A brief history of the FYROM Orthodox Church (split thread)

[danielmaco]

A brief history of the Macedonian Orthodox Church.

Since the uncanonical abolition of the autocephalous Ohrid Archdiocese in the year 1767, executed with a decision by the Turkish Sultan, at the request of Patriarch Samuel I of Constantinople, and all up to World War I the dioceses of the present Republic of Macedonia had been under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate. After World War I these dioceses territorially fell under the occupation by the Serbian state and were therefore transferred under the government of the Serbian Orthodox Church. With the beginning of World War II, the Serbian Episcopes, along with their army and police, left these dioceses which they had administered for only 20 years and were replaced by the Episcopes of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. After World War II, the Republic of Macedonia existed as a separate federative state within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Following the end of World War II, the clergy and the Orthodox faithful of the Republic of Macedonia requested the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) to consecrate native episcopes to them, for greater pastoral stability and efficacy of the Church. On 5 October 1958, with the resolution of the Clergy and Laity Assembly in Ohrid, Episcope Dositheus, a Macedonian born, a Vicar of the Serbian Patriarch German, was enthroned the 83 rd Archbishop of the restored Ohrid Archdiocese, which owing to the country in which it is active was given the name Macedonian Orthodox Church, and he – the title Archbishop of Ohrid and Macedonia.

The Holy Assembly of Hierarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church in June of 1959 passed a resolution (AH. No. 6/min. 57) which confirms that “the dioceses in the Republic of Macedonia have been separated into an INDEPENDENT Church which will be administered in accordance with the Constitution adopted at the Macedonian Clergy and Laity Assembly of the year 1958” and that “with this resolution cease to be valid the regulations of the Serbian Orthodox Church Constitution for the episcopes and hierarchs of the People's Republic of Macedonia”. Due to the need to form an independent Synod, the Serbian Patriarch German, Archbishop Dositheus of Ohrid and Macedonia, and also Episcope Nicanor of Bačka, on 19-07-1959 in Skopje consecrated the newly elected episcope Clement of Prespa and Bitola. With this there were conditions created for the formation of a Holy Synod of Hierarchs of the Macedonian Orthodox Church. About this all, Patriarch German of Serbia with his letter, registered under the synodal No. 515, of May 31, 1961, informed Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople.

On July 16 of the year 1967, the Macedonian Orthodox Church—restored Ohrid Archdiocese, at a Clergy and Laity Assembly in Ohrid, in accordance with the by then established practice of other Churches, is proclaimed autocephalous local Orthodox Church, following which the Serbian Orthodox Church unilaterally cut off the eucharistic communion with it. Concelebration of Episcopes of the Macedonian Orthodox Church with Episcopes of other Orthodox Churches has been taking place to this very day, only unofficially and with no public announcement. The Archbishop of Ohrid and Macedonia always mentions at the Great Entrance the names of the Heads of the local Orthodox Churches.

[danielmaco]

Is this better or am I going to be banned again for some insane reason.
http://www.mpc.org.mk/English/MPC/brief-history.asp

[danielmaco]

Why was my reply moved here?

[akritas]

Daniel read the follow abstract

Formation of the Autocephalous Church of "Macedonia"


Continuing efforts to sever the link between the newly created "Mace­donians" and the other Balkan Slavs and Bulgarians, and to boost the Macedonian consciousness (Palmer and King 1971), the government of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, with CPY's support, formed the Orthodox Church of "Macedonia" in 1967 with Skopje as the seat, despite protests by the Serbian Patriarchate. None of the other five Yugoslav republics had an autocephalous church. It was the only church formed by a communist regime, whose motto in the past was Lenin's dictum: "Religion is the opium of the masses." The Autocephalous Church of "Macedonia" broke the reli­gious ties of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia's Slavomacedonians with the Serbs and Bulgarians. Little by little everything became "Macedonian" in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia: history, culture, heroes, monu­ments, music, events, locations, language, even the Greek Civil War of 1946-1949 (which they renamed the "Macedonian National Liberation War") and, finally, the church in 1967.

By playing with the two meanings of the name, the ethnic and the geographic, history revisionists in Skopje constructed an artificial "Macedonian" nationality from Serbs and Bul­garians and created such confusion among unsuspecting foreigners who were unable to distinguish between the two meanings," assuming that everything Macedonian must belong to the Slavs of the Vardar Province or "Macedonia."5

The formation of the independent Church of "Macedonia" solved the religious affiliation problem faced by the diaspora Slavic emigrants. From the beginning of the twentieth century to 1967 slavophone immigrants in the United States, Canada, and Australia attended the Macedono-Bulgar-ian Orthodox Church affiliated with the Bulgarian Exarchate. After 1967, however, the members of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization (MPO) split into two groups, the Bulgarophiles, who still attend the Macedono-Bulgarian Orthodox Church, and the Skopje-oriented slavophones, who attend the Autocephalous Church of "Macedonia."

The Autocephalous Church of "Macedonia" was formed in violation of the rules of the Orthodox Church to strengthen Macedonia's autonomy vis-a-vis Serbia —autonomy expressed with the slogan "one state, one church, one nation" (Papastathis 1967). The independent "Macedonian" Orthodox Church also founded an extremely active bishopric in America and propagandized extensively on the Macedonian Question as a CPY tool. The church's intense "Macedonian" activism in the United States and Canada is supported by about thirty thousand Slav-speakers who continue to stir provocatively the Macedonian problem. The slavophones in Amer­ica, mostly of Yugoslav origin, who emigrated after 1950, became the most vociferous people on the Macedonian issue, with their activism continuing unabated today in the press, on television, and on the Internet.

source:
George Papavisas in Claiming Macedonia: The Struggle for the Heritage, Territory and the Name of the Historic Hellenic Land, 1862-2004

[slavicwolf]

the first time the church was mantioned under the name Macedonian Orthodox Church is in 1967, before that from the time when the slavs adopted christianity in the 6-7th century up untill 1967 the is no mention of that name. i do not have any problem with the name MOC because it should represent all the orthodox nationalities in macedonia, from bulgars to serbs vlahs albanians ect.

[wanted_gr]

fyrom are albanians,