c. 1998 Religion News Service
NAZARETH, Israel _ Italian restorationists are painstakingly cleaning the ancient mosaics that line the crypt of”Mary’s Well”at the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation here, where Christian tradition holds that the birth of Jesus was announced to the Virgin Mary.
The work is in preparation for upcoming year 2000 celebrations, when Christian tourists are expected to flock to the Holy Land.
But Nazareth’s lay church leaders, who hold the only set of keys to the church, say the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Diodoros I, won’t be allowed to preside over celebrations at the church unless progress is made toward the resolution of a bitter and long-standing struggle between the largely Arab laity and the Greek-born church hierarchy.
After centuries of quiescence, Arab Orthodox Christians, members of the Holy Land’s largest and oldest Christian sect, are in the throes of a religious uprising against their own church leaders _ the predominantly Greek-born hierarchy of monks and clerics who control Jerusalem’s Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, the ancient church’s governing institution.
Local Israeli Arab and West Bank Palestinian church members, who number between 100,000 to 150,000, say their parishes are neglected and the patriarchate is corrupt and moribund. As a result, ancient Christian communities are slowly dying and the best of Arab Orthodox youth are leaving for other Christian churches, they warn.
A spokesman for the patriarchate, Metropolitan Timothy of Vostra, denied the allegations, although he allowed that”not everything is perfect, but we are doing our utmost to respond to our pastoral responsibilities, to reach the soul of every individual.” The long-simmering tensions first surfaced several months ago, when churchgoers in the Israeli Arab town of Jaffa south of Tel Aviv staged demonstrations and protests against the patriarchate’s reported lease of church lands to Israeli real estate developers.
Meeting in mid-October in Nazareth, lay leaders of Israel’s Orthodox community accused the church hierarchy of effectively selling off vast church holdings in Jerusalem and throughout Israel to commercial real estate developers, in the form of long-term leases, and using the proceeds for personal enrichment rather than social, educational and pastoral work.
At the center of the storm is the land policies of the aging and seriously ill Patriarch Diodoros I _ as well as his predecessors _ who over the past 50 years have leased immense tracts of prime real estate to non-church institutions.
In Jerusalem alone, church lands effectively transferred to private developers on long-term leases cover an area that is twice the size of the Old City, said Fuad Farah, chairman of the executive committee of the Orthodox Congress of Israel. Not only are Israel’s Knesset, or parliament building, and the Israel Museum located on these former church lands, said Farah, but so are the city’s Independence Park and large sections of West Jerusalem’s plush Jewish neighborhoods.
For Palestinian Christians, the lease of the church’s real estate holdings in West Jerusalem have not only religious significance, but immense political ramifications as well because of Israel’s attempts to expand the city’s Jewish population to gain leverage in the struggle to control Jerusalem.
But for Farah and other Israeli Arab Christians, the more relevant issue today is the income earned through the land development, which has never been audited or accounted for to church lay leaders.
Farah and other lay leaders say the church’s income should have been channeled into educational, religious and social welfare programs for the Arab Orthodox communities, which are struggling to survive in the largely Muslim West Bank, or in predominantly Jewish Israel. But instead, the lay leaders believe that much of the funding may have been funneled into the patriarch’s personal budget and into the maintenance of patriarchal residences in Greece _ charges the patriarchate denies.
In a letter published recently by the Orthodox Congress in Israel’s executive committee, the lay leadership warned that the Orthodox church in the Holy Land risked the”total liquidation of church assets”if the current lease and development policies continue.”The blunt refusal to disclose details of such secretly drawn transactions and contracts, estimated at millions of dollars, arouses in us deep feelings of suspicion, as does (the church’s) reluctance to reveal its budget or allow any form of participation of church deacons on decision-making,”the lay leaders stated.
The laymen also railed against the”total neglect of the basic needs of the parish churches against the extravagant wasteful spending and lavish living at the summit; the corrupt and unbecoming behavior of the ecclesiastes within the patriarchate and the insulting remarks of the patriarch to the press against his own congregation …”Despite its enormous wealth, the patriarchate has not built one single church, a school, an educational or a social institution in Israel as far back as we know,”the lay leaders stated,”while its financial contribution towards the building of new churches, schools and youth centers financed by local communities is minimal. It also refrains from maintaining churches already in existence or assist in their running expenses _ in flagrant violation of (canon) law.” Farah cited Nazareth as an example. The heavily Christian town, where Jesus grew up, boasts about a dozen Catholic and Protestant schools _ but nary an Orthodox institution to serve the Orthodox community of about 17,000 people, Farah noted.
A recently opened church community center and Sunday School program were developed solely by lay leaders, with almost no help from the church hierarchy. And while other Nazareth-based Christian denominations operate hospitals, clinics and even housing projects on the real estate they own, choice parcels of Orthodox church land in Nazareth, controlled by the patriarchate, have been leased to commercial Israeli concerns with no church affiliation.
Nazareth’s Orthodox Church community, based in the historic Church of the Annunciation, is nonetheless in a unique position today to exert pressure on the patriarchate. The local community, rather than the Jerusalem patriarchate, holds the rights to the church and immediate environs, giving lay leaders control over the keys to one of the most important sites in the Christian world. “The patriarchate can hold meetings and conventions for the year 2000 in any hotel they choose, but we have the keys to the church,”said Adi Bajjali, the 39-year-old lay secretary of the Nazareth Orthodox community.
Metropolitan Timothy said church fathers have been locked in a legal battle with the Nazareth Orthodox community for over a decade for control of church properties, which he said explains the patriarchate’s lack of involvement in the development of local schools or welfare institutions. “But even children who have a complaint against their father do not deprive their father,”said Timothy, referring to the Nazareth community’s threat to close the church doors to the patriarchate for the year 2000 celebrations.”This is a threat which does not give honor.” The metropolitan, who holds a rank comparable to that of a Catholic cardinal, also dismissed other allegations of neglect. Within the patriarchates’ provinces of Jordan, the West Bank, Israel and Jerusalem,”many churches have been built, also schools, and the church pays for the salaries of the clergy and the maintenance of the churches,”Timothy said, citing schools that have opened recently in the West Bank cities of Bethlehem and Ramallah and in Arab East Jerusalem.
Still, even in the West Bank and Jerusalem, where Orthodox Church-laity relations are a little warmer, disenchantment exists over the patriarchate’s attitude towards its local laity, said Dr. Peter Qumri, director of Bethlehem’s Al Hussein Hospital and a leading Orthodox leader and benefactor.
Qumri said the church spends insufficient funds”on the needy of the community,”while allegedly investing extensively in the maintenance and renovation of the patriarch’s personal residences in Greece.”There is no treasury and no bookkeeping, and much of the income of the church goes into the personal box of the patriarch himself,”said Qumri.”But a clergyman who is spending money on material things is not looking for the future of his soul, or his people, many of whom are living in miserable conditions here.” Exacerbating clerical-laity tensions is the culture gap between the close-knit church hierarchy, a brotherhood of largely Greek-born monks and bishops, and the Orthodox believers, who would like to see the church evolve into one that is more Palestinian Arab in character.
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Church members, themselves educated and westernized, are also eager to adopt some of the strategies which have helped Catholic and Protestant congregations maintain a foothold in the Holy Land _ from the dissemination of newsletters on church affairs to congregants, to a greater emphasis on lay theological training and the pastoral role of clerics.”Our youngsters are moving to other churches like the Baptist or Roman Catholic, because the congregations are more alive, and the relationship with the church is more personalized,”said Bajjali.”It’s a shame because our belief was not an import from abroad, but something authentic to this region,”he added.”And we, the Orthodox Christians, don’t want to become antiquities or souvenirs in the Holy Land.” Greek Orthodox parish priests, while today largely Arab, are poorly educated, Farah and Bajjali agreed, trained largely to perform the traditional tasks of baptisms, marriages, Sunday services and funerals.
Moreover, as married clergy, they cannot move up in the church’s hierarchy, which has been controlled by Greek-born bishops since the third century Byzantine period.”People don’t see the patriarchate as something close to themselves _ and its come to a point of despair,”Bajjali said.
In the local Catholic church, in contrast, a younger generation of Arab monks and priests have gradually risen up through church ranks,”Arabizing”the church hierarchy. As a result, Greek Orthodox Christians today perceive the smaller Catholic church as more in touch with popular sentiments than their own hierarchy _ and more responsive to the social needs of local Christians.
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