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Our Opinion

This is the patent age of new inventions
For killing bodies, and for saving souls,
All propagated with the best intentions.
—Byron

Those familiar with the work of one of the finest Catholic novelists of the twentieth century might recognize the excerpt above from the introductory role it plays in The Quiet American. It stands as a warning, of course, something akin to Dante’s “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,” except that, for Graham Greene, it is the world as we know it—or rather, more to his point, as we try to “reform” it—that is the genuine Inferno, or at least an Inferno, to use the Greek phrase, εν τω γίγνεσθαι. (It is precisely his deep understanding of the contradictions of all confessions, including those that are, ostensibly, most secular, that makes Greene such a resonant writer for non-Catholics.) This month witnessed the more or less concurrent decease of two extraordinary churchmen, one universally hailed as “the man who brought down communism” and the other just as universally praised—albeit in a much smaller universe—as “the man who saved Hellenism in America.” We refuse to speak ill of the dead; in the event, we respectfully, and willingly, conform to the wishes of both of these Christian hierarchs and leave them to the judgment of their Maker—Who, we have no doubt, will be infinitely more astute in His/Her moral assessments than the global coterie of obituarists, commentators, editorialists, and assorted spear-carriers of the chattering classes have been in the last many days.

We will not comment on the late Pontifex Maximus, other than to say that his kingdom, pace the international mediacracy, was indeed of this world. In that very real—and effective—sense, he had everything in common with the former, and now late, Βορείου και Νοτίου, as he was best known, by allies and adversaries alike. Somewhere between the nativity of Jesus and His crucifixion, Christianity (inescapably) became embedded in the worldly. That is not a bad thing. Quite the opposite, many (almost all?) of Christianity’s most sublime—which is to say most human—moments have come in its defense of this world, and of the men and women who live in it. On the other hand, it is difficult to avoid the sad truth that “Eν τούτω νίκα” proved through the centuries to be more of a threat than a promise, as it transformed a sign of individual moral resistance into a banner of imperial aggrandizement and—such is the way of the world—justification.

Archbishop Iakôvos was widely looked upon by his supporters as an “ethnarch.” The question was never asked, however—then or now—ethnarch of which nation? The savior, the redeemer, of Hellenism in America? Unfortunately, the historical record points in the opposite direction, and has done so ever since Greek America’s greatest historian, Theodore Saloutos, first, and courageously, broached the issue over forty years ago, in his magisterial study of the Greeks of the United States. (Sadly, Saloutos remained alone then in his scholarly integrity and remains just as alone today, more than two decades after his death.) The late archbishop was the man who, above all others, transformed a Greek church into an American sect and, in so doing, institutionalized the Americanization of a formerly Greek παροικία. It is true, of course, that he built on the foundations laid by his predecessors, most notably the later-to-be Ecumenical Patriarch Athênagoras, who, when he was archbishop of the Americas, disenfranchised the parishes that the first immigrant generations had built by their toil, sacrifice, and, yes, faith, and compelled them, often after great upheaval that, in community after community, literally resembled the emotional violence of a civil war, to accept a centralization of authority—and, not at all coincidentally, church income—that was, if we may be allowed the analogy, more papist than the papacy.

It was Iakôvos, however, who strategically defined, and consolidated, this process of thoroughly conscious de-Hellenization. Much conspicuous beating of breasts, and metaphorical tearing of hair, and theatrical wailing has been seen and heard in these United States in the last couple of decades over the sad decline, not only of the Greek language, but of Greek education itself. The gun is smoking still, however. And the fingerprints are all over the handle. One thing is certain: As the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America was (profanely) “growing” in leaps and bounds, and its primate was running from one photo-op to another in the White House, year in and year out, regardless of administration, the very Greekness of Greek America was degenerating into an utterly formal (indeed, ritualistic) reality that had nothing to do with—in fact, in many of its aspects, came to be actively hostile to—Greece, Greek culture, Greek education, and even, in the end (if truth be told), Greek religion.

One last, but very important, point. John Paul II has been succeeded by Benedict XVI, the most reactionary pope since Pius XII, who John Paul, of course, firmly put on the road to canonization (along with an entire, less-than-angelic host of other twentieth-century Roman Catholic “martyrs,” including some indisputably fascist ones). This is not an accident. When Archbishop Iakôvos resigned, his successor was a man so morally insufficient to his position that he could not survive the most elementary scrutiny. That, too, was not an accident. Power is self-defining (and self-corrupting, as that great Catholic critic of papal autocracy, Lord Acton, famously pointed out), and it restructures the institutions it commands according to its own sense of itself, without any respect for dissent of any kind, let alone opposing ideas. There have been many illusions over the last couple of decades regarding John Paul II—even among the “left”; many of those illusions, some verging on sheer idiocy, were regurgitated ad nauseam in the first days following the late pontiff’s demise. As Benedict XVI establishes his pontificate, and slowly defines it, those illusions will finally dissipate and then, inevitably, reform into the nightmares they always were in fact. As for Iakôvos, we have no doubt that the moment of his burial concentrated the greatest sympathy for the man and the prelate; as each day passes from that moment, however, truth will slowly reconstitute and replace hagiography and idolatry.

As we said at the outset, we will not speak ill of the dead, which is why we focused on these two late hierarchs’ mission “for saving souls.” But Byron also spoke of “killing bodies,” and, at the onset of what is increasingly looking like a new Hundred Years War, we cannot help but point to the unavoidable connection between the former and the latter—and how the gardens of hell are truly “propagated with the best intentions.” But that is a subject for another day. For now, we hope the dead are resting in peace.