Letter to the Orthodox Times

The following letter is in response to your article falsely accusing Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of “attacking” Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.This is an absolutely false allegation. The reality is that the American Department of State has intervened blatantly in ecclesiastical matters and has created a catastrophic schism in the Orthodox Church. As a Greek American I am outraged by the intervention of people such as outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and “Ambassador” Geoffrey Pyatt in the affairs of the Orthodox Church.

This collusion between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and certain Bishops in the Churches of Greece and Cyprus with the State Department has contributed to the spiritual decline of these three Greek speaking Churches. The primary foreign policy aim of the American government is to isolate and contain Russia which is the last real bastion of Orthodox Christianity in the world. Russia is the Orthodox country that proceeded to save the Christians of Syria from genocide which resulted from the American Crusades in the Middle East. Russia is the Orthodox country that has blocked the neopagan gay, lesbian, and transgender ideology from being imposed (by western backed think tanks) on its territory.

On the matter of Ukraine, it was always the position of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and all Orthodox Churches that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Moscow was the authentic canonical Church. This stance did not change until the State Department meddled in Church affairs in 2018 and the Churches of Greece and Cyprus likewise refrained from entering into communion with Ukrainian schismatics until American officials all of whom are secularists or belong to certain Protestant heretical groups lobbied them to recognize the schismatics. 

The Russian Foreign Minister did not “attack” the Ecumenical Patriarch. He told the truth about Patriarch Bartholomew’s stance toward the Orthodox world. By tradition and by the teaching of Orthodox ecclesiology Patriarch Bartholomew is “first among equals” and holds a “primacy of honor” in the Orthodox Church. He is not an Eastern Pope and does not have the right to intervene in the internal affairs of any autocephalous Orthodox Churches. What he has done in Ukraine has violated canon law by attempting to restore”bishops” who were lawfully deposed by their own synods and has attempted to grab ecclesiastical territory (Ukraine) that has been part of the Russian Orthodox Church since 1686. 

 As a Greek, I also happen to love the city of Constantinople and the Great Church itself. However, I follow the example of Saint Mark of Ephesus who rejected the decisions of the Emperor John Paleologos and the Bishops of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1439 after they accepted the heretical decisions of the Council of Florence. The Orthodox Church has as its eternal leader the incarnate logos and word of God Jesus Christ! The Orthodox Church functions through the process of conciliarity in which the highest decision making authority emanates from an Ecumenical Council in which all Bishops from all local Churches convene to reach decisions.

Patriarch Bartholomew’s intervention in Ukraine undermines the conciliar tradition of the Orthodox Church at the behest of the atheist and heretical officials of the American State Department. Making this ecclesiastical crisis even worse is the violent persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church by the Ukrainian Government and by various Neo-Nazi and anti semetic militias and groups in Ukraine. The Greek Patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria and those Bishops in Greece and Cyprus who have entered into communion with defrocked Ukrainian shysters and unordained crackpots have committed serious ecclesiastical crimes against the Church of  Christ!

It is time for the Greek speaking world to come out of the slumber that it has been in since 2018 and to recognize that the State Department is using the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Greek Churches as if they were political parties or non governmental organizations. The Ukrainian affair has to do with proper ecclesiology and canon law, with the validity or non validity of the consecration of Bishops and the ordinations of Priests. These are matters that American officials have no business discussing or commenting on. 

Those Greeks who support Patriarch Bartholomew in his Ukrainian venture are in fact undermining the Ecumenical Patriarchate. As one who is under the omophorion of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and who has authored a book about its glorious history and has been active in raising awareness of its plight in Turkey, I say that I am against the activities of Patriarch Bartholomew in Ukraine. These activities and claims of supreme authority have destabilized and undermined the Church of Constantinople and its place in the Orthodox Church. Those who love and appreciate the great spiritual heritage of Constantinople are obligated to speak against the betrayal of this heritage by what is occurring in Ukraine. 

I conclude my letter by recalling the great irony in this entire affair. The State Department hypocritically claims to be protecting the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Anyone familiar with the history of the Church of Constantinople is aware of the fact that in the aftermath of the anti Greek pogroms of 1955  and the ethnic cleansing of Greeks from Constantinople and the islands of Imbros and Tenedos during the 1960’s surely recalls that the State Department refused to condemn or protest the atrocities against the Greek Orthodox population by the Turkish authorities. It should also be recalled that Archbishop Spyridon of Athens bravely condemned the Turkish government and the American and British governments for their passivity in the aftermath of the 1955 pogroms despite enormous pressure from the Greek Government and the American Embassy to keep silent. 

The Ecumenical Patriarchate’s strength has been spiritual, not political. Its strength throughout the hardships of the twentieth century emanated from its spiritual ties with its sister Orthodox Churches. As a result of Constantinople’s unwise and uncanonical invasion of the territory of the Russian Church in Ukraine it has cut itself off from the Russian Church and badly strained its relations with the other local Orthodox Churches. 

By harming the canonical and spiritual unity of the Orthodox Church through its invasion of Ukraine, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has also harmed itself by damaging the spiritual foundations upon which it was founded  and which has enabled the Great Church to survive since 1453. 

             Theodore G. Karakostas