Listening to the Ecumenical Patriarch

The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Archbishop of Constantinople New-Rome, so often misunderstood by the media, his fellow Orthodox, and other Christians, occupies an historically unique but currently embattled position in the East--not only by the Turks, but also by some other (especially Russian) Orthodox who dispute his authority, which, as I have shown elsewhere, is not in fact entirely clear in history, the canons, or ecclesiology. His little flock in Constantinople today is growing smaller with each passing year, and lives with on-going harassment from the Turkish government--though lately some of that might, perhaps, be lessening just a wee bit. He does not have the audience, or the ability to command attention, that the bishop of old Rome does. In witness of that, one merely needs to consider the enormous furor one interview the bishop of old Rome is able to generate. There has been no such publicity--not even close--to publications by or about the bishop of new Rome.

And yet this new book from Fordham University Press, a collection of the patriarch's writings, very much deserves attention:

Speaking the Truth in Love: Theological and Spiritual Exhortations of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought)



With a foreword from the Archbishop of Canterbury, this book, edited by the prolific John Chryssavgis, promises to give us some "inside information" into the thinking of a man with an enormously complex brief whose every action requires very painstaking consideration, and whose every word is obviously monitored   by Turkish government minders ever zealous to draw attention away from their deplorable record of protecting Christian human rights.

Fr. Bill Mills will review this in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies in 2011.