From the Pink News:
Gay rights advocates in Greece have appealed for help in fighting a lawsuit against activist Leo Kalovyrnas and non-governmental organisation Synthesis HIV/AIDS Awareness.
The Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Piraeus, Seraphim, is bringing the suit.
He made a series of homophobic statements in a newspaper article, claiming gay people are “morally corrupt, obsessed with satisfying their psychopathological deviation and who have made a life value out of the faeces elimination tract.”
Kalovyrnas described the Metropolitan’s words as “hate speech” which should be banned, and Seraphim (or Serafim) has responded by suing for defamation.
Orthodox clerics rarely feel the need to be civil when engaging in controversy; instead, opponents are heaped with the most rancourous abuse that can be mustered. Here’s Seraphim again, this time complaining about Greek Catholic (“Uniate”) churches in a letter to the Pope published in the Orthodox Press (Orthodoxos Typos) newspaper:
Your Beatitude,
Following the recent election of the new Bishop of the Uniates of Greece upon the decision of the Pope of Rome Mr. Benedict the 16th, it is now verified beyond any naïve doubt that the heretic papist parasynagogue (conventicle) –as our memorable, late spiritual father the Archbishop Seraphim used to call it- has not in the least altered its atrocious stance against the Undivided Orthodox Catholic Church – from which it severed itself, only to be thereafter led to thousands of other downfalls – distorting purposely and methodically both the dogma and the polity and the ethos of the undivided Church.
The enthronement within Athens itself on the 24th of the preceding month of May this year of Mr. Demetrios Salahas as Bishop of the nonexistent “Uniates of Greece” has totally disposed of the mask of supposed “amiable relations” and the theory of “sister Churches”, to reveal the true, unsightly face of Papism, which has opportunely struck a blow to the truth of the Faith by persevering satanically in its intolerable malice…
With brotherly love and due honor,
The least in Christ brother
+Seraphim of Piraeus
(Alternative translation here) Seraphim can also never bring himself to write of the World Council of Churches without calling the body “The World Council of so-called ‘Churches'”. We are also told that
Seraphim of Piraeus has defended the Orthodox Faith; he declared that the Church is One: that of the Orthodox Faith; he stressed that the Papist Bishop is in a fallacy; he underlined the fact that Papism is a heresy; he reminded him of the Papists’ crimes against 800.000 Orthodox in Croatia; he posed various questions to the Papist Bishop and with his stance, he defended the newspaper “Orthodox Press” for opposing Christian heresies.
An admiring profile of Seraphim written by a certain Protopresbyter Theodoros Zisis adds further details:
For decades now the pan-heresy of Ecumenism infects the Orthodox faith and life…The powerful weakened but it was preordained by God that a loud Orthodox voice of an even young bishop be heard. The metropolitan of Piraeus, most reverend Seraphim, amazed us and pleased us all with everything he wrote and reported to archimandrite Marko Manoli, to the unshakeable as well fighter of Orthodoxy, a spiritual and elder of the “Panhellenic Orthodox Union” who is also the spiritual overseer of the “Orthodox Press”. Whatever he writes and declares is the Faith, the voice, the teaching of the Holy Fathers and the self-consciousness of the Church.
According to the Orthowiki, Seraphim’s family name is Mentzelopoulos, and he was previously a bishop in Australia. Here he got on the wrong side of his boss, Archbishop Stylianos, who writes:
We shall, therefore, deal with certain extraordinary and rather mischievous ‘ploys’ of Athens in which they have ‘implicated’ us – taking advantage of our altogether caring disposition and philanthropic leniency towards those younger than ourselves. We refer to certain ‘sharpsighted’ and ‘office-seeking’ Clerics who, while presenting themselves as persons of ‘overflowing piety’ and ‘missionary zeal’, dared to profanely ‘snatch’ the highest and most sacred office and ministry of the Church – that of Bishop – so that they might then debase it and turn out to be, as sometimes occurs, our ‘abusers’ and ‘slanderers’.
We refer here to the altogether unexpected and inexplicable ascent to the position of Chief Secretary of the Archdiocese of Athens, Bishop Seraphim Mentzelopoulos of Christianoupolis, and to the former Metropolitan of New Zealand Joseph Harkiolakis, ‘protected’ and ‘promoted’ adroitly by the former.
As both of these hypocritical, desperate and, at the same time, mellifluous flatterers are seeking appointment to prime Metropolitanates in Greece, fishing undisturbed in ‘murky waters’, since this suits the unrepentant establishment of ‘Chrysopigi’, we are today obliged to make public our Pastoral Report (see pages 4,5) to the Ecumenical Pa-triarchate with regard to Metzelopoulos, forwarded more than three years ago in Greek, since we have already written about and made public matters pertaining to Harkiolakis.
The 2003 “Pastoral report and denouncement by Archbishop Stylianos to the Sacred Centre of the Ecumenical Patriarchate” can be seen here. The document is rambling and as hyperbolically abusive as anything produced by Seraphim himself; various clerics are denounced as “accursed”, “from a young age diabolical in dexterity and wickedness”, or “demonstrating a Luciferous arrogance”. However, the details of the actual dispute remain obscure; or, as we might say, “Byzantine”…
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