Welcome to the website
of the
Orthodox-Catholic Church of America!

The Orthodox-Catholic Church of America celebrates this year 100 years of being a self-governing church in the tradition of Western Orthodoxy. In that time, it has grown to having ministries in 20 of the United States, and two priests serving abroad. Entirely non-stipendary clergy, the ministers of the Church support themselves with secular work, or serve the Church in their retirement. The ministries include drug and addictions counseling, pastoral care, interchurch pastoral work, teaching, nursing, counseling, and a host of other vocations.

This summer, members of the Church will gather for a quadrennial Synod. Being as far-flung as we are, it is a time for renewal and strengthening of friendships. But it is also the occasion for introspection and evaluation of our ministries. The Synod will include business meetings for the membership to set direction for the future.

Does Church have a future? Within the memory of the older among us, we can remember Time Magazine famously asking "Is God Dead?" Clearly, God remains alive and well. But for many households of faith, wellness is a relative thing, as all sorts of challenges confront churchfolk in the daily living of the faith. For small, intentional communities such as the Orthodox-Catholic Church of America, issues tend to have a greater impact. For example, the death or departure of one priest in a church with hundreds or thousands of clergy is sad but when a Church family has a membership of less than 100 the impact can be significant. Welcoming and educating those interested in service is ongoing--and sometimes challenging.

Many intentional communities of faith often start with communities called "house churches." These are small groups of faithful gathering with a priest. For such charismatic communities change and growth are always in the foreground of consciousness. To help our household examine some of the opportunities for growth and change, we will host at the Synod a speaker from the Alban Institute.

Intentional communities often have properties and become highly visible members of the local community. Others, such as our own, deliberately choice to avoid becoming a brick-and-mortar community. We are people of tents, a migrant household. Since this is quite the opposite of what most churchs look like, it takes conscious effort to discover the best way to be a thriving portable feast.

While being in an inentional community can be hard work, it also has many blessings. Clergy elect their bishops in the Orthodox-Catholic Church of America, and the Holy Synod of Bishops elects the Archbishop and Metropolitan.  Governance is low-keyed in intentional communities, for the most part.  And rivalries don't often erupt. An example of that sharing spirit is that at the gathering this summer, a church-supply boutique will be set up for people to donate and to find for their use gently-used church goods. One wag calls it a sacred swap meet.

Even a cursory study of intentional communities (sometimes called "independent churches" a phrase the early church leaders would have been shocked to hear since In Christ no one is independent) shows that small communities don't often survive long. Perhaps we have become in the west too accustomed to a long history of relative ecclesial stability, and expect that "true" or "valid" churches have deep foundations which withstand the winds of time.  In the eastern Christian community, though, there is a memory that many once rock-solid churches, many with hundreds of years of history, have entirely and utterly disappeared. Their names are known only to historians. At one time, Christianity spread from Jerusalem like petals on a flower. Some north and west; some south west; some east and northeast. Jerusalem really was the center of the church world. Perhaps there is divine wisdom in this patern of dying and rising, dying and rising, dying and rising--a dynamic process not at all static.

For ourselves, the Orthodox-Catholic Church does not feel that it is dying. Our membership is committed to serving the people of God however and wherever there exists a need for presence and prayer. Church is a wave that flows, surges, ebbs, but moves always, Spirit-touched and quite healthfully alive.

Some church families call these Sundays between Pentecost and the end of the Church year "ordinary time." That means that having experienced the great church festivals of Advent/Christmas/Epiphany and Lent/Easter/Eastertime and Pentecost the balance of the year is given to experiencing the quotidian, just-plain-folk Mystery of God with us. For others, the description is "Time after Pentecost." I like that phrase, for it speaks to the ongoing presence of the Spirit with each community, each person, every gathering of faithful people--a six-month celebration of being and still-becoming Christ-like.

Blessings, many, many blessings and a wish for peace beyond just quietude. 

Archbishop Peter
Metropolitan Archbishop
Orthodox-Catholic Church of America