Posted by George Michalopulos
on 10/16/2009, 6:57 am, in reply to "Re: Scandals, their effects, and Unity"
Tom, my point is (and I'm a broken record on this) that dioceses should be small and compact. Yes, most OCA dioceses are larger in geographic area than the GOA "metropolises." However, the "metropolises" are not really metropolitan districts in that they are not conglomerations of dioceses. The title "metropolitan" refers to a primatial bishop who is elected by diocesan ordinaries and who has presidency over a region (not necessarily a political region but usually so).
The debasement this title in the GOA, the See of Constantinople, and even the Church of Greece (and wherever else for that matter) is a cause for great concern, not normalization.
Several months ago I addressed the debasement of this title in an essay. In medieval Greece, the very small metropolitan districts reflected a viable political reality in that almost every city of some size had a bishop. And of course, the mountainous terrain of Greece made it difficult to travel, therefore many dioceses could conglomerate rather easily into many metropolises.
The idea of one bishop=one city was reflected as far afield as Europe in the Middle Ages. A town could not called a "city" unless it had a cathedral, which was the seat of a bishop. Any town that did not have a bishop & cathedral was a "village."
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