Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I

Report: Greek Orthodox bishops in U.S. may take Turkish citizenship

31 Comments

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line 388

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line 394

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line 400

Theodore Kalmoukos of the National Herald is reporting that “the government of Turkey seems to be willing to grant Turkish citizenship to all those hierarchs of the Ecumenical Patriarchate who serve outside of Turkey. Turkish citizenship will allow them to freely participate in all the administrative activities of the Patriarchate including the right to be candidates for the Ecumenical Throne when a vacancy arises. It was made clear by the Ecumenical Patriarch himself that ‘they will have the right to elect and to be elected.’”

Kalmoukos said that no American bishop has yet to “express an opinion” on the matter:

The issue was brought up at the meeting of the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate and official letters were sent recently to hierarchs serving outside of Turkey urging them to file – if they so wish – their applications to become Turkish citizens. Patriarch Bartholomew brought the letters with him when he came to the U.S. on October 21 and gave them to Archbishop Demetrios to send to the hierarchs of the Archdiocese.

[ … ]

It is noted here that a hierarch cannot participate in two Synods. Until a few years ago only Turkish citizens were allowed to participate in the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, but Patriarch Bartholomew changed the rules so that at any given time six hierarchs from Turkey serve six month terms and six others from abroad serve one year terms. This development has been met with mixed reactions from hierarchs of all categories. Sources from the island of Crete told The National Herald that the hierarchs there have expressed some uneasiness because of fears that the local population will wonder about the loyalty of hierarchs who would be potentially under the influence of the Turkish government.

None of the hierarchs of America have yet to express an opinion. Concern has also arisen among high ranking officials of the Phanar since such a substantial increase in the number of eligible hierarchs will dramatically affect the dynamics of future patriarchal elections. Until now only Turkish citizens had the right to be candidates for the Patriarchy and only the Turkish members of the Holy Synod were allowed to vote. The hierarchs outside Turkey used the so-called “symsifon” meaning that they simply expressed their consensus on the decision of the Synod in Constantinople.

Furthermore, the Synod at the Phanar was obligated to submit the official list of candidates for Patriarch to the Turkish government for its official approval. The Turks had the right to delete the names of those hierarchs they did not want to be elected to the Ecumenical Throne. At the last Patriarchal election no names were deleted. The then-Metropolitan of Chalcedon Bartholomew was the leading candidate, and he was ultimately elected.

Boldness or Irrelevance?

4 Comments

John Mark Reynolds at the Scriptorium:

Dr. John Mark Reynolds

There is a boldness that should come with the a commitment to Christ. When the Green Patriarch (Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew) goes to a university ridden with the problems of our age and only tells them the parts of the Christian faith with which they are likely to agree, we are troubled by it. We hope he did not wimp out to curry political favor for causes where he is desperate for Western support, but we long for the clarity or boldness of a John Paul the Great in Poland.

We cannot judge for certain, but the Biblical prophetic witness sounds more like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s address to Harvard. There a brave man spoke truth to power . . . not in our modern trivialization of the phrase where it means taking on figures that are unpopular in our own social set. Solzhenitsyn did not take on oil companies to Green Peace or abortionists at Liberty University. He attacked those he admired in other ways or whose admiration he might have valued.

From a letter published on the Touchstone blog by James Kushiner, in a post titled, “Irrelevant & Silent Green Patriarch: on Abortion & Marriage”:

Yes, yes, all he says is good and important. But really now: addressing the three issues of nonviolence, health care and environmentalism–these are all issues that just about everyone at Georgetown agrees on. Or at least, they’re very sexy, politically correct, cool things to talk about today.

And yet what Luther said remains ever true today: “If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”

What is one of the huge elephants in the room, the huge culture battles that is going on right now all across our country, especially in the Roman Catholic world (which Georgetown represents)? Sexuality and marriage! Yet not a word here about homosexuality, abortion, divorce, sex outside of marriage, gay marriage, etc. Good grief, he could have at *least* thrown out a few choice lines when talking about caring for creation, like, “and let us care for all of God’s creation, including the unborn,” or something like this. But nope, very safe and non-controversial. (He does say, “Just as every human life is a gift from God, to be treated with love and respect,” but does this include the unborn? His listeners could interpret it either way.)

Deprecated: str_replace(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($subject) of type array|string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/genesis/lib/functions/image.php on line 116
class="post-4462 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-blog-archive tag-ecumenical-patriarch-bartholomew-i tag-green-patriarch tag-news tag-orthodox-church tag-patriarchate-of-constantinople tag-politics entry">

Green Patriarch’s priorities in Washington

VOA: Green Patriarch Brings Environmentalism to U.S. Capital

1 Comment

From Voice of America: Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of close to 300 million Orthodox Christians around the world, recently visited Washington, D.C. to speak about environmental issues. The Patriarch met with U.S. leaders to encourage them to push for environmental initiatives. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT3pN48GNDE[/youtube]

Deprecated: str_replace(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($subject) of type array|string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/genesis/lib/functions/image.php on line 116
class="post-4434 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-blog-archive tag-ecumenical tag-ecumenical-patriarch-bartholomew-i tag-environment tag-halki-seminary tag-hillary-rodham-clinton tag-news tag-orthodox-church tag-patriarchate-of-constantinople tag-politics entry">

Remarks by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Secretary of State Clinton

11 Comments

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHpfiMGtDBI[/youtube]

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew tells the Secretary of State that she holds within her “extensive world-view a remarkable comprehension of global political, economic and religious circumstances. In addition to understanding what is power and might, you know as well what is holy and right.”
—-
Address of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the Dinner Honoring Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Benjamin Franklin Room, The State Department, Washington, November 5, 2009:

Good evening, and please be seated. I want to welcome all of you to the Ben Franklin Room here on the eighth floor of the State Department for such a special occasion. It is indeed an honor for me to welcome His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, whom I have had the great honor and personal pleasure of getting to know over the years. And I know we have a number of other very distinguished representatives, His Eminence Geron Metropolitan Athanasios of Chalcedon, His Eminence Metropolitan Ambrosios of Korea, and, of course, a personal friend of mine, His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios, who is celebrating his 10th anniversary here in America.

His All Holiness and I have had the pleasure of meeting a number of times since I first visited him as First Lady at the Patriarchate in 1995, but one of our most memorable times together came when Archbishop was enthroned in New York 10 years ago. A lot has happened in the intervening decade, but one thing that has not changed is his All Holiness’s commitment not only to his church and to the people of the church, but to the world, and the work that he has done, which is so important to us all. Continue reading →

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function nuthemes_content_nav() in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/prose/archive.php:58 Stack trace: #0 /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-includes/template-loader.php(106): include() #1 /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-blog-header.php(19): require_once('/home/aoiusa/pu...') #2 /home/aoiusa/public_html/index.php(17): require('/home/aoiusa/pu...') #3 {main} thrown in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/prose/archive.php on line 58