Orthodox Reflections

The Patriarch of Constantinople, HAH Bartholomew, styles himself as the first bishop of the Orthodox Church – primus inter pares (first among equals or maybe even without equal) and the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians worldwide. In the United States, Archbishop Elpidophoros represents the Patriarch as head of the Greek Archdiocese. His Eminence clearly presents himself as the leading Orthodox hierarch in the country. Since the Greek Archdiocese is the biggest single Orthodox jurisdiction in America, the leading position of the Greek bishop has rarely been seriously contested.

To further its own ambitions, the Patriarchate of Constantinople needs both a global flock and the support of powerful global interests. Each must be willing to take the Patriarch’s pretensions to leadership seriously. Orthodoxy being a minority in the West, it also helps if the Patriarch, and his subordinates such as Elpidophoros, command some public admiration outside the Orthodox Church. Good public relations matter for a global non-profit based in a hostile environment.

The current actions of the Patriarchate are the opposite of good PR. In fact, the Patriarchate is busy making enemies of both Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike all over the globe, including at least half of the American people.

The Biden / Democratic Party Cuddle

The office of the President of the United States is powerful and important, regardless of who holds it. It would be expected that top Orthodox bishops would try to cultivate at least a good working relationship with such a political figure. Politeness, civility, and sincere prayers are to be expected. Obsequiousness, lies, and outright endorsements, however, are not.

After meeting with President Biden in the White House, Patriarch Bartholomew praised President Biden as “a man of faith and man of vision … we know that he will offer to this wonderful country and to the world, the best leadership and direction within his considerable powers.” 

Actually, we don’t know anything of the kind. Joe Biden is the most anti-family, pro-abortion president ever. Nominally Roman Catholic, there is an active debate as to whether his policies on moral issues should preclude him from receiving communion. Biden has never had a real job. He got rich off selling political influence as a shill for corporate interests. First for domestic financial corporations, then later he worked with his son Hunter to expand his grift internationally. Biden is a serial liar. The man had to drop out of the 1988 presidential race because of plagiarism. He’s done worse since. There is nothing in Biden’s past or present that would indicate he is a man of faith or vision or even common decency.

Biden’s disapproval rating at this point in his term is higher than all but one president’s since the advent of modern polling. Over half of all Americans, many stridently, disapprove of the direction the nation is heading in. Biden, in just a few short months, is already responsible for: vaccine mandates, the collapse of our supply chain, an energy shortage, a catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, skyrocketing gas prices, a possible war with China over Taiwan, federal support for transgenderism, federal opposition to state restrictions on abortion, harmful anti-climate change policies, ruinous inflation, unchecked government spending, a completely collapsed Southern border, interference in local education, weaponization of federal law enforcement against critics, expansion of Critical Race Theory, a slew of unconstitutional executive orders…. Just a partial list. We could keep going.

Americans are facing bare shelves and crushing anxiety. States are openly positioning themselves to oppose the overreach of the Biden Regime. Extreme rhetoric on all sides is now becoming common place. American society is in danger of tearing itself apart. Into this volatile situation steps the successor to the Apostle Andrew in order to praise the man whose reckless incompetence, dementia, and greed are at the heart of our precipitous national decline.

Nor is it just florid rhetoric at the White House that shows how all-in for Biden the Patriarchate of Constantinople is. Even before Biden took office, the Patriarchate published FOR THE LIFE OF THE WORLD Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church which promoted open borders:

Nor are borders anything more than accidents of history and conventions of law. They too may have at times a useful purpose to serve, but in themselves they are not moral or spiritual goods whose claim upon us can justify failing in our sacred responsibilities to those whom God has commended to our special care… In the United States, the most powerful and wealthiest nation in history—one, in fact, born out of mighty floods of immigrants from around the world—we have seen political leaders not only encouraging fear and hatred of asylum-seekers and impoverished immigrants, but even employing terror against them: abducting children from their parents, shattering families, tormenting parents and children alike, interning all of them indefinitely, denying due process to asylum-seekers, slandering and lying about those seeking refuge, deploying the military at southern borders to terrify and threaten unarmed migrants, employing racist and nativist rhetoric against asylum-seekers for the sake of political advantage, and so forth. All such actions are assaults upon the image of God in those who seek our mercy. They are offenses against the Holy Spirit. In the name of Christ, the Orthodox Church denounces these practices, and implores those who are guilty of them to repent and to seek instead to become servants of justice and charity.

Biden’s open border policies have created a humanitarian crisis as hundreds of thousands of people risk their lives in unsafe crossings, only to find themselves in horrid conditions an overwhelmed border agency can do nothing to alleviate. Biden’s policies have created a law enforcement crisis all over the country as drugs, guns, and criminals cross unchecked and spread out to every corner of the United States. The flood of illegals is worsening an ongoing fiscal crisis in the world’s largest debtor nation.

But according to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, if you favor border security, then you are assaulting the very image of God. You are a racist and a nativist in need of repentance. Does that need for repentance also apply to Texas Hispanics who are increasingly voting Republican out of a desire for increased border enforcement? Are they racists and nativists, or do they just want to live in a normal, safe, free country?

The Social Ethos document, by the way, also included tremendous support for combatting man-made Climate Change. The document, plus the type of rhetoric employed by the Patriarch and his subordinates, led us to consider whether or not the Patriarchate is a globalist tool shilling for The Great Reset.

Vaccine Mandates and COVID Protocols

Archbishop Elpidophoros has endorsed everything from lockdowns to masking toddlers to closing churches to vaccine mandates. The Archbishop said this in an interview recently, “We do advocate for the proper use of the masks, and we support vaccination as a means of protecting ourselves and as our moral obligation, as Christians, to protect others.” Over 19 months in with a fully endemic virus and current low rates of negative outcomes (hospitalizations and deaths), His Eminence and the other bishops seem to have learned nothing. They continue to advocate policies and vaccines which have clearly made no difference based on real-world data. GOARCH’s obsessive dedication to “pandemic protocols” led one Orthodox writer to label “Religious Covidism” a new heresy within Orthodoxy. This dedication is why in some areas of the country, two-year-olds are still wearing masks to attend Divine Liturgy in Greek Orthodox parishes. Even in Florida.

Not content to merely morally bully Orthodox Christians into taking experimental mRNA jabs to “protect others”, Archbishop Elpidophoros went even further in support of Biden’s vaccine mandates. The archbishop outright declared that Orthodox Christians can have no religious objection to any vaccine – ever.

Fair Orthodox observers can identify at least three distinct bases for religious exemptions from vaccine mandates: use of aborted fetal cells, free will as granted by God (and enshrined in the concept of voluntary, informed consent to medical procedures), and the prophecies of recent saints. Even some Roman Catholic bishops have endorsed freedom of conscience for their flocks. But not Archbishop Elpidophoros, for whom loyalty to Joe Biden appears to be far and away more important than fidelity to the Christian Faith.

The Patriarch and the Archbishop also recently presided over giving the Athenagoras Human Rights Award to three men, including the CEO of Pfizer, responsible for the COVID “vaccines.” We have have covered the corruption involved in our pharmaceutical industry (here and here). We have also covered the true physical effects of these experimental injections here. Not content to merely make money injecting adults and older children with experimental, harmful, and ultimately worthless “vaccines,” Pfizer is fresh off rigging a disgraceful “trial” to “prove” it is okay to inject small children.

There is no risk from COVID for healthy children in this age group. In fact, to prevent one death in the 5-11 age group from COVID you must inject 1,261,550 children. The data indicate for every one child saved by the shot, another 117 would be killed by the shot. This is the worst cost / benefit ratio in the history of vaccination. It is absolute madness, but we are going to do it anyway.

Pfizer CEO Bourla must be licking his chops to expand his market by over 28 million new victims with the added financial benefit of “booster” shots as far as the eye can see. It is no wonder that a company making $36 billion dollars a year off the “vaccines” is willing to lie, cheat, and harm children. Especially when Pfizer, at $2.3 billion dollars, held the record for the largest health care fraud settlement and the largest criminal fine ever imposed in the United States. Nor is it surprising that deeply corrupt regulatory and media organizations are willing to abet these crimes for their own benefit.

But a shocking question is – why would successors to the apostles put the CEO of such a sociopathic corporation on a stage and praise him? 

For whatever reason this happened, it needs to be made clear that the Greek Archdiocese has now firmly planted itself in opposition to at least 50% of the parents in this country who are terrified of what vaccine side effects can do to their children. The unpopularity of coercive policies is not just showing up in opinion polls. The recent state and local elections were a Red Wave that swept through many “blue” areas. The results prove how angry normal Americans really are, and much of that anger centers around protecting their children.

Republicans, capitalizing politically off parental discontent with the state of education in VA, swept all three statewide offices and flipped the legislature. Voters chose Winsome Sears, a US Marine veteran, as both the first female and the first African American woman to be elected Virginia lieutenant governor. Archbishop Elpidophoros, since Summer 2020, has seized multiple opportunities to lecture Americans about how “systemically racist” we are. Perhaps His Eminence should at least take note of such a development?

We should expect similar Red Wave results nationwide in November 2022. Parents are not just angry in Virginia. And the effects of the Red Wave won’t stay confined to politics either. Can you expect parents to write checks to Greek parishes, or even attend a Greekfest, when it is clear that the Patriarchate and the Greek Archdiocese support the people hurting their children?

The Patriarchate of Constantinople clearly thinks there is political benefit in being closely aligned with the polices of Joe Biden and the Democrats as a whole. In an interview on the 20-year anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, Archbishop Elpidophoros had this to say about President Joe Biden:

As I am sure you know, President Biden started his career in politics over 50 years ago with the warm support of the Greek-American community in his home state of Delaware. Greek Americans were always among his staunchest supporters, and throughout his career in the Senate, he took a special interest in the developments in Southeastern Mediterranean. I first met President Biden as early as 2013. At the time, I was serving as the abbott of the Theological Seminary of Halki, and the Metropolitan of Prussia. We met again after I arrived in New York, as the newly enthroned archbishop of America, in 2019. In July 2020, after the reconversion of Hagia Sophia to a mosque, he was quick to call me on the phone to reconfirm his unequivocal support to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, while this past March, he honored us by speaking through video at the celebration of the bicentennial of Greek Independence Day. I know that in President Biden, our Church and Hellenism has a friend in the Oval Office.

As always, the “survival” of the Patriarchate in its current home of Istanbul seems to blot out all other considerations. Unfortunately for the Patriarch and his subordinates, all morality of the situation aside, their embrace of Joe Biden shreds their moral credibility in the eyes of tens of millions of Americans. By sucking up to Biden, Big Pharma, and the Democratic Party – they are busy alienating the very people whose church attendance, tax dollars, and military service are vital to their future plans.

Are there really enough progressive academics and millionaires to replace them when they turn their backs?

Betrayal of Orthodoxy

It’s not just “politics” that has brought us to a point where supporting the Patriarchate of Constantinople is unconscionable. Elpidophoros’ actions and innovations regularly spark protests from the Orthodox Faithful against his secularism, his globalist Ecumenism and his abandonment of Holy Orthodox Tradition and practices. When the pandemic arrived, he aligned with Black Lives Matter, a movement fostering communism in the name of anti-racism. He supported anti-Christian pro-abortion politicians such as Cuomo and Giannaris. He abandoned basic human and Christian values like personal freedom of choice over one’s health in the name of “science.” He openly advocated that unconverted spouses of Orthodox Christians can share in the Holy Eucharist. He instituted liturgical innovations such as multiple spoons. He conducted Divine Liturgy under the LGBTQ+ flag.  He openly denigrated concerns over the COVID “vaccines” having used aborted fetal cells.

In addition to what he has done, we can also compile a huge list of things he should have done but hasn’t. He has not been a forceful advocate for Christian morality. He has not supported Christian parents in their fight to protect their children in public schools from filth and degeneracy. He has uttered not a peep as inflation ravages the paychecks and savings accounts of the poor and working class. As our social, medical, and economic freedoms have been eroded, Archbishop Elpidophoros has either been silent or wrong, but never on the correct side of common Orthodox people on whom his power relies.

Modern Day Janissaries?

It isn’t just American patriots and concerned parents who have growing issues with the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Greek Americans and those who support Greece are openly questioning the loyalty of hierarchs who are based in Turkey and have Turkish citizenship:

My question is – are these hierarchs of ours simply modern-day Janissaries? Were they trained by their Turkish “father” and then sent back to the Greek Orthodox people to “help” govern them? Are they advancing Turkish interests by also hearing, and relaying to Turkish intelligence, the confidences and confessions of prominent Hellenes and others? And when they send money to the Phanar, to supposedly support our “poor, persecuted Patriarchate,” where does it end up? Is it “just” maintaining Bartholomew’s position at the Phanar or is it doing more than that? Turkey may no longer be taking our children, but that does not mean they cannot be on the receiving end of our church donations. Is this blackmail? Treason? Both? Or is there something even worse going on? What exactly is Bartholomew funding?

The Patriarch Doesn’t Give a “S**T” About Orthodox Unity

The Patriarch of Constantinople likes to pretend that his office is a source of unity. If only! His ambitious exercise of power in the Ukraine has been the cause of the most important schism in a 1,000 years. When asked about the Russian Church no longer commemorating him, Bartholomew replied in Greek “Skasila mou” which best translates as “I don’t give a s…t”.

Reporting on this incident, Helleniscope had the following to say about what “not giving a s**t” really means in the context of Ukraine and even across the globe:

“Σκασιλα μου” / “I don’t give a s..t” – that because of my decisions and actions in Ukraine, neo-Nazis, the descendants of former Nazis among others, are taking away or destroying the Churches of the 70% of the Ukrainian Orthodox who chose to stay under the Moscow Patriarchate.

 

“Σκασιλα μου” / “I don’t give a s..t” – that this 70% of Ukrainians who chose to stay under the Moscow Patriarchate are suffering harsher religious freedom suppression than the Patriarchate is suffering under the neo-Ottoman Turks.

 

“Σκασιλα μου” / “I don’t give a s..t” that I was specifically warned that my decision about Ukraine would cause violence. I went ahead anyway because the teachings of Christ mean nothing to me. I prefer to act as an obstinate mule from Imvros and kick in every direction using my rear legs, than as a descendant of Andrew the First Apostle.

 

“Σκασιλα μου” / “I don’t give a s..t” that I caused havoc in Ukraine because I care more about the millions of $$ that I received from America for that purpose (and you Archons and the rest of the faithful will never learn exactly how I received them – unless you investigate former Ukrainian President Poroshenko…).

 

“Σκασιλα μου” / “I don’t give a s..t” that I minimized Orthodoxy – one of the four “ecumenical legs of Hellenism”, along with Diaspora, Navigation and Cultural Heritage). I care more about material indulgence. My predecessor Pat. Demetrios lived in a small room in the Patriarchate – but I live in a multi-million dollar villa overlooking Vosporos paid for by one of you – the late Alex Spanos. I teach my subordinates, the “Hierarchs of the Throne”, to do the same: AB Makarios of Australia bought a $6.5 million apartment overlooking Sydney harbor, and recently, my second-in-command Emmanuel of Chalcedon bought a $1 million house in the glitzy northern suburbs of Athens, and then he stole all the furniture of the Metropolis of France where he used to serve for twenty years to furnish it!! I surely lead by example!!

 

“Σκασιλα μου” / “I don’t give a s..t” that I undermine the second ecumenical leg of Hellenism, Diaspora, by instructing the Archbishops of America, Australia, England and Canada to put a lid on any political action against Turkey by the Greek communities under their command. I am a Turkish citizen, all my hierarchs are Turkish citizens, we have taken an oath of allegiance to Turkey and we all intend to keep it!! I blessed the Turkish troops as they invaded Syria to kill the fighting Kurds and I may even bless them again if they invade any Greek island. Anyway, the Greek Islands along the coast of Turkey are already under my ecclesiastical jurisdiction and “Σκασιλα μου” / “I don’t give a s..t” if either Turkey or Greece has sovereignty over them!

We can also add that apparently neither HAH Bartholomew nor His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros give a s**t about average Americans.

Given any objective comparison between the two, it is no wonder that a “local” and persecuted Metropolitan Onuphry of Ukraine is so much more popular globally than the “worldwide head” of the Orthodox Church. For all that we Americans, and our tax dollars, have done to persecute the true church in Ukraine, we should be heartbroken with repentance.

What Now?

There is a petition which we strongly encourage all Greek Orthodox Christians in America and Canada to sign. It begins, “The undersigned Greek Orthodox Americans hereby declare an unwavering and unconditional commitment to our faith and to its self-governing independence in our beloved American homeland.” For all the reasons in this article, it is past time for the Greek Archdiocese to be free from Istanbul, to clean house, and to chart her own course.

As that process either plays out or doesn’t, those of you who plan to stay in the Greek Archdiocese need to face a hard fact – 50% or more (being conservative in the estimate, probably more like 70%) of your countrymen view your hierarchs as outright enemies. You can’t just sweep all this under the rug and pretend it is not happening. We are not talking about just politics as usual. For many of your neighbors, the Patriarchate of Constantinople is now openly, vociferously, and unquestionably aligned with positions that attack our children while putting the future of our nation at risk. Not to mention our ability to freely exercise our Orthodox Faith.

Do not expect to simply wait for this to all go away and for things to return to normal. We all have decisions to make now, whether we would prefer to avoid them or not.

May God have mercy on us all.

Demetrios – former member of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, currently attending a Serbian Orthodox parish