A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY
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| Volume 6 Number 31 - Tuesday, August 3rd, 2004 |
A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY |
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The Orthodox Christian News Service |
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The Archbishop speaksAs of this moment it would be much too early to comment on the work of the Clergy-Laity Congress still in progress. His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios, contrary to the practice followed by all his predecessors, has done away with holding periodic press conferences and granting exclusive interviews to the Greek American media. This is doubly harmful: first, because the people who care about Church issues cannot be informed directly from the Archbishop about them; and second, because not holding press conferences deprives him of the opportunity to get through to people; third, to get valuable feedback on the situation in the Church from independent parties. When, therefore, Demetrios grants an exclusive interview, as he did last week to The National Herald—the Archbishop stipulated and the Herald agreed reluctantly to bend its standard practice of conducting only live interviews, for the sake of providing him with a platform to convey his message—that interview has an extra interest that compels comment. The interview was rather lengthy by any standard. Yet he thought it appropriate to attach a segment of “questions not asked,” which apparently in his view prove his achievements over the past five years since he was chosen as the new Archbishop of America. Never mind that we had reported extensively on those issues and praised him in the past. (Something never done before, to the best of our knowledge.)
In any case, what
really comes out of it is that it shows an
Archbishop isolated from the problems facing the
Church. It is no surprise therefore that he paints
an ideal, almost perfect, picture of the situation
of the Church. We will therefore limit ourselves in examining only three points he made in the interview. The first one is on the crisis engulfing His All Holiness Patriarch Bartholomaios and the Archbishop of Athens and all of Greece, Christodoulos and his role in it. (We remind our readers that the Herald broke the story that Demetrios objected to the sanctions imposed on Christodoulos by the Patriarch but he signed the document so as to give the appeal of a unanimous Holy Synod decision. We would also like to remind you that the Herald praised Demetrios for his objection to the sanctions.) Said Demetrios: “This subject has some aspects...unknown to many...When all facts become available there will be many surprises.” We object strongly to this kind of mentality. Either you reveal what happened—the surprises—or you do not talk about it. With the same logic, President Bush could claim superior but secret knowledge justifying everything he does and be above criticism. The ‘I know more than you do’ method should not be condoned. The second one is the response he gave to our question: “Given what transpired between the Patriarchate and the Church of Greece...if the time has come for our Church...to go for autonomy or even autocephaly.” Demetrios wrote a very interesting (for its ambiguity) response that could either mean a lot or not. Said he: “I would suggest that the talk about a possible state of autonomy, autocephaly or subordination of the Holy Archdiocese of America to the Church of Greece, because of the recent problems between Constantinople and Athens cannot really become a subject of a responsible and serious conversation.” Well fine, but the clear implication left here is that the idea of cutting off from the Patriarchate would be subject for a “responsible and serious conversation” if the reason(s) were other than the problems between these two Churches, let’s say for better serving the needs of our Church. Does he not purposely leave the door open for such an interpretation? The third is the all-important issue of sexual abuse by priests. In this case, even though he goes into a whole analysis of the process followed in such cases, he fails to answer the question, and inform the public how many—if any—and who those priests are that have been found guilty in a court of law and/or the spiritual court. However, he does not dispute the facts contained in our question that the Church borrowed “in the past three years $1.5 million in order to pay victims sexually abused by clergy. What happened to these priests? Have they all been defrocked?” This is an issue that demands an answer. Evasiveness serves the interests of no one. The more we know about this issue as a society, the better.
Note: Not allowing members of the Orthodox
Christian Laity to attend the Congress in New York
is nothing short of preposterous. If anything, it
proves the point OCL is making about the lack of
dialogue in our Church. |
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