New Skete is a stavropegial monastic foundation, which means the communities are subject directly to the primate of the Orthodox Church in America, His Beatitude Metropolitan Jonah, Archbishop of Washington and New York.
In 1979, after many years of studying and practicing Orthodox theology and liturgy in the Greek Catholic or Byzantine Rite branch of the Franciscan Order, New Skete joined the Orthodox Church, under His Beatitude Metropolitan Theodosius, along with the parish which had developed around the monastery. This enabled us to integrate our life and ideals more completely by joining those with whom we can share our worship and ecclesial life more fully, thereby participating in the life of the whole Church.
As members of this Orthodox Church since 1979, New Skete works actively for the reconciliation and mutual understanding of all Christians, East and West, drawing on our own experience in both parts of the schism, and conscious of the spiritual pain engendered by this separation which mocks the Gospel of Christ.
The Orthodox Church in America (OCA), is one of fifteen autocephalous, or self-governing Orthodox Churches throughout the world today, including the Russian Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Church and the Antiochian Orthodox Church. Together these regional churches make up The Eastern Orthodox Church of today, which follows the faith and practice of the apostles and disciples of Christ handed down through two millennia. Over the centuries rifts developed over matters of doctrine and discipline augmented by the effects of cultural and political evolution, creating first the Oriental Orthodox Churches (Coptic, Ethiopian, Syrian and Armenian) and then, the division between the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches.
Orthodoxy arrived in North America through the Russian missionary monks who reached Alaska, then Russian territory, in the late 18th century. The OCA is a direct descendant of this effort to bring the Gospel to the indigenous American people. The Russian Orthodox Church, after having appointed bishops across the country, established the Orthodox Church in America as self governing in 1970. It now co-exists in the United States and Canada along with various jurisdictions of ethnic Orthodox Churches who are ultimately governed from the mother Churches in Europe.
