Metropolitan Jonas Paffhausen of New York and Washington (1959- )
Andrei Shitov
Vladyki, how did Orthodoxy arrive in America? How many Orthodox are there in the USA? What is the general state of Orthodoxy in America, in your opinion?
Metropolitan Jonas
Orthodoxy was originally brought to America by Russian missionaries. With great care, we preserved their spiritual heritage and the influence of Russian traditions is very strong. In total, there are less than one million active Orthodox in the USA. We have about 2,500 parishes and hundreds of monasteries (sic) in the USA. Of these, the OCA has about 650 parishes and 20 monasteries. 30 parishes are directly under the Moscow Patriarchate and the ROCOR has some 100 parishes. There are some 15 different church jurisdictions operating in America. The OCA has about 100,000 active parishioners and it is the second-largest bloc after the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese.
As a whole, I would say that Orthodoxy here is still very much a “carryover” from the Old World, in the OCA it is still basically Russian, and the GOA is still basically Greek. By no means has it become a completely “American” phenomenon. However, the essence of the Faith, not the specific cultural expressions of it, is what is important, that we maintain the fullness of our spiritual traditions. This is what we mean when we use the term sobornost (a word weakly translated as “catholicity” or “collegiality”, but, it is much more: editor’s note). I desire that our church should remain a part of the single Orthodox pleroma, but, that it would also acquire some distinctive American features over time.
Andrei Shitov
Please, if you would, describe the relationship of the OCA to the MP.
Metropolitan Jonas
Our church is the “daughter” of the MP. We have had very close relations with the MP, especially after our autocephaly in 1970, and these ties deepened after the fall of the Soviet régime. The OCA became a major source of financial support for the MP (this statement is doubtful in the extreme, it is not backed or substantiated: editor’s note).
Andrei Shitov
I recall reading that you, personally, collected a large sum of money for Russian monasteries…
Metropolitan Jonas
On my part, I collected about 150,000 dollars after the collapse of your banking system in 1998. Specifically, I raised this money for the Valaam monastery, but, they shared the funds with other monastic houses. Why did I wish to aid the Valaam monastery, in particular? It is simple, truly. My spiritual father lived there, so, I consider it my spiritual home, and it was where I entered upon the path of the monastic life.
Andrei Shitov
Can you tell us how it happened?
Metropolitan Jonas
In 1993, I was living in Moscow, working for the Russki Palomnik (Russian Pilgrim) publishing house. I was introduced to then-Archimandrite, now-Bishop, Pankraty, the deputy abbot of the Valaam monastery. In him, I found a spiritual father and brother, a man whose life I desired to make my own. He introduced me to his starets (elder), Archimandrite Kirill, who lived at the St Sergius-Holy Trinity Lavra. Fr Kirill played a significant role in my life, for he blessed me to enter monasticism and to accept ordination. Before meeting him, I did not know which path in life to choose, whether to marry or to embrace monasticism. I asked him for his advice. In obedience to his counsel, I took upon myself the monastic mantle. After he blessed me, I began to understand his insight.
Andrei Shitov
Did you meet the late Patriarch Aleksei II, as well?
Metropolitan Jonas
I did, more than once. My first fleeting encounter with him was in 1993, on his birthday, in the Yelokhov cathedral (where Patriarch Aleksei is now buried: editor’s note) on the occasion of a patriarchal liturgy. Later, two rather more important encounters occurred. In 1994, I gathered a group of some 50 young Americans to go to Valaam to help in the restoration work at the monastery. However, when we arrived there, it was a local feastday and the patriarch was present. He met with our group and I acted as his translator. In 1999, after I had collected funds for the Valaam monastery, he invited me to Moscow to give me his personal thanks. Of course, this made a great impression upon me. At that time, I was a monk, the abbot of a small monastery in California (dedicated in honour of St John Maksimovich the Wonderworker of Shanghai and San Francisco: RG note). I even had the honour of serving together with His Holiness at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
Andrei Shitov
What kind of man did he seem to you, what impressed you about his personality…
Metropolitan Jonas
He gave me the impression of great paternal warmth and profound kindness, a man who had a deep spiritual life. I felt that he was a man who could be trusted implicitly, which was clear in his relations with starets Kirill. The passing of the patriarch is a tremendous loss, not only for the Orthodox Church in Russia, but, also for the entire Orthodox world. I would have attended the funeral, but, unfortunately, on the day that the patriarch died, I had sent away my passport for renewal. It is hidden somewhere in the bowels of the postal service. Over here, it’s not easy to get a passport.
Andrei Shitov
Now, the election of a new patriarch is pending. If I remember it rightly, the first patriarch named after the restoration was chosen by lot, but, today, there shall be a vote. Is it possible to speak of this election being providential?
Metropolitan Jonas
In a certain sense, I would agree with that. I would hope that it would be manifested through the gift of spiritual discourse. The all-Russian council shall advance the names of the candidates and the Synod shall choose one from the list. A bishop can be chosen only by other bishops.
Andrei Shitov
The list of candidates is more or less known to all. However, you did not become a bishop until mere days before your election. Yet… you were chosen. Many of those present at your church council are convinced that this did not occur without the intervention of the Holy Spirit. Are you familiar with those who are called potential candidates for the patriarchal throne in Russia?
Metropolitan Jonas
I have met the majority of them, but, I cannot say that I really know them.
Andrei Shitov
So, it goes without saying, you state that you have no preferences in this matter?
Metropolitan Jonas
No, of course not, for the Russian church shall decide this matter. However, I shall be happy to maintain the closest relations with whoever is elected the new patriarch. Both of our churches grapple with a secular and materialistic culture, and we must appeal to those whose lives and views have been formed in secular and materialistic directions, which, as a rule, lack any meaningful religious experience.
Andrei Shitov
So, is that what it has come to in the end? With us, it is understandable, taking the recent Soviet past into account. However, America was founded by those who sought religious freedom. There is general agreement that Americans are generally more pious people than, let’s say, western Europeans. But, one sees, in your speeches and writings, a lament over the tragic lack of spirituality in America.
Metropolitan Jonas
I consider that this situation is a genuine tragedy. If you satisfy a person’s material needs, that is only part of what they require. Therefore, some people, including the very young, fall into despair. I think that the seeds of destruction of the Christian culture of America were originally contained within Protestantism, which taught an ethics of radical individualism. Freedom is understood as total wilfulness, which then turns into complete permissiveness. If we speak of the intelligentsia, in my view, in the USA, they are now beginning to resemble the Russian intelligentsia of the 1840s and 50s, a time when nihilism took root in Russia.
Andrei Shitov
You were born in 1959, into a Protestant family. What led you to Orthodoxy?
Metropolitan Jonas
My first contact with Orthodox culture was in reading the novels of Dostoyevsky. Then, at the age of 14, I underwent an experience of deep spiritual transfiguration, and I felt a deep calling to serve the church. After this, I began a conscious spiritual search, and, by the time that I had completed high school, I was close to converting to Catholicism. However, during my college years, I came across a book by Vladimir Lossky, Essays on the Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. That book turned my entire life around completely. From the very first paragraph, I understood that this was the truth and there was no other alternative for me.
But, what was more important than the books were the people I met. After I converted to Orthodoxy in 1978, for quite some time I was influenced by Bishop Mark of Ladoga and San Francisco and his friend, Archimandrite Dmitri Yegorov. Both of them were formerly monks at the Valaam monastery.
24 December 2008
Rossiskaya Gazeta (The Russian Newspaper)
As quoted in Interfax-Religion
http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=print&div=9370
One Year On…:
It is very sad to report that Jonas Paffhausen has brought back virtually all of the major players in Herman’s inner circle. I shall be blunt… Herman was not the problem… the cabal was the cancer, and JP has not only refused to remove it, he has encouraged it. May God cause this poseur’s reign to be short.
BMD
