By Subdeacon Nektarios, M.A.
Just recently the Metropolitan Tikhon of the Orthodox Church in America recently travelled to the Ukraine to concelebrate and meet with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) to strengthen "ties with the Orthodox Churches in Ukraine, Romania, and Constantinople" [1]. This trip to the Ukraine established that the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) is in full communion and recognizes the UOC under Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and not the Ecumenical Patriarchate creation of the OCU.
However, on the official Facebook page of Orthodox Church in America they stated that Metropolitan Tikhon and a delegation of OCA clergy also travelled to Constantinople and were received by Patriarch Bartholomew and that Metropolitan Tikhon "and the delegation attended divine services in the sanctuary of the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George; Great Vespers on the evening of June 8 and the Divine Liturgy on the morning of June 9, at which time the delegation received the Holy Mysteries" [2]. This trip with the Primate of the OCA makes for some interesting ecclesiology because of who they are now in communion with. It is well known that the OCA is in communion with the rest of the World Orthodox jurisdictions which makes this much more interesting. Not only are they clearly in communion with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). This communion obviously also extends to the Patriarchate of Moscow.
However, this recent post throws some confusing signals out to the rest of the world as they recently travelled to Constantinople where they concelebrated with the Ecumenical Patriarchate who created and is in full communion with the controversial OCU. Another interesting point is that the Ecumenical Patriarchate does not recognize the autocephalous status of the OCA since they received their “autocephaly” form the Soviet Moscow Patriarchate in 1970.
