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The Eastern Orthodox Church

Though comparatively better than other denominations and the closest one to the early forms of Christianity, the Orthodox Church has its fair share of serious problems.

Scandal in the Greek Church: bribery, smuggling, fraud, drug dealing, sexual favours

Telegraph News - Corruption scandal hits the Greek Church, February 5, 2005:
The Greek Orthodox Church suspended a senior bishop and an influential priest surrendered to police yesterday as corruption allegations involving bribery, drug dealing and sexual favours swamped the country's powerful clergy. The two men were the first ecclesiastical casualties in an alleged trial-rigging scandal that has called into question the credibility of the Orthodox Church and the courts. So far 20 judges are being investigated on suspicion of bartering away decisions in important cases, notably involving drug deals or church elections.
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Archmandrite Ioakovos Giosakis surrendered to police yesterday after a warrant was issued for his arrest on a charge of stealing from archaeological sites on the island of Kythera.
More details and further developments

Guardian Unlimited - Sex and fraud woe for Greek church, February 19, 2005:

Embattled Orthodox archbishop calls emergency meeting and asks for forgiveness over lurid claims
Greece's Orthodox church, buffeted by sex and corruption scandals, met in emergency session on Friday amid lurid claims that have included one newspaper publishing photographs of a 91-year-old bishop naked in bed with a nubile young woman.

Scrambling to resolve the worst crisis in the church's modern history, the embattled spiritual leader, Archbishop Christodoulos, convened the rare meeting as allegations of skulduggery, sexual improprieties, trial rigging, drug and antiquities smuggling engulfed the institution.

Greeks have watched dumbfounded as allegations of their priesthood's dissolute lifestyle have unfolded on their television screens. Snatched tape-recordings, aired nightly, have revealed rampant homosexuality among senior clerics who, unlike ordinary priests, are under oaths of chastity.

The alleged debauchery has not been limited to monastic cells. Last week, claims emerged that Metropolitan Theoklitos of Thessaly, a leading churchman, had been arrested on suspicion of drug dealing in a police raid on a notorious nightclub in Athens.

The priest was reportedly rounded up with Seraphim Koulousousas, the archbishop's former private secretary, also implicated in another "unholy affair" involving gay sex with a bishop. In a setback for Archbishop Christodoulos, Mr Koulousousas announced this week that he was leaving the church to embark on a career as a fashion designer in Paris.

The revelations follow the suspension of two high-ranking clerics for "ethical misconduct" earlier this month.

Metropolitan Panteleimon of Attica, who headed Greece's richest diocese, was withdrawn from duties after allegations of "lewd exchanges with young men" and charges that he had embezzled around €4.4m (£3m) for "his old age." The bishop is one of several eminent priests whose names have been linked in a widening trial-fixing and corruption scandal involving at least 20 judges currently under investigation. In the wake of suggestions by fellow members of the synod that he resign, Panteleimon's reaction was less than charitable. "If I speak, there will be an earthquake. I'll take many with me to my grave."

Earlier this month, Archimandrite Iakovos Giosakis was also suspended after being charged with antiquities smuggling following the disappearance of valuable icons from his former diocese.

Under public pressure from a media determined to expose the shenanigans, the church is investigating four more clerics, including a 91-year-old metropolitan bishop who was captured on camera cavorting in the nude with a young woman. The picture was splashed across the front page of the mass-selling Avriani.

Thanos Dokas, a political scientist..."Despite widespread evidence that these sort of things were happening, its leadership was always reluctant to deal with them.

Guardian Unlimited - Greece in revolt as scandals sweep the Orthodox church, March 20, 2005:

Theoklitos, the Bishop of Thessaliotis, resigned amid accusations of homosexuality and drug dealing.
...Metropolitan Bishop Kallinikos, with yet more claims of sexual impropriety... [that he] made sexual overtures to a male cantor.
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The revelations are mind-boggling. Almost daily, men once revered as paragons of virtue have been exposed as lascivious money-grabbers. Recorded conversations of eminent clerics engaging in 'love talk' have been broadcast on television, secret bank accounts revealed, and malfeasance unearthed, with priests emerging as central players in activities as disparate as trial-fixing, antiquities smuggling and election rigging. Highlighting a raft of lurid sexual claims, one newspaper splashed what was purported to be a 91-year-old priest in bed with a woman across its front page.

'In many ways, the Greek Orthodox Church has been revealed for what it is: a completely amoral and unethical multinational company,' said Nikos Dimou, author of the best-selling book The Misery of Being Greek.
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[Archbishop Christodoulos, head of the Greek Orthodox Church,] Forced to admit his own links with a priest imprisoned on charges of stealing icons and manipulating court judgments, the 66-year-old archbishop was quickly drawn into the scandal. Subsequent revelations of his connections with Apostolos Vavilis, a convicted drugs smuggler whom he endorsed in a glowing letter of recommendation, sparked protest from within his own ranks.

More at:

Greeks now want Church-State separation

But, this week, for the first time ever the vast majority told pollsters they would support the full separation of church-state relations.
As the allegations have mounted, so have calls for a separation of church and state. Priests in Greece are paid by the government.
From: Guardian Unlimited - Sex and fraud woe for Greek church, February 19, 2005
and Guardian Unlimited - Greece in revolt as scandals sweep the Orthodox church, March 20, 2005

The Orthodox Church In America with its own scandal

CNN News - Greek Orthodox archbishop resigns amid money questions, August 19, 1999:

The head of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America has resigned effective August 30 amid questions about financial mismanagement of church funds.

Spyridon -- the first U.S.-born leader of the 1.5 million Greek Orthodox members in the Americas -- had come under increasing pressure to resign during his three-year tenure. He was accused of financial mismanagement, covering up sexual harassment at the Holy Cross Seminary in Brookline, Massachusetts, and demagoguery.

Orthodox-Catholic relations today

The Schism between the two Churches has had a painful and difficult past: the sack of Orthodox Constantinople, the Roman Church's conspiracies against the Russian Orthodox Church and among the more recent events, the WWII genocide of the Orthodox Serbs at the hands of the Catholic Ustashi. Many Catholic priests were part of the Ustashi and participated in the terrible atrocities. Besides murdering or forcibly converting the Orthodox population, the Orthodox priesthood and Churches were also marked for extermination:

As the Serbs were marked for genocide, it was desired that no trace of their cultural heritage should remain. 299 Orthodox churches were destroyed. Some 300 Orthodox priests and five bishops were murdered. As this was a clerical-fascist crusade, the Orthodox clergy were marked for especially cruel torture, usually ending with the gouging out of their eyes or other forms of bodily mutilation. In one case the eighty-one year old Bishop of Banja Luka was shod like a horse and forced to walk until he collapsed, at which point his heart was cut out and he was set on fire. In Zagreb the Orthodox Bishop was tortured until he went insane. Some 400 Orthodox priests were killed in concentration camps.(50)
-- What is the Vatican hiding?, by Barry Lituchy
See more: Nazism in Yugoslavia - the Catholic Ustashi and The Vatican and Fascism in the 20th century
It is very understandable that Orthodoxy does not trust the Catholic Church, considering the latter's crimes against the former. Combined with these grave injuries of the past, there are other issues as well today.

The Pope's unwelcome visit to Orthodox Greece

The unpleasant histories of their encounters with Catholicism, particularly the lingering memory of the sack of Constantinople, has made the Eastern Churches wary of Rome. That is why there were many protests when in May 2001 the Pope visited Greece (the first Pope to do so since the Great Schism nearly a 1000 years ago) after having cancelled it in 1999. Though the tiny Catholic presence in Greece has the usual high opinion of the Pope, Greece's Orthodox majority has a decidely different view.

Some Greek Orthodox Christians compared the Pope to the Devil himself
New York Times - Pope Visits Greece Today on a Tough Mission of Reconciliation, May 4, 2001:

Orthodox priests and monks have held protest vigils and marched under signs that read "the heretic pope" and "two-horned monster of Rome." Archbishop Christodoulos, head of the Greek Orthodox Church, has vowed not to pray alongside the Roman Catholic pope, who arrives in Athens on Friday.
Guardian Unlimited - Monks protest at Pope as Greece goes on strike, April 27, 2001:
"Out with the two-horned beast, the Pope of Rome 666!" read a banner. "No to the leader of heresy," read another.
Telegraph News - Pope's visit to Greece infuriates Orthodox Church, April 29, 2001:
The Orthodox priest [Father Chrysostomos of Athens] declared: "He will infect our country,"
A poster outside Fr Chrysostomos's church spells out Orthodox opposition to the visit. Denouncing the Pope as a "false prophet and the anti-Christ" who adorns his mitre with "666", it announces a demonstration to be held tomorrow against the visit and lists the historical crimes for which successive popes were allegedly responsible.
Better late than never: in 2004, the Pope finally gave the long-expected apology for the sack of Constantinople and for many other Catholic crimes against Orthodox Christians. The statements he made in 2001 did not seem like apologies, but rather an exercise of inventing mutual blame where only one side had actually been at fault.

Catholics amongst the Orthodox in the East: feared to be a Trojan horse

Besides rejecting the exercise of papal primacy and the more recent 19th century Catholic dogma of papal infallibility (from the First Vatican Council of 1870), the Orthodox Church has another serious criticism of Catholic doctrine. The Orthodox world deeply objects to the inculturation encouraged by the Roman Church and practised by Catholics in Greece: Rome's use of Uniates (Catholics who are loyal to Rome, but follow Orthodox rites) to proselytise among the Orthodox Christians throughout the Orthodox Christian world, including Greece. Inculturation is the method the Catholic Church employs these days in all non-Catholic countries, whereby the country's Catholic Churches take over the prevalent non-Catholic practices, which the Vatican hopes will attract converts.

...the most contentious issue for Orthodox believers are the Byzantine Catholics, who follow Eastern rites but are loyal to Rome. The Orthodox church views them as a kind of Trojan horse to convert Orthodox believers.
From: New York Times - Pope Visits Greece Today on a Tough Mission of Reconciliation, May 4, 2001
...inroads made by the Catholic Church in other predominantly Orthodox states in eastern Europe have earned it a reputation for conversion.

Fr Nektarios, abbot of a monastery on the Corinthian Gulf, said: "It is a fairytale to say that the Pope is just coming on a personal pilgrimage. He is doing this because he wants the Orthodox Church to recognise him. He wants recognition as a global religious leader.

"Popes have fooled the Orthodox Church in the past. This pontiff will not be allowed to repeat the trick. He has the burden of history on his back. He cannot be trusted. You don't honour a criminal, you put him in jail."
From: Telegraph News - Pope's visit to Greece infuriates Orthodox Church, April 29, 2001

Guardian Unlimited - Pope's visit [to Orthodox Ukraine] fails to heal old wounds, June 28, 2001:

With divisions between the Roman Catholic and Oxthodox churches as wide as ever, the Pontiff's efforts at reconciliation seem unlikely to succeed...

Catholics and Orthodox have been clashing in Ukraine since the middle ages. They were still at it through the 1990s, when communist suppression melted away to expose unhealed old wounds from the distant past.

This week, in his first ever visit to Ukraine as pope, John Paul has moved to try to settle the conflict before he dies. But the Moscow patriarchate has told the Vatican to get stuffed.

John Paul's central ambition has been to undo the Great Schism and ultimately unite the two faiths while at the same time celebrating and paying tribute to the Greek Catholics of western Ukraine who suffered so grievously under Stalin and became the world's biggest banned church. But the two aims are incompatible. The Orthodox still view the Greek Catholics as heretical apostates wooed or forced away by the Vatican, the Catholic Poles, and the Austro-Hungarians to assert Roman Catholicism and undermine Orthodoxy.

There is plenty historical accuracy in that view. But the legions of young, American-educated theologians who are an integral element of the current Vatican roadshow exude contempt for the arcane, old-fashioned conspiracy theories of the Orthodox. In Lviv on Wednesday, a million Catholics remembered the outstanding Uniate leader of the 20th century, Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky. But in Moscow they quote him as having declared: "Ukrainians are merely the instrument of the divine scheme to wrest the Christian east from the clutches of heresy [Orthodoxy] and house it in the bosom of the [Catholic] Apostolic See and the European Community." [I.e. the Uniate Sheptytsky admits Catholics in the East are a wedge to open Eastern Orthodoxy up for Catholicism. And it seems Ukraine's separation from Russia, to join with Europe instead, is expected to be a step towards that.]

And at Kiev's Monastery of the Caves, Russian Orthodoxy's oldest shrine, crowds of devout elderly people prostrated themselves while praying passionately for the pope to depart their country.
"I'm not going to talk about politics," said a black-robed Orthodox priest who declined to give his name. "But the pope has never wished us well and can only bring us harm."