The much-discussed question of the Holy Synod of Greece and the recalled priest of the Chicago Greek Community is at last settled, and Reverend Cyrill Georgeadis is found guilty by default by the mother church, the Holy Synod of Greece.

Civil and religious laws, whether they are right or wrong, must be accepted and respected by the people whom they govern. Disregard or disobedience of the laws endangers the very foundations of society. But laws are administered by human beings, and, therefore, since the human mind is not free from error, these laws are bound to do injustice instead of justice. There are many instances in which an innocent person has been found guilty.

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And one of these victims of our imperfection is Reverend Cyrill Georgeadis, priest of the Greek Orthodox Church in Chicago.

The aim of this article is not to criticize the Holy Synod and its decision in the case of Reverend Georgeadis, but simply to state the facts, as they are, to the mother church and to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, because, from all indications, neither the Partiarchate nor the Holy Synod is familiar with the Greek communities in America.

As a close observer of what is going on in the Chicago Greek community, as well as elsewhere in the United States where Greek communities are established, I hasten, with reverence, to bring to the attention of the mother church the fact that the integrity, dignity, and holiness of the Greek Church are being undermined by the Greeks in America.

The Holy Fathers of the Greek Church are delighted to hear that pious 3subjects of the church in faraway America are establishing Temples of God, and that they are requesting the mother church to send her religious servants to preach the Divine Logos and the Holy Gospel, and keep us Greeks of America under the wings of Orthodoxy. Noted priests of demonstrated integrity, outstanding ability, and long and faithful service to the Greek Church are chosen by the Holy Synod, and sent to us in America to minister to our religious needs. The hearts of those Holy Fathers of the Church are full of joy and thanksgiving that the Greeks in America are not lost sheep of Orthodoxy, but true and staunch followers of the Greek Church, the Ark of true Christianity, which for centuries has withstood the brutal attacks of so-called Christians as well as non-Christians--an unsinkable boat, she has sailed in all the turbulent seas of the religious world, and emerged scot-free from adulteration, evil, and falsehood.

Are we really as pious and blessed as our church takes us to be? Do we establish shrines of worship because of religious devotion? Are we performing 4our duty as brothers in Christ? Is there any piety and reverence in us toward the holiness of our church? The answers to these questions are all in the negative.

The dignity, purity, and grandeur of that holiest institution, the Greek Church, is undermined, not from without by its admitted enemies, but from within by its so-called followers--the Greek communities in America.

Here is the danger and the underground work of the Greek-American communities. We establish churches simply in order to create an opportunity for ourselves to become presidents, secretaries, treasurers, and so forth. We establish patriotic societies because we crave titles. Where are our religious and patriotic activities and deeds?

We request the mother church to send us priests, and we want these priests to be our tools, to dance to our whip, and woe to them if they dare to disobey our command. We load their backs with various unfounded charges, 5and, for ornament, we throw upon their character and good name a basketful of slurs.

We do not expect our priests to do only their religious duties, but we want them to go begging from door to door, to raise money for our mortgaged churches, which we have built without consideration of our financial powers. The president of the church and his cohorts, in order to pull the wool over the peoples' eyes, and make it appear that they are capable administrators of the church's affairs, command the priest to become collector, solicitor, and beggar, telling him, "Go ahead, Father, and raise money before we lose our church."

The good and efficient servant of the church, not being trained in these vocations of collector, solicitor, and beggar, becomes a tool for the wiles and intrigues of the former sheepherders and mountaineers, who, because of their money, aspire to high positions and titles.

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We have our political factions and fights, and woe to the priest who desires to stay neutral in our combats. He is immediately thrown out of the parish with a great list of incapabilities pinned upon his ecclesiastical frock.

And who are we? We, the judges and the critics of these noted and tried servants of the church, are farm hands and shepherds of yesterday, uneducated, uncultured, rustic people. But our dollars and our extravagant love of titles, coupled with the Holy Synod's unfamiliarity with the fabrications of the Greek communities, has given us the power and the inclination to compel our priests to follow a course of hypocrisy, indignity, and, eventually, unfaithfulness to the mother church, whose holiness depends upon the purity of her ministers.

Some of us want our priest to be attired in traditional garb--that is, with the long and loose black robe, the chimney-like head dress, and, above all, the long beard and mustaches. Some of us, who desire to be 7called progressives, want the priest to go along with the times and be modern, not ancient or medieval.

However, regardless of how the priest dresses himself, the following accusations will be hurled at him: "hypocrite, pharisee, dissembler, rebel, unorthodox, apostate, dance-hall gigolo." We want our priest to drink with us in the saloons. If he does not do so, he is unsociable and stingy; if he does, he is a drunkard and unfit to be a priest. In our vanity and pride we want our priest to wear expensive clothes and to live, he and his family, in a sumptuous building where rents are high, but we raise a storm of protest when mention is made of increasing his salary. Because of our audacity and the power we wield over the meek servants of the church, we dare to meddle even in the priest's religious work, we say for instance, "The priest did not hold the baby right at the christening"; "The priest did not say such and such a prayer"; and many other things shameful enough to move even a stone to tears.

In a certain community, which is known to us all, a faithful servant of 8Orthodoxy has lost his job because he dared to rebuke the godfather in a christening for his inability to say the "Pistevo". The cultured and highly-educated priest, in a mild rebuke, said to the godfather, "It is the duty of all Christians in general, and of godfathers in particular, to know the 'Pistevo', the symbol of Christianity."

Improper language was the charge upon which this faithful servant of Christianity was discharged from his position. No stone was left unturned in the effort to dismiss the priest who had dared to utter such an insulting remark against this godfather, who happened also to be a member of the council which controls the church and its minister.

This incident of the priest's dismissal has rocked the foundations of that community. But the worst is yet to come. This member of the church's council, after persuading his colleagues to dismiss the offending priest, requested them to authorize him to deliver the dismissal document in person. Undoubtedly, this arrogant and touchy Greek must have planned to 9say to the priest, "I will show you how to say the 'Pistevo' now."

When the facts are as I have stated, can it be said that we establish churches for piety? Do we call priests to preach the gospel and keep us under the shelter of Orthodoxy? If we have an iota of decency we must admit our sins to the mother church; we are unworthy of the good thoughts that the mother church has for us. We are unworthy to have priests, since we dismiss them as easily as we fire a porter or dishwasher. We are unworthy of ourselves, when we demand that the Ecumenical Patriarch recall such and such a priest, with the threat that if he does not do so, we will accept Protestantism as our religion.....

This is a nice attitude to assume toward Orthodoxy and the mother church. Religious followers of this type are useless in any denomination, are, in fact, a danger to the very foundations of any religious creed. It is about time that the mother church discovers what kind of Christians we are, why we establish churches, and why her ministers are not suitable 10to us. The mother church must bear in mind that when her ministers are treated by us as ordinary domestics, as old shoes to be discarded at will, her dignity, sanctity, and safety are in danger.

Methods must be found to bring the recalcitrant Greeks of America under control of Orthodoxy. Yielding to our offensiveness and permitting the ministers to become victims of our impiety will eventually lead the whole church into moral destruction.

One of the many victims of our impiety is Reverend Cyrill Georgeadis, who, in spite of his thirty-four years of faithful service to the church, and in spite of his being the choice of the venerable body that sent him to Chicago to perpetuate his splendid work, goes down in the archives of the Holy Synod of Greece as a condemned minister of the Greek Church.

When the mother church crucifies its ministers to appease our wrath and thus keep us under the wing of Orthodoxy, the sacrifice is too great for 11such unworthy subjects, who threaten to become Protestants if iniquity, impiety, and rascality are not condoned. If the mother church wishes to prevent our pollution from rotting out her holiness, purity, dignity, and very foundations, the best thing to do is to know us as we are. I believe that persecution of the ministers will then cease.

These are the facts which I solemnly present to the mother church for consideration.