NEWS STORY: Patriarch lauds slain civil rights leader

c. 1997 Religious News Service ATLANTA _ Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew issued a ringing call Friday (Oct. 31) for believers from all nations to join together to work for peace and racial reconciliation as he visited the grave of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and the site of the 1996 Olympic Summer Games. […]

c. 1997 Religious News Service

ATLANTA _ Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew issued a ringing call Friday (Oct. 31) for believers from all nations to join together to work for peace and racial reconciliation as he visited the grave of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and the site of the 1996 Olympic Summer Games.

The patriarch, not quite half through his month-long pastoral visit to Orthodox Christians in the United States, in a speech at Emory University, also called on believers to balance faith and technology for the betterment of humanity.


As Bartholomew arrived in Atlanta from Boston, there were reports education officials are investigating irregularities at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Mass., where Bartholomew received an honorary degree Thursday.

The theological school and its sister institution, Hellenic College, are under investigation by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges and the Association of Theological Schools, the two agencies that grant accreditation, the Boston Globe reported.

In Atlanta, Bartholomew, spiritual leader of more than 250 million Orthodox around the world, laid a wreath at the King grave and received a rare President’s Medal from Emory.

He also led an ecumenical prayer service at the Centennial Olympic Park, near the spot where a terrorist bomb killed one person and injured several others during the 1996 games.”Dr. Martin Luther King Jr had a dream in which all men and women would come to live together in peace,”Bartholomew said.”He ran the race, fighting the righteous battle, struggling on an Olympian scale with the forces of darkness and evil.”He is a martyr to the cause of peace, to ideals that Christ himself taught to one who preached his word. Here in Dr. King’s city, in the place where his earthen vessel remains to remind us of his spirit filled vision, we dare to echo his call and proclaim the dream of a thousand year peace,”Bartholomew said in a speech at Olympic Centennial Park linking King’s vision to that of the ancient Olympics.

At the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Bartholomew was greeted by Coretta Scott King, widow of the civil rights hero, who thanked him for”reaffirming the commitment of the Orthodox Church to human rights and dignity.” Mrs. King lauded retired Archbishop Iakovos, former head of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, as”one who supported my husband during the civil rights movement.”Iakovos marched with King in demonstrations in the South.

In response, Bartholomew called himself”a humble apostle of peace”who has shed”a flood of tears that the world might some day know the way of the Prince of Peace.”Of King, he said,”May his memory be eternal.”The patriarch then sang a Greek hymn-prayer for the soul of the slain civil rights leader.

Just an hour later, Bartholomew received the President’s Medal from Emory University in recognition of”his impact on the world in enhancing the dominion of peace and enlarging the range of cultural achievement.” The patriarch, just the third person to receive the medal, joins the company of the Dalai Lama of Tibet and President Carlos Menem of Argentina in the honor.


In accepting the medal, Bartholomew called on citizens of the world to”use the tools of human progress for moral and ethical commitment.””The modern Western world has often portrayed this simple message (the love of Jesus) as marginal to the great advancements of science, technology and the arts since the Enlightenment. Modern culture has been portrayed as having its own message, its own truth that is more relevant, more important to the lives of the people of our societies than the church’s ancient message. The latter has been portrayed as archaic and irrelevant. At the same time, secular culture has often been shown to be empty and without morality.” The patriarch said”contemporary society has searched for a moral compass everywhere, too often ignoring religious traditions”and especially since World War II, religion has been seen to be”in conflict with the hallmark of modernity, which is secularism.”Yet secularism’s emptiness leaves the culture desiring a moral direction. Contemporary culture has a short memory. Orthodox Christianity, however, has a long memory,”he said.”We must not blame the culture of intellectual progress for the emptiness of our own souls,”he added.”If we look to secular culture to feed our psyches, we will starve. If the diverse peoples of a culture look to the memories of their faith traditions, whatever they may be, they will be sustained, they will be fed the food of God’s spiritual knowledge.” (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

At issue in the Holy Cross/Hellenic College incident, is the firing earlier this year of the school’s president and three faculty members who had refused to cover up alleged misconduct on campus by a visiting cleric from Greece and a graduate student at the seminary.

According to initial investigations by a faculty disciplinary committee, the alleged assault occurred during Lent, when several visiting clerics from Greece were holding a drinking party in their dormitory room. One of the priests reportedly made repeated sexual advances toward a male underclassman, who responded by punching the priest in the eye.

Archbishop Spyridon, appointed by Bartholomew in 1996 to head the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, fired the academics to resolve what he said were long-running academic disputes at Holy Cross/Hellenic College.

All of those fired were members of the disciplinary committee and had unanimously recommended the expulsion of the Greek priest, who was a graduate student at the seminary. In a decision that has been widely criticized by Greek Orthodox laity, Spyridon allowed the priest to remain at the school and receive his degree before returning to Greece.

Bartholomew made no mention of the flap when he visited the seminary Thursday.

MJP END HARWELL

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