![\"green_patriarch\"](\"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/green_patriarch2.png\" "\\"green_patriarch\\"")
<\/a><\/div>\nStrong words? Yes, but only because the endless strings of ebullient praise muddles other very important points. While Pat. Bartholomew\u2019s 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 \u201ccreation care\u201d (as some of the participants<\/a> in the Mississippi River Symposium refer to it) are sound. <\/p>\n For example, as part of Pat. Bartholomew\u2019s 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<\/a> (CAP), a George Soros funded think-tank originally developed as Hillary Clinton\u2019s cabinet-in-waiting, but now a center of far-left cultural activism. We can say, and CAP would probably agree, that CAP\u2019s sole function is to promote the ideas of \u201cProgressives\u201d — the far left \u2014 including moral issues that an Orthodox Christian could never adopt and still remain true to the moral tradition. <\/p>\n Of course, this is America and support of these issues is fair game. America has no institution of moral adjudication so the vexing moral questions end up being debated loudly in the public square, including think tanks. But should the Ecumenical Patriarch be lending his moral authority to CAP with a speech? I don\u2019t think so. It simply is not appropriate for a religious leader of his standing to do that. I object not only because the positions CAP holds on the great moral questions are different than my own. A visit to, say, the Heritage Foundation<\/a> whose views are closer to mine would be just as inappropriate.<\/p>\n Why throw in with CAP? Why align yourself so closely with George Soros (no friend of religion, nation-states, or free markets)? Why risk the diminution of an already fragile moral authority by lending it to those who hold religion in disdain, and whose policies contradict the Orthodox moral tradition? <\/p>\n You can be sure that Pope Benedict would never make such a blunder, but then the Pope seems to have a better grasp of moral leadership than the EP. The Pope recognizes the crisis in Western culture is primarily moral and has spoken out forcefully<\/a> against the cultural rot. We don\u2019t see the same breadth and consistency from the EP. In fact, all too often we see the lauding of politicians who in their public lives foster the culture of death. The EP will do that again<\/a> in his visit to Washington next month. Compromise trumps conviction time and again, at least in some parts of the Orthodox Church. <\/p>\n Perhaps the overbearing praise attempts to cover these persistent lapses. But that too, is a miscalculation. We are Americans. We don\u2019t do well with monarchical pretensions. And while many hierarchs still govern their flocks with the medieval sensibility that the mitre confers a divine right of kings, Americans (responsible ones anyway) understand that ideas have consequences, and that a bad idea is still a bad idea even if a hierarch promotes it.<\/p>\n