Kathimerini
Ahead of top-level Church talks on burgeoning claims of corruption among prominent churchmen, Archbishop Christodoulos yesterday admitted that the Church has its fair share of rotten apples.
“The Church also has people who have broken their oaths,” Christodoulos said during an Athens sermon. “But it has ways of ensuring that such problems are removed.”
On Thursday, the Church’s ruling body, the Holy Synod, will meet to discuss allegations regarding Archimandrite Iakovos Yiossakis — who is being investigated in connection with an alleged court corruption scandal and antiquities theft — as well as claims by a former bishop that the Archbishopric hushed up a drugs scandal involving a bishop and a close aide to Christodoulos. In a sermon yesterday, Anthimos, Bishop of Thessaloniki, said that “the Church, society and the judiciary are in the throes of a crisis.”
When I served on the Parish Council we reviewed the procedures put in place by the Greek Orthodox Church in America for dealing with reports of inmproper or unethical behavior by Priests. This was in the wake of the highly publicized reports of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church several years ago.
I was impressed to see that the GOA has a strict, formal and well-thought out process in place for reviewing complaints and taking disciplinary action where required. The several instances of improprieties that I heard of were quickly and effectively dealth with by the head of our diocese, Metropolitan Anthony.
Priests are human beings, like everyone else, and may fall prey to the same weaknesses. If it hasn’t done so already, the Church should consider a periodic peer review process, as well as the creation of a support network for Priests dealing with personal or family difficulties.
Note 1:
“If it hasn’t done so already, the Church should consider a periodic peer review process, as well as the creation of a support network for Priests dealing with personal or family difficulties.”
I suppose that would be helpful. It is just as important, IMO, for Church leadership to resist the institutional inertia and denial that has plagued the Church of Rome. I am just making an observation and am not saying that this is a problem currently.
Also, I don’t know much about Church/state relations in Greece, but I believe that it is somewhat cozy. I think such an arrangement makes the temptation to engage in unethical behavior even more acute, and also makes it more difficult to root out bad clergy. I hope His Grace, Archbishop Christodoulos can effectively correct the situation.