[ COMMENTS ]

Re: Spyridon's statement
on the controversy between Vartholomaios-Christodoulos

by Anonymous on 13-May-2004 @ 09:03:22 UTC

The statement of His Eminence Archbishop Spyridon,at one time and for a short period Archbishop of America, that is in fact of the U.S.A., is on the face of it, a call to the Orthodox Church (es) in Europe to close ranks, especially as he puts it, in the face of Europe's Roman Catholic majority - he strangely omits the assorted Protestant denominations including the Anglican Church.

He professes profound sorrow at the decision taken by the Enlarged Synod of the Oecumenical Patriarchate - more precisely it was a Greater and Enlarged Temporarily Resident Synod according to traditional ecclesiastical terminology, in late March.He was obviously referring to the controversy or feud or dispute, call it what you like, between the Orthodox Church of Greece and that of Constantinople, its Mother Church, the Oecumenical Patriarchate over the latter's canonical rights regarding the dioceses in the North of Greece and certain Greek Aegean Islands which Constantinople transferred as a Vicariate to the Autocephalous Church of Greece though retaining residual canonical rights over them, through the Patriarchal Praxis of 1928, enshrined in the current Constitution of the Hellenic Republic. His concern is shared by many - public brawls are not welcome in the courtyard of Europe and that of the whole world, though the controversy has not descended to that level, despite the attempts by various sensationalising journalists, assorted politicians in the Greek arena, some of whom are professed non-believers or practice religion as a matter of convenience and the odd correspondent on the internet who is a water-carrier for vested ecclesiastical interests.

Having said that, may I respectfully point out to His Eminence that he seems to have been ignoring -both in his most recent statement and a previous one regarding the reconstruction of the Holy Standing Synod of the Oecumenical Patriarchate some of his own calls in the past to revive the institution of a "representative" synod, as he put it, by the Phanar.

The issue of "representation" apart - he knows that the "Resident" Synod over the centuries, including Byzantine days, 1700 odd years, in Constantinople assumed many shapes and forms and that Canon Law in fact, he would know better than humble laymen, whatever their qualifications and research, never enshrined the concept of a representative synod other that the "eparchial" or metropolitical synod and the occasional Oecumenical Council. The concept of the Synod of the Hierarchy, as is known nowadays in Greece or the other Balkan churches is a relatively recent development and cannot be equated to either a provincial synod ( as are the Cretan, or U.S.A. ones) or much less an Oecumenical Council. The other type of synod, the Local, in Church history was an occasional phenomenon. Those churches like the Cypriot one, simply converted a provincial synod into a de facto national one, some canonists would argue.

Archbishop Spyridon's own requests for a reconstructed "Continuing" Synod and a Synod of the Hierarchy of the Oecumenical Patriarchate, nevertheless seem to have been answered in part, though with respect to His Eminence not because he asked for them, by the reconstructed Standing Synod at the Phanar from March 1st last and by the recently convened Greater Enlarged Synod, "Temporarily Resident" in Constantinople, at the end of March.

True, the Standing Synod, contains only six of its twelve members from outside Turkey ( five if the Senior Metropolitan of Nicaea is to be put in a special category, though it would appear that the Finnish Church, under Constantinople, was cognisant - and probably consulted about - of the inclusion of its former and most venerable primate. Those five, however, include some formidable episcopal entities : (i) the Primus (in fact,not in name only) of the Church in the U.S.A.who presides over his own provincial synod of eight metropolitans, (ii) the Primus , again in fact, of the Church of Crete which has its own