self-headed Church under its present name.

Not every Orthodox Church accepts that grant. The Churches of Russia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Poland, and the Czech Lands and Slovakia recognise the OCA's autocephaly. The Ecumenical Patriarchate and several others do not, holding that only an ecumenical council or the Ecumenical Patriarchate can create a new autocephalous Church. Those Churches nonetheless treat OCA bishops, priests and sacraments as fully canonical, so the dispute is about status rather than validity. An OCA priest is an Orthodox priest everywhere. Our guide to the autocephalous Orthodox Churches and who disputes the list sets out how self-government is granted and contested.

What its parishes are like

OCA worship is predominantly in English, in the Russian recension of the Byzantine rite, with four-part choral singing in the Russian and Kievan traditions in many parishes and simpler chant in others. The territorial dioceses cover the whole country, and alongside them the OCA contains three ethnic jurisdictions with their own bishops: the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America, the Bulgarian Diocese, and the Albanian Orthodox Archdiocese in America. The Diocese of Alaska, with its Aleut, Yup'ik and Tlingit parishes, is the oldest Orthodox community in the country, and the OCA treats it as the origin of its own mission.

The OCA runs two long-established Orthodox seminaries in North America, St Vladimir's in Yonkers, New York, and St Tikhon's in South Canaan, Pennsylvania, alongside St Herman's in Kodiak, Alaska. St Vladimir's Seminary Press publishes the Popular Patristics series and much of the standard English-language theology of the Eastern Fathers, and its volumes are read well outside Orthodoxy. The theologians associated with the OCA in the twentieth century, Georges Florovsky, Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff among them, gave American Orthodoxy much of its vocabulary.

The OCA also states its purpose as building a single local Church for this continent, and has repeatedly offered its autocephaly as the basis for a united American Orthodoxy. Other jurisdictions have not accepted that offer.

3. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America is an eparchy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, established in 1922 and governed under a charter granted by the Patriarchate's Holy Synod. Its archbishop is elected in Constantinople, its metropolitans sit on the Patriarchal Synod, and its cathedral church is the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York City.

Where it came from

Greek immigration to the United States rose sharply from the 1880s, and the immigrants built parishes long before there was any Greek hierarchy to govern them. The first Greek parishes, in New Orleans and then in New York, Chicago and the mill towns of New England, were founded by lay communities that hired priests from Greece or from the Patriarchate. Ecclesiastical order arrived afterwards, and the Archdiocese carries the mark of that history in the strong role of parish councils and of the lay-led Archdiocesan Council.

The Archdiocese is divided into an archdiocesan district around New York and several metropolises covering the rest of the country. It maintains Hellenic College and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts, the National Shrine of Saint Photios in St Augustine, Florida, and Saint Basil Academy. Its philanthropic and youth structures, from the Ladies Philoptochos Society to the youth ministry known as GOYA, are long established and operate nationally.

What its parishes are like

Worship follows the Greek recension of the Byzantine rite with Byzantine chant, sung by a cantor rather than a choir in many parishes, though large parishes often have both. Language varies widely. Some parishes serve almost entirely in English, some alternate, and some keep a substantial amount of liturgical Greek. A visitor should expect the Creed and the Lord's Prayer in Greek in many places even where the sermon is in English. For what is taught in those parishes rather than how they are governed, see our guide to Greek Orthodox beliefs and where they stand with Rome.

Greek parish life is also strongly cultural, and the annual Greek festival is a fixture of civic life in towns across the country. That visibility is why many Americans meet Orthodoxy first through the Greek Archdiocese. It also means that a convert with no Greek background sometimes finds the cultural texture harder to enter than in the OCA or the Antiochian Archdiocese, which is a matter of parish personality rather than of policy. Converts are received in Greek parishes throughout the country.

Several monastic communities founded in the 1990s under the guidance of Elder Ephraim, formerly of Philotheou on Mount Athos, operate within the Archdiocese, the largest being St Anthony's Monastery in Florence, Arizona. They keep a stricter Athonite typikon than most parishes and have become significant pilgrimage destinations. Their spiritual style, more ascetic and more directive about confession and obedience, has been debated within the Archdiocese, and a Catholic reading about American Orthodoxy online will encounter both admiration and criticism of them.

4. The Antiochian Archdiocese

The Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America is a self-governing archdiocese under the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East, whose see is in Damascus. Its headquarters are in Englewood, New Jersey, and under its self-rule constitution its metropolitan is elected by the Holy Synod of Antioch from nominees put forward by the archdiocese.

Where it came from

Arabic-speaking Orthodox Christians from Ottoman Syria and Lebanon began arriving in the 1870s and 1880s, and at first they were cared for by the Russian mission. In 1904 the Russian archbishop of North America, the future Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow, consecrated Raphael Hawaweeny as Bishop of Brooklyn to serve them. He was the first Orthodox bishop of any nationality consecrated on American soil, and he travelled the continent gathering scattered Arab Christians into parishes. He was glorified as St Raphael of Brooklyn in 2000.

After his death in 1915 the Syro-Arab community split, and for decades there were two rival Antiochian bodies, one centred in New York and one in Toledo, Ohio. They reunited in 1975 under Metropolitan Philip Saliba, and the reunited Archdiocese has planted missions across the continent since. The Antiochian Village in Bolivar, Pennsylvania, serves as its camp, conference centre and heritage library.

What its parishes are like

Antiochian worship is largely in English, with Arabic used at particular moments and more heavily in parishes with recent immigration from Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. Music is usually Byzantine chant adapted to English, and the Archdiocese has invested heavily in English-language liturgical texts and hymnography that other jurisdictions borrow.

Two features make the Antiochian Archdiocese distinctive for anyone comparing jurisdictions. The first is its openness to converts. In 1987 the Archdiocese received a body of American evangelicals who had organised themselves as the Evangelical Orthodox Church after a long study of the early Church, and their clergy and congregations entered Orthodoxy together. Several of the writers who introduced Orthodoxy to a wide English-speaking audience came out of that reception, and the Archdiocese has since been a natural landing place for Protestants and Catholics exploring the East.

The second is the Western Rite Vicariate, a small group of parishes that celebrate an Orthodox recension of Western liturgical forms, including a Divine Liturgy of St Gregory derived from the Roman Mass and a Liturgy of St Tikhon derived from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. A Catholic visiting one will find the shape of the Roman Mass with Orthodox commemorations and no Filioque in the Creed. The vicariate is contested within Orthodoxy and is not accepted by every jurisdiction, so it should be understood as an Antiochian provision rather than a general Orthodox practice.

The Antiochian Patriarchate itself is a Church under pressure. Its faithful in Syria and Lebanon have lived through war, displacement and the abduction of Metropolitan Paul Yazigi of Aleppo in 2013, whose whereabouts remain unknown. American Antiochian parishes carry that burden in their intercessions, and a Catholic who wants to pray for persecuted Christians will find the names already on the list there.

5. ROCOR and the Russian Presence

The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, usually abbreviated ROCOR and sometimes called the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, is a self-governing part of the Moscow Patriarchate with its synodal headquarters in New York City. Its Synodal Cathedral of Our Lady of the Sign on East 93rd Street houses the Kursk Root Icon, which ROCOR calls the Hodigitria of the Russian Diaspora.

Where it came from

ROCOR was formed by Russian bishops who fled the Revolution. Meeting at Sremski Karlovci in Serbia in 1921 under the protection of the Serbian Patriarchate, they organised a church administration for Russians abroad, appealing to a 1920 decree of Patriarch Tikhon that authorised bishops cut off from the centre to govern themselves. When Metropolitan Sergius issued his 1927 declaration of loyalty to the Soviet state, ROCOR refused to sign and broke administrative communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, holding that Moscow was no longer free to speak for itself. For eighty years ROCOR regarded itself as the free part of the Russian Church, keeping the faith until Russia could receive it back.

That ended on 17 May 2007, when the Act of Canonical Communion was signed in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. ROCOR entered full communion with the Moscow Patriarchate while retaining self-government in administrative, pastoral and property matters, with its first hierarch confirmed by the Patriarch of Moscow. A minority of ROCOR clergy and parishes rejected the reunion and left to form small groups outside the canonical Church. Those splinters are separate from ROCOR, and a visitor should read a parish sign carefully.

What its parishes are like

ROCOR keeps older Russian practice with the least adaptation of the four. It follows the Julian calendar for fixed feasts, so its Nativity falls on 25 December by the old reckoning, which is 7 January on the civil calendar. Church Slavonic is normal, though English-language ROCOR parishes and English-Slavonic mixtures are common and growing, and full services rather than abbreviated ones are the expectation. Women often cover their heads, most parishes have no pews, and the fasting discipline is taught as written.

Holy Trinity Monastery and Seminary in Jordanville, New York, is ROCOR's intellectual centre and printing house. ROCOR also carries the memory of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, whom it canonised in 1981, a decade before the Moscow Patriarchate did in 2000. St John Maximovitch, Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco, who died in 1966 and was glorified in 1994, is the best known ROCOR saint, and his relics lie in the Holy Virgin Cathedral in San Francisco.

ROCOR is not the only Russian body in the country. The Moscow Patriarchate also maintains its own Patriarchal Parishes in the USA, a separate administration with its own bishop, and there are Russian-tradition parishes within the OCA and elsewhere. Three different entities can therefore all be described accurately as Russian Orthodox in America, and the differences between them matter chiefly for governance. Our guide to what the Russian Orthodox Church teaches and how Moscow governs covers the mother church itself.

6. The Other Jurisdictions You Will Meet

Beyond the four largest, further canonical Orthodox jurisdictions operate in the United States, most of them serving a particular national tradition. They are fully Orthodox, and a Catholic will meet them in ordinary parish life in any large city.

• Serbian Orthodox Church in North, Central and South America. Dioceses under the Patriarchate of Serbia, with a long-established monastic and administrative centre at St Sava Monastery in Libertyville, Illinois. Julian calendar for fixed feasts, Serbian and English in worship, and the Slava, the family patron saint's feast, kept as a household observance.
• Romanian Orthodox Metropolia of the Americas. Under the Patriarchate of Romania. Romanian Orthodox Christians in America are divided between this body and the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America, which belongs to the OCA, a split that goes back to the Cold War and has never been undone.
• Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA. Under the Ecumenical Patriarchate, seated with its consistory and St Sophia Seminary in South Bound Brook, New Jersey. The war in Ukraine has made these parishes centres of relief work.
• American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese. Under the Ecumenical Patriarchate, seated in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and organised in the 1930s by Carpatho-Rusyn Greek Catholic parishes that left the Catholic Church over the same conflicts described above. Its plainchant, the prostopinije, is distinctive.
• Bulgarian, Albanian and Georgian jurisdictions. Bulgarian and Albanian Orthodox Christians in America are split between dioceses inside the OCA and dioceses under their home Churches or the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Georgian parishes serve a small and recent immigration.
• Patriarchal Parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate. The Moscow Patriarchate's own parishes in the United States, distinct from ROCOR.

Separately from all of these, groups describing themselves as Old Calendarist, True Orthodox or Genuine Orthodox operate independent synods in America. They broke from the mainstream Churches over the calendar reform of the 1920s or over ecumenical contacts, and the canonical Orthodox jurisdictions do not recognise them. A Catholic trying to understand an unfamiliar parish should look for its membership of the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America, which is the practical test of whether a body is in the mainstream Orthodox communion.

7. Not the Same as the Oriental Orthodox

The Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Syriac and Malankara Churches are Oriental Orthodox, a separate communion from the Eastern Orthodox Churches described on this page. The two families are not in communion with one another. Confusing the two is a common error in English-language writing about American Orthodoxy, and it is worth getting right before you visit anything.

The division goes back to the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and the language used there about the union of divine and human natures in Christ. The Oriental Orthodox Churches did not receive Chalcedon and hold to the formula of St Cyril of Alexandria concerning one incarnate nature of the Word, which they understand as a full confession of Christ's complete divinity and complete humanity without confusion. Modern dialogue, including the joint declarations between Rome and the Coptic and Syriac Churches from the 1970s onward and the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox agreed statements of 1989 and 1990, has concluded that the two sides confess the same faith in different terminology. Formal communion has not followed.

In the United States the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church in its Eastern and Western dioceses, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Malankara Churches have large and growing communities. They have their own coordinating body and do not belong to the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops. Our guide to the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Chalcedon question sets out their history and their relationship with Rome in full.

8. The Four Jurisdictions Side by Side

The table below sets out the four largest American jurisdictions on the points that actually distinguish them. Every one of them holds the same doctrine, celebrates the same sacraments and recognises the others' clergy.

On relative size, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese is generally counted the largest American jurisdiction by adherents, with the OCA and the Antiochian Archdiocese following and ROCOR smaller than the three. Orthodox Christians as a whole are a small share of the American population.

Size and share figures should be taken from the parish census work published for the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America by the sociologist Alexei Krindatch, and from the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Study, which has measured Orthodox Christians at around one percent of American adults. This page gives no membership numbers of its own, because the jurisdictions count differently, some by baptised members and some by regular attenders.

9. Are They in Communion With Each Other?

All the canonical Orthodox jurisdictions in America share one faith, one baptism and one priesthood, and in normal times an Orthodox Christian may receive communion in any of them. That normal state has been disturbed since 2018 by a dispute among their mother churches, and the disturbance is felt in American parishes.

What happened in 2018

In October 2018 the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate broke eucharistic communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, after Constantinople moved to grant autocephaly to a united Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The tomos establishing the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was signed in January 2019. Moscow subsequently broke communion with the primates of Alexandria, Greece and Cyprus as they recognised the new Church. Moscow also directed its faithful not to receive communion in parishes of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Constantinople's position is that the Ecumenical Patriarchate has the prerogative to grant autocephaly and was restoring order to a Ukrainian Church long divided. Moscow's position is that Ukraine is its canonical territory and that Constantinople received schismatic bishops without repentance. Both sides argue from canons and from history, and neither questions the other's doctrine.

What it means in an American parish

ROCOR and the Patriarchal Parishes belong to Moscow. The Greek Archdiocese, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA and the Carpatho-Russian Diocese belong to Constantinople. Clergy across that line no longer concelebrate, joint services have been curtailed, and the work of the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops has been strained. The OCA, the Antiochian Archdiocese, the Serbs and others are not parties to the dispute and remain in communion with everyone, which puts them in the position of holding the middle.

For a Catholic the practical consequences are limited, since Catholics do not receive communion in Orthodox parishes in any case. The pastoral consequence is real for Orthodox families, and it is a live sorrow in American Orthodoxy. It also bears directly on Catholic and Orthodox relations, because the question underneath it is the same question that separates Rome and the East: who may speak for the whole Church, and on what authority. Our guide to what Eastern Orthodox Christians believe and the four questions still open with Rome takes that up in detail, and the history of the Great Schism of 1054 traces how the division began.

10. Calendar, Language and Parish Culture

Three practical differences do more than anything doctrinal to give American Orthodox parishes their distinct feel: which calendar they follow, which languages they sing in, and how a particular community carries its history.

Old calendar and new calendar

In the 1920s several Orthodox Churches adopted the revised Julian calendar for fixed feasts, which agrees with the Gregorian calendar for the dates in question. The Greek Archdiocese, the OCA and the Antiochian Archdiocese follow it, so their Nativity falls on 25 December in the civil year. ROCOR, the Serbs and several others keep the older Julian reckoning, which places the Nativity on 7 January by the civil calendar. Nothing separates the two practices except the calendar itself.

Pascha is a different matter. The Orthodox Churches in America, whichever calendar they keep for the fixed feasts, calculate Pascha by the Julian paschalion, which is why Orthodox Pascha usually falls later than the Western date and occasionally coincides with it. That difference is the most visible one for a mixed Catholic and Orthodox family, since it decides when Lent begins, when the fast ends and when the two halves of the family celebrate. Our guide to the Catholic liturgical calendar and its seasons explains the Western reckoning alongside it.

Language

Language use is a spectrum rather than a rule, and it varies parish by parish more than jurisdiction by jurisdiction. The Antiochian Archdiocese and the OCA are largely English. The Greek Archdiocese and ROCOR use more Greek and Slavonic respectively. Any parish with recent immigration will use more of the mother tongue than a parish whose families arrived four generations ago. Service books in English are standard on the pew shelf or the website of nearly every parish, and visitors are expected to follow along.

Parish culture

The differences a visitor actually notices are these. Whether there are pews or an open nave where people stand. Whether the music comes from a cantor singing Byzantine chant or a four-part choir in the Russian manner. Whether the fast is preached strictly or gently. Whether the congregation is mostly cradle Orthodox from one homeland or half converts. Whether the coffee hour is in Greek, Arabic, Slavonic or English. None of these touches doctrine, and all of them shape whether a given family feels at home in a given parish.

11. Can a Catholic Receive Communion?

A Catholic should not approach for communion in an Orthodox parish under ordinary circumstances, and should not ask the priest to make an exception. That is the answer, and the reasons on the two sides differ, which is why it is worth setting them out separately.

What the Catholic Church says

Rome recognises Orthodox holy orders and the Orthodox Eucharist as valid. Canon 844 of the Code of Canon Law permits a Catholic to receive penance, the Eucharist and anointing of the sick from a non-Catholic minister whose Church has valid sacraments, when it is physically or morally impossible to approach a Catholic minister, when necessity or genuine spiritual advantage suggests it, and when danger of error or indifferentism is avoided. The Orthodox Churches meet the sacramental condition. The circumstances almost never do in the United States, where a Catholic parish is usually within reach.

The Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, issued by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in 1993, adds the decisive pastoral point. It asks Catholics to respect the discipline of the Eastern Churches according to their own judgement, and to avoid putting an Orthodox priest in the position of refusing them. A Catholic who presents himself for communion in an Orthodox parish is asking a priest to break the discipline of his own Church.

What the Orthodox Churches say

Orthodox practice is closed communion, and it is closed on principle. The Orthodox understanding is that receiving the Eucharist together expresses a unity of faith that already exists, so communion is the seal of full membership in the Church rather than a means toward it. That principle applies to Catholics, to Protestants, and among the Orthodox themselves in periods of broken communion, as the 2018 rupture shows. It is not aimed at Catholics and it is not a judgement on any individual.

The reverse case runs differently. Canon 844 permits a Catholic priest to give communion, penance and anointing to an Orthodox Christian who asks of his own accord and is properly disposed. Most Orthodox jurisdictions instruct their faithful not to ask, so this arises rarely, and the initiative must always come from the Orthodox person.

For the Catholic understanding of what is received at Mass and why the Church guards it, see our guide to the Eucharist and the Real Presence. The broader Catholic approach to other Christians is set out in our guide to Catholic ecumenism and what unity actually requires.

12. The Sunday Obligation Question

Attending an Orthodox Divine Liturgy does not satisfy a Catholic's Sunday obligation. Canon 1248 of the Code of Canon Law provides that the precept is fulfilled by assisting at a Mass celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite, on the day itself or on the evening before. The Orthodox Divine Liturgy is not celebrated in a Catholic rite, however ancient and however valid its sacraments.

The distinction that trips people up is between Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic. A Ukrainian Greek Catholic, Melkite, Ruthenian, Maronite, Chaldean or Syro-Malabar parish is Catholic, in full communion with the Pope, and its liturgy fulfils the obligation for any Catholic of any rite. The service will look and sound much like the Orthodox one, since several of these Churches use the same Byzantine rite. Sunday obligation is a question of communion rather than of ceremonial. The Eastern Catholic Churches guide lists them.

The practical situations are worth naming. A Catholic married to an Orthodox spouse who attends the Divine Liturgy with the family should also attend Mass, and many mixed families do exactly that, or alternate weeks with both parties keeping their own obligations. A Catholic travelling where the only church for a hundred miles is Orthodox has a genuine impossibility, which canon 1248 already anticipates in a different way and which a pastor can address. A Catholic seriously considering Orthodoxy who has stopped attending Mass has moved into a question no web page can settle and should say so to a priest.

None of this makes attendance at a Divine Liturgy a lesser act. Catholics who go come away having prayed. The obligation is a specific legal duty of the Latin and Eastern Catholic faithful, and it is discharged in a specific way.

13. Catholic and Orthodox Marriage in America

A Catholic may marry an Orthodox Christian, and both Churches regard the marriage as a sacrament. The complications are procedural, and they are entirely manageable if the couple starts early with both clergy rather than late with one.

The Catholic side

Canon 1124 requires the permission of the local ordinary for a marriage between a Catholic and a baptised non-Catholic. Canon 1127 then makes a provision specific to the Eastern Churches: when a Catholic marries a member of an Eastern Church not in full communion, the canonical form of celebration is required for liceity only, and for validity the presence of a sacred minister suffices, with the other requirements of law observed. In plain terms, a wedding celebrated by an Orthodox priest with the crowning is valid in the eyes of the Catholic Church. A dispensation from canonical form, granted by the Catholic bishop, removes the question of liceity as well, and dioceses grant it routinely for Orthodox marriages.

The reasoning behind that provision is the same reasoning that runs through everything on this page. Rome recognises Orthodox orders, so an Orthodox priest is a sacred minister, and the sacrament is real. Catholic law does not extend the same provision to weddings before Protestant ministers, where a dispensation from form is required for validity.

The Orthodox side

Orthodox practice varies by jurisdiction and by bishop, and there is no single code covering all of them. Most American jurisdictions permit an Orthodox Christian to marry a baptised Trinitarian Christian, including a Catholic, in the Orthodox church with the blessing of the bishop, and require that the marriage take place in the Orthodox church for the Orthodox party to remain in good sacramental standing. An Orthodox Christian who marries in a Catholic church without that blessing may be regarded by his own parish as outside the sacraments until the situation is regularised. This is where couples get hurt, and it is why the Orthodox priest has to be part of the conversation from the beginning.

The wedding itself will be one ceremony rather than two. Concelebration of a marriage by a Catholic priest and an Orthodox priest is not permitted, though the clergy of the other Church are commonly invited to attend, to offer a prayer or to give a blessing, and this is normal courtesy in both directions. There is no Mass or Divine Liturgy in most such weddings, precisely because the couple could not receive communion together at it.

Children and household life

Catholic law asks the Catholic party to promise to do all in his or her power to have the children baptised and raised Catholic, and asks that the other party be informed of that promise. Orthodox practice asks the same of the Orthodox party. Two Churches asking the same thing of one household is the honest difficulty of these marriages, and pastors on both sides deal with it constantly. Couples who settle it before the wedding, in conversation with both priests, do far better than couples who leave it. Our guide to Catholic marriage, its bonds and its requirements covers the Catholic side in full.

14. How Converts Are Received

Every canonical Orthodox jurisdiction in the United States receives converts, and the usual path is a catechumenate of several months to a year or more, followed by reception through chrismation or through baptism and chrismation. The differences between jurisdictions on this point are real, and a Catholic reading about it should understand both practices before drawing conclusions.

Chrismation or baptism

Where a person has already been baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, most Orthodox bishops in America receive them by chrismation, the anointing with holy chrism that corresponds to confirmation in the Latin Church, followed immediately by confession and communion. This is done by what Orthodox theology calls economia, the pastoral application of the Church's law, and it does not commit the receiving bishop to a formal judgement about the sacramental status of the person's former community.

Some bishops and some parishes, more often in ROCOR and in certain Greek and monastic settings, baptise converts regardless of previous baptism. This is done by akribeia, strictness, on the understanding that the Church can recognise sacraments only within herself. Orthodox theologians differ among themselves about which practice better expresses the Church's mind, and the disagreement is internal to Orthodoxy. A Catholic who encounters it should not read it as a considered ruling that Catholic baptism is void, since the same Churches receive most converts without baptising them.

The Catholic position is the settled one on its own side: baptism validly conferred with water in the Trinitarian formula is never repeated, whoever conferred it. That is why a Catholic who returns from Orthodoxy, or an Orthodox Christian who becomes Catholic, is received by profession of faith rather than by baptism. See our guide to baptism, what it does and who may receive it.

What the process looks like

A person interested in a parish is normally asked to attend services for a while before anything else happens. Formal enrolment as a catechumen follows, with a short rite at the end of a service. Catechesis is usually in a class or one to one with the priest, and covers doctrine, the services, the fasts, confession and prayer. Reception is commonly at Pascha, though it happens throughout the year. A sponsor from the parish stands with the convert and takes a continuing role, and the convert takes a saint's name.

For a Catholic thinking about it

A Catholic considering Orthodoxy is contemplating a change of communion, and the Catholic Church holds that such a step separates a person from full communion with the See of Peter. That is a serious matter and it deserves serious treatment rather than a slogan. The questions genuinely at stake are the ones our guides on the papacy and Petrine primacy, on the Filioque clause and why the East rejected it, and on the Eastern Orthodox Church examine: the procession of the Spirit, papal jurisdiction, the definitions of Vatican I, and the Immaculate Conception. Anyone weighing them should read the strongest Orthodox case and the strongest Catholic case, and should talk to a priest in each Church rather than to the internet. The 1965 lifting of the mutual excommunications of 1054 by Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras changed the temperature of this conversation permanently, and it should be conducted in that spirit.

15. Visiting an Orthodox Parish as a Catholic

Orthodox parishes welcome visitors, and a Catholic who turns up for a Sunday Divine Liturgy will be treated as a guest rather than as a problem. A few practical points make the visit easier for everyone.

• Arrive on time and expect length. The Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom runs around ninety minutes, and Matins beforehand adds more. Many parishes also serve Great Vespers on Saturday evening, which is a good first visit because it is shorter and quieter.
• Dress modestly. Modest dress is expected, and in many parishes it is more formal than an American Catholic congregation is used to. Many Orthodox women cover their heads, especially in ROCOR and Serbian parishes, and a visitor who wishes to may do the same without any obligation.
• Expect to stand. Many parishes have pews and many do not. Standing for most of the service is normal, and sitting when you need to is accepted.
• Do not go up for communion. The chalice is for Orthodox Christians who have prepared by fasting and confession. Stay in your place, or step aside for the antidoron afterwards.
• Follow the congregation on gestures. Orthodox Christians cross themselves right shoulder first, bow, and make prostrations during Lent. A visitor may cross himself in his own manner or simply pray.
• Icons are venerated, not worshipped. Kissing an icon is a greeting given to the person depicted, and the Catholic teaching on images, defined at Nicaea II in 787, is identical. See our guide to the saints and how Catholics honour them.
• Say what you are. Telling the priest you are a Catholic visitor is the simplest way to avoid every awkward moment, and it is almost always met with warmth.

The last point is worth pressing. Catholics and Orthodox share the seven councils, the seven sacraments, apostolic succession, the veneration of Mary as Theotokos, prayer for the dead, monasticism and the whole patristic inheritance. What divides the two Churches is real and it is not vast. Nothing is lost by praying alongside people who confess the same Creed, and something is gained.

Urgency belongs on your own soul rather than on any of this. No one knows the day or the hour (Mark 13:32), and readiness is asked of every Christian now, in the Church where he stands. Study of another tradition is worth doing when it drives you deeper into prayer, confession and the sacraments rather than into argument. Our guides to confession and what it restores and to Catholic prayer and how to begin are where that starts.

16. Related Topics