Comments on: Fr. George Nicozisin: The Mission of the Greek Orthodox Church in America

By: George Michalopulos

George Michalopulos — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:50:27 +0000

Amen, Isa. That’s why things like the awarding of a honorary doctorate to Rowan Williams matters: it makes the battles of the parish all that much harder. Borrowing a military metaphor, it’s demoralizing to the front lines.

No need to stop there: the waste of precious resources on the recent “Apostolic Journey” on behalf of pseudo-science is execrable as well. (Of course, I don’t believe that the GOA wasted a penny on this, to my dying day I’ll believe that George Soros funded it lock, stock and barrrell, but you get the point.)

In reading it, I was fascinated how Nicozsin went from the beginnings of the Greek immigrant parishes, to their normalization, their problems, and what their problems mean for us. It’s all of a piece. I agree with you Fr, the Orthodox Church is coming into its own even as America collapses. If we fail, and if our ethnic bishops continue acting as colonial satraps, then there will be hell to pay.

By: Isa Almisry

Isa Almisry — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 03:18:23 +0000

In reply to Geo Michalopulos. I think the article focuses on a very important fact: no matter the set up of the hierarchy, the local parish is the main frontline both for our families within and evangelizing the non-Orthodox around us without. The revisionism of the statement "At the beginning, the Greek Orthodox parishes were under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople" (the first Greeks organized into a parish were under the Russian bishop of Alaska in San Francisco, the Greek Consul George Fisher, a naturalized Serb, helping to found the cathedral parish there) reveals the combination of the worst of both worlds (Old and New) in the origins of the GOA: congregations with no spiritual oversight nor shepherding, with foreign ethnarchs clinging to the pretense of grandeur. This has devolved into the plutocracy-ethnocracy complex. Fr. George goes over things the Church faces: abortion, drugs, sex saturation, etc. And what is the main concern of the Archdiocese, as voiced by the primate? A vestige of power thousands of miles away and the names of a sovereign state not on our borders, and a blind eye is turned to moral theology because of checks funding these two great causes. Fr. George, however, is focused on what really matters.

By: Fr. Johannes Jacobse

Fr. Johannes Jacobse — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 03:16:50 +0000

You raise an interesting point George. This lumbering, top-heavy, bureaucratic, authoritarian approach of Church governance that has emerged for the last decade or so isn’t really, well, Orthodox. Think of the Russian missionaries. Tough, faithful, men risking their lives for the Gospel. Think of the Guatemalans, laboring in obscurity and yet now a new Orthodox community half-a-million strong. Compare that to the tawdry debates about ethnicity, the overweening focus on the perquisites of power and pomp we are subjected to time and again, the coddling of politicians — as if this really has any enduring meaning.

Here’s my take. I believe (yes, I really believe this) that it is no accident that Orthodoxy has come of age at the same time that American society is under tremendous stress and pressure. It is time to just say no to the outlandish claims of foreign potentates, roll up our sleeves, and get to work. The Lord is preparing people among us like He prepared the Guatemalans. We should muster the same courage the missionaries who brought the Gospel to American shores displayed.

Imagine how things might be different if Fr. George’s words were taken to heart.

By: Geo Michalopulos

Geo Michalopulos — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:54:30 +0000

Fr, great article! There are so many powerful points therein. I only want to dwell on one particular at this time. I especially was drawn because of recent events in Guatemala to what the late Archbishop Iakovos said (as quoted above): “Our parishes in America began as organizations and developed into religious communities…”

In other words, there are many paradigms of Christian formation. We see this same type of thing with the Guatemalans. They started these churches on their own. Since it happened with the Greek immigrants, the claims of the Phanariote supremacists are incredible (that is, not believable). And just like the Greek immigrants whose parishes were normalized, so too the Guatemalans.

Again, what’s the point? It’s more than the fact that the claims of universal jurisdiction by the EP are null and void. Is it possible that the knowledge of the indigenous church in Central America and its possible reception into ROCOR/MP/OCA silenced the Istanbul supremacists during the Chambesy proceedings? After all, no mention was made of canon 28. It was just all “diptych” this and “diptych” that. Viewed in this light, the phanariotes made a virtue out of necessity.