Unrepentant, Trainwreck Elpidophoros: “Separating People Based On Their Love Life Is Not Orthodoxy” (EN-GR)

PHOTO: Giving the interview to Yiannis Pantazopoulos

“…This novel argument and really incredible criterion that some people use, that we should separate people based on their love life, is not Orthodoxy; it does not even count as a humane attitude. We cannot reduce everyone’s sexual behavior and love life to the single criterion to either accept or reject them. These are unprecedented things, and I would say that in Greece, they are the result of an imported Western puritanism…”

EDITOR’S NOTE (Nick Stamatakis) A desperate Elpidophoros, obviously on the last leg of his “service” in America, entirely rejected by the Greek-American community, with his fallacies exposed daily by our community’s press (Helleniscope, after five years of lonely struggle is not alone anymore – thank God the rest of the media have seen the light of who truly Elpidoktonos is, albeit for different reasons each) tried to “escape” by an interview to a Greek “modernist” magazine to express his heretic views and his multiple fallacies:

• “To separate people on the basis of their sex life is not Orthodoxy”; in other words we become an “Episcopalian” branch where all deviance and sins are accepted. For some of those degenerates, sex with animals is also “love”.  There is no end to his heretical slippery slope: No matter where he ends up (in America, he is DONE), Elpidophoros will likely, in a few years, also accept bestiality in church.  Nothing is to stop him!
• He is not satisfied by distorting the New Testament; he proceeds to distort the Old Testament too! He specifically denies that the book of Genesis – where the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is described in great detail – explicitly condemns homosexuality (among other sins)!!
• He is proud of supporting the “pink flag exhibition at the Greek Consulate” (link here) – unable to see that desecrating the Greek Flag in the official “House of Greece”  in New York was a horrible act of treason! Would he support an exhibition of a “Blue Turkish Flag” in the Turkish House of NYC – supposedly to protest the countless violations of human rights in Turkey? No, of course not, because Turkey is his “homeland” and even more because it would mean he would never be allowed to go back home to Turkey!!
• He is proud to be an activist, supporting all kinds of social causes, George Floyd? BLM, etc. Just do not ask him to be an activist for our causes. For example, do not tell him to lead a demonstration against the Turkish occupation of Cyprus! Or a protest against Erdogan for turning Hagia Sophia and Moni Tis Choras into mosques!!

I will stop here.  From this point on there is only one issue for our organizations and each of us personally: Kicking this heretic trainwreck of an Archbishop back to Turkey!!

“ΔΕΝ ΣΕ ΘΕΛΕΙ Ο ΛΑΟΣ, ΠΑΡ’ ΤΟΥΣ ΤΟΥΡΚΟYΣ ΣΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΜΠΡΟΣ!!” –

“THE PEOPLE DO NOT WANT YOU, TAKE YOUR TURKS AND GO!!”

TO READ THE GREEK ORIGINAL, PLEASE LINK HERE  – BELOW IS AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

May 13, 2024, n.stamatakis@aol.com   www.helleniscope.com

DISCLAIMER: The views and statements expressed in this article constitute constitutionally protected opinions of this author.

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source – lifo.gr

Separating people based on their love life is not Orthodoxy.”

Archbishop of America Elpidophoros comments on the need to modernize the Church and the reactions of priests to marriage equality.

By Yannis Pantazopoulos

The offices of the Archdiocese of America are located in an imposing building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York. A small temple, a large dining room, countless libraries with historical ecclesiastical volumes but also impressive furniture that decorates the labyrinthine spaces catch my eye as I ascend to the top floor. The purpose of the visit is to meet with the man who leads the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, which includes 540 parishes, 800 priests, and approximately 1.5 million believers.

This is a hierarch who, thanks to his bold actions, is considered a pioneer, open-minded, progressive and also a reasonable voice in the Greek Church. Indicatively, he has taken part in Black Lives Matter demonstrations for the murder of George Floyd, took a position from the beginning in favor of science during the pandemic, closing churches, received homophobic attacks because he baptized the children of a gay couple in Glyfada, while not he hesitated to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine outright, saying that the responsibility for the bloodshed rests on the shoulders of Vladimir Putin. Since 2019, when he was enthroned, he has constantly promoted unconventional actions and symbolic movements, while many of his initiatives or positions provoke comments, sometimes positive and sometimes critical, on social media.

We cannot reduce everyone’s sexual behavior and love life to the single criterion to either accept or reject them. These are unprecedented things, and I would say that in Greece, they are the result of an imported Western puritanism.

As long as I talk with him, I realize that the head of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America believes deeply in the fundamental freedoms of man, he does not like innuendo and malice, he considers religion by its nature to be “activist” and he envisions a different ecclesiastical discourse that it includes everyone, without discrimination. During our conversation, he is approachable, relaxed, and friendly, while in his office, among a multitude of Byzantine icons, a portrait of the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew, dominates.

In the interview that follows, he opens his papers and talks about the need to modernize the Church and comments on the opinions of priests who opposed the marriage equality bill. He also responds to the criticism leveled at him by a section of the expatriate press, refers to the separation of state and church, presents the successful example of the Archdiocese of America, and takes a position on the protests concerning the project with the pink flag of the visual artist G. Lale, the which was exhibited at the Consulate General of New York. Finally, he describes who the really rich are today, how he would justify to a young person whether it makes sense to believe these days, and explains why he is closer to “believe it or not, research”.

– What era are we living in?

We are going through a period of rapid shifts at all levels. You know, it amazes me that nowadays there are people who may not know things that have a rudimentary connection with nature, or they don’t even know how to manage communication with other people. No one doubts that everything in our time is developing with incredible speed, to such a point that even the Church does not have time to talk about these developments. Of course, by its nature, every religion, because it is a conservative organization, moves and transforms at a slow pace. However, since artificial intelligence is developing rapidly, the only thing that is certain is that we are walking in uncharted waters. And it seems that technology waits for no one.

— Is there room for modernization in the Church?
Over the years, the Church has changed, and we must say that it has evolved. Obviously, what cannot be affected are the principles of the Faith. Everything else, however, can be upgraded. Undoubtedly, some people get upset even at the word “change”. I advocate that the exercise of our religious duties cannot be threatened, only adapted. In other words, you change the way the truth of the Gospel is expressed. You put new wine into old wineskins, as our holy texts also say. Self-confidence and courage are needed by the priests in order to speak the language and communication codes of each era in each period. Otherwise, all we succeed in doing is marginalizing the Church and putting ourselves out of society. Consider that today 70% of marriages in the United States are to non-Orthodox and in many cases non-Christians. So if we adopt an exclusionary mentality, every year our flock will dwindle. The Church, however, has always embraced and will embrace all people. Everyone is accepted and welcome.

— You were heavily criticized because you baptized the first children of a same-sex couple in Greece. After all that has been written and heard, do you have any regrets?
First of all, let’s clarify, because this was also misinterpreted, that we are talking about a baptism ceremony and not a wedding. When the parents asked me to baptize their children, as I was supposed to do, I accepted with great joy. After all, the contractors were Orthodox and I had absolutely no reason to refuse. This novel argument and really incredible criterion that some people use, that we should separate people based on their love life, is not Orthodoxy; it does not even count as a humane attitude. We cannot reduce everyone’s sexual behavior and love life to the single criterion to either accept or reject them. These are unprecedented things, and I would say that in Greece, they are the result of an imported Western puritanism. For example, they interpret original sin as sexual. If you read Genesis, there is no mention of sex, or that the original sin was related to a “sexual” act. Essentially, it was nothing but the rejection of God’s authority in moral matters, his disobedience, that is, a misuse of freedom of choice. We don’t even know if it was an apple, if it was a fruit in general, because it doesn’t matter. The motivation was selfishness and ambition, not sex or love. It was a Puritan construct and nothing else, aimed at criminalizing the sexual act and amorous behavior, and on top of this guilt narrative, which has nothing to do with Christian teaching, some invested in order to control people, projecting an inherited punishment. This is how we have reached, in Greece, this extreme phenomenon, where a person’s sexual behavior becomes a criterion for any discrimination in the professional, social or political sphere, even within the Church. It is completely anti-Christian and Greek culture never weighed any man according to his love behavior. We must condemn all forms of violence, verbal and physical, and deplore hatred and prejudice based on the diversity of every human being.

— Were you disturbed by the criticism and what was written about your trip to Mount Athos and a possible postponement of it because you would not be accepted?
Criticism makes us all better and I don’t mind. What upset me is that the facts were misrepresented, which also reflects the real intention of the people who protested. What we ended up seeing happening is a smear campaign bordering on yellowness. I repeat, all I did was baptize two children. And it’s something I would do again, without any difficulty.

— On the occasion of the passing of the marriage equality bill, we heard incendiary statements by metropolitans such as that of Mesogaias Nikolaos, who in his multi-page introduction to the meeting of the Synod of the Hierarchy called homosexuality a perversion and stated that “our biggest mistake would be to accept that the homosexual act, in addition to being a mental disorder, is not a sin.” How do you comment on that?
Look, I listen carefully to all the people who ask for my advice. However, I am neither a psychologist nor a psychiatrist. Therefore, to go out in public and stigmatize anyone I do not hide from you that I consider it fascist. And partisan attitudes are based on the guilt of our fellow citizens for some reason. We have seen this happen historically, e.g. with the Nazis. This is an extremely dangerous mentality, which manifests itself in various aspects. Look what’s happening with the rising trend of anti-Semitism. Therefore, is it possible to give the impression that the Church blesses or conceals or tolerates with its silence such attitudes? This is a terminal disease, a carcinoma that will spread to other parts of the body. Today it may be Jews, tomorrow homosexuals, the day after tomorrow dark, blond and at some point fascism will knock on our door and we will feel the cold metal cutting our necks. In particular, the degree of anti-Semitism of a society shows how healthy it is. These are ideologies that have bled Europe and the world and they can have nothing to do with Christian theology, no matter how much some try to clothe their extreme ideological fantasies with a Christian cloak.

— There were also some metropolitans who argued that those who voted for the marriage equality bill should be banned from entering the churches. What did you think of this?

Did you see how the cancer is progressing that I was telling you about? Do you see that when you let something go it goes on? The abscess must be cut and we must put a limit, because it is very possible that we as a society are in danger. It is clear, therefore, that the Church does not accept partisan attitudes.

— There were also some metropolitans who argued that those who voted for the marriage equality bill should be banned from entering the churches. What did you think of this?
Did you see how the cancer is progressing that I was telling you about? Do you see that when you let something go it goes on? The abscess must be cut and we must put a limit, because it is very possible that we as a society are in danger. It is clear, therefore, that the Church does not accept partisan attitudes.

— There were also reactions to your statements in the meeting you had with the general secretary of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoubas, regarding the separation of state and church.
First of all, let me tell you that I gladly accepted the visit of the general secretary of the KKE, as I always do with other political leaders who visit me from our homeland. Of course in any case I try to focus on common points of interest. The word of the Church must be unifying and we cannot continue to walk with the old mentality that the Church has nothing to do with communism. These are completely obsolete. As you understand, Mr. Koutsoumba and I would not discuss theological issues; I preferred to develop issues related to social solidarity, human rights, justice, peace. In fact, we speak the same language as the left on these issues, since we coincide in terms of our humanitarian approach. I told him that the secret of the success of our archdiocese is the essential and not decorative participation of the people in decision-making and in all administrative and financial control bodies. These are useful because they do not follow the trope that the laity is just the believer who blindly follows the orders of the church leadership but has an active role and is respected in all governing bodies and that is the Church, clergy and people. In America, the archdiocese does not have parishes with the structure found in Greece. Here there are communities where the laity has absolute participation, the right to vote and decides on the administration and financial management at all levels of the church organization. Obviously, I did not recommend Greece to follow our example. I merely set forth our experience, which may be found useful as a proof that Church and State might be entirely separated, without affecting the progress and welfare of the Church.

— For some in the diaspora you are persona non grata. How do you explain it?

It would be strange to be exposed in the public sphere and be liked by everyone. There are people who are not happy with me, and sometimes they criticize me well-intentioned and sometimes ill-intentioned, or a criticism that comes from selfish interests. I confess, however, that I have no intention of surrendering to these interests and purposes that are completely foreign to the principles of the Church. At the same time, I have no intention of becoming an instrument of interests, so I suffer the consequences. However, there are only a few of those you mention and their speakers are directed mainly towards Greece. We are talking about certain media that try to create a different image than what someone living in the United States sees. Since the pandemic, because I had taken a stand in favor of science, fake news was circulated. What I had emphasized then was that we had to follow a sanitary protocol. We closed the churches ourselves, we didn’t wait for the state to tell us, we made a recommendation to the believers to wear masks, through a circular we urged them to get vaccinated, while we emphasized that a place can be holy, but it does not mean that it is sterile. As you can imagine, I have disturbed some conservative circles who are imbued with the spirit and ethos of anti-vaccinationists, and you can understand why such reactions occur.

— How did you see the exhibition of the artist Georgia Lale at the Consulate General of New York, which caused a storm of political reactions due to her work with the pink flag, through which she tried to give a symbolic dimension to the increasingly frequent murders of women?

I visited the Consulate General and saw the project, which, I will not hide from you, that I neither disturbed nor took it as an insult to the Greek flag. After all, in a prominent position of the Presidential Palace, accessible to the public, is the painting “Exodus”, which also has the Greek flag, by the renowned artist Christos Bokorou, but it has not been disturbed. Obviously I’m not an art critic, but I’m sure that even the Consul General, Dinos Konstantinou, doesn’t have a diminished sense of our national symbols. All this noise and furore was ill-conceived. In retrospect, I think that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also realized this and sought to lower the tone.

— What was your childhood like?
I was born in Makrochori of Constantinople and grew up in a multicultural and multilingual environment. A painful moment that I will not forget is our uprooting from the City, when the situation had become unbearable for the Greeks. We were a very poor family. When we came to Greece we had to rebuild our household from scratch. I remember my parents, who had to work endless hours in a country they didn’t know well, struggling to raise me and my siblings. At least, I lived in a time when we were in direct contact with nature, and I developed strong friendships because then you could spend more time in your company. Essentially, our relationship with the other, the contact, the physical expression of emotion was important. I have always been fascinated by Theology and Byzantine History. Thus, I graduated from the Theological School of Thessaloniki in 1991, and two years later, I completed my postgraduate studies at the University of Bonn’s School of Philosophy. There I met Metropolitan Augustinos of Germany, who is also the man who inspired me to serve the Church by his example. Of course, my other benefactor is the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew.

— To the difficult questions of life, is religion the easy answer?

There are no easy answers. It depends on us, on our mood. Christianity reminds us that many of the answers can be found in love. It is the only link to perfection. And I say that because people today seek to be given a pill for everything. They are afraid of pain. However, pain accompanies man throughout his earthly life. Fear, pain and death concern both the first and the last. Therefore, without love you cannot discover wholeness. Otherwise, we become unhappy, isolated and unable to coexist with others.

— If a young person asked you why he should believe nowadays, what would you answer him?
I would initially tell him that no one has an obligation to believe. And then I would remind him that because nature abhors emptiness, if he does not believe in God, something else will fill this emptiness which will not make him happy, because he will always lack something. As you may have understood from our discussion, I am not in favor of blind faith but conscious faith.

— What do you answer to the losers of life?

Being disappointed or hurt, I understand. But he should not feel defeated. Faith in God is a passage that will help him overcome difficulties.

— What is the profit of man’s passions?
For me, passions are like wounds that leave their marks on our bodies. The more wounds you have, the harder you have fought, and the more experience you have that reflects your fighting spirit. The loser is the one who gives up and succumbs to his wounds, not the one who continues and learns from his mistakes. Reflection through repentance, forgiveness and confession is for the Church inherent in its existence. For example, because we are going through Easter days, maybe some did not succeed in fasting as much as they would have liked, maybe some did not fast at all. But our share in the Easter bank is not determined by the quantity or quality of the food we have consumed. The ticket of the share in the “bank of faith” is honored rather by the quality of charity and the quantity of love towards every fellow man.

— Who would you say is the real rich in our time?
Very nice question. Where the treasure is, there is the heart, say our Gospel readings. Let each one give the answer to himself as to where the treasure of his heart is placed – in deposits, in houses, in cars, in the material world? Probably not. Because, as our people wisely say, the poor give you more than the rich. And this, in its general picture, shows that the one who really doesn’t care about money is the truly rich. I always remember the carved saying that exists in many homes in the East: “Today for me, tomorrow for another and never for them.” In our lives we are managers and not owners. The modern man of the western world turned his individualism into an ideology and equated happiness with success, wealth and material in all its forms. Worthy of admiration are not the powerful, the bright, the “influencers”, those who are seen and make noise, but the silent and the invisible. They are those who give selflessly and passionately for the common good.

— Are you closer to “believe it or not, research” or “believe it or not research”?
This saying is not found in any verse of the Bible. It is a popular expression which does not express me and its use has nothing to do with Christian teaching. I, however, like to research everything and a lot.

— What do you consider important in life?
To have found your balance, to be good with yourself and those around you. And I believe that this is achieved when you have managed to be useful to society as a whole. The completion of our growth occurs when we practice the virtues of patience, tolerance, humility, generosity and forgiveness.

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