Challenging and Fearless Presence S. Wesley Ariarajah
No
one who had met, heard or related to the late Metropolitan Mar Gregorios
can cease to be impressed with the depth of knowledge, the clarity of
thought and the political acumen he brought into anything that he hadto
deal with. Only a few within the ecumenical movement have also had the
breadth of experience and formation that the Metropolitan has had from the
time, as Fr. Paul Varghese, he entered the ecumenical arena through the
Student Christian Movement and the Orthodox Student Christian Movement of
India.
I recall my first
meeting with him in the fifties, when I, as the newly elected General
Secretary of the SCM of Madras Christian College, was asked to organise a
meeting for Fr. Paul Varghese to address the students and staff of the
college. He was on his way back to
Since then I have had
the opportunity to work closely with him within the wider ecumenical
movement, especially the World Council of Churches. He knew the political "East''
and the "West'',
and had many crucial contacts within both even during the worst years of
the cold war. He also had a thorough knowledge of the
"East''
and "West''
in terms of church traditions; born and brought up within the Orthodox
tradition, he had his post graduate studies in Princeton, Yale, Oxford,
Budapest, Leningrad, Prague and India. He was the President or Chairman of
numerous local, regional and international organizations and initiatives,
studies and conferences, too numerous to list in this reflection. But what
is most significant is that in each and all of them his presence was
profoundly ""felt'',
and he would leave an indelible mark on the discussions. He had the
fascinating capacity to keep himself informed and up dated. Often he was
ahead of others more closely involved with the issue simply by having
looked up the information on the latest developments on the subject under
discussion.
As far as the World
Council of Churches is concerned, few, if any, since the late Willem
Visser't
Hooft, the first General Secretary, have had the width of involvement in
the manifold aspects of the Council's
life as did Met. Gregorios. In 1962 he became the Associate General
Secretary and Director of the WCC Division on Ecumenical Action. During
this time he was one of the Observers at the Second Vatican council and
was WCC member of the joint Working Group between the WCC and the Holy
See.
After leaving the
staff position, he made his contribution as a Member of the Faith and
Order Commission (68 - 75), Moderator of the Working Group on Church and
Society (75 - 83), chairing most ably its most significant world
conference on ""Faith,
Science and the Future''
in MIT, Cambridge, 1979. During his leadership of Church and Society he
gave impetus to study and research on many lively concerns related to a
Just, Participatory and Sustainable Society, especially to sustainable
development, ecological crisis, disarmament, nuclear non - proliferation
and the just use of the advancements in science and technology.
He was a respected
and ""feared''
member of the Central and Executive Committees and his long and
distinguished career within the ecumenical fellowship was recognized in
his elevation as one of the Presidents of the WCC at the Vancouver
assembly.
Met. Gregorios was
involved with the WCC and the broader ecumenical movement at a time when,
despite the participation and outstanding contribution by major
theologians like him from the third world, the Council remained
predominantly Western and Protestant in its theology and ethos. He was
deeply convinced that on many occasions the theological voice of the
Asian, African and Latin American theologians and the Orthodox tradition
was ""tolerated
but never taken seriously''.
He was convinced that the western cultural domination of the Ecumenical
Movement was the biggest obstacle to the movement becoming truly
ecumenical. ""This
is all icing''
he once told me when one of the speakers spoke of the need to listen to
the voices from the third world, ""Underneath
is the solid Western cake.''
During a coffee break in a Faith and Order meeting in the seventies, where
I was present as a youth advisor, he came up to me and said ""You
are new to this game, you will find out that you are up against an
impenetrable fortress of Western thought.''
To the very end he
fought what he saw as a Western (theological) and Northern (economic)
domination of the WCC and the unwillingness of the privileged to take the
others seriously. In this criticism he was sharp and uncompromising and
did not fear courting unpopularity and enmity. This side of his
personality came out most vividly when he challenged the Prime Minister of
Australia, at the WCC Assembly in Canberra, on his attempt to underplay
the deplorable plight and status of aboriginals within the Australian
Society. With his passing away the Asian and Orthodox churches have lost a
challenging and fearless presence of their voice within the ecumenical
movement.
After his WCC
Presidency ended, he became more involved in the inter-faith movement in
which he had always shown interest. He was much sought after in the
meetings of the World Conference on Religion and Peace and the World
Council of Faiths, where he was given leadership positions. As always he
was on top of the subjects given to him to speak on and showed remarkable
insight into the faith perspectives of others.
I met with the
Metropolitan for the last time at the Parliament of World's
Religions at Chicago, held to mark the Centennial of the first Parliament
of 1893. He had already had a stroke, and had to move around with a stick
and a person to assist him. But when he sat down to speak, his mind was as
alert as ever, tongue as sharp and thoughts as clear and insightful.
Andhis audience was as
wrapt as my fellow students were when he addressed us forty years earlier
as the young Fr. Paul Varghese.
Within the ecumenical
movement he was a man for all seasons. There had not been many like him
before, nor will be.
(Courtsey: AIACHE News
Letter, Vol. XXXI, No. 1, February 1997)
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