Orwellian Orthodoxy?

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. – George Orwell
Πεταει ο γαιδαρος? Πεταει. (Do donkeys fly? Yes, they fly.) – Greek proverb

Most of us keep thinking, “well, now we’ve seen and/or heard everything. What more can our clergy, hierarchy and selected parish council throw at us?”

On a national level we are appalled to witness that a Metropolitan has actually forbidden sacraments in Lynn, Massachusetts because the community will not raise its yearly allotment from $68,000 to $88,000. At a time and in an economy where most of us are making do with less, the Metropolis of Boston and the Archdiocese demand MORE. The community is informed by the Archbishop that their Metropolitan is “synponetikos” (compassionate) and that he asks them, “eugenika”, (politely) to comply with the Metropolitan’s wishes. The actions and consequences are anything but compassionate or polite.

Locally, we were told by His Eminence that for the time being we were to remain united; stewards were to be identified and asked to pledge on a single, unified form, and the community should be encouraged to seek a badly needed harmony. His Eminence offered the Archdiocese’s assistance in these matters and others, also asking that Metropolitan Isaiah “kindly” implement these measures with the Archdiocese “firmly” by his side. Instead of “kind” implementation, we received a rambling, semi-comprehensible missive, insistent, as usual, on the Metropolitan’s prerogatives.

Adding insult to injury, the Metropolitan delves into a derogatory diatribe against a local “kind of” leader, who happens to be a Greek-born professional who has given nearly 50 years of devoted service to this community, painting all the Greek-born who arrived in the past half-century as “dishonorable” to the memory of the earlier Greek immigrants. (In fact we honor them greatly enough to engage in this unequal struggle with a clergy that has become anything but kind.) We who are immigrants, or who are related to immigrants who arrived “later” from the “old country” (please, who uses these terms anymore?) resent and are deeply offended by these assertions. It is, further, not the first time the Metropolitan has made his disdain toward “Hellenes” evident. (We wonder how his ancestors would feel about that, or for that matter, Archbishop Demetrios, who is, after all, a Greek immigrant who arrived “later”?)

Finally, there are our local priests and our selected parish council (where nary a Greek word, let alone, accent can be heard!) We have all witnessed how quickly they have rushed to comply with the Archbishop’s directives with regard to stewardship and unity.

But then again, ignorance apparently IS strength.