New York, October 20, 2017
An article appeared on The Pappas Post on Wednesday which many say distorts the meaning and use of a prayer written by a metropolitan of the Greek Orthodox Church, claiming that it applies to patients of sex-change operations.
The article “The Greek Orthodox Church Has a Prayer for Name Changes Following Gender Reassignment Surgery” aims to discredit the Church’s stance against the recently-adopted law “On the Legal Recognition of Gender Identity” which allows anyone 15 years or older to legally change his gender by written notification to the relevant authorities.
“While Greek Orthodox Church leaders protest Greece’s new gender laws and some have even ordered their parishes to ring bells every day to mourn these new laws, the fact remains that the Greek Orthodox Church has, amongst its catalogue of thousands of prayers, a reading for clergymen called ‘A Prayer at the Giving of a New Name Upon Modification of Gender,’” Gregory Pappas writes in the article.
Gregory Pappas is the founder and publisher of The Pappas Post who defines himself as being passionate about his Greek heritage, and wanting to share it with the world. In 2014, Pappas wrote an article publicly lamenting that he was denied Holy Communion for being an openly-practicing homosexual.
He writes that the Greek Church’s protest against the bill has “divided the nation and perpetrated hatred against many in Greece’s trans community.” In addition to individual hierarchs, the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church and the Sacred Community of Mt. Athos have issued strong statements against the transgender law.
The story, which has been picked up by Christian Today and a number of other publications and blogs, immediately drew criticism. As many, including hierarchs and clergy of the Greek Orthodox Church, have noted, the prayer is not about renaming someone who has undergone a sex-change operation later in life, but is rather “for those who had a legitimate operation, i.e. who were born hermaphrodites and were assigned the wrong gender by doctors,” as Fr. Peter Heers has commented.
Archimandrite Georgios Chrysostomos, the current metropolitan of Kitros, Katerini, and Platamon, writes in an article posted on the official website of the Greek Orthodox Church, that the given prayer is for “the very rare cases of children born with organic sex confusion, with incomplete or dual-developed sex organs,” and “only concerns infants after the rehabilitation of a sexual complication.”
The prayer was included in a euchologion, a collection of priestly prayers for various occasions, composed and compiled by Metropolitan Timotheos of Nea Ionia and Philadelphia in the 1980s. Although the metropolitan’s collection received the approval of the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church, it should be noted that it is not a publication of the Holy Synod, as the Pappas article implies, and the given prayer is not included in the Synod’s official prayer book issued for priests.
The prayer is “is only for these cases. Nothing more,” writes Bishop Chrysostom Hatzygeorgiou of the Greek Orthodox Church in Australia, referring to the distinction between gender restoration and gender reassignment.
The prayer reads in in English:
All-good and greatly compassionate Lord, above [all conceptions of] being and divinity, Who alone exists eternally and without change: “He who is” unto the ages; Whose glory is incomprehensible and Whose mercy is immeasurable; Who created the entire human race to dwell over the entire face of the earth; and Who honored the human being with Your image, newly shaped in form and beauty from a rational soul and dignified body; Who made male and female and gave to each its own appearance and substance; Who knows the weakness of our nature and knows the name and age of each; Who gives each a name to be distinct, distinguished in their own appropriate gender, personality and worth.
Master, Yourself acquiring our infirm and impoverished blend [of soul and body] in Your saving dispensation, accept at this time Your servant (new name, if applicable) as You accepted Peter the first Chief [of the Apostles], formerly Cephas, son of Iona, to whom You gave the keys to the Kingdom of the Heavens; [as You accepted] Paul the Renown, formerly Saul, whom You showed to be the Herald of the Gospel by a revelation and a chosen vessel.
Likewise, send down upon [Your servant] Your heavenly grace upon undergoing the organic modification of gender, for the biological alteration of nature is a wondrous work of Your all-powerful right hand and Your inscrutable will, and amazed by this new and astounding work, we confess Your grace, we herald Your mercy and, declaring Your magnificence, we glorify Your indescribable love for humanity.
Grace Your servant (name) in Your sanctification and make HIM (or “HER”) worthy to keep HIS (or “HER”) own vessel without stain and blameless, likewise guarding the pledge of baptism inviolate and undefiled, and as a child of light, advancing in Your precepts and completing HIS (or “HER”) remaining years, ascribing glory to You all the days of HIS (or HER) life.
By the intercessions of Your All-pure Mother, the radiant Archangels, the Honorable Forerunner and Baptist John; the holy glorious and all-famed Apostles, and all Your saints. Amen.