Talk:Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

1932 constitution

I'm currently working on St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church (Seattle). I gather that there was some serious disagreement about adopting the Archdiocesan constitution in 1932. I came here hoping to get some insight into that; it isn't even mentioned.

If someone knows where I might find more about this, please "ping" my user talk page, because I'm really not maintaining a watchlist these days. - Jmabel | Talk 04:08, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

an eparch of the EP

I know this is what the website of the GOARCH says, but according to the wiki article 'eparchy' that this article links to, 'an eparchy is the jurisdiction of a bishop, corresponding to what in the West is called a diocese.' Is the word 'eparchy' correct in describing the GOARCH? or is the article 'eparchy' wrong? thanks 99.224.220.52 19:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

This is true. "Diocese" and "Eparchy" are equivilent, the first being used in the Western Churches and the second being used in the Eastern Churches. "Eparchy" here might be being used in a generic sense as a word that could mean both regular eparchies/diocese as well as archeparchies.

Making things more complicated, the Greek tradition has reversed the words for their hierarchy compared with the rest of the world's episcopal churches, Roman Catholic, Russian Orthodox, Anglican. Normally eparchies/diocese are grouped together into Provinces. The first bishop of the Province is called the Metropolitan Archbishop and his diocese is called a "metropolitan archdiocese" or "metropolitan archeparchy." The other bishops of the other diocese are called "suffragan bishops" and their jurisdictions are called "suffragan diocese" or "suffragan eparchies." Non-metropolitan bishops can also have the title "archbishop" as an honorary title. But as a rule, in an ecclesiastical province, there is one Metropolitan Archbishop and multiple Suffragan Bishops.

But the Greek Orthodox Churches, including the Church of Constantinople, Church of Greece, Church of Crete, and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America have reversed this. The first bishop of their provinces is called an Archbishop. And the other bishops of the provinces are called Metropolitan. The jurisdiction of the Archbishop is called an archdiocese or archeparchy, and is sometimes applied to the entire province, thus the "Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America." And the jurisdictions of the subordinate bishops are called "metropolises." So in this case, the word usually used for the first and superior bishop of an ecclesiastical province, namely a Metropolitan, is applied to every lower level suffragan bishop.

If one was not aware of this terminological shift one might assume that the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America was composed of 8 or 9 provinces and that would imply it had even more eparchies/diocese as each province would have at least 2. But the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America is actually a single province with 1 archdiocese and 8 subordinate metropolises. And the province is called an 'eparchy' because the first bishop of the province is an Archbishop and his jurisdiction is called an archdiocese or archeparchy and 'eparchy' is a generic word for that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ryan Close (talk • contribs) 14:38, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

southern greeks

i don't see it in here anywhere, but the greek communities in the south are older than those in the north. there is mention in the article about the oldest community being founded in 1896 in new york, but the greek communities in florida, alabama, and louisiana are all older than that and certainly didn't just vanish between their first immigrant's arriving and modern times. we have greek orthodox marriage and baptismal records from my wife's family in birmingham, alabama that date from the late 1800's-early 1900's and the community there was not the oldest, by far. the new york greek community seems to have been a somewhat later development. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.4.76.57 (talk) 16:50, 10 July 2010 (UTC)