Page 213 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

T H E D I A S P O R A A N D T H E C R I S I S O F C AT H O L I C I T Y
lished by Canon 8 of the First Ecumenical Council remains
fundamental both canonically and ecclesiologically: there is
to be only one bishop in a given place. The existence of many
bishops in one city gravely violates this principle. If a bishop
serves only as head of a specific cultural or ethnic community
and not of all the members of the Church in a given place, it
becomes impossible for the Church to express its catholicity
through the bishop’s ministry. The bishop exists precisely to
transcend all divisions—national, ethnic, linguistic—and
gather all into one Body.
For this reason, the present organization of the diaspora
constitutes a canonical anomaly. In many cities there exist side
by side Greek, Russian, Serbian, Romanian, Arab, Bulgarian,
and other bishops. This is a most serious and tragic anomaly
from the ecclesiological and canonical point of view. The
temptation here is ethnophyletism: the subordination of ec-
clesial structure to national identity. Whenever the Church in
the diaspora is organized primarily according to nationality
rather than according to the local Eucharistic principle, cath-
olicity is endangered.
This became especially evident in the Russian diaspora
after the Bolshevik Revolution. While the Greek Orthodox
diaspora remained united under the Ecumenical Patriarchate,
the Russian diaspora became divided into several jurisdic-
tions: the Synod of the Russian Church in Exile, the Paris
Exarchate, the Moscow Patriarchate jurisdictions abroad, and
the American Metropolia. This fragmentation produced open,
hidden, and partial schisms throughout the diaspora. At-
tempts were made to bring canonical bishops together in
common conferences, especially in America, but such bodies
possess no true jurisdictional status and cannot resolve the
deeper ecclesiological contradiction.
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