Let me preface this by saying that I know that there is a thread already out there for this topic but it’s on
ByzCath.org and quite outdated now.
I was wondering what are some of the most Orthodox-oriented E.C. churches in North America people here have been to. Also, I’m curious to what extent there are these churches, i.e. fully Orthodox liturgically (no latinizations whatsoever) but in full communion with Rome.
As for my personal experience, I’ve only seen one that fits my rather subjective criteria: Saint Elias in Brampton, Ontario (Eparchy of Toronto).
I’m not sure what your criteria is. I’m in a Russian EC parish. We use the OCA liturgy and fasting calendar. The music is the same. We have roughly the same kind of benches on the back wall, and 4 folding chairs as the OCA parish I go to and as the ROCOR cathedral. I see little head covering in either our parish or the OCA, but the ROCOR do expect it, and they expect women to not wear pants. Language wise we get a fair amount of Old Church Slavonic from our priest, tho sometimes he does launch into Arabic, tapping into his years serving the Melkite, and from our deacon and depending on who does 9th hour there a fair amount of Slavonic. My parish is mostly now limited to the Kyrie, the Trisagion and Christ is Risen as far as Slavonic for all the parishioners. The Choir often has more fluency, In the OCA parish I go to most often many of those parishioners are able to recite the Lord’s Prayer and some other things in Slavonic. The Epistle is read in English, in Russian and in Greek in my parish.
So what liturgies and services we have are fully orthodox. On the other hand, we are very tiny and there are many services we do not have. This is a problem. Many of us go to Orthodox parishes for these as I did tonight at a Greek Orthodox Cathedral where the people sit in pews most of the time (when we would be standing, and have no pews LOL). If I didn’t go to the Orthodox (usually Russian) for these my faith life would be very different. I don’t think Sunday Divine Liturgy, and maybe presanctified Liturgy is enough. Festal vigils and the Compline and Great Canon are really central in my opinion. Again, a lot of our EC parishioners go to the OCA and ROCOR for these and for Sat night vigil and sometimes daily DL and Vespers/Matins.
Our Iconostasis has a Holy Icon of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux because it is modeled after the Iconostasis
in Russicum seminarian’s chapel. I’m told our priest would like to have a new Iconostasis. I’ve grown to love ours because it was made for our beloved ancestors and were it not for them and their struggles we would not have a parish at all.
Of course the name of our parish is entirely Latinized, thanks to the Latin Bishop who named the parish. We consider ourselves under the protection of the Mother of God but don’t as a parish have any devotion to Fatima. There may be some parishioners who have that devotion but it’s not expressed in any way in our calendar or our services.
I’ve never been to Fr. Anthony’s church
St. Basil’s in Los Gatos/Palo Alto but I had a class with him and I’m sure it must have very orthodox services. He’s grown the parish so much they have had to move into a Latin Church for Sunday DL so they are stuck with having to use an environment that isn’t of their own making.
I’ve been to St. George’s Melkite in Sacramento and the liturgy was fine, but the chairs were not… They need a new church. The place is bursting at the seams, I was there on the feast of St. Elias and when Father Brendan went out to bless all the cars the parishioners all went to have coffee. Not a one joined in the procession. The procession was Father, the cantor and the two altar servers. I took that as a cultural thing. When we have processions we only go through our church out the back door, though the garden up the street and in the front door… not much processing but everyone who is able to do the stairs takes part in it. And for St. Elias we are all very hot to have our chariots blest!
