Give me your tired, your poor...
Garvey, John
l his Christmas marked the seventh year during which I have served as pastor of an Orthodox church. The changes we have gone through have been remarkable for what sometimes feels like a...
...But after the first year the newcomers got involved (they were recruited), I noticed a change: The two communities began mixing more, and have merged into one community...
...At the other side are American attitudes toward immigration, and the problems involved in absorbing people from a very different culture...
...But many had a decent command of English before coming, and many more have picked it up in dasses and on the job since...
...Under the regime of the dictator Enver Hoxha, there was a determined attempt to eradicate all religion...
...Most did...
...Our church custodian was the principal of a high school and taught mathematics in Albania...
...I keep remembering family stories about my immigrant ancestors and how hard they had to work...
...The changes we have gone through have been remarkable for what sometimes feels like a relatively brief time, and at other times feels like an eternity...
...When I first came to Saint Nicholas I knew it was part of the Albanian Archdiocese of the Orthodox Church in America...
...m Margaret O'Gara LUTHERANS & CATHOLICS Ending an old argument ~ ow long does it take to resolve an argument...
...This Declaration has special significance because it is a joint action, not just a theoretical analysis...
...But most were simply hard-working people trying to make it in a country which isn't easy on immigrants, and which seemed at the time to be going through another nativist spasm...
...In some ways they show in microcosm things happening all over America--including the effects of immigration, the reasons people come here, what they love and don't love about being in America...
...The Albanians I know are not uncritical of America, but they love it...
...In some of them, years under communism had produced a lethal combination of cynicism and naivet6, a conviction that things had to be done stealthily, that no public official ever tells the truth...
...Developments have taken place which not only make possible, but also require the churches to examine the divisive questions and condemnations and see them in a new light," Lutherans and Roman Catholics said in a historic Joint Declaration of the Doctrine of Justification, signed by representatives of the pope and the Lutheran World Federation in Augsburg, Germany on October 31, 1999...
...About onethird to one-half of the people in church were immigrants, and at first the crowd was fluid...
...Growth is no longer a pressing concern...
...At the time I arrived it was a small parish, about eighty members, not all of whom attended with any regularity...
...And these Albanians were different: They had been through years of a persecution most Americans could not begin to understand...
...Make no mistake about it: This is an important ecumenical breakthrough...
...then they declare that those earlier condemnations no longer apply to the partner today...
...For years our parish has held a flea market as a fund raiser...
...Most of the members were middleaged, family people, assimilated Americans of Albanian descent...
...That was fine---that's what the coffee hour is for...
...One problem for the newcomers was that for a long time they felt like guests in our community, not members...
...We repeat a few prayers in Albanian, but the liturgy is otherwise in English...
...At this morning's liturgy the congregation included a lot of Albanians (of course), some people of Russian background, a couple of Egyptian Copts, a couple of Greeks, and two large Eritrean families...
...This was due in part to the fear of change...
...But Roman Catholics, more interested in the renewing effects of grace, tended to emphasize the transCommonweal 8 January 14, 2000...
...Suddenly a church that had a preponderance of members who lived on Long Island and commuted into Queens for services was hill of people li~ng in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, people who worked for low wages or lived on welfare...
...It's an interesting congregation...
...But Lutherans and Roman Catholics use different emphases to explain this justifying grace from God and its effects...
...We had to do what we could with referrals, while making it clear to people reared in a Communist society that the church was not primarily a social service agency...
...Now the two churches have reached "a consensus on basic truths of the doctrine of justification...
...The teaching about God's justifying grace was at the heart of the Reformation debates in the sixteenth century, and Luther made it his central emphasis...
...Among Albanians, hospitality is the essential virtue...
...With the collapse of communism our situation changed radically...
...others felt that this would alienate our non-Albanian members, as well as the American Albanians and newcomers who preferred English...
...The biggest barrier for some was, and is, English...
...some were Muslims looking for help in a new country...
...Not all were Christians...
...Fundamentally, it teaches that the two traditions on justification are actually complementary, not contradictory...
...The Joint Declaration thus functions as a kind of reception of fifty years of scholarly work that has prepared the theoretical ground for this breakthrough...
...At the same time, it is a joyous, celebratory event where Christians recognize in each other a common teaching on this central issue for the first time in 450 years...
...Once thought to be contradictory, these different emphases are presented in the Declaration as two valuable approaches to the same basic faith consensus, each offering a helpful and complementary insight about grace...
...Former engineers work construction...
...It isn't easy...
...q~ey are different...
...What basis does the Declaration give to explain its dramatic conclusions...
...We should not overlook the value of this kind of action for the healing of divisions...
...It is also interesting to hear their reactions to America, and to the church in America...
...They love and relish the freedom, and the diversity, of this country...
...Their attitude is something like, "I want to be an Orthodox Christian and you can tell me what it means later...
...This is where I learned something about the religious and social importance of those parish events that can often seem more like a nuisance than a blessing...
...dealing with growth is...
...The ecumenical movement has reached many theological agreements, but here the agreement is also received and acted on by the two churches in an official way...
...Some wanted more Albanian in the liturgy...
...It takes weeks of work, it can be exhausting, and we Commonweal 7 January 14, 2000 approach it with something like dread every year...
...For example, the Declaration says, because Lutherans wished to show that only God's saving action in Christ and nothing else is the basis of justification, they emphasized the distinction between this justifying action and the renewal of life that follows...
...There were a few older members who had been born in Albania, and a number of people from Greek and Arab backgrounds who liked celebrating the liturgy in English...
...Contrary to some of the anti-immigrant rhetoric, they haven't come here simply to make it materially, though they are happy to be in a country where this can be done...
...In the light of this consensus, they conclude, "the corresponding doctrinal condemnations of the sixteenth century do not apply to today's partner...
...Their Albanian experience had made them suspicious of banks...
...This was no longer the cozy community (dying, but cozy) they were used to...
...Interestingly, the most vocal proponents of Albanian were Americans with Albanian nationalist sentiments...
...they aren't like us or our parents," they would say...
...We noticed new faces every Sunday...
...A number of people in the parish tried to help the newcomers find work...
...Most of the baptisms I do are for adults and young people who could not be baptized in Albania...
...Many are highly educated but have to clean buildings and hotel rooms for a living...
...The main concern was keeping the parish alive, trying to attract new members or win back people who had drifted away...
...Many of the newcomers are highly conscious of their having come to America, and although they are happy to belong to a largely Albanian church, they have told me that they prefer the liturgy in English...
...We talk about the most basic aspects of the gospel message, the creed, the meaning of baptism and the Eucharist, and then I baptize them...
...Now the church is full every Sunday, sometimes full to overflowing...
...Both the decrees of the Council of Trent and Lutheran confessional documents included condemnations of the other's position as they understood it, condemnations that have continued to influence how each church sees the other...
...It took Lutherans and Roman Catholics more than 450 years to reconcile their differences over justifying grace...
...That's only true about half of the time here...
...In this joint action involving the two churches at the level of worldwide ministries, they teach in common where they once condemned...
...Most of the younger people in this situation are going to night school after their exhausting daytime jobs...
...At first some of the Americans spoke negatively about the new arrivals...
...But they enter the new millennium with a breakthrough agreement that gives a common teaching on justification and ends mutual condemnations...
...I am writing this on Sunday...
...It is especially moving to receive so much generosity from people, many of whom are poor and struggling...
...Christians share the conviction that God's salvation is a gift that makes human beings "justified" or righteous before God...
...There were a small handful of recent immigrants from Albania, but the population as a whole was American in culture, and fairly affluent...
...By the time this column appears I will be in the middle of house blessings, which always follow Theophany...
...They are delighted to be in a place where they can worship freely...
...Gradually the fluidity gave way to a solid core of families who were there every Sunday and who cared about Orthodoxy...
...It's a clich6, but a good and true one: Only in America...
...former doctors look for jobs in labs...
...Language became an issue for some of our congregation...
...And the coffee hour that follows every liturgy is another important nonreligious event, without which we would be less of a community...
...Some of them had to be taught how to open bank accounts...
...They were also, many of them, poor...
Vol. 127 • January 2000 • No. 1
