The AOCC Didn't End In 1933

A common claim made about the American Orthodox Catholic Church is that it ceased to exist after 1933. The narrative is usually presented in simple terms: following the later personal irregularities of Archbishop Aftimios, the Church he helped organize supposedly collapsed, dissolved, or disappeared altogether.

That version of events is tidy and easily repeated.
It is also not supported by the historical record.

This article is not written to defend personalities or to relitigate controversies. It exists for a simpler reason: to preserve continuity in the historical record and to clarify what actually occurred after 1933. When that record is examined carefully, a quieter and more complex reality emerges.

Orthodox ecclesiology has always distinguished clearly between matters of dogma and matters of discipline. A bishop’s later personal failure or disciplinary irregularity does not retroactively invalidate earlier sacramental acts performed while he stood canonically in the Church. Orthodoxy has never taught otherwise.

Archbishop Aftimios was canonically consecrated as a bishop in 1917 and exercised episcopal authority for many years. Whatever judgments are made regarding his later actions, those actions occurred after bishops had already been consecrated and ecclesial life had already taken root. Orthodox theology does not permit the retroactive erasure of valid episcopal acts based on later personal collapse.

This distinction matters, because the continuity of the Church does not depend on the moral success of a single hierarch. It depends on whether episcopal life continued beyond him.

The record shows that it did.

Among those consecrated prior to the events often cited as the “end” of the AOCC was Bishop Sophronios (Sophronios Beshara) of Los Angeles. His episcopal consecration took place in May of 1928, several years before the controversies that later overshadowed Archbishop Aftimios.

This places Sophronios’ episcopate firmly within a period of recognized canonical order. His standing as a bishop does not depend on Aftimios’ later actions. His consecration stands on its own historical footing within Orthodox apostolic succession.

If the American Orthodox Catholic Church had truly ceased to exist in 1933, one would expect episcopal life to have ended with it. The historical record shows otherwise.

Archbishop Sophronios did not disappear from ecclesial life after 1933. Nor did episcopal ministry simply lapse into silence. According to preserved historical records, Sophronios continued to function as a bishop and performed ordinations and episcopal consecrations after 1933.

Among those consecrated by him were Bishop John Chrysostom (The first black orthodox bishop in America) and Bishop Christopher Contogeorge. These consecrations are not cited here to inflate claims or to suggest uninterrupted institutional strength. They are cited for a more basic reason: they demonstrate that the episcopate itself did not cease.

A Church that has vanished does not consecrate bishops. A lineage that has ended does not propagate itself.

From the moment Sophronios consecrated bishops after 1933, the claim that the AOCC simply “disappeared” becomes historically untenable.

It is important to speak carefully and honestly at this point.

Not every episcopal line consecrated during the early twentieth century continued visibly into the present day. Orthodox history is filled with lines that flourished briefly, went dormant, fragmented, or were later healed or received in different ways. Dormancy is not extinction, and fragmentation is not the same thing as nonexistence.

The present American Orthodox Catholic Church does not claim uninterrupted administrative sameness across every consecrated line of that era. In particular, while Bishop John Chrysostom stands as evidence of post-1933 episcopal continuity, his line does not intersect with the contemporary AOCC. Due to lack of administrative gravity plus continued challenges from other ethnic groups, the bishops were separated from one another. Some left the jurisdiction, others joined by way of ordination or consecration.

By contrast, the episcopal line of Christopher Contogeorge does continue forward and forms part of the living succession present in the AOCC today. However, there is a jurisdiction that still exists within his episcopal lineage. One we hope to reconcile with in the near future. That distinction is stated plainly, without embarrassment or exaggeration, because historical honesty matters more than rhetorical certainty.

Orthodoxy has never required that every line survive indefinitely in order for the Church itself to remain alive.

Equally significant is what does not appear in the historical record.

There is no council declaring the American Orthodox Catholic Church extinguished.
There is no synodal decree dissolving it.
There is no canonical act nullifying the episcopal consecrations that occurred after 1933.

What exists instead is a period of weakness, fragmentation, and obscurity. That pattern is not unusual in Orthodox history, particularly in missionary contexts and in times of upheaval. Silence and marginalization are often mistaken for erasure, but the Church has never measured her existence by prominence alone.

This article does not claim that the AOCC after 1933 looked the same as it did in the 1920s. It does not claim uninterrupted growth, institutional stability, or universal recognition. Those claims would not be historically responsible.

What it does claim, and what the record supports, is more modest and more important: the American Orthodox Catholic Church did not simply vanish. Episcopal life continued through bishops consecrated prior to 1933, with documented consecrations occurring thereafter. Sacramental continuity endured even through seasons of instability and decline.

That is not polemic.
It is history.

And history deserves to be preserved carefully.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit Forever.

Amen