BishopAccountability.org
	Have They Not Yet Learned? By Theodore Kalmoukos Orthodox Reform September 29, 2007 http://orthodoxreform.org/cases/fr-nicholas-katinas/have-they-not-yet-learned/ Once again, our Church is being dragged to the courts for one of the most heinous cases imaginable: sexual misconduct involving a priest and a young boy. Once again, church officials seemed to have known about the case, and tried for months to keep it a secret until the news inevitably broke – as it should have been expected to – when the case reached a court of law. Words are not enough to describe the shame and fury our people feel – honest, moral, God-fearing, hardworking, law-abiding American citizens – who are seldom engaged by the police (our community has one of the lowest crime rates in the country) for such despicable acts. Nor are words enough to describe the justifiable concern they have for the state of our church's administrative leadership. It was only a few months ago when our Church was shaken to its core by the sexual abuse case involving Nicholas Katinas, the now disgraced former pastor of Holy Trinity Church in Dallas, whom Ecumenical Patriarchate finally defrocked – and rightly so – but our Archbishop still can not bring himself to officially and properly inform our community about it, a case which is still pending in Dallas courts. It is fair to state that both the Katinas case, as well as the new case involving Father Nicholas Graff of Jacksonville, Florida (see this week's lead story), existed prior to the enthronement of Archbishop Demetrios, so the Archbishop is not responsible for them being ordained. But the Archbishop is responsible for the dismal way in which both these horrifying cases were handled, and for the absurd attempts to keep them covered up. Have they no fear of God inside them? Have they not learned anything from the almost catastrophic experience the Roman Catholic Church has undergone as a consequence of similar circumstances, though larger in scale? In the Graff case, Demetrios is also responsible for appointing the newly accused priest a member of the Archdiocese Council and a member of the Hellenic College/Holy Cross Board of Trustees; and for twice recommending that he be elevated to the Episcopate. Is this not just incredible? And can you blame people for asking what's going on? Our community is deeply concerned about not only the moral, but also the financial, ramifications of these cases for our Church, which seems to toss about in an ungovernable hurricane.
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