Harry, you’re being too hard on yourself. He’s a grown man, just like you and me. We all need to be held to account for our words and actions.

Along this vein, I certainly blame you or anybody in the old Voithia/OCL axis for setting these actions into play (the exile of +Spyridon, etc.). The only way any blame can be leveled is to all laymen in the GOA (you, me, the guy behind the tree) who continue to allow this situation to fester.

I don’t even blame the Phanar for their dysfunction, that’s all they know.

Fr. Hans: I want to think as you do as well. Among very many, mine was one of the hands involved in causing him to have the church job posting he now has. So maybe in truth I’m trying to excuse myself in some part.

In my more quiet moments, I wonder if during the time after his experiences in the USA and before his return some habits of the ‘hyperbolic language’ favored by the EP didn’t creep in. You know, the EP referring to himself as ‘our modesty’ and so on. Over there flowery and hyperbolic language is common and people know what it is and how to understand it in context. Here, not so much. On the other hand, maybe here’s me making excuses again. I hope he amends these remarks somehow.

Perhaps this is about the man who left as a respected theologian free of the pressures of geo-politics, but on his return having been in the high ‘Greek’ political circles the theologian also took on the ‘ethnarc’. Who knows. I just live in Iowa and need to get back to my knitting.

Unfortunately Fr, he has a pattern of this. Remember grovelling before Imam Obama and extolling his virtues, calling him another Alexander the Great? A few more of these musings and the GOA will be reduced to an ethnic rump east of the Hudson River.

Harry, yes, I caught the irony, even before you mentioned it and your appeal to magnanimity has some force as a result. I can cut the Archbishop some slack since everyone makes mistakes. But this is a mistake that I hope he does not make again. Calling forward genetics as the justification for the survival of a people is fraught with problems, some of them leading to very bad ends.

And this overlooks too the theological assumptions people make when they hear this kind of justification, as if called to be sons of God is a function of pedigree rather than baptism. Apart from Jesus, the Father has only adopted sons, that’s why there is no longer Greek or Jew in the New Israel, the ekklesia or “ones called out.” Once this is forgotten (and in some places it has been), the ekklesia reverts to synogogue, that is, an assembly of like minded believers rather than the the ones called out. There heritage can still be a compelling force for cultural creativity, but it is not enough to withstand the secular assaults of our age as the crisis in Greece makes clear.

I’m not anti-Greek as you know, but the fact I’m compelled to offer the caveat shows that the thinking I am describing is more prevalent than it should be. It also limits the very real contributions of the Greeks to Western Civilization by redefining the wellspring in deterministic categories rather than directing the hearer to the contemplation of higher things. You would think that a man who lived through Nazism and the Communism of the Greek Civil War would be more careful.

And that is what I find puzzling. I know Abp. Demetrios is a precise thinker and clear teacher. So I’ll accept your call for magnanimity. Maybe he was having a bad day.

“The Orthodox Church is not only for one nation, one civilization, one continent. It is like God Himself: for all, and for every place and time.”

–Patriarch Ignatius IV of Antioch.

I think that kind of says it all.

P.S. Here’s me making apologies for a bishop who was among the defendants in a legal action about an imposed GOA charter where I was rather the least among many plaintiffs. Should I look now for horsemen in the air, the sound of trumpets, the end of days, and my dog and cat getting along? What a situation. Note that after the handed down charter was imposed, our sensitivies as seen in USA foreign policy attitudes and results and impacts has declined. Who’d have predicted that? Less US government interest in multiple fiefdoms controlled from Turkey than a unified Orthodox Church in the USA. So, the Foreign Policy 101 class they teach at the community college was right after all. What a shock. Will a foreign controlled unified church do any better? Hmmm… doing the math… borrow the nine… …. ….

Andrew,

All I’m hoping for is an appreciation, as he was discussing touring these places you could see how it haunted him. Here are these all ethnic Greek people, right now, today, having their homes and properties taken because they were denied jobs, denied police protection, denied justice, been purposefully made victims of physical violence and property crime, etc. etc. Basically treated as horses to be ridden until they died without replacement. The only people there are ethnic Greeks and the recently arrived sub-populace of mostly moderate Turks, among this sub-populace a fraction big enough to do crimes and oppress willing to push ‘them’ away. Hence this narrow DNA dimension– that’s all that’s there.

What is being done by the Pope? What is being done by, well, just about anybody? Greece’s government actions toward the US recently haven’t been exactly warm, though on a human level the relations are very good indeed. Seriously Turkey is a very big place with lots of space compared to the number of people who live there, why persecute the ethnic minorities? At this point it is just plain mean. The minorities are a threat to nobody and often better educated than average besides.

So I’m guessing his immersion in that world where there were only ethnic Greeks and their oppressors with nobody else reaching in to make a difference might have provided the energy behind these tenacity of DNA comments. I don’t sense really an agenda to unfavorably compare to other peoples in general but instead to showcase or spotlight this situation of tenacity unaided and unhelped amid modern and ongoing oppression.

That an a certain sense of helplessness. What can be done? So this sense of disquiet and pain I think just bubbled over. I prefer to believe that than to suppose the alternative along the lines you’ve outlined. The remarks read without that context are indeed hurtful and I hope he amends them.

For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God. John 3:17-21

Hi Andrew,

First of all, please believe me when i tell you that you are preaching to the choir. And having been one of those excoriated on many occassions, I truly appreciate the depth and veracity of your comments…and have the scars to prove it…LOL

But when you say, “The Archbishop has an entire press office and PR staff at his disposal.” – I just had to chuckle.

While you are technically correct…let’s all keep in mind the competence of those involved…describing them as “an entire press office and PR staff”…is like saying the Swiss Navy is a navy…I guess it’s technically correct, but all similarities between the two disappear shortly thereafter.

That aside, all your points are well taken, and should happen.

Best Regards,
dean

Being an Hellene myself, I understand the pull of millenia of history. I get it. Unfortunately, it’s not that significant a trump card. There is one race that trumps us in this identity politics regarding the Church: it’s the Jews. If we’re going to descend to this game, then they have it all over us. Luckily, the First Apostolic Council called their bluff and said: “no the gentiles [Greeks] are just as much a part of the plan of salvation as you.”

This hurts me to say it, but I was wrong about cutting +Demetrios the slack. He should know better. If he doesn’t then his flunkies at the press office should have “clarified” his remarks for him. Regardless, this bodes ill for the future of a unified American Orthodoxy.

This is why the Archbishop’s words hurt. They damage the lives of every person who is not part of the special race/omogenia and they damage the very people who suffer under the yoke of the Turkish government. They also damage the EP itself. Because in the ends its not about DNA/Race. Its about the human person created in the image and likeness of God. Its about the gift of freedom and the ability to do what is right. Would Dr. King have made such a DNA based argument in seeking to overturn the culture of racial segregation?

If the Archbishop’s words regarding DNA are true then Orthodoxy is stripped of its prophetic witness. Its empty. This is what oppressors want. They want a Church without the ability to transforms lives and shape consciences. This does not help any person of group who suffers under the yoke of oppression.

Its 2010. Isn’t it time for the Archbishop to say that we are all more than our race/DNA? We are created in the image and likeness of God and who we are is much more that our genetics.

Isn’t it time we expect Christian greatness from our leaders instead of the mediocrity of racial politics?

Perhaps a thing vaguely comparable to the ‘scouring of the shire’ where our hero having attained recognitions and authorities and accolades and lotsa people wanting to get in photos with him sees what living in the context of actual and constant if sophisticated oppression really is. And to see the nature of the struggle of those who hang on there as it is their home and for generations. A person can see it in racial terms, in ancestral home terms, in the context of the world wars and the treaties of the last century, in religious terms, or in the simple matters of the basic human right to be left alone in peace at home. Whatever. The mind of many of their actual oppressors has almost a biological/tribal ‘exterminate not-us’ character only dimly connected to the humanity of the thing. Many other more moderate would be most content to simply live in peace.

So you have this Archbishop, who the EP having withdrawn all meaningful power from his office, then gets asked and goes on a tour of the suffering homeland of the EP. Once again you get more help from people on whose neck you are not standing.

Anyhow the suffering there, the active oppression going on, the tenacity of the people hanging on by their thumbs just trying to live in the context of actual oppression — I think this was a moving thing, and recent, and perhaps informed those comments.

As an ironic aside– Why do all the people who make reference to ‘Mother this or that’ usually intend to treat the hearer though adult enough to understand the phrase and with highly prized resources nevertheless in the status of infant who needs their intensive control? More and more I love ‘Uncle Sam’. By contrast does the value and inner meaning resolve.

ethno-colonialist or missionary – sums it all up. It seem that the line in sand has already been drawn for us. All that is left is to choose a “side.”

Dean, I disagree. The Archbishop has an entire press office and PR staff at his disposal. If his words were chosen poorly, if the author of this piece is confused, if the piece is misunderstood and has offended people with its words albeit inadvertently, then he can issue a statement through his office clarifying his remarks and humbly apologizing for giving offense. He can certainly show both humility and leadership in this regard.

There is no law saying an Archbishop cannot admit a mistake and apologize. Besides, this might just be one of those teachable moments where +Demetrios rises to the occasion and shines.

However, in the absence of such actions, we should not offer him any slack. He is accountable for his actions and words. After all, The GOA has excoriated many folks for challenging the conventional wisdom of 79th Street and supporting American Orthodoxy.

Dean, if you re-read my post, you’ll see that I cut +Demetrios significant slack. (Heck, after how he stood up to the EP on the issue of +Jonah and the OCA, he’s aces in my book.) That’s why I went directly into my analogy about The Rope and the Drowning Man: the anti-hero in the story was not +Demetrios –who has to deal with a colonial eparchy as he finds it–but up-and-comers who seek to subjugate the Gospel to a horribly twisted misreading of canon law. Which let’s be honest, neither +Demetrios nor any other GOA bishop for that matter has promulgated here in America (to my knowledge).

Like all men, the archbishop has his failings, we can’t fault him for having a Hellado-triumphalistic view of things. it’s the way he was raised. We all have our own socio-cultural referents. Americanists such as myself might substitute Teddy Roosevelt for Alexander the Great, Will Rogers for Aristotle, etc. I could easily see an American bishop going to a colony of ex-pats in Paris and praising them for still celebrating Thanksgiving and saying something like “It’s because of your Midwestern grit that you still get together for this holiday.”

Having said that, Chris hits the nail right on the head. There simply can’t be any room for such racialism when speaking to the public or the parishioner.

BTW, I have every confidence in your appraisal of his homiletical skills, I just for the life of me can’t understand why he doesn’t apply them more frequently. Is it because the Greekist powers-that-be here in the States would raise cain?