c. 1998 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ Upset by what they contend is the authoritarian style of their new American archbishop, some members of the Greek Orthodox Church have organized a new protest group.

The group, Greek Orthodox American Leaders (GOAL), hopes to spur a dialogue about democratic church governance and return “well-being” to church institutions, said neurosurgeon John Collis and retired naval commander Andrew Kartalis. Both are from Cleveland and at the forefront of the dissident movement.

The group will hold its first national strategy-setting meeting March 20-21 in Chicago, but its goals have already been publicly discussed in 13 regional meetings.

GOAL’s national meeting comes in the wake of an encyclical from Archbishop Spyridon and the church’s other leaders reaffirming the church’s commitment to involvement of the laity in governing the church but expressing”great concern”that unnamed groups”are attempting to establish themselves as separate and self-proclaimed arbiters of church governance.” The encyclical also warned that”organizations which call the faithful away from the Body of Christ, in order to randomly critique the Body of Christ, are neither edifying to the faithful, nor contribute to building up the unity of the church.”

Collis contends Spyridon, named to head the American archdiocese in 1996, has not honored the governing charter of the American church, which has given laity a voice in church governance for all of its 75 years.

The charter was created and is amended by a half-lay, half-clergy congress that meets biennially. Its decisions have been approved by the church’s top international governing body, the Istanbul-based Patriarchal Synod, Collis said.

“Our charter is clear. The laity has a voice in all matters. Neither laity nor clergy can back out of an agreement without the agreement of the other,” he said.

Collis said Spyridon, who was born in Ohio but has mostly served the church in Europe, seems unfamiliar with the charter and has been single-handedly making important _ and sometimes troubling _ administrative decisions, particularly about the geographic structure of the church.

“We have a new archbishop, and he is making decisions as he sees fit,” countered the Rev. George Passias, chancellor for the archdiocese. “The real issue here is that these people _ a few disgruntled people of means _ don’t agree with the direction of the church, with some of the decisions. …

“Lay people serve (in the congress) only at the grace of the archbishop,” added Passias. “They can’t preclude the hierarchical character of our church, which comes from the time of Christ. Nothing is law unless the synod approves. And the congresses cannot direct the church on matters of dogma and canonical structure. The church is not a democracy.”

But, Kartalis argued, the synod did approve the charter, the American church is democratic and canonical structure refers to religious laws, not administrative ones.

Collis and other GOAL leaders are also concerned that a movement toward Orthodox unity in America, nurtured by retired American Archbishop Iakovos, is not receiving support from Spyridon.

That may have been dictated by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who is based in Istanbul, the historic home of the Greek church, and may reflect “a turf battle going on at the top,” said Dean Popps, national press officer for GOAL.

Collis was on the executive committee of the archdiocese that then covered all of North and South America when it heard rumors three years ago that the patriarch wanted to split the archdiocese into regional jurisdictions and divide the United States into dioceses centered in large cities. The executive committee flew to Istanbul to protest.

The committee told the patriarch that the American church _ with perhaps 750,000 active members out of about 1.5-million claimed total members _ was too small to split, said Collis.

“And we asked him to choose someone with at least five years experience in the United States when our Archbishop Iakovos retired. He let us down in both instances.”

Without what they regarded as necessary approval by the congress, said Collis, the American archdiocese was split into Canadian, U.S., Central American and South American archdioceses, reporting directly to Bartholomew.

The United States was further divided into seven dioceses.

“And he sent a totally inexperienced person (Spyridon) to supervise 500 parishes,” said Collis.

Kartalis termed the moves “a way to divide and conquer, to push the laity out of administration” and thwart the ecumenical movement.

Passias disagreed.

He said the synod always considers changes when a new archbishop is appointed. One archbishop could not effectively visit the entire Western Hemisphere, he said. And Spyridon is very interested in the Orthodox ecumenical cause, he said.

Passias said the archdiocese will ignore the GOAL meeting. “They can’t call us to their turf,” he said.

DEA END FRENCH