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faith

His Memory Be Eternal!

  • On Monday April 10, one of the Saints that is commemorated on the calendar of the Orthodox Church is Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople. Patriarch Gregory served as Ecumenical Patriarch on at least three different occasions. He was deposed the first two times, but his last tenure on the Patriarchal throne ended with his execution. 
  • He was executed at the gate of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on the Sunday of Pascha. He was held responsible by the Ottoman Sultan for the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence. Formally, the Patriarch renounced the Greek uprising. Unofficially however, he had known about plans for an uprising but remained silent. He took the position that he could not be formally involved but did nothing to betray the Greek cause either. 
  • After the Greek uprising, a campaign of terror was undertaken against the Greek Orthodox populations of Constantinople, Smyrna, and Thessaloniki. The martyrdom of the Patriarch seemed to have exhausted the rage of the Sultan and the policies against the Greeks in those cities was relaxed. The Patriarch gave his life for the protection of his flock.
  • His execution angered both the Russian and British governments. The Russians were angry that an Orthodox Patriarch was put to death and the anti Greek terror campaign in the Ottoman Empire hardened Russian attitudes to the Turks. The British recognized that the execution of one of Christendom’smost prominent spiritual leaders was a horrendous crime and could not ignore it. 
  • The Patriarch suffered considerably. Along with several bishops he was hanged. The gate where he was hanged from at the Patriarchate has remained closed up to the present day. A former Mayor of Constantinople that was elected in 1994 named Recep Erdogan had vowed that he would visit the Patriarchate and the gate would be opened just for him. International pressure forced him to back down. 
  • The Patriarch Gregory V was weak and frail. He was hanging for hours before he died. His body was subsequently degraded and dragged through the streets of Constantinople. His body was thrown into the bosporus was eventually found and taken to Odessa where he received an official State funeral at the expense of the Russian Empire. In 1871, the relics of the Patriarch were sent to Athens where they have remained in the Annunciation Cathedral to be venerated by faithful Orthodox Greeks. 
  • Patriarch Gregory V is an example of a spiritual shepherd. His life was lost so his faithful left behind in the Ottoman Empire would be spared. On the one hundredth anniversary of his martyrdom in 1921, the Patriarch Gregory was officially recognized as a Saint by the Greek Orthodox Church. This was when 
  • the Greeks were fighting for the liberation of Asia Minor and it was hoped the Greek Army would be inspired by the Saint from Constantinople. 
  • It should be noted that the Russians gave the Patriarch a state funeral. There is no reason why the Ecumenical Patriarchate should not have brotherly spiritual relations with the Russian Church. Greeks and Russians share so much including the Saints. Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory V was an Orthodox traditionalist and one of the best Patriarchs to serve in the post Byzantine era. The present occupant of the Ecumenical Patriarchate should emulate 
  • his example and his bravery.
  • In this case, bravery would be to reverse what has been done in Ukraine over the past five years. This necessitates condemning the oppression of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Let us remember Patriarch Gregory V! His memory be eternal!
Categories
political

Canadian Fascism

Last December, the New Atlantis a conservative magazine wrote about the advances that the right to die has made in Canada. An interview was conducted with a doctor who supports euthanasia. The article can be found here www.the new Atlantis.com/publications/no-other -options.

The doctor interviewed enthusiastically embraces the “right” to die and called it “therapeutic”. The article alarmingly discusses how some people are choosing to terminate their lives because they are unemployed or having financial difficulties. The horrific predictions that conservatives made back in the 1990’s about euthanasia are being fulfilled.

Liberals in favor of euthanasia have said only people who were terminally sick would be permitted to voluntarily end their lives. From a Christian standpoint suicide is always a sin and immoral. The Church emphasizes faith and hope and life because man is created in the image of God. Man is neither an animal to be put down nor a machine to be unplugged.

Canada permits putting desperate and troubled people to death while imprisoning men like Rob Hoagland. Mr. Hoagland is the man that was imprisoned for opposing his fifteen year old daughter’s sex change surgery. These policies are barbaric.

Nazi Germany embraced the policies of euthanasia when it sought to murder the lives of people it considered unfit. These would include the mentally retarded and others considered “useless”. These people were gassed. The euthanasia program became the model for the use of gas in the death camps during the holocaust.

Assisted suicide is inevitably the fulfillment of social Darwinism, the survival of the fittest. Permitting the “suicides” of the weak and the vulnerable is nothing less than murder. This nothing less than the revival of fascism under the guise of liberal democracy.

America and Europe are going down similar paths. In January, Democrats in Minnesota promoted a radical bill promoting abortion throughout pregnancy. This would mean an abortion would be legal in that state for any reason at any time during a woman’s nine month pregnancy.

Social progressivism in this day and age is fascism.

Categories
faith

Hagia Sophia Diaries 30

Last December it was reported that Hagia Sophia suffered even more damage. The Imperial Gate under the mosaics of Saints Constantine and Justinian was damaged last year, but in December it was discovered the gate suffered more damage. Hagia Sophia appears to suffer from the ignorance of those responsible for the Great Church’s upkeep.

President Erdogan took Hagia Sophia from the ministry of culture which did a good job preserving the Church, and gave it to the clerics who are completely indifferent to both the Christian origins of Hagia Sophia and the historical significance of the Church. The upcoming Turkish elections will be significant.

Will Hagia Sophia be restored as a museum in a post Erdogan government? This remains to be seen.

Categories
Letters

Letter To Senator

My name is Theodore Karakostas and I am a Greek Orthodox Christian. This is not a political letter, but a letter motivated by concerns over religion, democracy, and freedom of conscience. 
At the present time, the Ukrainian government is attempting to outlaw the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This Church is one of three religious institutions claiming to be an Orthodox Church in that country. The dogmatic and ecclesiological matters are a matter of importance to Orthodox Christians and so I will not delve into this particular matter. 

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (not to be confused with the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine) has condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Despite this, the Zelensky government is intent on outlawing the Church and has permitted angry mobs with fascist sympathies to seize Churches in order to give them to the religious institution presently favored by the Kiev government. In a democratic society, the government should not care where people choose to worship and citizens should not be discriminated against or suffer violence because of choices they make in matters of religion. 

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been persecuted by the Ukrainian authorities long before the Russians invaded. The Ukrainian government has targeted an entire community because of the choices they make in matters of faith. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is being targeted because it is under the spiritual leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church. The hierarchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has condemned the Russian invasion and provided support for all Ukrainians regardless of religious affiliation. 

At the present time, the Ukrainian authorities are attempting to seize the Kiev Caves Lavra (a monastic complex) of Kiev which is the holiest site in Ukraine. The government is trying to evict the monks and seminarians even though they have done nothing wrong. Angry mobs have been harassing the monks and ordinary Ukrainians who have shown up at the monastery to show their support for the monastery and the monks. There is nothing political about this, and under no circumstances does concern for the freedom of religion for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church have any sort of implications regarding the war. 

Roman Catholics throughout the world are under the spiritual authority of the Papacy. This does not make Roman Catholics loyal to the Italian government. As a Greek Orthodox, I am under thespiritual authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople from Turkey, and I have no sympathies for the Turkish government. The Ukrainian government is violating the right to religious freedom for millions of Ukrainians. American taxpayers are subsidizing the government of Ukraine.

The American government must demand that the government in Kiev cease and desist from interfering in the religious lives of its citizens. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church must be granted the same rights and recognitions that other religious institutions in Ukraine enjoy. 

Theodore Karakostas
Milton

Categories
Published Letters

Greek Churches Must Speak

LETTER TO EDITOR

Letter to the Editor: On the Orthodox Church in Ukraine

April 5, 2023

The National Herald

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(Photo: TNH, File)

(Photo: TNH, File)

To the Editor:

The Greek-speaking world has always prided itself on its devotion to the faith of Christ and the Orthodox Church. As such, it is of extreme importance that we must raise our voices to condemn the barbaric persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its most important shrine, that of the Kiev Caves Lavra. From the strict point of view of canon law and Orthodox ecclesiology the Ukrainian Orthodox synod of Metropolitan Onuphry is the canonical Church of Ukraine. There is a schismatic entity called ‘Orthodox Church of Ukraine’ which lacks canonicity, catholicity, and apostolicity. Its creation is in fact highly irregular and problematic and threatens to destroy Orthodox unity.

From a democratic standpoint, religious freedom and freedom of conscience are extremely important. This means that each individual has the right to follow whatever religion or faith that they like. In Greece for example, individuals may worship within the canonical Church of Greece, or they may worship among the old calendar churches. Or they may attend Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or Muslim services. The point is they have the right to worship as they like.

The Ukrainian government has effectively decided to outlaw the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. These are outright fascist policies that target an entire group of people because they worship within the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which was always recognized by all Orthodox Churches (including Constantinople) as the canonical Church of Ukraine until 2018. The decision of individuals to worship within the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is a basic human right supported by the right to religious freedom and freedom of conscience.

The Ukrainian government has been seeking to evict over two hundred monks from the Kiev Caves Lavra, the holiest site in Ukraine. Kiev reasons that because the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is under the omophorion of the Patriarchate of Moscow there must be some sort of sinister political designs at work. This is like saying that Greek Orthodox in America and those parts of Greece (Crete, the Dodecanese islands, Mount Athos) that are under the Ecumenical Patriarchate must have some secret loyalty to the Turkish government.

Were Roman Catholics around the world disloyal to their own countries when Mussolini was in power, or when Rome was under Nazi occupation? We should remember that the Turkish government has in the past accused the Ecumenical Patriarchate of having political designs and has bestowed a policy of repression upon it.

The Greek speaking Orthodox churches must find their voices and must condemn the oppression of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The Greek Churches should remember the bravery of martyred Patriarch-Saint Gregory V, Metropolitan Chrysostom of Smyrna, Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens, and the late and beloved Archbishop Christodoulos who always spoke out against injustice.

Theodore Karakostas

Boston, MA

Categories
political

Madonna, Biden, And The Trans Evil

This past week six people (three of them children) were murdered in a school shooting perpetrated by a “trans” woman. The school was an Evangelical Christian school. The murderer was a former student who reportedly harbored resentment at her Evangelical family’s opposition to transgenderism.

The murders were anti Christian. This has been ignored by the media which continues to espouse the deranged cause of trans psychopaths. Madonna has announced she will perform at a benefit concert for the trans community. Not for the families of the people who were murdered.

Madonna seeks to oppose a law in Tennessee that prohibits drag queens from performing in public places where children are present. Madonna has denounced laws in general that seek to keep LGBT sexual ideology away from children. Madonna recently did a photo shoot with Vanity Fair in which she blasphemously dressed as both Jesus Christ and the Mother of God.

Reasonable people recognize that parents have a right to raise children according to their values. The LGBT activists demonstrate that their entire cause is without reason, logic, or morality. They have demanded and received access to other people’s children in schools and public libraries. They recognize no limits which is demonstrated by their efforts to indoctrinate children.

School libraries include books on homosexuality and transgenderism. Public libraries host shows by drag queens with sexual overtones which are attended by children. The massacre in Nashville was for years preceded by an organized effort from the trans activists to indoctrinate children.

Dylan Mulvaney is a YouTube “performer” who “discovered” he is a woman. He was able to visit the White House and interview Joe Biden. He asked Biden about the legislation passed by Republicans across the country which prohibit transitioning (sex changes) for minors. Joe Biden referred to such legislation as “immoral”.

That says something about Biden and the Democratic Party. In the aftermath of the massacre, attention is given to lunatic trans activists rather than the victims. Madonna, Biden and others who refuse to stop the trans evil are morally complicit in child abuse.

It also indicates the rising threat to all Christians in America and the west.

Categories
Commentary

The Ecumenical Patriarchate And The Great Lavra

As of this writing, it appears the faithful Ukrainian monks of the Great Lavra are going to be forcibly evicted by the fascist police. Orthodox hierarchs worldwide are holding all night vigils and contacting their elected officials to intervene. In America, Metropolitan Tikhon of Orthodox Church in America (OCA) has raised his voice with Orthodox hierarchs.

Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese has said nothing. The morally and spiritually bankrupt Archdiocese has nothing to say on the matter. The Archbishop who marched with the Marxist “black lives matter” and held a liturgy in that pagan temple used by the anti Christian Episcopalians is silent to the plight of the monks of the Great Lavra.

Patriarch Bartholomew has demonstrated he cares only about power. In 2018, he colluded with the State Department to carve up the Russian Orthodox Church. He granted “autocephaly” to a depraved group of laymen who were either defrocked by the Russian Church or never ordained by the real Church.

Patraiarch Bartholomew had no authority to intervene in Ukraine. From 1992 (the origin of the Ukrainian schism) until 2018, the Patriarchate’s official position was that the synod under Moscow was the legitimate Church in Ukraine. It has always been evident that the Patriarch changed his stance because of political factors.

The Churches of Greece, Cyprus, and Alexandria blindly followed Constantinople’s suicidal path. The Greeks of 1821 and 1940 would be appalled by the slavish manner with which today’s Greek hierarchs obeyed the State Department. On matters of faith and ecclesiology.

We have forgotten the State Department’s apathy toward the Greeks of Constantinople and the ethnic cleansing process by the Turks since 1955. The collusion between the Greek hierarchs of Constantinople and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese with the State Department is obscene. Never let it be forgotten that the Russian Orthodox Church in 1955 condemned the anti Greek pogroms by Turkey.

I’m 2004, Russia helped kill the Annan Plan for Cyprus which would have sealed the Turkish occupation. In 2010, the Russians helped open the Patriarchal Monastery of Pangia Soumela in Trebizond. Russophobia infected the Greeks.

For several years the canonical Ukrainian Church has been persecuted by President Zelensky and his predecessor Petro Poroshenko. This started long before the war. The Ukrainian government and its Neo Nazi militias accuse the legitimate Ukrainian Church of being pawns for Moscow.

The hypocrisy is astounding. The synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has in fact condemned the Russian invasion. This means nothing to the fascists who lead Zelensky by the nose. The fascists who have been seizing Churches over the last several years have taken them for political reasons.

The blasphemers in Zelensky’s government intend to use the relics of Saints in the Great Lavra to attract visitors to the museum that the Monastery is going to become.

The Ukrainian bishops are accused of serving Russia. This is interesting considering the degree to which the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese serve Turkish and American interests. In 2018, Patriarch Bartholomew blessed the Turkish Army before it invaded the Kurdish region of Syria. Archbishop Elpidophoros appeared with officials of Turkey and the leader of the Turkish occupation of Cyprus in the fall of 2021.

Which bishops are serving which governments? The Greek and Greek American media have been ominously quiet about the Ukrainian schism since it began. Deference to Patriarch Bartholomew has reached an extreme point to which Greeks are unaware that American influence has a hold over the hierarchs in all Greek speaking Churches. This is appalling.

There are voices suggesting the Ecumenical Patriarchate should be abolished. This blog is not among those voices despite abhorring and condemning all of Patriarch Bartholomew’s actions in Ukraine. The downfall of the Ecumenical Patriarchate will occur because it has deviated from Orthodox ecclesiology.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate holds a “primacy of honor” and holds first place among Orthodox Churches. That may change very soon. The Ecumenical Patriarchate turned its back on its sister Churches and Orthodox faithful everywhere to align itself with the atheistic and neo pagan establishment in Washington.

The Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church has written to Patriarch Bartholomew asking him to speak out on the persecution of the Monks of the Great Lavra. The Patriarch’s refusal to speak and to repent may bring about the end of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Categories
Letters

Letter To National Review


Bobby Miller in his March 26 article hopes that Turkish President Erdogan will lose the elections. Unfortunately, he hopes that Kemal Kilicdaroglu will win the elections. The latter 
is the head of the Republican People’s Party which is no better than Erdogan’s Party. Both of these men are extreme Turkish nationalists and both of them openly call for invading Greece and seizing the Greek islands. Mr. Miller appears to be a throwback to the writers that believed Turkey was some kind of secular utopia before Erdogan totally destroyed that myth. 

Mr. Miller shows no concern for Greece, Cyprus, Armenia, or the Kurds who are all being victimized by the present regime in Ankara. The Erdogan regime threatens Greece and Cyprus,
and has armed the terrorist state of Azerbaijan which started a war with Armenia and carried out war crimes and ethnic cleansing against Armenian soldiers and civilians alike. Is there 
ever a time when American writers on foreign policy will give up on the myth of Turkey?

Kilicdaroglu heads the party that was founded by Mustafa Kemal and was later led by “bloody” Bulent Ecevit. Kemal was the homicidal maniac who presided over the mass extermination
of Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian Christians in Asia Minor. Ecevit ordered the bloody Turkish invasions of Cyprus in 1974. Virtually all of Turkey’s political leaders in Parliament have 
criticized Erdogan.

They have not criticized him for his authoritarianism and for his intolerance of Christians. For example, they have not criticized his conversion of the Greek Orthodox Hagia Sophia into a Mosque back in 2020. They have criticized him for not following through on his threats to invade the islands of Greece which they refer to as “occupied territory”. Turkey will remain a threat to American interests as Ankara will remain hostile to the Kurds who represent a real future for democracy in the region were they ever to gain any form of independence. 

Theodore Karakostas
Boston

Categories
faith

On the Convening Of A Council

Archbishop Anastasios of Albania has again called for the convening of a council to resolve the schism in Orthodoxy. The Archbishop had called for the convening of a council from the time the crisis in the Church began. There is however a serious risk in convening a council now.

There have been very serious developments since Patriarch Bartholomew intervened in Ukraine. Bishops in Greece and Cyprus have entered into communion with the fake entity in Ukraine. The Patriarchate of Alexandria recognized the fake entity.

The Russian Church broke communion with some bishops (including the primates) in Greece and Cyprus. It has broken off communion entirely with the Alexandrian Patriarchate. Unlike Constantinople which did not break communion with Moscow (after Moscow broke communion with Constantinople), Alexandria has broken communion with Moscow.

There is therefore a full rupture in communion between Alexandria and Moscow. This happened after the Russian Church established a presence in the territory of Africa after Alexandria refused to reverse its recognition of the fake church in Ukraine. Then there is the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Would the convening of a council change anything for the better at this time? A council at this point might have the opposite effect of what the Archbishop hopes will happen. As long as the war in Ukraine continues, anti Russian sentiment will continue and the State Department will not relinquish its grip over the Greek speaking Churches.

The best course of action is to wait for the war to end and international tensions to ease. A council can only be effective if political interests do not intrude. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union tried to use the Russian Church for its own goals.

The US is doing likewise with the Greek Churches today. A successful council convening under the guidance of the Holy Spirit must happen. But when the time is right.

During the iconoclastic controversy, it took sixty years before the Church fathers gathered at Nicea to discern the truth. Even after that, iconoclasm made comeback and it was not until another fifty six years that the truth prevailed against the iconoclasts.

Saint Athanasius struggled against the Arian heresy for decades even after the first Ecumenical council of 325 AD. There need be no rush to convene a Council. We do not need to risk a repetition of the debacle that occurred at Crete in 2016.

Categories
political

Farewell To Patrick Buchanan

The great Patrick Buchanan retired from journalism this past January. Buchanan was a fine conservative who sought to save the Republican Party from the neoconservatives. He ran for President in 1992 and 1996.

Buchanan served in the Nixon and Reagan administrations. After the Cold War, he became an anti war conservative and his ideas were later shared by Donald Trump. Buchanan opposed the Gulf War in 1990 and denounced the neocons.

In 1992, the neocon establishment closed ranks behind the elder Bush and defeated Buchanan. At the Republican National Convention Buchanan gave a great speech referring to the religious and cultural war under way for the soul of America. Buchanan anticipated the problems America would have by intervening in other countries and the rise of the LGBT movement.

In 1996, Buchanan won the Republican primary in New Hampshire. The neocons succeeded in defeating him much as they would later work to bring down Donald Trump. In 2003, Buchanan became a founder of the American Conservative which opposed the Iraq War from the very beginning.

Buchanan proved to be correct on Iraq and the Middle East. Buchanan opposed the expansion of NATO. He was right when so many foreign policy “experts” were wrong. His voice will be missed but at least his ideas live on in Donald Trump’s candidacy for President.