“Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them,

and they that are great exercise authority upon them.

But it shall not be so among you:

but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;

And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:

Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto,

but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:25-28, KJV)


The word the Athenians used for their Assembly was Ekklesia, the same word used in the New Testament for Church
(and it is the greatest philological irony in all of Western history that this word,
which connoted equal participation in all deliberation by all members,
came to designate a kind of self-perpetuating, self-protective Spartan gerousia -
which would have seemed patent nonsense to Greek-speaking Christians of New Testament times,
who believed themselves to be equal members of their Assembly.)

- Thomas Cahill, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter




ΦΙΛΟΤΙΜΟ: THE GREEK SECRET


Saturday, August 2, 2008

Bravo

In response to Mr. Varanakis' assertion that the Metropolitan "stands by the letter he provided to our community after the information on our survey was provided him.", we say, as we said we would, "bravo".

We however stand by our blogs regarding the issue, despite Mr. Varanakis' detailed explanations on the nature of the CLC and its myriad of workshops, meetings and resolutions.

TOCB in representing the wishes of 87% of this community's members who voted, had every reason to point out that the issue of splitting our community WAS in fact on the CLC agenda, regardless of whether or not it was discussed. The controversy, in fact, would never have occurred, had the resolutions sent to the Archbishop been amended based upon "the information our survey provided".

In fact, we surmise that had this situation not been exposed, we may have all been facing a highly different outcome.

Further, we find it hard to imagine that some random soul from another parish or state felt self-righteously compelled to see to it that our community was split, and therefore proposed the original resolution at the Denver Metropolis CLC in Tulsa.

Therefore we reiterate the critical question, "WHO initially proposed the resoluton at the Denver Metropolis CLC in Tulsa, Oklahoma with regard to splitting our community?"

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I totally disagree with the moderator who decided to caption the latest letter to the blog with the word "Bravo". Neither Mr. Varanakis nor his Eminence deserve such a congratulatory remark if one analyses the factual events that led to the sent letter to the Archbishop by the local Metropolitan asking that he (the Archbishop) submits the ever known "resolution" of the split of the two Churches of our Community to the CLC in Washington this year for discussion and consideration for passage. There is no doubt that the "trio", i.e., The Metropolitan with his two chronies have attempted, once more, to pull a fast one on us. I believe that if it wasn't for the so called "rumors", that our parishioners started in the middle of the Clergy-Laity Conference, the "deal" would have been accomplished and this would have been "IT". Kai meta trexa gyreve. The one big question remains, however. Since both Fr. Michael and our President Nick Varanakis attended the local CLC in Tulsa, Oklahoma in May, 2007, whereby the resolution of the split was submitted and approved, WHY those two representatives of our Community did not report "the sad news" back to the rest of the Board Members and the members of our Community????
Sakis Sakellariou