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The Orthodox Christian News Service

Published by The National Herald, December 13-14, 2003

Priests are needed, but…

To the Editor,

I am writing in response to your December 6-7 editorial: “Christmas list: priests needed.”

You lament the growing shortage of priests in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese – certainly a serious problem. A problem which will not be solved by lowering academic standards and increasing scholarships at Holy Cross; or requiring that candidates must be “bilingual” in order to serve a church in which more that 80 percent of the marriages included non-Greeks, with many converts and fewer Greek Americans who understand the Greek language; or offering higher salaries and benefits. The problem will certainly not be solved by asking “the Church of Greece to send us the number that we need” as your editorial suggests.

In order to address the problem, we need to acknowledge the fact that for years the pages of your paper have been filled with the various crises that have troubled the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese since the enthronement of Patriarch Bartholomew, particularly since the meeting of all Orthodox Bishops in Ligonier, Pennsylvania in 1994. Some of your coverage includes:

-- The demand that the Hierarchs under the Istanbul Patriarchate renounce their signatures on the two Statements issued by the Bishops at the conclusion of their Ligonier meetings.

-- The forced “retirement” of Archbishop Iakovos.

-- The unilateral dismembering of the Archdiocese and creation of separate “Metropolitanates” in Canada, Central and South America, ignoring both the Archdiocesan Council and the Clergy-Laity Congress.

-- The appointment, turbulent tenure and then removal of Archbishop Spyridon.

-- The secrecy surrounding the development of a revised Charter, which began with efforts by the Bishops to be included in the process from which they had been excluded by Archbishop Spyridon (see motions passed at the Orlando Clergy-Laity Congress); and was continued by them and Archbishop Demetrios (see refusal to make copies available to the delegates at the Philadelphia Clergy-Laity Congress); the attempts to prevent a vote on the proposed Charter (see the proceedings at the Los Angeles Clergy-Laity Congress); the rejection of the resolutions passed by that Congress; the attempted imposition of a revised Charter this year as a “done deal”; and now, the stubborn resistance to growing demands that the Charter be voted upon in New York next year.

-- News accounts of the attempted (or worse yet, successful) imposition of a new Charter on the Archdiocese by the Istanbul Patriarchate without clergy and laity approval, highlight the destruction of the eighty year history of co-ministry of hierarchs, clergy and laity which has both defined and allowed the Church in America to grow. The recent removal of parish councils by bishops, threats against and coercion of clergy by hierarchs and demands for “blind obedience” on the part of both clergy and lay leadership create an atmosphere of fear and repression in the church that are not conducive to recruiting qualified candidates for the priesthood.

-- The financial difficulties that the Archdiocese persistently faces are not unrelated to the shortage of priests “problem.” Soliciting financial support for an obviously failing institution is challenging at best. Asking young men to devote their lives to serving an institution which presents the kinds of problems which the Istanbul Patriarchate and the Archdiocese have thrust upon it since 1994 explains the shortage of priests which your editorial laments but does not account for.

In the short term, the shortage of priests should be addressed by looking to the graduates of St. Vladimir’s Seminary, rather than the Church of Greece. In the long term, only an autonomous and eventually and administratively united and autocephalous church in North America will address the shortage of priests problem which confronts us as Orthodox Christians in America. Both the short term and long term solutions call for a change in the culture of the Patriarchate/Archdiocese and how they relate to the clergy and laity and especially to our children and grandchildren and their non-Greek spouses and converts. If The National Herald expects the Archdiocese and Holy Cross to be the primary agents for maintaining the Greek ethnic heritage in America, and if those institutions continue to accept the role of Diasporists engaging in rearguard actions linking the “omogenia” to Mother Greece instead of bringing Orthodoxy to America, the shortage of priests may turn out to be the least of our problems.

Sincerely,

George D. Karcazes
Chicago, IL

George D. Karcazes Chicago, IL

George D. Karcazes
Chicago, IL