Month: October 2009

Even if you don’t understand Greek, you will still understand what is going on.

— A new book claims that the “Greek mafia” controlled not only the drug trade in Tarpon Springs but the local Greek Orthodox Church, too. Some say the book is “a bunch of garbage.”

— Church of Greece bishops are anxious about the new Socialist government’s plan to tax church property. Don’t forget about property owned by the Roman Catholics and the Ecumenical Patriarch, the bishops helpfully remind. Separately, there’s a question about those 1.2 million Euros.

— Archons make their case for the Ecumenical Patriarchate before the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

— “Among the comments that received most attention was Metropolitan Geevarghese Coorilos’s suggestion to look at the reality of the church not only ‘from above’, but also ‘from below’, taking into account the daily experience of ‘being church’ in particular contexts, citing the example of his Dalit church in Kerala, India.” Is this what we mean by “practiced incoherence”?

— While Moscow says that entry of part of the Ukrainian Orthodox into the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate will cause divisions, Bishop Makarii (Meletych), Archbishop of Lviv of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, isn’t too concerned.

— Some anti-ecumenist clerics in the Church of Greece say Patriarch Bartholomew’s management style, based on the “smear, slander, intimidate and silence” approach, leaves something to be desired: “This is the well-known tactic of excommunication and an en masse condemnation that does not tolerate a contrary word, cannot even consider a second opinion and crushes anyone who dares to utter one. This is the familiar tactic, which relies on coercion, on marshalling forces, on having the absolute upper hand, on ecclesiastic servility.”

— The OCA’s Metropolitan Jonah is in Georgia (the country) until Sunday.

— Pope Benedict XVI communicated his hope to Abuna Paulos, the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia, that the churches may “draw closer in the unity which is the Holy Spirit’s gift, and bear common witness to the hope brought by the Gospel. Let us continue to work for the integral development of all Africa’s peoples, strengthening the families which are the bulwark of African society, educating the young who are Africa’s future, and contributing to the building of societies marked by honesty, integrity and solidarity.”

In an interview with the National Catholic Register’s Edward Pentin, Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk talks about his first official visit to Rome in September as chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Affairs. He offers a caution about any Catholic-Orthodox union, something that media reports and at least one Catholic bishop said was imminent. In pointing out that the Roman Catholic understanding of the primacy of the bishop of Rome was a chief sticking point, Archbishop Hilarion also observed that the Orthodox have primacy issues, too. At least from the Russian perspective.

NCR: Archbishop Paolo Pezzi of Moscow was recently very optimistic about Catholic-Orthodox unity, saying it could possibly happen in a matter of months. What is your reaction to Archbishop Pezzi’s words, and what is your analysis of the current progress towards reunification?

Pope Benedict and Archbishop Hilarion

Archbishop Hilarion: I would be more cautious with regard to progress towards unity between the two Churches. Yes, I agree that the Russian Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches have a common understanding on issues concerning social and economic ethics, personal morality, family, bioethics and other topical issues facing the modern society.

This agreement enables our Churches already now to bear common witness to Christian ideals in the face of the secular world. A perfect unity between Churches however presupposes first of all harmony in faith, and here the situation appears to me to be more complicated.

The Joint Commission for Orthodox-Catholic Theological Dialogue now begins discussing the most important issue — though not the only one that divides the Catholics and the Orthodox — concerning the primacy of the bishop of Rome in the universal Church.

Unlike Archbishop Pezzi, I do not think we can reach a perfect agreement on this point in a matter of a few months. I have already had to point out that the problem of primacy within the universal Church has not been settled even within the world Orthodoxy. Continue reading →

Pardon my skepticism but does anyone else find the effusive praise in the handout to Greek Orthodox parishioners last Sunday overbearing? The author tries so hard to convince us of Patriarch Bartholomew’s stratospheric virtues that the entire piece has an “Our Dear Leader” feel to it. It reads, I am sad to say, like propaganda.

Strong words? Yes, but only because the endless strings of ebullient praise muddles other very important points. While Pat. Bartholomew’s stand on the protection of the environment should be applauded, and while he has done much to raise awareness that environmental care is an issue to which Christians can contribute, it does not follow that all of his actions surrounding “creation care” (as some of the participants in the Mississippi River Symposium refer to it) are sound.

For example, as part of Pat. Bartholomew’s environmental program in the United States later this month, he plans a visit to Georgetown University to deliver a talk co-sponsored by the Center for American Progress (CAP), a George Soros funded think-tank originally developed as Hillary Clinton’s cabinet-in-waiting, but now a center of far-left cultural activism. We can say, and CAP would probably agree, that CAP’s sole function is to promote the ideas of “Progressives” — the far left — including moral issues that an Orthodox Christian could never adopt and still remain true to the moral tradition. Continue reading →