OO/EO discussion (not debate): Is it a good thing that we show up in each others' churches?

dzheremi said:

Note: Even though I already put it in the thread title, I want to reiterate that I'm posting this in St. Basil the Great's Hall, not St. Justin's, because I don't see any need that this turn into a debate. I don't want one. (This is also why I didn't put it in the general forum.)

It's a pretty simple question, really: Is it a good thing or a bad thing (or something else) that we OO or EO people show up in each others' churches on occasion? I'm thinking here of things like this, which is clearly in no sense a liturgical service but does involve OO people praying in an EO cathedral:

HG Bishop Youssef of the Southern United States diocese of the Coptic Orthodox Church and believers pray together in Holy Trinity Cathedral, Tblisi, Georgia

Though I don't have any fancy video to prove it, I've written before about the Chalcedonians from Jordan who chose to come to our liturgy over their own for something on the order of at least half a year (basically until they moved away). There were also the curious EO visitors who we essentially held a liturgy for the benefit of (since they were too elderly to make the 6 hour trip to and from Albuquerque to see it in our parish church) in Las Cruces, NM. So the reverse also happens.

Obviously no one is communed or seeks to be, so I would think questions of what exactly it 'means' ecclesiologically that we might attend each others' churches is more or less a moot point, since it doesn't involve leaving one communion for another (I assume that any attendance of the other communion's church would be for some other purpose, hopefully with the blessing of your own authorities; that is how it is in the Coptic Orthodox Church, anyway, and I don't have reason to assume that you guys would be more lax than we are), so it is not about painting everything as equal. Just visiting. I too have gotten the message before that "we don't do that" when I mentioned perhaps visiting the local OCA in my home area when I was leaving for Christmastime with my family, but obviously that was meant to emphasize that we are not the same communion, since I was very new to the Coptic Orthodox faith at the time. And obviously that kind of blunt warning doesn't stop people from going to the others' church despite lingering doctrinal disagreements and suspicions.
So what do you think? I have a feeling that, painted broadly, we might have different takes on this, so I will not share my personal opinion in this post. Maybe subsequently. I am interested to hear your takes on this.

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dzheremi said:

This is a curious idea. Why do you think this? I don't know how it looks from the Eastern Orthodox world, but as an OO person I can say that -- photo ops and/or agreed statements aside -- we generally* have even less to do with the Western churches than you guys do! (The whole "600 fewer years of being in communion" thing does tend to have an impact. )

* Armenians and some Syriacs possibly excepted

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dzheremi said:

Yes, there is the general blessing, in addition to the individual blessing/prayer upon the head of every person (as the priest censes the church, you bow your head slightly and he places the handcross upon your head and gives a short blessing/prayer). As far as I have seen, he does not skip visitors, nor inquire as to their background beforehand.

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dzheremi said:

I agree, Father.

So if a group of OO people were visiting your church and felt moved to pray in it, as in the video in the OP (not during a liturgical service), would you allow them? Or, rather, would your bishop allow it, if that is a more appropriate question?

The only example I personally know of OO-EO relations like this on a local level (where the local Copts would go to the Greek church) actually involved communion (with the full knowledge and consent of the appropriate OO and EO bishops), but I think that's a bit like asking for a million dollars when what you're actually looking for is $5, so I wanted to ask about something smaller.

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dzheremi said:

This is an interesting perspective. Thank you for sharing it. I guess it's true that we don't have quite so many hangups with the Latins that you guys do; until pretty recently, I think they were probably seen as more of a curiosity than anything else, because there just weren't very many outside of a few specific ethnicities (the historic Italian community, for instance). There was even a Coptic Pope whose name of course now escapes me c. 1700s who 'used' the then-recently-arrived Latin missionaries to carry the Holy myroon (is that the word in English? mayron? myron?) to Ethiopia during one of the periods in which the Islamic government disallowed direct contact between the Coptic Orthodox Church and its daughter church in Ethiopia (hey, if the westerners are going to be in Egypt anyway, they might as well make themselves useful ). And of course there is the famous story (not involving the RC, but western Christians more generally) of the bishop of Asyut responding c. 1860s to Presbyterian missionaries attempting to invite his flock to Christianity (hahaha) by stating "We have been living with Jesus Christ for nearly 2,000 years; how long have your people been living with Him?"

Whether or not these are the kind of people you would want mediating for you is another question (I wouldn't, precisely because so many don't know much or anything at all about EO-RC relations; why would they? OO were long out of the picture by the time the cracks really started appearing in your relations with each other, unless I have been gravely misinformed). I would prefer the Holy Spirit, though it's weird to say that as though that's a matter of preference and not a matter of Who is entirely necessary for any true and lasting union (EO-RC, EO-OO, etc.) to be a reality.

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