Pastor's PageWhat Comes Around! "What goes around, comes around" is one of those sayings to suggest that every dog has his day, or that good guys sometimes win in the end. The event I have in mind is the announcement the end of August that Bishop Demetrios Traketellis of Greece is just named the new Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church of North America. In the case of Bishop Demetrios, this is a case of a good guy, a good bishop, finally having his day.
I first met Demetrios in l972 in Athens. He was just about the best educated and most ecumenically inclined of all the bishops. Liberal in spirit and democratic in political outlook, he was anathema to the military junta which governed Greece at that time. He was a risk for the Patriarch who probably respected Demetrios and knew he was needed to modernize the church but who did not know how to use his talents in a climate that was hostile to every progressive outlook. So Demetrios was given an honorary title, Bishop of Vresthene which was once a thriving area in Turkey but which ceased to have any parishioners with the mass exodus of the Greeks from Turkey after WWI.
So Demetrios was a bishop without either pastoral or episcopal duties. This freed him to pursue a teaching career at Harvard Divinity School and the Orthodox Seminary at Brookline, Mass, all through the 70s and 80s. Through the years I kept only occasional contact with Demetrios, meeting him once in Boston and several times in Greece where we were both on holiday., most recently talking to him August of l998 when I was on holiday in Athens.
Two years ago when the late Archbishop of Greece, Seraphim, had died, Demetrios was a runner-up in the election among the Greek bishops. My Greek friends thought that Demetrios should have then been elected but that approaching 70, he was a bit too old; he also may have still been too liberal for Greece. And now, ironically, at 7l he has been named to lead the wealthiest Greek Church in the world, the l.5 million member Greek Orthodox Church of the Americas.
The circumstance of Demetrios' elevation from retirement are cruelly ironic. Two years ago the aged Archbishop Iakovos was forced to retire at 86. The Patriarch named a very young and U.S. born bishop, Spyridon, to replace him and everyone assumed a new, progressive era was beginning for the American Church which is no longer a church of immigrants. The opposite proved the case. Spyridon was apparently aggressively authoritarian and stubborn and ended up alienating just about everybody in American Orthodoxy. A veritable civil war was waged against Spyridon by leading laity and most of the hierarchy, all five senior metropolitans opposing his rule. And finally the Patriarch acted by recalling him to Turkey, accepted his resignation, and appointed Demetrios.
I know Demetrios as a honorable, humble, intellectually brilliant, and democratic leader. He will be a blessing to his church. What goes around, comes around and after many years a good bishop has received his just recognition.
Pastor Gene Preston
The Rev. Gene R.Preston
14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com
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