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Greece’s National(ist) Church Patriarch Vartholomeos of Constantinople is trying to reassert legal and historic rights in northern Greece, but he is stumbling upon the nationalist ambitions of Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens. The two churches have agreed to disagree on the matter for 75 years, but in a tectonic ecclesiastical shift, that understanding has now ended
THE CURRENT crisis between the Church of Greece and the Ecumenical Patriarchate has been long in coming. The Church of Greece has moved to effectively annul the right of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople to nominate candidates to replace metropolitans in northern Greece. The disagreement is turning into a major rift between the churches. The roots of that rift lie in the birth of the Greek state itself. Shortly after independence, the new Bavarian monarchy in 1833 moved to tear away the diocese of the fledging Greek state from the mother church of Constantinople. It was a case of religious boundaries following political. The new rulers of Greece wanted to control the church, and not have it under the authority of a patriarch who was based in a city that was still the Ottoman capital. The patriarchate recognized the religious autonomy, or autocephaly, of the Church of Greece only 17 years later, and on its own terms. Greece would not have a primate, and the highest religious authority was to be the Holy Synod – a gathering of the country’s metropolitans and bishops. But Greece was to keep expanding at the expense of the Ottoman empire until the early 20th century, and the new lands were not automatically inducted into the Greek Church. Today, what is called the Church of Greece is comprised of two distinct parts organically connected under a single administrative structure: the Autocephalous Church of Greece, which represents the original breakaway dioceses, and the Patriarchal Dioceses of Epirus, Macedonia, Thrace and the northern Aegean islands, which were dubbed "New Territories" soon after their incorporation in the Greek state, beginning in 1912 and 1913. Many patriarchal hierarchs are convinced that Archbishop Christodoulos wants to extend his authority throughout the Greek state and raise his status to that of primate, or even patriarch.
The Greek church’s involvement with the New Territories began in the aftermath of the 1923 exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey, which brought the patriarchate’s flock from Asia Minor to Greece. In a three-way agreement between the churches of Athens and Constantinople and the Greek state, known as the Act of 1928, the Phanar ceded administrative authority over the New Territories to the Holy Synod in Athens. But the patriarchate reserved the authority to approve the list of candidates for metropolitans in these dioceses, to nominate its own candidates and to veto candidates nominated by the Athens synod. The letter of the law has been scantily observed, however. The Greek Church honoured its obligation to send the list of candidates to Constantinople for approval only a few times in the last 75 years. In practice, it is the Church of Greece hierarchy exclusively that elects metropolitans to fill vacancies in the northern sees. With the death of Metropolitan Panteleimon of Thessaloniki last summer, the patriarch has sought to reinforce the Act of 1928 to the letter, and clear away the established practice of being ignored. In response, Christodoulos fashioned a decision, passed by the Holy Synod, stating that the patriarchate could exercise its rights to nominate candidates, but only under the terms of the 1977 Church of Greece Charter. By this he meant that the synod would have to finally approve patriarchal nominees. Athens would effectively be able to cancel the patriarchate’s right of nomination.
(The charter provides that the Greek Synod votes secretly only on whether to register on the list of electable candidates clerics whose names appear on the preliminary tables of candidates, which are drawn up by the metropolitans of Greece. It allows the patriarchate to nominate candidates directly to the list of electable candidates). In any event, the patriarchate has made it clear that it considers the Act of 1928 to take precedence over the charter and any subsequent correspondence between the two churches. In its letter responding to the Greek synod’s recent decision, the patriarchate is expected to insist that Athens religiously follow the terms of the 1928 Act and to warn that it will not recognize any election in its dioceses that are not conducted under the terms of that agreement. For good measure, the Phanar will probably also reject Christodoulos’ interpretation of the Church of Greece Charter. The nationalist Christodoulos all along has appeared uncomfortable with many of the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s privileges. He began tinkering with the status of the patriarchal dioceses soon after his election in 1998. He proposed to the Greek synod that the archbishop of Athens, be commemorated in the "New Territories" dioceses for the first time ever. Last spring, Christodoulos elected widely unknown, close associates of his to the patriarchal dioceses of Serres and Zihnon in snap elections, without consulting the patriarchate at all. When Metropolitan Panteleimon of Thessaloniki a patriarchal diocese and the second largest in Greece – died last summer, Christodoulos referred to him as a hierarch "of the Autocephalous Church of Greece". When Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomeos then requested to approve the list of candidates to fill that diocese, in accord with the Act of 1928, Christodouls refused. Last summer, the Church of Greece joined the Moscow Patriarchate in voting against recognizing the primacy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Europe, confirming suspicions of an unholy alliance between Athens and Moscow – which has long challenged Constantinople’s canonical primacy in the Orthodox world. Moscow’s pretences can only be encouraged by Christodoulos’ challenge to patriarchial authority. |
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