A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY
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| Volume 6 Number 33 - Tuesday, August 17th, 2004 |
A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY |
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The Place of the Laity in Our Church I have been disheartened by the conduct and direction taken by the hierarchy of our Church for the past years — and especially by reports of what transpired at the Clergy-Laity Conference that ended just a few days ago. It seems that our Orthodox Church in America has become a bastion of ethnic, nationalist pride, more concerned with Greek festivals and traditional dancing than salvation. And our hierarchs have become revisionist historians and theologians, ignoring the great democratic traditions of our Church, while creating a new order mimicking the Papal autocracy of the west. This week I turned to re-reading Steven Runciman’s The Great Church in Captivity and found this refreshing reminder of the place of the laity in our Church: “Byzantium was fundamentally a democracy. Not even the Emperor, … , could enforce a religious policy of which the people disapproved. Every Byzantine felt passionately about religion. If he were well educated he considered himself entitled to have his views, whatever the Emperor or the hierarchy might say. If he were simple he depended upon his spiritual adviser; and the spiritual advisers of the humbler folk were the monks, over whom neither the Emperor nor Patriarch could always exercise control. The Emperor was an august figure whose sacred rights were respected and who in a struggle with the Patriarch would usually have his way. But neither he nor the Patriarch, for all their splendour, could live securely in his high office if he lost the sympathy of the Christian people of Byzantium.”[i] I also re-read portions of Volume II of a two volume work by Reverend Robert Walsh, entitled: A Residence at Constantinople during a period including the Commencement, Progress, and Termination of the Greek and Turkish Revolutions. (See citation below.) A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, Robert Walsh (1772-1852) came from a distinguished County Waterford family. While a minister, he pursued studies for a medical degree. Walsh served as chaplain to the British Embassy at Constantinople at the time of the Greek revolution, and after. Walsh is a primary source for much of what has been written about the events in Constantinople and Asia Minor during the Greek revolution. “Four patriarchs had been deposed and elected during my first residence in Turkey. On the execution of Gregory, Eugenius was appointed in his place. He was led into the palace under the hanging body of his predecessor; and a short time after some Turkish rabble broke into the patriarchate, destroyed his chair of state, and attempted to murder himself. His calpac was cut through with the blow of a saber, but the thick covering saved his life. He never recovered from the shock, and he died in the following year under the impression of terror. He was not permitted to be buried at Arnaut Kui, because he must pass the palace of the Sultan at Beshiktasj, so he was interred at Haskui, and laid beside the Jews who had treated his predecessor with such indignity. On Friday following a firman was issued for electing a new one, and Petropolo, the Megalos Logothetos, was directed to inform the synod that they might choose whom they pleased, even any of the six bishops then confined in the prison of the Bostangee Basin. On the next day the synod assembled, and I proceeded to witness the ceremony. The hall of election was a large square apartment, with a divan running round it. Here eight bishop and five hundred delegates of the esnafs, or trades, assembled. On the divan were seated the ecclesiastics and the most respectable of the delegates. The common people occupied the middle of the room; they seemed to be of the lowest and meanest class. And there was a rudeness and want of order in the proceedings of the assembly that reminded me of the εκκλεσια of their turbulent ancestors. In this assembly three candidates were proposed, the archbishop of Thessalonika, and the bishops of Syra and Chalcedon. The first of these was the choice of the clergy. But the last was the choice of the people. He was one of those confined in prison, and there seemed to be much sympathy for his fate. Five qualities were required of the candidate, experience, prudence, ability, science, and, above all, fealty to the Turkish government. The people cried out that he possessed them all. A short and turbulent debate ensued on the respective merits of the others, when the people shouted with one voice, “Halkedhony Anthemis,” and having overcome all opposition, Anthemis, bishop of Chalcedon, was elected by acclamation. Among the most active on this occasion was a Greek tchelebi, or gentlemen, named Georgio Katembasi, of my acquaintance. He had been a proscribed man, and a short time before I saw him disguised in close concealment. But on this occasion he could not be restrained; he came forth to exercise his franchise at all hazards, and no ancient Greek could be more tenacious of it or zealous in supporting it, though it might cost him his life. By his exertions principally the patriarch was elected.” In the election of the Patriarch the role of the people, the laos, was determinative. 1. Runciman, Steven. The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence. London,: Cambridge U.P., 1968, 73f. 2. Walsh, R. A Residence at Constantinople, During a Period Including the Commencement, Progress, and Termination of the Greek and Turkish Revolutions. London,: F. Westley & A.H. Davis, 1836.
JASON C. MAVROVITIS |
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