Greek Orthodox Church / Church of Greece (original) (raw)

The Greek Orthodox Church today comprises five administrative jurisdictions; the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (now Istanbul), the Patriarchates of Alexandria and Jerusalem, and the Churches of Cyprus and Greece. All together, the Church counts a membership of approximately fifteen million people living in Greece proper, the Near East, Africa, North and South America, Western Europe, and Australia. It has been estimated that there are more than 150 million Orthodox Christians in the world, while other estimates placed the number the area of 300 million.

The Hellenic Orthodox Church is the national church of Greece. The Greek Orthodox Church of today claims that she is the Church founded by Jesus Christ himself; that the Church was guided by the Apostles, including Saint Paul, who visited many Greek cities, was strengthened by martyrs, saints, and the Church Fathers, and is maintained and propagated by her believers in the modern world. The first contact of the Greeks with Christ is related by the author of the Fourth Gospel. He writes that some Greeks among those who used to visit Jerusalem at the Passover approached Philip and Andrew and asked to see Jesus (Jn. 12.20-24). The Greeks, as seekers after truth, were eager to listen to something novel, to meet the new master.

In the history of the Greek Orthodox Church four stages of development can be distinguished. The first three centuries, through the age of Constantine the Great constitute the apostolic and ancient period. The medieval period includes almost ten centuries, to the fall of Constantinople. The age of captivity starts, roughly, in the fifteenth century and ends about the year 1830. It is followed by the modern period.

The Greek War of Independence brought a great change to the Church of the free kingdom. The clergy had taken a leading part in the revolution. In 1821, at the beginning of the movement, when Alexander Hypsilanti was making his absurd attempt to rouse the Vlachs, Gregory V of Constantinople, forced by the Turkish government, denounced the "Hetairia Philike" and excommunicated the rebels. But the Metropolitan of Patras, Germanos, the Archimandrite Dikaios (Pappa Phlesas), and other leading ecclesiastical persons openly took the side of the Greeks, helped them with their counsels, and in many cases even joined in the fighting. Dikaios made a heroic stand with 3000 men against Ibrahim Pasha's Egyptians at Maniaki on Mount Malia. In 1822 the Turks began their series of reprisals by barbarously murdering the Patriarch Gregory V in his vestments, after the Liturgy of Easter Day (22 April), although he, so far from being responsible, had obeyed them by excommunicating his fellow-countrymen. Throughout the war the Greek Church showed that the cause of her children was her cause too.

The Greek Church did its part nobly in the liberation of Greece proper from the Turkish yoke, and it was at once recognized as the established Church of the country. In the reign of Otho a commission was appointed, with Pharmacides at its head, which declared the independence of the Church of Greece on the See of Constantinople, and proposed for it a constitution similar to that of the Church of Russia. The declaration of independence was confirmed by the bishops of Greece in the same year. The Episcopal Synod was pronounced the highest ecclesiastical authority in the realm. Christ was proclaimed the Head of the Church, and the King its chief governor in external matters. At the same time all the monasteries which had fewer members than three were dissolved, leaving eighty-three for men, and three for women. Such measures as these could not pass without opposition. It was argued that the Church of Greece had not the right of declaring its own independence, and that the dissolution of the monasteries was profane. But this excitement passed away. A convention in 1844 sanctioned the arrangement made in 1833, only omitting the King's title of supreme governor.

The Church of Greece, with a membership of approximately nine million people, was officially recognized as a self-governing church in 1850. She increased both territorially and numerically after a series of revolutionary wars that brought to the Greek nation the territories of Epiros, Thessaly, Macedonia, Thrace and the Ionian and Aegean islands. Greece is a solidly Orthodox Christian country.

Since the census of 1890 the number of Greeks immigrating to the United States increased greatly. Some came from Greece, some from the Greek islands of the Aegean, and others from Constantinople, Smyrna, and other parts of Asia Minor. They were largely unmarried men, or, if married, they have left their families behind them and have scattered over the .country, those from the same section usually keeping together. As they became to a certain extent permanent residents, and especially as they were joined by their families, they felt the need of religious services, particularly in case of marriage, or sickness and death. Accordingly, application was made by the communities to the ecclesiastical authorities of their own sections, and priests were sent to this country, sometimes by the Holy Synod of Greece and sometimes by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. These priests formed churches in the larger centers and also congregations in places within easy reach, which they visit more or less regularly as convenient. The Greek Orthodox Church of America was founded as an Archdiocese of the Ecumenical Throne in 1922. As such, the Archdiocese of America is an eparchy of the Ecumenical Patriarch.

The Greek Orthodox Church is not to be confused with the "Greek Catholic Church," which is a branch of the Roman Church. In fact, the Church of Rome includes members of the Byzantine Rite. The Orthodox on the other hand, who commonly use the name "Greek Catholic," use it always with other attributes such as Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic, Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic, etc. "Greek Catholic" alone refers to the Roman branch of Greek liturgical background, also known as "Uniate," i.e., in the union with the Roman Catholic Church.

The faithful of the True Orthodox Church of Greece are commonly known as "Matthewites," after Blessed Archbishop Matthew (+1950). The Matthewites must be distinguished from the State Church of Greece, which follows the New Calendar, and from the Greek Old Calendarists known as "Florinites" (after the former Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Florina), who derive their orders from the Church of Russia. There are also a number of other Old Calendarist groups that have no historical connection to the True Orthodox Church of Greece.