The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Thread

Since BLM was mentioned, it is interesting to note that when doing a search on their website for lives that should “matter”, it is rather selective. There are mounds of data on Trayvon ( for ex.) but do a search on the victims of the Charleston, SC Church shooting and no results. Someone like Clementa C Pinckney does not register.

Charleston church shooting - Wikipedia

https://blacklivesmatter.com/search/Clementa+C+Pinckney+/

Justin-H.S. said:

So, I edited the original post because I took into consideration your feelings, and you keep swiping at me even after it was edited that’s on you.

The OP (edited long before your constant swiping last night) doesn’t say one way or the other. If the EP and Abp repented of their ways of allying themselves with anti-Christian Western governments and their anti-Christ ideologies, that would especially go in here. If the GOA hierarchs woke up and by God’s grace became the most trad jurisdiction known to man, do you think I wouldn’t put that in here? I’d be happy to post that news.

Would that happen? It’s up to God. We’re the ones praying for our wayward hierarchs at church, gritting our teeth while the rest of the Church laughs at us for having an Archbishop who’s aligning himself (and by proxy, us GOA laity) to the secular woke ideology.

You think we like our situation? At least your hierarchs aren’t blatantly p!ssing in your face and calling it “rain.”

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no one is swiping at you. I didn’t think it was wise to post this thread in the beginning, and then came many justifications as to why it was wise to have such a thread. so, I responded each time.

no swiping.

Justin-H.S. said:

At least your hierarchs aren’t blatantly p!ssing in your face and calling it “rain.”

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If your spiritual house, your parish, is really that bad for you, why not join OCA, AOCNA, or another?

Lukaris said:

Since BLM was mentioned, it is interesting to note that when doing a search on their website for lives that should “matter”, it is rather selective.

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Probably because its narrowest focus is on police killings of blacks, not, say, discrimination against blacks in general.

rakovsky said:

Suppose, as evidence shows, that GOARCH staff pocket funds designated for St. Nicholas shrine in NYC...

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On October 16, 2018, the Special Investigative Committee (SIC) released Phase II of the PricewaterhouseCoopers investigative report to the Archdiocese, along with a summary communication based on the report.[65]

It concluded that there was no evidence that St. Nicholas funds were improperly paid to any individuals employed by or associated with the Archdiocese, and no evidence or allegation that fraud was committed in connection with the St. Nicholas project. Rather, the cost overruns appear to have been the result of change orders agreed to by Archdiocese decision-makers to address architectural concerns or enhance the design of SNCNS.

rakovsky said:

Probably because its narrowest focus is on police killings of blacks, not, say, discrimination against blacks in general.

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I am comparing victims of an outright racist massacre( not acknowledged on their website) to a person ( unfortunately) killed in debatable circumstances that they uphold as a martyr.

Lukaris said:

I am comparing victims of an outright racist massacre( not acknowledged on their website) to a person ( unfortunately) killed in debatable circumstances that they uphold as a martyr.

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OK.
I am explaining the rationale why they would do that in line with their mission focus. It doesn't mean that BLM doesn't care about the victims in Charleston.

FenderTL5 said:

It concluded that there was no evidence that St. Nicholas funds were improperly paid to any individuals employed by or associated with the Archdiocese, and no evidence or allegation that fraud was committed in connection with the St. Nicholas project. Rather, the cost overruns appear to have been the result of change orders agreed to by Archdiocese decision-makers to address architectural concerns or enhance the design of SNCNS.

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Statement Regarding the Arrest of Jerome “Jerry” Dimitriou - 2019 - Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

According to the Justice Department’s website, Dimitriou was charged on wire fraud charges for committing two embezzlement schemes: 1) where he allegedly embezzled more than $488,000 from GOARCH by directing subordinates to issue him unauthorized excess salary payments; and 2) where he allegedly charged hundreds of personal expenses to his GOARCH credit card, without authorization, costing GOARCH at least tens of thousands of dollars.

The Special Investigative Committee formed by GOARCH that included the law firm of Baker Hostetler and PriceWaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC formed to review the finances of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine found no evidence of any theft of any kind against St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine. ... Thus, the alleged embezzlement that Mr. Dimitriou has been charged with today appears to be unrelated to St. Nicholas.

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Didn't the PWC report conclude that it found nothing illegal because funds from St Nicholas were transferred to pay other, unrelated GOARCH expenses, thus making the transfer of funds purely an internal GOARCH matter? If the funds got transferred from the Shrine to unrelated GOARCH expenses, AND if Dimtrou acquired overcharged GOARCH personnel "expenses", then what?

• If the PWC audit found no wrongdoing then why is the St.Nicholas Shrine still under federal investigation?
• Is Psaros aware that the PWC report declares that Papadakos and Dimitriou, the two top finance officers at GOA (now both indicted), declined to be interviewed for the report? These two officers were indicted AFTER the supposedly “all good” report was published…. Also, Skanska, the main construction company, refused to be interviewed…
• Why doesn’t the PWC reports refer, not even ONCE, to Fr.Karloutsos and his multiple liabilities? Was AB Demetrios the only one who made mistakes? Wasn’t Fr.Karloutsos part of the small team that worked for St.Nicholas? Didn’t he make millions in fundraising “commission” for himself? Wasn’t his presvytera and son employed for decades by GOA – doing next to nothing – at a huge salary over $200.000/yr? Wasn’t he employed as a chaplain by the Port Authority at the same time as he was part of the St.Nicholas team (a clear conflict of interest)?
• Who is responsible for the selection of the higher bidder, Skanska? It does not seem to be AB Demetrios. Then who? Fr.Karloutsos, Jerry Dimitriou, or someone else? The October 2018 PWC report (page 8) says specifically: “Documents provided included no rationale for why the GOA selected Skanska”…
• How can Psaros say that nothing illegal happened, when we all know that money was taken out of a “restricted account”? How pathetic is to take money out of a 911 fund?
• If “Faith” and “Leadership 100” are now ready to violate their charters and donate money, why didn’t they do it three years ago? Why should the Church and the Greek American community be embarrassed so that Bartholomew and Karloutsos force AB Demetrios to resign? If “Faith” and “Leadership” allowed the GOA get a mortgage while they could help (during 2018 and before), how can they be trusted in the future? Does Psaros think that his (ridiculously void of answers) speech will cover the wrongdoers? The fact that he paid PWC with his own money does not mean that he can misrepresent their report in any way he wishes…

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• The Whistleblower Comments on Michael Psaros’ Speech… - Helleniscope

Justin-H.S. said:

"At least your hierarchs aren’t blatantly p!ssing in your face and calling it “rain.”" - Justin
...
Because I was advised by many on this forum (and posting in this thread) to stay in my parish so I am.

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No one is forcing you to stay an official member of a parish or jurisdiction in the US where you are unhappy for a legitimate, canonical reason. The Quran asserts that "There is no compulsion in religion." Isn't Church life supposed to be even better?

You should avoid church-hopping over something minor. Imagine that you change your membership to someplace new and something else minor crops up. But EO Churches have no requirement to instruct people that they have to stay in a parish where they are hurting for a legitimate reason.

I admire Abp. Elpidophoros for marching against police killings, but "First Without Equals", which he formulated in an article years ago, is not something I can get right in my brain. If "First Without Equals" is true and canonical, then who is ideally supposed to be supreme, the Bishop of Rome or the Bishop of Constantinople?

Due to this current unfortunate MP-CP conflict, if I moved to an area where there was a CP church and a non-CP Church, I would typically want to pick the latter to belong to.

Justin-H.S. said:

So, I edited the original post because I took into consideration your feelings, and you keep swiping at me even after it was edited that’s on you.

The OP (edited long before your constant swiping last night) doesn’t say one way or the other. If the EP and Abp repented of their ways of allying themselves with anti-Christian Western governments and their anti-Christ ideologies, that would especially go in here. If the GOA hierarchs woke up and by God’s grace became the most trad jurisdiction known to man, do you think I wouldn’t put that in here? I’d be happy to post that news.

Would that happen? It’s up to God. We’re the ones praying for our wayward hierarchs at church, gritting our teeth while the rest of the Church laughs at us for having an Archbishop who’s aligning himself (and by proxy, us GOA laity) to the secular woke ideology.

You think we like our situation? At least your hierarchs aren’t blatantly p!ssing in your face and calling it “rain.”

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I really hear you, but when you feel like that, I recommend thinking about how your own sins might disappoint others around you looking for a Christian example.

Justin-H.S. said:

Because I was advised by many on this forum (and posting in this thread) to stay in my parish so I am. Doesn’t mean I can’t call out the faults of the hierarchs.

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Yeah, but even when you’re really right, you need to start in your own church. Fr Matt is right that you need to be really careful, and when we want in anger, we aren’t generally being careful. It means to be full of care, of concern and wishes for both the betterment and the best for those hierarchs. I feel that the worldliness of lay folk at a Greek parish in the US were a contributing factor in my mother’s decision to leave them and turn to Islam. So I have my own axe that I could grind. But my own sins keep threatening to become a beam in my eye.

rakovsky said:

What specific case are you thinking of where people don't accept Tradition?

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Orthodox teaching on marriage, specifically as applied to two practicing Orthodox Christians. If they really accepted it, then we would see essentially no divorces and very few remarriages in the Church. When both are saying, “I believe in loving and forgiving my neighbor and my enemy seventy times seven (= always)”, and actively trying to practice it, then these things should not be. (That’s different from having one adulterous spouse that is truly unrepentant.) But they are, and the justifications are those of the pop psychology of the world, all the “good reasons” the world has to offer for divorce. The words of St John Chrysostom or other enlighteners of the Church have less weight than Dr Phil and Oprah in real terms. I’m experiencing a flat-out ongoing epidemic in my parish, and among many others that I know. Actually saying that we need to hold a standard that insists on unconditional love (agape, the self-sacrificial kind) and faithfulness to and beyond the grave is really unpopular, especially among those that have done it and think what they did to be right and “the best thing”.

But I don’t want to go on and on about that here. It is demonstrable that Christ gave some pretty hard commands about marriage that a great many of us in the Church have disobeyed, and that a significant number of people think those hard sayings inapplicable to some Christians for the reasons that the world gives.

That’s one good example. It’s not the only one. My point here is that we are ready to be eclectic in our faith as soon as holding to what the fathers taught becomes inconvenient or hard. And while the fact that people in the Church sin couldn’t shake my faith, the fact that they can dismiss or deny well-established Christian doctrine did. So I think there ought to be a place for a person whose faith is being shaken to come and raise the issues that are feeding his doubt, and hopefully, grow past that doubt.

rusmeister said:

Yeah, but even when you’re really right, you need to start in your own church. Fr Matt is right that you need to be really careful, and when we want in anger, we aren’t generally being careful. It means to be full of care, of concern and wishes for both the betterment and the best for those hierarchs. I feel that the worldliness of lay folk at a Greek parish in the US were a contributing factor in my mother’s decision to leave them and turn to Islam. So I have my own axe that I could grind. But my own sins keep threatening to become a beam in my eye.

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Hi Rusmeister,

I'm not sure that you understand the issue. Some people can try to work in their own Church, like if they are in the Assembly of God and want to bring it to Orthodoxy, or if they are in GOARCH and want to try to bring it to the doctrine of only "First Among Equals."

The person can go to their parishioners, priest, and bishop, and their answer can be "No," and then what is your advice, to stay in the Assembly of God or in GOARCH, and keep trying to "work" to bring them to doctrinal orthodoxy?

Your answer will probably be to me, correctly, that GOARCH is not Assembly of God. I agree. However, the fundamental issue is what to do in a situation where a person has a legitimate, canonical reason to be unhappy in their jurisdiction. Certainly, trying to talk to the parish about the issue is a good idea, but what happens when that doesn't work? How long are you going to demand that a person stay in that situation that is unhappy for them and try to change a situation where they make no headway?

People have natural limits as to how much they can push until they burn out themselves.

Let's be clear, "First Without Equals" is a major issue. If it's true, then we need to figure out whether Rome or Constantinople is supposed to be the institutional head of all Christians. If it's false, then someone is wrongly trying to give someone or their synod power over everyone else.

rusmeister said:

Orthodox teaching on marriage, specifically as applied to two practicing Orthodox Christians. If they really accepted it, then we would see essentially no divorces and very few remarriages in the Church.

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I don't know if there would be "essentially no divorces," because church teaching on marriage is not the only factor on the topic.

Imagine that EOs were as strict on divorce as the Catholic church, yet all other factors in terms of Christian doctrinal compliance remained the same. You could get a "young Stalin childhood" situation where a kid grows up in a family so abusive that 19th century Georgians would agree that it's wrong, yet Keke isn't allowed to divorce "Beso". In that case, there be very few divorces, but it would be a very bad situation nonetheless.

So simply dedication to EO teaching on marriage, which is not as strict as in the RC Church, would not by itself necessarily entail "essentially no divorces."

rakovsky said:

Didn't the PWC report conclude that it found nothing illegal..

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that is correct.

..because funds from St Nicholas were transferred to pay other, unrelated GOARCH expenses,

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no, that is not the case.
The funds were used to pay for change orders.

thus making the transfer of funds purely an internal GOARCH matter? If the funds got transferred from the Shrine to unrelated GOARCH expenses, AND if Dimtrou acquired overcharged GOARCH personnel "expenses", then what?

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moot, as that was not the case. The funds were used to pay for change orders. They were not utilized for "unrelated expenses".

linkage to the report summary

FenderTL5 said:

The funds were used to pay for change orders.

moot, as that was not the case. The funds were used to pay for change orders. They were not utilized for "unrelated expenses".

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Hi Fender.

I recall reading this about an issue with a GOARCH project's funding that turned up about that time as concerns over St Nicholas Shrine. The theory that I read was that GOARCH's managers did not do anything illegal because they only shifted GOARCH's funds from one allocation to another, internally within GOARCH. It wasn't as if they took 10000$ from the pension fund and transferred it to a private cruise line.

The NY POST reports:

At the same time, the archdiocese was descending into a financial crisis unrelated to the project and grappling with a $5 million deficit, leaders admitted in the fall. It cut staff and restricted travel and credit-card use.

The archdiocese’s treasurer reported in October that the organization lacked proper internal controls and that $4.75 million was transferred from a restricted account to fund the deficit.

Although the nature of the account wasn’t specified, the priest in charge of fund-raising for the shrine said in December that there would be a probe into “how funds were transferred from the St. Nicholas account” and that they would be returned.

How a church destroyed on 9/11 became mired in controversy

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Former Archbishop Demetrios['] second appearance was related to the problems with the finances and the stoppage of construction of the new church in 2017. When Pelley said that $3.5 million dollars were transferred from restricted account for St. Nicholas to other accounts of the Archdiocese, Archbishop Demetrios admitted that it was done but said that when he found out that something like that had taken place he told those in charge of the finances that they should have never done that. It is reminded here that The National Herald had broken the story about that issue, which was one of many financial problems that led the Archdiocese into the dire condition of having to mortgage its headquarters buildings under Archbishop Demetrios.

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St. Nicholas Church and National Shrine Featured on 60 Minutes - The National Herald

I presented my report from my attendance at the annual Metropolis President’s Meeting, which took place at our Cathedral on Saturday, March 10th. It was very informative. Mr. Louis Kircos, who is the new Financial Chairman of the Archdiocese, related that there are a lot of financial issues that need to be addressed in order to make our Archdiocese whole and to set standards for complete transparency going forward. I realize that everyone is concerned about the status of the Saint Nicholas Shrine, so he stated that over three million dollars was transferred from that restricted account and used to pay Archdiocese operating expenses. The funds will be returned with interest to the St. Nicholas Shrine Fund.

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https://www.atlgoc.org/s/Spring2018.pdf

Even outside of this issue of a transfer of funds from a restricted account, the St Nicholas Shrine funding issue looks shady. The PWC report is saying that the funding issues are the result of the real costs turning out later to be far higher than the original estimates. However, should that really be a surprise, considering that the architect has a history of projects that turn out to cost much more than originally budgeted, projects that turn out sometimes never to be completed because of this discrepancy. In that case, why did GOARCH pick the highest bidder for the project? Articles online like the "Whistleblower" one above are raising lots of good questions.

rakovsky said:

Let's be clear, "First Without Equals" is a major issue. If it's true, then we need to figure out whether Rome or Constantinople is supposed to be the institutional head of all Christians. If it's false, then someone is wrongly trying to give someone or their synod power over everyone else.

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we all should know it’s false. there is no “if” in this regard.

ArmyMatt said:

we all should know it’s false. there is no “if” in this regard.

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What I've seen and heard from the CP and GOARCH seem like selective quotations from Church history, at least sometimes misinterpreted. IIRC, Canon 9 at first glance seems ambiguous as to the CP's appellate authority, whereas Canon 28 is specific and not giving the CP the power that it claims.

It reminds me of how Fr. Josiah Trenham described Calvinist/Reformed use of quotations of Church Fathers like Augustine as "selective."

rakovsky said:

What I've seen and heard from the CP and GOARCH seem like selective quotations from Church history, at least sometimes misinterpreted. IIRC, Canon 9 at first glance seems ambiguous as to the CP's appellate authority, whereas Canon 28 is specific and not giving the CP the power that it claims.

It reminds me of how Fr. Josiah Trenham described Calvinist/Reformed use of quotations of Church Fathers like Augustine as "selective."

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agreed, sadly