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The National Herald - February 12, 2019
We Have a Theological School Here Too
By Theodore Kalmoukos
The main administration building of Hellenic College and Holy Cross Greek-Orthodox School of Theology in one of the most prominent areas of Brookline Massachusetts.
The issue of the reopening of the Halki Seminary of the Ecumenical Patriarchate was brought into the foreground – very rightly so – one more time when Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras recently visited there.
During the joint press conference in Ankara Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that “we didn’t close the School” and he immediately connected its reopening with the issue of the selection of muftis in Greece’s Thrace region. Erdogan pressed one more time the dubious doctrine of linkage and sought to bargain over an issue of religion freedom, which is a matter adhering to international law, not bilateral relations.
When Tsipras visited Halki he made more hopeful statements expressing his wish that the historic Halki Seminary, which shouldn’t have been closed in the first place, will soon reopen.
Having said that, I want to remind everybody that here in America and yes in Boston, which is considered one of the leading academic cities of the United States and the World, there is our own Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology.
It is an institution established by then-Archbishop of America and future Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras with the financial support of the pioneer Greek immigrants.
The School is in the most prominent location of the city of Brookline, with good buildings and facilities, but without a soul and with no dreams for the future as it is in very dire financial, administrative, and academic condition – as The National Herald has revealed.
The question is, shouldn’t the Ecumenical Patriarchate show concern and care? In the final analysis, isn’t the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America an Ecclesiastical Eparchy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate?
Why has the Patriarchate permitted all those “exceptional mediocrities” that have been tucked away there through the years to bring the School literarily to its knees from every standpoint and to turn it into a wreck? The excuse that Patriarch Bartholomew invokes that there is an Archbishop and an Eparchial Synod in America not only fail to convince, on the contrary provoke laughter.
After all, they are the ones who sent the Archdiocese into bankruptcy despite their claims that they didn’t know anything about its finances. If that is the case, what kind of Synod are they?
As time passes the situation at the Seminary is becoming more unbearable and the cliques among the faculty and administration are fighting each other. During a recent meeting about the evaluation of students as to how prepared they are to become ordained, the art of hypocrisy was applied.
Despite the conclusion of the committee in the presence of the School’s president, Fr. Christopher Metropulos, that three students had huge deficiencies in theology, teleturgics, and knowledge of liturgical and biblical Greek, they still approved their ordination.
Thus in a little while more mediocrities will be added to the ranks of the clergy of the Archdiocese. But despite the fact that they will not be able to fulfill their basic priestly responsibilities in the parishes, they will demand lofty salaries, benefits, paid vacations, and travel expenses for meetings and Clergy-Laity congresses. All the good and expensive things that priesthood brings.
Of course here it is fitting to repeat the wise saying of the people: “you will learn the same letters that your teachers know who teach you.”
[ The National Herald
www.thenationalherald.com/230461/we-have-a-theological-school-here-too/
February 12, 2019 ]
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