The past few years have seen their controversies within the Self Ruled Antiochian Archdiocese of North America. On September 30, 2010, Kevin Allen and John Maddex traveled to Englewood, NJ to visit the headquarters of the Antiochian Archdiocese and the home of it’s Archbishop Metropolitan Philip Saliba. Our purpose was to seek clarification on several key areas that have become a concern to many, and fodder for the blogosphere. His Eminence warmly welcomed us and gave Kevin the freedom to ask any question he thought would be helpful to our audience in understanding several critical issues. There were four specific topics we wanted him to address:
1. The meaning and future of self rule in the Antiochian Archdiocese.
2. The status of the Bishops in North America and the meaning as well as the ramifications of the title “Auxiliary Bishop.”
3. The finances of the Antiochian Archdiocese and in particular the status of an audit.
4. The view point of His Eminence on the Episcopal Assembly, SCOBA, and the future of Administrative Unity in North America.
We have left the Metropolitan’s remarks intact and unedited to make them available to the audience for their own evaluation and conclusions.
This episode provides the entire interview. If you are interested in listening to the individual topics, we have also divided it up into 4 sections and those are available on The Illumined Heart page of Ancient Faith Radio. A free transcript is also available.
Listen here:
[audio:http://audio.ancientfaith.com/illuminedheart/tih_2010-10-10_metphilip.mp3]Podcast courtesy of Ancient Faith Radio
Personally, the entire interview is rather depressing. Philip proves once again that he functions as a desert tribal chieftain, with no respect for due process, canonical norms, and petty little things like American civil law. He’s basically a tyrant and his defenestration of Bishop +Mark is unforgivable. Having said all this, he is quite right about the the incipient failure of the Episcopal Assembly.
This is what bothers me: Philip’s assessment of the EA is clear and lucid. He knows what he’s talking about. Therefore I can’t believe that he’s not capable of logical thinking. Hence my depressive assessment of the rest of the interview, where he clearly displays a lack of coherence and simple logic. What does this mean? That his regrettable actions are eminently self-serving. Of course he and Damascus are of one mind in this. (Damascus is trying to increase its hold on its diaspora in order to wrench more concessions from the other patriarchates, Istanbul especially.)