American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese

The American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese is a diocese of the Ecumenical Patriarchate with about 75 parishes in the United States and Canada, led by Metropolitan Nicholas (Smisko) of Amissos. Though the diocese is directly responsible to the Patriarchate, it is under the spiritual supervision of the primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

At the end of the nineteenth century, many Ruthenians (Rusyns) immigrated to North America, and established their Ruthenian Catholic Church parishes. However, the differences between the Eastern Rite Catholics and the predominant Latin-Rite Catholics (especially regarding a married priesthood and the form of the Divine Liturgy or "Mass") led some of them to withdraw from the Catholic Church and become Eastern Orthodox.

The diocese was founded in 1938 when a group of 37 Ruthenian Eastern Catholic parishes, under the leadership of Fr. Orestes Chornock, were received into the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The year before, this group had officially renounced the Unia with Rome, primarily in protest over Latinizations occurring in their church life. A particularly divisive issue was the 1929 papal decree "Cum data fuerit" mandating that Eastern Rite clergy in the US were to be celibate.

This move actually marked the second American group of Ruthenian parishes to turn to Orthodoxy. The first had been led by St. Alexis of Wilkes-Barre into the jurisdiction of the Russian Metropolia in the 1890s. Notably, this second large-scale conversion to Orthodoxy by Carpatho-Russians in America was directed toward Constantinople rather than to the Russian presence in America. This was primarily motivated out of concerns of Russification, which had occurred with the previous move. As such, rather than being absorbed into the body of Russian churches, and so being compelled to adopt Muscovite traditions, the ACROD was permitted by Constantinople to keep its distinctive Rusyn practices. Thus, the hymnography and liturgical forms, including the particular form of Old Church Slavonic used in the divine services, were preserved, while certain Latinizations, such as the Filioque clause in the Nicene Creed, were removed.

Besides its 75 parishes, the ACROD has one seminary located in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, called [http://www.acrod.org/seminary.html Christ the Saviour Seminary] . The bulk of the diocese's parishes are in the United States, with one in Canada; nearly half are located in Pennsylvania. There was formerly a diocesan monastery, the Monastery of the Annunciation in Tuxedo Park, New York, which closed in the early 1990s. Another monastery at Beallsville, Maryland, called [http://omna.malf.net/hcnews.htm Monastery of the Holy Cross] , dissolved in the late 1990s when the abbot returned to Eastern Rite Catholicism.

The diocese is a member of Standing Conference of Orthodox Bishops in America.

ource

* [http://www.orthodoxwiki.org/American_Carpatho-Russian_Orthodox_Diocese OrthodoxWiki:American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese] , an OrthodoxWiki article
* [http://www.acrod.org/about2.html A Detailed History of the ACROD]