The question should always be: What benefits the community?

Published by The National Herald, April 21, 2005

In one of the most significant eulogies in memory, Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens, president of the Synod of the Church of Greece, stood before the coffin of Iakovos in the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York, and in a clear and powerful voice proclaimed that this is not the time "to weep over for the person who has left us, for he is much better at the place where he went… Instead we should stand before him shedding tears and in admiration; shedding tears, for he is not in his body anymore and therefore not with us; and with admiration for the magnitude of his accomplishments."

Indeed, the passing of a great leader like Iakovos should not only be an occasion for weeping. It should also be an occasion for thanksgiving that such a parson lived and walked among us.

Such a monumental event should serve as a rallying point for bringing our community and its leaders even closer together, forgetting the past differences – even more so just before Easter – and rededicating ourselves to the core values we all share, making it the beginning of a new effort to uplift ourselves spiritually, to better ourselves.

Sadly, instead of this, the death of Iakovos became a source of new divisions; of cementing past differences; of allowing an opportunity to bridge the gap existing between two sides to escape forever.

It is becoming ever more clear that at least two serious mistakes were made in the way the Ecumenical Patriarchate handled the death of Iakovos – mistakes which will haunt the Patriarchate, as well as this community, for years to come.

Unless there were extremely serious circumstances preventing him from traveling, His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew should not have missed the funeral of Iakovos. It was his best and perhaps only chance to make peace with the Archbishop he disagreed with so many times.

If Bartholomew had the time to fly to Rome for the funeral of Pope John Paul II the week before Iakovos died – and rightly so – he should have made the time to come to Iakovos’ funeral, too.

How many clergyman of Iakovos’ caliber can the Patriarchate – or the entire Orthodox Church, for that matter – claim to have in their hierarchical ranks?

It was wrong to deny the leader of the Church of Greece the courtesy – and his individual right – to participate in the funeral and burial services for his beloved brother in Christ. Christodoulos standing in the Church idle, while Archbishop Demetrios was conducting the service, was unbecoming for an Archbishop of an autocephalous Church.

Twice in the past, our Church authorities denied Christodoulos permission to visit our community over differences stemming between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Church of Greece.

Moreover, the decision to obstruct Christodoulos’ participation in our community’s liturgical proceedings is deeply offensive to us all. That our Church would be used on such an occasion, the funeral of our late leader, to exacerbate differences among the Orthodox hierarchy is both wrong and completely disrespectful to the community, regardless of whether one allies himself with one side or the other.

It is also rather unfortunate that the instrument through which all this occurred was His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios of America. By not exercising his jurisdictional rights, he neither served himself nor the Patriarchate nor the Greek American community well, at all.

Had the ecclesiastical authorities concerned thought of the obvious question of how the interests of the community would be served best, they might have avoided making these serious mistakes. That they acted without due consideration of this fundamental question is a burden they will have to carry for a long time.



Volume 7 Number 17 - Tuesday, April 26th, 2005	A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY