Met. Philip Saliba

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Metropolitan Phillip

Metropolitan Philip is the leader of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese.

September 6, 2013

President Barack Obama, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC

Dear Mr. President:

We write to you with a heavy heart having heard the recent news of the attack on the ancient Christian city of Maaloula, Syria by the rebel forces. This city houses one of the oldest and most important monasteries, the Monastery of St. Thekla, which is considered a holy place by both Christians and Muslims.
This attack by the rebel forces, who are supported by the U.S. government, is an unspeakable act of terror, and speaks volumes to the viciousness of those rebel forces who seek to overthrow the Syrian government. Apparently there is nothing that is sacred to these people, and it is very disturbing that these same people are being supported by our government.

Mr. President, we appeal to your humanity, and compassion for people to halt consideration of any U.S military action against the Syrian government. This would be a deadly and costly action, and nothing can be gained by it. If indeed chemical weapons have been used (and this is still to be determined by the UN inspectors who recently returned from Syria), there is no compelling evidence which points to the use of these weapons by the Syrian government. On the contrary, there is some compelling evidence that the rebel forces had both the means and the will to launch such a heinous attack against innocent people, Christians and Muslims alike, who are all the children of God.

May our Lord and God guide you to find a peaceful solution which relies on negotiation and not bombs.

Sincerely

+Metropolitan PHILIP Saliba
Archbishop of New York and Metropolitan of All North America

Note October 14, 2010: A few days ago I posted this interview (a very good one, BTW), then took it down, but I am putting it back up but disabling comments. Why did I take it down? I took it down because Met. Philip, a flash-point in the blogosphere right now, is also my hierarch. On a personal level, the man has been very good to me, taking me in and going to bat for me when I was mistreated by another bishop. On a corporate level, I am aware of the complaints and while I think some of them need to get ironed out, some of them are too personal and distract from what I see as the larger problem at hand: a clash of Eastern and Western sensibility and culture that, 1) the OCA was forced to confront when the ties to the Mother Church was cut by the Bolsheviks in 1918, 2) the GOA refuses to confront by building a false mythology of primacy, 3) the AOA has moderated by essentially building two churches side by side but which are now rubbing up against each other.

St. Paul ordaining Titus in Crete

I am not, like some Orthodox, reflexively critical of all things Western. It’s a remarkable thing that the marauding tribes of Europe — the Goths, the Gauls, the Vandals, the Vikings, etc. — heard the Gospel that came from the East, embraced the Christ revealed through it, and then built a civilization that produced the most stunning achievements the world has ever seen. It is, in its own way, as remarkable as the transformation of Classical civilization that began when St. Paul first set foot on Crete.

The West carried forward much of the best of Christian/Hellenic ideals after the Muslim domination of the East. The Magna Carta, the US Constitution, the ideals of freedom, liberty, human rights, a high value of human life, Christian humanism — ideals that must be properly defined of course and, frankly, not always practiced — had their genesis in the East but reached a development in the West that needs to be recognized, embraced, and strengthened. Our churches reflect that tension between East and West — that groaning of how to reconcile and build a Church in a culture that was shaped by sensibility at once familiar but also different, especially for those raised with more of an Eastern orientation.

Ossios Lukas (Venerable Luke) Monastery

I’ve lived in Greece. I’ve been to the (good) monasteries, many times in fact. I led the the college segment of Ionian Village for five years and came to rely on one monastery in particular as the place where the person seeking God but having great difficulty finding Him would finally meet Him. I saw this happen time and time again. So I know the depth of faith that can exist in the East, that transformative, regenerative power of God’s Holy Spirit that works in the places of antiquity where faithful men and women followed Christ for centuries and still follow Him today.
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An Open Letter from His Eminence Metropolitan Philip to President Obama

Metropolitan PHILIP Saliba – On the Record