ISAIAH

Submitted July 8, 2005

LETTER TO METROPOLITAN ISAIAH

His Eminence Isaiah, Metropolitan of Denver
4610 East Alameda Avenue Suite D-1
Denver, Colorado 80222

Your letter published in the June 22^nd issue of the Hellenic Voice is interesting! I find it satisfying that a metropolitan of the Greek Orthodox Church of America has found the courage to publicly admit that he and his fellow prelates are not infallible and are subject to error. Unfortunately, you stand alone; none of your peers show any signs of having the guts to take a similar position or will any support you. I’ll wager that not one of them will follow your lead. They will probably condemn you; if not publicly, then privately.

Your admission that there are serious problems and failures in the administration of the American Church is the first sign coming from the hierarchy that you need help; the kind of help that once came from the laity. The laity that Bartholomew and his appointed satraps endeavor to bend to their will. Should there be any doubt that the laity is being forced into silence, one need only look to what happens to they that voice an opinion in variance to the priests and bishops. One needs only to look at your handling of the Houston situation, Maximos’ handling of St. John here in Youngstown and the churches in York, Pa. and Cleveland, Ohio. The most embarrassing example of the hammering of the restless laity with the iron fist is Demetitrios’ shameful excommunication of the elected leaders of the church in Corona, New York. Should any believe that the convicting spiritual court, set up by Demetrios to railroad the Corona case, was fair and impartial, then I too have a bridge to sell!

The title applied to your letter, “A house divided against itself cannot stand!” is an old adage, but it is also a truism. It is a truism, but most houses are divided not by the children, but by tyrannical fathers or obsessive mothers. This writer is of the opinion the source of the divisive force plaguing the GOA comes not from the laity, but from the hierarchs of the church. Bartholomew, because of his fear of losing the American Church, has fractured the Archdiocese of North and South America into disconnected principalities through which he has imposed a tyranny that will guarantee he will lose the American Church! The likes of his European mind set was discarded in 1776 and every attempt to reintroduce it in this country has failed! A people schooled to think will accept leaders but they will not be herded like sheep.

I find it interesting that after admitting to the problems of the American Church; you declare you have no “Validated information” about what is going on in the Old Country. One then should ask, “How much validation is required when a patriarch is defrocked and thrown out of office?” What else do you need to know when Bartholomew and Meliton sell a monastery out from under its monks, with Meliton’s family accused of being the beneficiaries of the sale? What more validation is needed when a Greek Metropolitan is discovered to be a real estate mogul? What validation is needed when Greek Bishops are dragged into court and priests are on Interpol’s wanted list. Of course one would deny having validation if he disregard the world’s news media or choose not to ask questions such as those the Hellenic Voice posed to Demetrios; (Go to the web site WWW.OCL.org) questions to which the archbishop or anyone from his office has yet to respond.

I hesitate to get into the sexual abuse situation because I have observed it to be one with a long history of cover up by the church. My introduction to it started with the published Bishop Anthimos indiscretions when he was Bishop of Boston. Then there was the disgusting homosexual attack by two seminarians upon another HC/HC student. What was Spyridon’s response to that incident? He whisked the perpetrators out of the country before formal charges could make the case public. From Spyridon’s solution to the problem, one can conclude that somewhere in Greece there are two homosexual Greek priests praying and preying.

Then, among other situations, there is the known pedophile problem that shook your dioceses. The question must be posed, if the chairman of the archdiocese sexual abuse committee doesn’t know what is going on in the sexual abuse area, as you say in your letter, then who the hell does? If you, the chairman of the committee were kept in the dark on the subject, as you declare in your letter, how can you personally believe there are not more than two or three cases of abusive priests? If at least a half dozen cases have been made public, how many never saw the light of day?

Yes, the GOA is a rapidly segmenting church, but rather than clergy and we laity glossing over the causes, rather than pointing accusative fingers, we should all discard the rose colored glasses and look at the realities that are crying out to be recognized. Among the realities it is the captains that are the cause of the ship’s floundering, not they who only wish to help pull on the oars.

Is your letter a plea for unity? If so, then that unity can only come when the laity’s trust and confidence in its leaders is restored. That trust will only be restored when the selection of our church leaders is a process that allows the voice of the laity to be a factor in the selection process.



Volume 7 Number 28 - Tuesday, July 12th, 2005	A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY