America’s new Archbishop ELPIDOPHOROS
According to the Romfea.gr website, His Eminence Elpidophorus Lambrianides, Metropolitan of Bursa, has been unanimously elected by the Holy Synod of Constantinople to be the new Primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese.
Interestingly, he was not “elected” by the bishops of the GOA. In fact, according to that same website, the Eparchial (i.e. American) Synod pushed back, invoking Article 13 of the GOA Charter. Unfortunately, because the GOA bishops have long succumbed to pressure (read: blackmail) from the Phanar they continue to prove themselves feckless in standing for their prerogatives or anything else for that matter. The only exceptions are Hellenist Triumphalism, Byzantine Nostalgia, maybe even Phanariote Romanticism. Take your pick.
Here’s the problem. The shift in the GOA since the elevation of the Bishops to Metropolitans, which made Bishops accountable to the Phanar instead of New York, effectively subjugated the American Church to the papal ambitions of Constantinople and thus directed the ministerial and evangelical energy to serve those ambitions. Furthermore, in the fifteen or so years since the application of the new charter that affected that change, we have also seen the appointment of Bishops who (slavishly?) serve the Phanar agenda. The consequences in the local churches have been catastrophic. GOA member attrition rates have risen since the shift and will only increase.
There are many faithful parishioners in the GOA. We see this in the success of the Ephraimite Monasteries that are growing. If the parishioners cannot find spiritual vitality in the parishes, they will seek it elsewhere — and they have. This will continue. Furthermore, if the culture of the parishes is driven towards the papal dreams of ecclesial supremacy that have driven much of the Phanar’s initiatives in the last two decades, expect some parishioners to abandon the GOA altogether and seek out different jurisdictions.
The Phanariote initiatives have been a sorrowful thing to behold. The Green Patriarch gambit was an ill-fated attempt to establish the Patriarch as the putative moral leader of the West. It failed. The Cretan Council was a bust and Ukraine autocephaly is shaping up to be a fiasco. The one thing they all have in common is that they fit the contours of Progressive politics which tells us two things: 1) The Phanar has no real comprehension of the cultural currents shaping the Western half of Christendom, and 2) The Patriarch’s American advisers (liberals all) have led him into dark alleys.
Now we have a leader who was shaped in this eastern cauldron of confusion leading the Church in America. It does not bode well.
11 May 2019 Wall Street Journal Online
BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH SC JOHNSON
In a curious intersection of religion and business interests, and in the wake of the appointment today of a new archbishop for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America by Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of over 250 million Eastern Orthodox Christians based in Istanbul, Turkey, Berkshire Hathaway announced its intention to partner with SC Johnson to enable the company to quickly and dramatically ramp up production of a key product. Berkshire’s investment will be $1.6 Billion.
“This product is key to the health of the Greek-American community, and in the wake of this appointment demand is certain to rise far beyond even the most wildly optimistic forecasts,” said Buffet, Berkshire Hathaway’s chairman and CEO. “The demand will surely be there. We wanted SC Johnson and our investors to profit from it. With 1.5 million members, a lot of product will be sold.”
SC Johnson already saw a steady increase in demand over the past five years, but Buffet is now betting it will skyrocket. With his uncanny ability to spot opportunities missed by other investors, SC Johnson’s CEO, Herbert Fisk Johnson III, said he was “glad to hear the announcement from Istanbul and pleased to partner with Berkshire Hathaway.”
For more information on SC Johnson products, a privately held family company, visit https://www.windex.com/en-us
I know what the product will be. I could tell you but then that would activate a drone strike on anybody who clicks on the link.
This istambul. Bureaucratic Catholic will be a disaster, but perhaps that is good news as to finally make the members of the GOA decided between a club with sideline in BANAL worship and a Church belonging to the Orthodox world
spiritual leader of over 250 million Eastern ???
Where are they, the 250 million that is?
jacksson: “Where are they, the 250 million that is?”
Eastern and over 250 million? Must be Indonesia!
Martin: Sounds logical to me. Maybe there has been a large conversion event in India or China. lol
What are the odds of whole Greek parishes leaving?
Also, living in Texas, I go to Holy Archangels a few times a year and can’t imagine the monks going along with this. Can parishes and monasteries switch jurisdictions?
Monasteries can and do change episcopal affiliation but parishes of the GOA & AOCNA are legally owned by their ruling bishops. Priests can seek transfer of jurisdiction to serve other bishops and lay parishioners are of course free to the extent that their scruples demand conscientious affiliation. But all real property in both Greek and Antiochian Archdioceses is held by the bishop and cannot he alienated without his approval and agreement of jurisdictional council.
You must be thinking Greek parishes will balk at the
Fener appointment to the Archbishopric, ‘Gerond’ Elpidophoros of Brusa. I can’t think of any that would protest effectively and the only way to strike back meaningfully at Fener ruination of Church life is to leave the Greek church for the canonical American one that this new Gerond derided so scurrilously ten years ago.
Make no mistake. GOA Clergy are seriously at risk. Consider the following speculation for a hypothetical outcome.. The election of the new archbishop of America shows that the path forward is a Phanar-centered, 79th St-centered political approach to the Church. This is not parish first leadership. Politics and Power are the first order. Now we now that that the GOA is heavily in debt. St. Nicholas, Holy Cross and 79th Street are all seriously struggling. Selling off assets would be seen as a sign of political weakness …. so what does the new Archbishop do?
He turns the the parishes that is the people he can “tax”. Now what is the single largest expense item for every parish. It is clergy salary and benefits. What if the new archbishop decides to flood America with foreign born clergy from Greece who are far more cheaper to support and can easily be seen as more “compliant”. Would parish councils dump their clergy for a “rent-a-priest” scenario from Greece where clergy would work at 25% of current costs? Cutting clergy expenses in such a way would free up more money to support 79th Street and all its expenses. I wonder if the greek government with its increasing secularization and austerity would not want to unload large amounts of clergy in America or at least send bunches of them to the USA on rotating 2-3 year assignments.
Sadly, it would also jeopardize the health and well-being of current GOA clergy and their families. There would be parish councils that would no doubt ask…..Why support an American-educated priest and his family when you can import a priest from Greece at 1/4 of the price?
I know what the product will be. I could tell you but then that would activate a drone strike on anybody who clicks on the link.
Seriously, you may have it pegged correctly. I imagine the current influx of Romanian priests who work for half the pay of Greek-Americans has dried up.
Dear “GOA Clergy Are At Risk”,
one solution might be for the priests to “take” (most of) their congregation
and go under OCA, ROCOR or Antiochian, and we ‘ll see who is the big loser.
The church is the people. Wherever the people go, the building will follow, one way or the other.
Maybe we could think that Church is Christ, His own Body and Bride, and that we are members of it — and of Him.
Yes, Monk James,
the Church is the body of Christ and we want to stay in it.
However if Bartholomew says he is (like the Pope) EVERYTHING inside the Church and he sends his obedient Elpidophoros to do, as he has stated “I am entrusted with a very confidential mission by our Patriarch ” THEN,
…sorry we won’t come to this parish any more, we’ll go tothe next-door ROCOR, OCA or Antiochian one. As simple as that!
The aftermath of ecumenism!
So much for respect for the required meaningful advisory process within Archdiocesan Council of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America that requested more time
before rendering advice as mandated by bylaws.
https://www.goarch.org/-/archdiocesan-council-unanimously-approves-letter-to-ecumenical-patriarchate
https://www.goarch.org/-/resolution-of-the-archdiocesan-council
Disgusting. The Phanar bureaucratic openly sorted the requested of the Church in America as if it were some a nothing toddler wanting another ice cream.
There you are with another bureaucratic turk
Sorry about spelling but sure you get the ghist.
Dear Matthew, With all due respect, the Archdiocesan Council of GOARCH should be the last one to ‘call foul’ on upholding bylaws and lawful procedures. GOARCH and especially Metropolitans, like Methodios in Boston. As we have personally experienced, they have a long record of doing whatever they want with full disregard to bylaws and parliamentary procedures. Time they get repaid with their own currency. Whose face is on their denari?
Dear OSJR,
There are many people who don’t and simply can’t agree with your premise of supporting more lawlessness in the face of lawlessness. I think that people being repaid with their own currency like that always creates undesirable situations.
Irony of ironies: Doesn’t “Elpidophoros” mean “bearer of hope”?!?
He certainly isn’t a messenger of hope to most Orthodox faithful in America.
Rather, his impending arrival says: “Bow down to us, your natural leaders in Istanbul.”
Whatever. Praying that the other American jurisdictions find their cajones and tell him to get lost. At least we know that ROCOR and probably the Serbs and Antiochians will.
Christ is Risen!
The final word comes when the last trumpet sounds. Until that Day, we only have rumors that the end has come.
And if this an end of sorts, then we should glorify God, who has given us such sufferings, for our purification.
No man or ideology can take over the Church, since it is the Body of Christ, without spot or wrinkle.
Sad days are not lost days. Difficult days and not a reason to give up the fight. In them, we can find joy and light, because the Lord has overcome death, and annihilated its power.
Christ is Risen!
The church is the people. Wherever the people go, the building will follow, one way or the other.
So true. A crisis is as we greeks know ‘a opportunity’ to look at a situation and decide. Χριστός Ανέστη.
Stirring words Pappouli!
Indeed He is risen!
Dear Papouli Theodore,
Indeed He is Risen!
I very much enjoyed reading your graceful comments, thank you.
So, let’s see. One degree after another, one meaningless meeeting after another, “monastic tonsure” (giggle), ordination 3 x, on deck swinging bats til somebody retires or dies…..HEY! Elpi! You’re on! This creature is a true hothouse flower. Has he ever seen unfiltered sunlight? I see no contact with a parish church in the history. What does this person DO for a living? I know he has posed for three pictures. We have seen it all. There is no reason to ever pay the least attention again.
These people are the real reasons for atheism and leaving the Church. What do they do? Well what does a lobbyist do that would be missed, over a nurse or a doctor?? Nothing. Just knows how to talk new liberal conference talk .
I fear same for uk greek church too. The current archbishop there, Geigorios, may have been weak in many ways, but he spent his entire life as priest and bishop in North London near to and loved by the people. And a sincere believer. And presented the worship of the church.
These scum, as this turk from bursa, with his soon to be spouting ecclesiastical crap, needs to be told to get lost. But I fear he will be wined and dined and feted and soon be coming out with his meaningless new age conference speak and sat with his archon and leadership a million, cronies. ANAXIOS ANAXIOS, ANAXIOS.
All I know is that in my OCA parish, the Greeks ABSOLUTELY enhance the experience (George is one of them). If more Greeks want to come on over, they are more than welcome: we’re Greek, Russian, Eritrean, Murrrican, and whatnot. I’m more Anglo than the English themselves, lol
The enthusiasm being shown here on Monomakhos for breaking up and abandoning the largest single Orthodox entity in the United States, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, is troubling to me.
What happened to the concept of giving a chance to someone new on a job? Just what horrible, non-Orthodox thing is he about to do?
John, this is not about giving someone a chance on a new job. It’s not even about Elpidophoros. It’s about a patriarch who, propped up by his minions, walked away from his brother bishops and, hence, the Church.
Bartholomew has lost his mind.
And now this severely compromised man, who has done considerable damage to the canonical Church on a global scale, is no longer at arm’s length from the GOA. With Archbishop Demetrios’ resignation, he is now able to directly impact a jurisdiction that, for all practical purposes, may have been already mortally wounded by old world politics and flat out incompetence. THAT’S what this is about. Elpidophoros is just another symptom of a disease that has infected our Church. He is not the cause of it nor can he make it better. Bartholomew and everything connected to him must be surgically removed to protect the Body of Christ.
Gail,
What is needed for that is Bishops under Constantinople and Athens to openly proclaim their opposition to the ecumenist heresy that His All-Holiness has championed for his entire career and to call the faithful back to Orthodoxy. Remember that every Bishop but one, including the Patriarchs of Moscow and Constantinople, signed on for reunion with Rome; only Mark of Ephesus stood against it; but the Church survived and kept its independence. As with Noah and Abraham and John the Baptist and Athanasius Christ used the faith of one man to keep the Church alive in dark times. We are not quite there yet but we will likely need such a leader soon.
A whole lot of pious GOA people in this country have been deluded through the love of money and their own heritage and the truncated conditions of worship here so that they can no longer see the truth. Who can or will speak against ecumenism from within a position of authority in the GOA? I think the voice will have to come from the Greeks in Greece, and it had better come soon, because Germany, the USA, the Papists, and much of the Phanar are all working to subjugate or destroy Christianity in that county as quickly as they can.
God loves the Greeks more than any people except the Jews, but we see that most of the Jews have turned away from Christ, and it can happen to the Greeks too. God is able from these very stones to raise up children of Abraham.
John, all things being equal, your critique is most apropos. The problem however ia that it is too late in the day as far as thr GOA is concerned. That goes dor Orthodoxy in America as well.
While Lambrianides will have the full support of Bartholomew, the GOA post-Iakovos is permanently hamstrung. The archbishop on NYC is merely a figurehead.
In addition, Bartholomew’s position has eroded considerably. 20 years ago this this new papalism might have worked but no longer. Nor should we forget that Arb Spyridon had the full support of cpole back then only to be thrown under the bus when the newly-minted metropolitans closed ranks against him.
As usual, so well said, George. I so call remember being told by Patriarch Bartholomew, His Eminence Archbishop Spyridon, would be the Archbishop up until his death or something to that extent. Oh boy, how things drastically changed after the money stopped coming in!
So this alienating/divisive figure about to lead GOARCH is suppose to bring in more money? Me thinks the more faithful will go elsewhere as GOA has been hemorrhaging members
Not quite sure what Bart’s idea behind this was. If he wanted more money he should have gotten an American-born, evangelism-minded guy who would have brought more converts/re-verts into the archdiocese
My guess, this guy has been tasked with “unifying” all the jurisdictions under GOARCH and reporting straight to the Phanar, under the guise of a future Autocephaly, which will probably never come, due to loosing that compilation of revenue from all jurisdictions. See Ukraine for example
Spyridon threw himself under the bus. He could not then and I imagine cannot now speak in complete sentences. A dim bulb. People just DON”T GET IT. They choose unitelligent people to serve in these jobs. I guess they know they can get away with it. Consider: Where do bishops come from? Laymen. Start with laymen with no brains you get bishops with none. There is no magic in ordination, obviously none in the silly charade of “tonsure”. No magic in wearing a black hat. As long as the laity are this unchatechised and put up with this kind of insult it will continue. When laity decide to send the bright boys to a seminary that teaches the Christian faith (it would be swell to have one that’s not on the brink of being closed for poor quality) , and that assumes they believe it with SOME intelligence to sbegin with, you’ll get better clergy and some day bishops. I didn’t say better bishops, just bishops. It will be a refreshing change from what we have now.
If the intelligence goes along with advanced degrees from Western universities, we might be better off without it. So many educated Bishops have been “enlightened” by the “angel of light” who reigns over Western intellectual culture. Pray for them.
Touche!
John,
I, for one, am not celebrating. I am saddened.
The vituperation you see here has little to do with the GOA, the faithful of which are deeply loved and respected. It’s just that our definition of ‘faithful’ has reference to the Faith of the Church, not blind loyalty at any cost to the holder of an office.
On another note, my gut tells me that by the measures that matter to some (the financial health of the archdiocese, the completion of the St. Nicholas Shrine, etc.), things will likely improve rather quickly. These measures, however, while not bad in themselves, are not those we care most about.
No, Bart behaves in the same abusive codependent manner that all Greeks treat their own families, neighbors and employees.
Well, John,
“The enthusiasm being shown here”
is not enthusiasm but sadness for what is happening to the Church,
really, can’t you see?
“giving a chance to someone new on a job?”
Elpidophoros was given many chance by becoming bishop, and you know what he did?
He wrote an introduction with words of praise in a book in 2018 written by arch-mason N.Laos in Greece.
https://www.theonlinepress.gr/diafora/νέος-αρχιεπίσκοπος-αμερικής-ο-μητροπ/
and
https://www.katanixis.gr/2018/10/katanixisgr-mason-pride.html
Really, John, what more chance do you want to give him, could it be to introduce another masonic book in the U.S.? Is that what he promised to do in his ordination?
John,
The best predictor of future performance is past performance. I’m not sure if the Abp Elpidophoros has ever pastored anything other than a monastery (his bio states that he’s the Abbot of the Holy Trinity monastery on Halki…. not sure how large that monastery is anyway) and that he’s a professor in the theological school in Thessaloniki. I’m all for bishops being monastics, but some real life parish experience is vital. Especially parish experience here in America. We are not a spread out archipelago of Greek villages.
We have on record his talk from 2009, where he outlines his views that the problem with the GOA is that it’s not Greek enough, and that we are all vassals of the “Throne” in Istanbul. He vilifies Met. Philip of blessed memory and Met. Jonah, both of whom knew that American Orthodox were no longer diaspora but a people who call America home, permanently. I’m not even sure if American converts to the faith are even on his radar.
Abp Elpidophoros has expressed his 100% support for the crazy new “church” in Ukraine which actively persecutes the saintly Met. Onuphry and his flock.
The “first without equals” mantra of the EP came from Abp Elpidophoros, in which he states that our faith cannot exist without the church in Istanbul (pure rubbish). As others have posted, he has called Pope Francis a father of our faith as well.
I’d love to be surprised, but God does not call us to be stupid or to have blind faith. All of his past performance suggests that this Abp will work out only if all faithful, clergy, and other American Orthodox jurisdictions are willing to defer to him, to honor Hellenism above all, and to honor his whims. I doubt that’ll happen.
As for “giving him a shot,” I don’t have a stake in that game since I’m no longer in the GOA. But if GOA faithful want to be patient to get to know him, how much do you think he or Istanbul will be patient to get to know the complexities and intricacies of our faith in America?
They completely ignored the GOA lay leadership plea for a locum tenens and for taking time to appoint a new Abp. Do you think that Abp Elpidophoros will reach out to Met. Joseph, to Met. Tikhon, to Met. Hilarion, and to other American Orthodox leaders to collaboratively work for our faith in this country? Or do you think his chief goal will be to channel GOA funds back to Istanbul, to promote Hellenism, to deride GOA faithful for not speaking Greek, and to continue to push his heretical views of the EP as the Eastern Pope?
If faithful feel compelled to “give him a chance,” then fine, but I don’t think they should be blind or ignorant about it. Just sayin’.
Χριστός Ανέστη!
It is called GOARCH. Do you know what G stands for?
Thank God, OCA is here.
In the meantime, leave our ethnicity alone.
Welcome Elpidophoros!
John you are a bright guy and I genuinely respect you. I suggest you read Elpidophoros’s white paper of about ten years ago renaming the Patriarch of Constantinople First Without Equal, instead of the traditional First Among Equals, which served the Church well for more than 1500 years. His mindset is a complete disaster. Black Bart is sending us his personal pit bull / lap dog. There is a reason for that. Anaxios, Anaxios, Anaxios!!
In the following link, you will see where the new Archbishop states that “we have two fathers…Pope Francis and EP Bartholomew.” It happens around the 1:48 mark.
https://youtu.be/zp15aaXPCWM
What does he say before two fathers?
Yes please Mikhail and thank you for asking Vergil. As a RC convert to Orthodoxy, I am particularly concerned. Thank you, Nicole
It would be well to re-visit the inflammatory and insulting speech given by Lambriniadis 10 years ago this month at Holy Cross. The American Orthodox Institute published it under the title, “Ecumenical Patriarchate: American ‘Diaspora’ must submit to Mother Church.”
http://www.aoiusa.org/ecumenical-patriarchate-american-diaspora-must-submit-to-mother-church/
Looks like he is a well-groomed hit-man to complete the Turkish take over, bristling with all the right ideas. If I had a cynical bone in my body, I might ask how Lambriniadis did when he was vetted by the U.S. State Department.
— kirill/kurillos
“Hellenist Triumphalism, Byzantine Nostalgia, maybe even Phanariote Romanticism.”
So the “Megali Idea” basically?
For those who are hoping for a united Orthodox Church of America, go ahead and count the GOA out for the time being. Hope instead that the Antiochians, OCA, and the Serbians can work something out, and a few more will join in. As for ACROD I can say Bishop Gregory is without a doubt a good Southern boy, and a pious and well-educated hierarch devoted to his diocese. He is, however, not about to lead ACROD out from under the EP especially with Met. Elpi as the new Archbishop.
Mikhail: “the new Archbishop states that “we have two fathers…Pope Francis and EP Bartholomew.”
No surprise that he and his boss side with the Uniate nationalists of Western Ukraine. The repetition of 1439.
Why should Greeks care about islamosoviet slavo-mongols?
Greece is the mother of the West, not the East.
Without the Greek, Orthodoxy is reduced to eastern tyranny
Sad sad comment meaning nothing. Makes me ASHAMED to be greek
For more than a thousand years now the West has rejected and betrayed the Greeks at every turn. They are doing so again as we write. The enemies of Christ will never stop until He returns.
If that were true, it would have been advisable for the Greeks to have looked to themselves, sort of like certain small East Asian countries with limited natural resources did, and forget about ‘betrayal’, rejection, and other excuses forever beyond remedy; just get on with it.
Greeks who left seem to have had little trouble with the idea.
Like my ma used to say (and many another ma, no doubt): “laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone”. A lot of other useful maxims, too.
Leonidas and his 300 Spartans begat the agrarian warrior glory of western civilization while Huntington’s Clash put Athens in the Islamo-Soviet zone. Sparta colonized Sicily hence begat Rome, while Athens colonized Scythia hence begat Russia. Alexander’s dad choked Athens by grabbing Besant to choke Scythian wheat. Athenians are the source of all leftist ideas like globalist commerce, Delian central banking, cowardly philosophers and socialist taxation. in https://sites.google.com/site/deplorablepolicyguide/
Poras Nanokis: “Why should Greeks care about islamosoviet slavo-mongols?”
Poras, you have “two fathers…Pope Francis and EP Bartholomew.”
Here is a story about your hero, from Orthodox Wiki:
“On 1437, Patriarch Joseph II of Constantinople, a friend of reunion, named Isidore Metropolitan of Moscow. After receiving funding from Basil II, Isidore headed to Ferrara for the continuation of the Council of Basel. His travels were a grand tour of his territories. He left on September 8, 1437, traveling through, among other cities, Riga and Lubeck. During the trip, Isidore displayed undue friendliness with the Latins and thus offended members of his traveling party. He arrived in Ferrara on August 15, 1438. In the sessions at Ferrara and Florence, to which the council moved in January 1439 due to the plague, he worked with Johannes Bessarion, after Mark of Ephesus had been silenced, trying to sell out Orthodoxy. The only person left to oppose him was the secular representative Thomas of Tver.
Through these times, Isidore received many honors from the Latin church. After the council, Pope Eugene IV made him a cardinal-presbyter and a papal legate for the provinces of Lithuania, Livonia, Russia, and Galicia. His appointment as cardinal is one of the few times that a person not of the Latin rite was so appointed.
On his return to Moscow after the council had approved reunion, Isidore issued in Budapest, in March 1440, an encyclical calling on all the Russian bishops to accept the union. On arrival in Moscow on Pascha 1441, he served his first Divine Liturgy in the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Moscow Kremlin carrying a Catholic cross in front of the procession, naming Pope Eugene IV during the prayers of the liturgy, and then proclaimed the union in the cathedral. He read to the faithful the decree of unification and later passed a message from Rome for Prince Basil requesting that he, the metropolitan, be assisted in spreading the union in Russia. Basil II of Moscow, the clergy, and the people would have nothing to do with his proclamation. Three days later, at Prince Basil’s direction he was arrested and a synod of six bishops deposed Isidore and shut him away in the Chudov Monastery as a prisoner.
Two year later in September 1443, Isidore escaped his imprisonment and fled first to Tver, then to Lithuania, and then finally to Rome. Graciously received in Rome, Pope Nicholas V sent him as a legate to Constantinople in 1452 to negotiate again a reunion. He was in Constantinople when the Ottoman Turks broke the defenses of the city on May 29, 1453. He escaped capture by dressing a dead body in his cardinal’s robes. While the Turks were occupied cutting off the head of the dead body, he was shipped off to Asia Minor, as a slave, with a group of insignificant prisoners. Escaping captivity, Isidore returned to Rome where he was made Bishop of Sabina.
Later, Pope Pius II gave him successively two titles: as Latin Patriarch of Constantinople and Archbishop of Cyprus, neither of which was he able make into a real jurisdiction. In October 1461, he was named the Dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals. Isidore reposed in Rome, Italy on April 27, 1463.”
Not to be disparaging of our hierarchy and the respect the office deserves, but, when the crap are out Bishops and Patriarchs going to nut-up and ACTUALLY do something?
I’m afraid it’s gotten to the point that Pat. Bartholomew needs to be deposed. Why is Constantinople historically always the start point for heresy in the Church?
Because of pride.
Take a look at this list, does it look like Greek Americans care about Orthodoxy, Russia, or even Greece? https://www.bilirakisforcongress.com/ https://www.charliecrist.com/ https://www.johnsarbanes.com/ http://www.dinatitus.com/ https://www.michaelwaltz.com/ https://www.chrispappas.org/ https://www.eleniforca.com/ https://www.susanforct.com/ http://www.votemcguiness.com/ https://www.mariapappas.net/ http://www.erikaharold.com/ http://www.mikegianaris.com/ https://www.andrewgounardes.com/ https://www.skoufisforny.com/ https://www.nicolemalliotakis.com/ https://www.nomikikonst.com/ https://www.jimtrakas.com/ https://www.zackspaceforohio.com/ https://www.leoraptakis.com/
Here’s to hoping that more politicians stop caring about the Russians
There have been hundreds of comments since George announced we had passed the 100,000 mark a few days ago. I may have missed it, but I haven’t seen Axios once. – I wonder if that gives them pause.
“AXIOS!! Metropolitan Elpidophoros of Bursa Elected Unanimously Archbishop of America”
https://hellenicnews.com/axios-metropolitan-elpidophoros-of-bursa-elected-unanimously-archbishop-of-america/
You and only you, dear Joseph, and even you had to be prompted.
Gail. God bless Joseph!!
well only two options exist,,,,, for the conservatives the old calendar jurisdictions in america of which there are many to choose from,,,,,,the other for those who want to grow and thrive is the oca — the infrastructure with st vlads and st tikhon’s grads in the goa is there — may be time for a change and to make the oca the american patriarchate —– carpe diem
The OCA. In NY I attended the whitestone St Nicholas Parish. Took parents of american Catholic ( non practice) friend. They loved it in all respects and I did too. I felt at home, in America, and ORTHODOX. Met the Bishop who was a simple ( in good sense) man with no imperial pretense and american.
Superb choir.
Want to add that is where if i as a greek lived in USA would worship. Met greek families there WHOSE CHILDREN WORSHIP TOO
Anaxios!
So true. A crisis is as we greeks know ‘a opportunity’ to look at a situation and decide. Χριστός Ανέστη.
Oh, geez. Wonder if it’s true.
John, thanks for sending it. Check latest post.