c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, ratcheting up the stakes in its increasingly nasty dispute with church dissidents seeking to oust the denomination’s top cleric, has gone on the legal offensive against the organization formed by the critics to press their attack.

In a suit filed Friday (Sept. 11) in federal court in New York, the archdiocese charged Greek Orthodox American Leaders, Inc. (GOAL) with having”misappropriated”the church’s confidential _ and”sacred”_ computerized mailing list, causing the denomination”irreparable harm”and violating its members’ privacy.

The suit asked the U.S. District Court’s Southern District to restrain GOAL from further use of the list and to award the archdiocese unspecified monetary _ including punitive _ damages and reimbursement of associated legal costs.

Court papers characterized the archdiocese’s action as”a divine responsibility.” A GOAL spokesman Tuesday (Sept. 15) denied the organization’s mailing list had been improperly compiled and termed the suit an attempt to”destroy”the group.”This is a thought and mind-control process that, to me, is very reminiscent of the Soviet-era style of doing business,”said Dean Popps, GOAL’s national spokesman.”They’re trying to stifle debate because they’ve been gravely embarrassed.” The Rev. Mark Arey, the New York-based archdiocese’s communications director, denied the suit’s intent was to undermine GOAL.”This is not about GOAL’s ability to talk or speak,”he said.”We only want our property back. They have a right to say what they want, just not with our mailing list.” For nearly a year, GOAL and the archdiocese have been locked in an escalating and bitter dispute centering on the performance of Archbishop Spyridon, an American-born cleric who has led the denomination since 1996.

GOAL says Spyridon’s heavy-handed management style and alleged fiscal irresponsibility are ruining the American Greek Orthodox church, which claims about 1.5-million baptized members.

Archdiocese officials contend the dissidents are a well-financed but small group of malcontents concerned with gaining power and in rebellion against Greek Orthodoxy’s traditional adherence to firm ecclesiastical leadership.

Last spring, GOAL _ which claims the direct support of at least 2,000 church members who have contributed funds or attended its meetings _ called for Spyridon’s removal from office. In August, GOAL’s Web site reported Spyridon had been ousted by the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarch, the highest ruling body for those Orthodox churches affiliated with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.

Bartholomew is the Istanbul-based spiritual leader of much of Eastern Orthodoxy as well as the man who named Spyridon to head the American church.

More recently, the Web site, citing reports from Greek and Greek-American newspapers, has reported that Bartholomew overruled the synod to keep Spyridon in office.

In its suit, the archdiocese makes no direct claim as to how GOAL allegedly obtained its mailing list of 131,000 names. However, it notes that access to the list was closely controlled and that it was”seeded”with coded names of archdiocese employees to track mailings of”The Orthodox Observer,”the church’s official newspaper.

The employees have received GOAL mailings, something the church says could not have happened”unless GOAL had misappropriated the archdiocese’s membership list.”In an interview, Arey said the archdiocese’s list has, to his knowledge, never been sold or shared with a non-church entity.

In response, Popps said GOAL’s own mailing list _ which is approximately the same size as the archdiocese’s _ was culled from individual parish lists and names submitted to its Web site.”We’ve been collecting names on Voithia (GOAL’s Web site) for the better part of a year … The Internet itself has been a large part of how we collect names,”Popps said.

DEA END RIFKIN