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Show AMERICANIZING XfffiMJSSIANS NEW YORK, March 19. With a view to Americanizing the priests and members of the Russian church in this country and to counteract the effect of tho Bolsheviki doctrines, the Association Asso-ciation of the Citizen Clergy of tho Eastern Holy Orthodox Church of America has been Incorporated at Albany. Al-bany. The purposes of this action, according accord-ing to the Rev. Ingram N. W. Irvine, D. D., head of the English department of the Russian church, was, "to unite clergy and laity more closely, to further fur-ther the interests of the church among tho Russians and other various nationalities na-tionalities holding a similar doctrine in America; to encourage American citizenship among clergy and laity; to secure necessary financial ' assistance; assist-ance; to create high spiritual and social so-cial ideals among the laity; to stimulate stimu-late interest in American schools and institutions; to protect tho clergy and laity from unwarranted and libelious attacks; to hold1 tho Episcopate as sacred sa-cred and to take all means to prevont tho appointment of unworthy persons to the clergy." Expected Free Land. "As a result of the false hopes held out by the Trotzky-Lenine regime, the Russian church in America has been depleted of many members and priests," said Dr. Irvino. "They went back to Russia in expectation of receiving re-ceiving lreo land and other privileges not available in tho United -States. "There are not now,, so far as I know, six Russian priests in tho American Amer-ican mission who were hero when I was ordained in St. Nicholas' cathedral," cathed-ral," he continued. "We have between be-tween 800 and 1000 missions and parishes par-ishes in America and during the regime re-gime of Emperor Nicholas II received an annual grant of $100,000 for the propagation pro-pagation of our faith in this country. "Because of all these transitional conditions, the citizen clergy of tho , Eastern Holy Orthodox church, met together to-gether in an iriformal way recently and decided to incorporate, so as to create stability and to stop, if possible, possi-ble, tho migration of priests and people." peo-ple." Dr. Irvine said that Tikhon, the pa triarch of the Russian church, elected II on November last, dm-ing the Keren- mWA sky regime in Russia, is a man of lib- R eral spirit who, as archbishop of the Russian church in North America had absorbed the'spirit of democracy. Tik- Bs? hon, he said, was the first patriarch IjRp of the Russian church since Peter tho 1 Great in the 16th century abolished Jjo the patriarchate, of Russia and set up, Jilgij instead, the holy synod. He intro- Seduced Se-duced into the synod a procurator geA- mVffo eral. Dr. Irvine said, Peter had paved mj the way for the spread of Germanic in- IJcli. fiuenccs in the life and aspirations of ,Tom the Russian people and that this toil- mpfc ton Influence in church and state had F; been for centuries the curse of the ML Russian nation. Jtlorj |