Search Results for: Jerusalem

Meletios Metaxakis’s Failed Jerusalem Coup d’Etat

In the summer of 1908, an insurgent group known as the "Young Turks" rebelled against the Ottoman Emperor Abdul Hamid II, forcing him to restore the long-suspended Ottoman constitution. In the wake of the Young Turk Revolution, the local Palestinians in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem saw an opportunity to increase...

Jerusalem Wasn’t Really Autocephalous from 1669-1845

From the fall of the Byzantine Empire until the 17th century, it was customary for the Patriarch of Jerusalem to appoint his own successor, usually by making the chosen heir the Metropolitan of Caesarea. In 1666, Patriarch Nektarios of Jerusalem appointed his 25-year-old archdeacon, Dositheos Notaras, as Metropolitan of Caesarea,...

Jerusalem’s Abp Panteleimon in America, 1924-1931

On October 19, I wrote about Archbishop Panteleimon of Neapolis (today's Nablus), a bishop of the Jerusalem Patriarchate who was active in America in the 1920s. Since then, thanks to help from some readers, I've learned more about Abp Panteleimon's later years in America. Here's an update. Abp Panteleimon seems...

Abp Panteleimon & the Jerusalem Patriarchate in America

When most people think of the Jerusalem Patriarchate in America, they think of the controversial jursidiction that spung up in the past decade or so, which included ethnic Palestinians and some former clergy of Ss. Peter and Paul (Antiochian) in Ben Lomond, California. This jurisdiction received a bishop in 2002,...

Melkite Catholic Identity and Relations with Orthodoxy

Earlier this week, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch, Yusuf al-Absi, gave a very significant speech at an event celebrating the publication of a volume about the history of the so-called “Zoghby Initiative”, which sought to create a form of double communion for his church with both Rome and the Antiochian...

The Ecclesiology of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew Over Time

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is undoubtedly one of the most consequential figures in modern Orthodox history – not only the longest-tenured Patriarch of Constantinople ever, but also a man whose leadership has proven decisive for Orthodoxy around the world. It is for this reason that, in my article on the political...

St Raphael Hawaweeny vs the Pope of Rome

In 1894, Pope Leo XIII issued a papal encyclical on the "Eastern Rites" -- that is, the Uniates, those groups who use ancient Orthodox liturgical rites but submit themselves to the Pope of Rome. In 1898, St Raphael Hawaweeny, then an archimandrite in New York, published a response in a...

Patriarch Bartholomew’s Enthronement Speech

On October 22, 1991, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was enthroned in Istanbul. As far as I can tell, his enthronement speech has never been published in English, although a broadcast of the enthronement -- available on YouTube -- conveniently includes an English voiceover. My research assistant Cassidy Irwin transcribed that voiceover....

Freemasonry and the Orthodox Church

If you search the internet for Orthodoxy and Freemasonry, most of what you'll find will be condemnations of the movement. You might also find my 2012 article on Freemasonry in American Orthodox history. But, as far as I know, there hasn't been much work done to document the basic history...

How Did Orthodoxy Get Into This Mess?

It almost goes without saying that the Orthodox world is a mess right now. The situation in Ukraine alone is a disaster: a Russian invasion of the country backed by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) by the state, and a recognized-by-only-some Orthodox Church of...