Shifting Narratives at St. Sava Cathedral

The blog posts “Three Police Calls in Fourteen Days” and “Bishop Irinej Called the Police on His Own People Instead of Coming to Cleveland to Talk” do not present a dispassionate account of events at St. Sava Cathedral. They construct a prosecutorial narrative in which the diocesan bishop is depicted as a threat and a small group of protesters is treated as the authentic voice of the Church. When set against Orthodox ecclesiology and canon law, this narrative is seriously deficient.

The Serbian Orthodox Church is a hierarchical Church. Authority in doctrine, discipline, and governance rests with the Holy Assembly of Bishops, the Holy Synod, and diocesan bishops. Parishes are not autonomous congregations that may set themselves over against the bishop whenever a faction is dissatisfied with parish decisions, including decisions about board leadership. The texts in question promote a de facto congregationalism, implying that a local group can sit in judgment on the bishop and function as an alternative governing body. This is foreign to Orthodox canonical order.

Over time, the narrative advanced in these writings and actions has undergone marked shifts. Initial disputes concerned parish governance and particular personalities. Later communications focused almost exclusively on criticism of the bishop. Subsequent pieces introduced the allegation that the cathedral was becoming “un‑Serbian.” More recent material places particular emphasis on confrontations at the church steps and repeated police calls, now framed as proof that the bishop has abandoned “his own people.” The central grievance is repeatedly redefined while the target remains constant. Such escalation risks normalizing ongoing agitation rather than encouraging recourse to diocesan and synodal processes.

A further concern is the use of ethnic and national labels. Supporters of the bishop are described in terms of ethnicity, with references to Macedonian and Ukrainian parishioners and to “un-Serbian” directions in parish life. This rhetorical pattern risks becoming racist and xenophobic, as if fidelity to St. Sava were determined by bloodline or passport rather than by baptism and confession of faith. In truth, all the faithful share one Orthodox identity; the bishop is bishop of the entire flock, and the Church is not a closed ethnic association but one Eucharistic body. This claim that the parish is becoming “un-Serbian” is also simply false. The parish’s liturgical and devotional life remains fully within the Serbian Orthodox tradition of St. Sava, and nothing in the bishop’s pastoral oversight has altered that.

Formulations such as “three police calls in fourteen days” and “the bishop called the police on his own people” are presented as decisive indicators of episcopal misconduct. In fact, police may be called for many reasons related to safety and access, and their presence is a neutral datum. The antimins, moreover, was not stolen and cannot, theologically or canonically, be reduced to an instrument of parish factionalism; it is a consecrated cloth issued by the bishop and must be treated with reverence. Claims that “over 120 parishioners” chanted that “Bishop Irinej is unworthy,” when eyewitnesses report a much smaller group, and the casual use of deposition language outside any synodal process, further weaken the credibility of these texts.

A response consonant with Orthodox tradition would set aside racialized and nationalistic rhetoric, carefully document verifiable facts. Only by rejecting congregationalist agitation and xenophobic overtones, and by returning to obedience and sober speech, can St. Sava Cathedral recover peace and manifest what it truly is: one Orthodox community gathered around one bishop in one faith.