calling

Published by The National Herald, December 26, 2004

What is our high calling?

Christmas is upon us, yes, and most of us focus on the celebratory aspect of the holiday season, but we also need to turn the eye of our mind inwardly and examine substantive spiritual matters and social realities. As such, Christmas also grants an opportunity to dispense with some tired old platitudes.

Last year on this page, we applauded the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America’s declared initiative to create a much-needed endowment fund: "Faith, An Endowment for Orthodoxy and Hellenism."

With highly publicized pledges then of $20 million, and an announced objective then of raising $100 million, this launching of this new endowment fund was supposedly endeavoring to empower the Archdiocese financially, so that the Church in America can carry out its mission more effectively, and with greater dignity.

That was a year ago. That being the case, it is well within the community’s rights to ask a few legitimate questions.

What has happened with the fundraising effort since then? How much money has actually been raised? How is the money being managed, or how will it be managed? What are the needs? Under what criteria are those needs being assessed? Who is addressing them?

Moreover, are there any conflicts of interest? Ideally, the new Archdiocese endowment should help fund the Archdiocese’s operational needs, to include funding the individual ministries. On the other hand, Leadership 100 is supposed to help (and has helped to some extent) the Archdiocese "enhance" its ministries.

The Archdiocese and Leadership 100 can raise all the money they want, but that’s not the point. The point is, what will be done with the money? How will the money actually be used?

Each institution, each program, needs to be carefully re-evaluated, and certain institutions and programs should take priority over others.

In our community, as we see it, Hellenic education should be our top priority. Our schools are sorely under-funded, and most of them are under Archdiocese oversight.

The Church clearly plays a leading role in the effort to help educate our young people. This is because of the melding of Hellenism with Orthodoxy over the centuries. The Church was the arc of salvation for Hellenism during Byzantine and Ottoman times, and that function has carried over to the present day in America, where the community is surrounded not by Ottoman aggressors, but by a vast sea known as the Melting Pot.

In America, people of Greek heritage have customarily looked to the Church as their center of social life… as a place where they can preserve their cultural identity.

Institutions like Hellenic College/Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology are barely sustaining themselves. And they are clearly not succeeding in a carrying out a fundamental task: producing bi-lingual graduates.

The language issue is one which is frequently, and often vehemently, discussed. God knows how often it has been discussed right here on this page.

At their core, the arguments are almost always the same. But the overall attitude does not deal with the issue effectively (only superficially, at best). A solution is required. In a global age, developing, cultivating and expanding our multi-lingual ability is clearly the order of the day. America’s ever-increasing Spanish-speaking population, for example, is propelling the country to adopt Spanish as a second language in places like California, Texas and Florida.

Globalism is bringing North and South America closer together. The Asian and Muslim communities are also growing.

But the Greek American community is not only shrinking, it is also becoming more and more diluted with the passage of time. Preserving our ability to speak, read and write Greek in America, therefore, becomes takes on even more urgent dimensions, particularly among those who would lead us.

Our teachers and priests should be able to communicate in both Greek and English fluently, and translate from one language to the other with relative ease. The onus is on them to instruct the rest of us properly.

If they didn’t learn their Greek well enough, they were not responsibly taught. And if they need financial assistance to seize solid opportunities to learn, that’s where responsible funding comes in handy.



Volume 6 Number 52 - Tuesday, December 28th, 2004	A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY