What is going on in the Syriac Orthodox church? 14.May.2007 
Honourable Patriarch, we know each other more than well. Recently all over the world our church celebrated your 25 years jubilee as the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox church. Just like me, lots of people do remember your promise, in which you wanted to realise democracy within the church and would revive the old glory of the Syriac language. Many people miss this in our church. I was young then. Me and my friend were proud of our language and determined to serve our church enthusiastically during different church activities. You changed a lot within our church. ……. I won’t deny that. But if we look at the status of our church, and have a critical look the last years at the same time, than the following question rises with many of us: What is going on in this church? I hesitated for a long time whether to criticise the personal behaviour of a spiritual leader. Behaviour that does not suit his function nor his position. My hesitation comes from the fact that I have always been in the opinion that you should look at the positive side of a person and especially of that of a spiritual leader. But if this behaviour becomes a conspicuous phenomenon in our beloved church, then it becomes necessary to make this public and to criticize it. This criticism should of course be in the advantage of our church itself and of the Assyrians (Suryoye) in general. On the same hand, with this criticism I want to try to reduce the negative influence of this phenomenon on our church and people. I will not mention any names here, because everyone is already familiar with them. Besides they are not ashamed when they act in public en announce their statements at public places. Below I will give a few examples: - A few years ago, when one of our new bishops was at a condolence where accidentally I was also present, a co-operator of the intelligence service (Muchabaraat) with a low position came in. The bishop asked the co-operator to sit next to him. Through jokes and anecdotes the bishop gave this co-operator of the intelligence service all of his attention. Fifteen minutes later a high police officer came in and sat just between those present, without getting any attention of the bishop in spite of his high function. The same counts for the other present clergymen. They sat far away from the bishop and did not get any sort of attention of the bishop at all. This indicates how our church and bishops are influenced by the intelligence service, the “Muchabaraat”. This kind of behaviour and influence puts our church and people in a difficult situation. - An other example of more recent date is one that has to do with you, our patriarch. At the funeral of His Eminence late bishop Julius Cicek, that took place 1,5 year ago in Holland, you invited the ambassador of Syria to sit next to you. The speakers also thanked this Syrian ambassador many times, but for what no one knows. During this stately occasion the Dutch cardinal of the catholic church got a seat far away from the patriarch. He was considered just an ordinary guest, in spite of his high spiritual function. Besides you, our patriarch, preached once again in Arabic in front of ten thousands of people audience and spectators of the live broadcast of the Dutch and Assyrian media. You knew very well that more than 90% of the listeners does not understand the Arabic language. You had your preach instead, clumsily, translated into Suryoyo. Why not directly in the mother tongue, everyone thought? That is yet the liturgical language of the church, isn’t it? It is besides the language of the people and even our Lord Jesus Christ made himself heard in this language during his life on earth.
Our patriarch promised us to bring back the glory of our language. With this action he broke his promise in advance. If he would have preached in English in this European country, out of respect for his international guests, then everyone would have had understanding and even respect for this. Or was according to him the judgement of the Muchabaraat (Syrian intelligence service), in this case the Syrian embassy, the most important? Unluckily this has become a tradition of His Holiness the Patriarch. A patriarch that speaks the language of the people but refuses to use this to speak to his people in, uses a translator to have his words translated from Arabic into the language of the people. Is this patriarch, that is standing in front of us, the real leader of the Syriac Orthodox church, or are there things happening behind the scenes that we do not know of? Besides the patriarch said in an interview last year in a Lebanese newspaper (Annahar) that the Arabic blood is purely streaming through his veins. But in what laboratory he recovered this, he did not tell. This fact shocked our people, because this is against the desire of our Creator. We are created as Assyrians (Suryoye) and not otherwise, with all respect for all nations. Against what price he is making such statements, is not clear. The so-called democracy he promised to give us back our church institutions, is used as freedom for the bishops to misuse their spiritual authority for non-religious purposes. The bishops take their decisions without consulting the church management en the priests. Many of these decisions are taken at the cost of our people and church. An example of this: The affair of the disappeared million dollars, that were diverted by the bishops of The Netherlands and America to the mafia, is already familiar with everyone. Until now the believers suffer from the negative consequences of this fraud. What is even more attracting attention is the creation of dioceses of which some of them don’t have more than one or two parishes. New bishops were inaugurated for this, one of them was even not able to celebrate a service. Herewith we can thank God that we live in a time of TV channels and satellites that present us such events directly and make us a witness of the low level our beloved church has reached. And if there is the rare event, as was the case in The Netherlands, that all the members of the community agree about the choice of the monk that would have to become their new bishop, than the patriarch immediately rejects this. Without giving a reason for his decision he starts one commission after the other ‘to expose the real choice of the people’. This choice was known already for a long time and had been announced to him more than once both scripturally and orally. This made the people sorrowful and it leaves many question marks in the heads of the believers. In other places monks got even consecrated as bishops without consulting their respectively parishes. This brings us back to our question: “What is going on?” One of these ‘very learned’ new bishops discovered a short time ago that the Turks are totally innocent of the genocide on our people in the year 1915 in Turkey. A genocide that was planned systematically by the government and by which hundreds of thousands Assyrians (Suryoye) got killed. Till the day of today there are countless families that still suffer from the consequences of this tragedy, ironically one of these families is the family of the just mentioned bishop himself! Now this genocide matter is starting to get recognition within different European authorities, and the Turkish government is getting difficulties because of this in its relation with the Europeans, the bishop wants to state that the Turkish are innocent. He got this sudden clear insight immediately after he got consecrated and the Holy Spirit came down on him. This probably happened when he got invited for the well-known dinner by the Turkish ambassador in Brussels. After this dinner he started to state that the Turks were innocent. This bishop is not ashamed of his words, which he repeated in his lecture that he organised himself and where he had invited a genocide researcher. But this researcher did not get any chance to say anything. He tried cleverly to misuse the presence and the reputation of this genocide researcher. What even drew more the attention was that the bishop had also invited people from the Turkish embassy for this meeting, so that they could be witnesses of his loyalty to the Turkish state. Many of us wonder how this bishop can deny and repudiate the hundreds of thousands of Christian martyrs of our people. This behaviour arises by vile souls, where combined with the name of Jesus in order to be able to act with this name. Like this they betray Jesus even more than Judas has done. At the same time and in spite of his bad health, the patriarch was not far from the place where the lecture took place, relaxing from his long journey to Europe by which not is told for what he came, certainly not to come The Netherlands to have the consecration of the new bishop..? The only explanation for this sudden European journey is, that he wanted to be sure of the discipline of his new bishops and to be able to see if the Turkish blood is really flowing through their veins, like through his the Arabic blood is flowing. His promise to let the glory of the Assyrians (Suryoye) revive is apparently becoming old goods and is not going well with our time. The influence of the intelligence services (Muchabaraat) of our original area and their politics have become a characteristic of our time. At least with some of our clergymen that have become really cheap. Is this really what is happening in our Syriac Orthodox church? By Said Saume Lahdo ESNA © EasternStar News Agency | 
