Does the Œcumenical Patriarch have any authority over the Orthodox Catholic Churches or is his role purely honorific?
Could someone please answer that part of my OP about the Œcumenical Patriarch? I’ve just had a look at the Wikipedia article on the OCA. It says that the Œcumenical Patriarch doesn’t recognise the autocephaly of the OCA because the Russian Orthodox Church does not have the right to grant it autocephaly …
He does not have any authority outside of his Metropolitan synod.
Within the synod the bishops and the Metropolitan (Patriarch) are required to work together. The synod is largely gutted since the population exchanges due to the Greco-Turkish war, which ended in 1921 or 1922. Most of the Greeks of Asia Minor fled abroad, many to the USA.
What follows is my interpretation of the situation, others may see it a bit differently.
The EP seems to be operating under a theory that while they can grant autocephaly to a mission church of their own foundation, that new autocephalous church cannot also grant autocephaly to it’s own missions without the EP’s approval. Since the EP does not have any real authority over those other churches they have been basically ignored much of the time, in fact whenever it is convenient or judged necessary to do so. Suffice it to say most other Orthodox do not subscribe to any theory of reserved rights in the hands of the EP.
The Russians established a mission church structure in Alaska and elsewhere in north America which came to serve as an umbrella organization for all the other Orthodox (with the notable exception - as I recall - of a few Greek parishes which did not recognize any bishops at all for a while).
North American Orthodox were essentially under the Russian Metropolia until the Bolshevik revolution, when the Soviet government suppressed and compromised the Russian church. Other churches which had been home churches to various congregations in north America sent their own bishops to congregations of their immigrants to protect them. Leaving the Russian Metropolia to be mostly Russian and Carpatho-Russian (with a smattering of others, like Albanians and Bulgarians). That is why there have been so many different Orthodox churches in America, they largely withdrew from the Russian Metropolia at that time. The ethnic Greeks in America in a round about way eventually came under the control of the EP, which was fortuitous since the EP very much needed financial support.
In the 1970’s the Russian church (Russia being still under Soviet control at the time) granted autocephaly to the original (but now somewhat reduced) Russian Metropolia in north America. That is what became the OCA.
This created a problem for the EP, because if the Russian church had theoretical (if not actual) jurisdiction over north America and had suddenly released that church to govern itself, the Greek Orthodox of north America could conceivably be absorbed into the self-governing Metropolitan synod. Among other things that could dry up a valuable source of funding, not to mention a loss of prestige. Thus, it seems to me that the EP was acting in it’s own parochial self-interest by putting obstacles in the way of the OCA re-unifying Orthodoxy in the Americas.
As I said, this is an interpretation, you may take it for what it’s worth.
. The OCA is just one of the jurisdictions we have in America.