Welcome to our website!

Image provided by Robert Lentz of Trinity Stores

Whether you were looking for us or just stumbled upon us, I thank you for your time and reflection as you scroll through our website.

The authenticity of any group doesn't depend on its size, but on its legal and moral authority. For example, California and Vermont both have two senators in the U.S. Senate. The two from Vermont are no less senators than the two from California, even though California overshadows Vermont both in size and population many times over. The senators are equal peers because they share the same legal roots in the U.S. Constitution. The authenticity of a church is not in size or strength in human terms, but in its being rooted in the Church of the Apostles according to the major decrees of the seven recognized Ecumenical Councils of the Church.

The Orthodox-Catholic Church of America is a small community. Indeed, most orthodox churches are size-wise mere wisps when compared with the larger Christian churches. We in OCCA are a tiny Vermont of a church. Yet we can take our place with the California-size churches, knowing that we share the same one, holy, catholic and apostolic roots. The truth we speak, insofar as it is given to us, is grounded in the gospel and the doctrine of the undivided Church of the first millennium. We stand on the same ground as our much larger counterparts in the Church.

Perhaps OCCA will always be a kind of wayside space, gathering folks who have stumbled along the Way, folks who have found us a shelter and refuge. We do not look to big buildings and bulging bank accounts. What we seek is to serve God's people in building up the believing community, helping people to experience Christian community in a way that resonates the gospel. We are a church uninterested in simply preening ecclesiastical feathers or existing only in virtual reality on the internet. Our hope is to honor God in the great and sometimes confusing diversity among believers and non-believers alike, pressing forward in Christ's dual command which summed up the Law and the Prophets.

Yes, we admit it, we're not a perfect church. We are sinners still in search of the holiness that has already seized us. We sometimes hoot and howl at one another, but we always manage to gather around the only Table that will bind us into eternity and keep us on track here. Our indebtedness is always to the Holy Spirit.

May you be blessed in your journey with us. Please pray for us as we seek to serve the Triune God and enflesh the gospel.

+E. Paul Brian Carsten
Metropolitan Archbishop