Fr Archimandrite Eleftherios Kambourakis (1975- ), rector of St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Marrickville, New South Wales (part of the Sydney metro area). A church has been on the site since 1961, the present building was completed in 1966. There’s something odd in this… they’re letting a small number of whingers run roughshod over the neighbourhood.
Editor’s Foreword:
I got a note from Oz on this one:
Vara, being here in Sydney and very familiar with Marrickville, I can add that it is common knowledge in Sydney that Marrickville Local Council is the most looney-left, greenie, ultra-Marxist, rabid gay-and-lesbian loving hotbed of socialist maniacs in Sydney. This suburb, once home to one of the largest populations of Greeks outside of Athens is now under control of a real anti-Christian mob. But don’t worry, I know the Greeks of Sydney (and there’s lots of em), they will not take this BS too much longer, and Marrickville Council better watch out who they piss off.
A Perceptive Ozzie
Needs no comment, does it?
BMD
******
A Church has been banned from ringing its bells because neighbours complained the sound was offensive. Marrickville’s St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church installed new electric bells to save elderly committee members climbing 40 steps in two bell towers for every wedding, funeral, and Sunday morning worship. The modern bells toll for 10 to 15 seconds and are about 73 decibels. Council reports say the noise level of a typical “quiet suburban area” is 40 to 50 decibels while a jackhammer hits between 90 and 100 decibels. After complaints by neighbours, Marrickville Council ruled the bells must stay silent until the open towers were muffled in acoustic glass boxes worth at least 20,000 Australian dollars (17,729 USD 534,213 Roubles 12,690 Euros 11,093 UK Pounds).
Fr Terry (Eleftherios) Kambourakis said the parish was too poor to install the thick glass panels. “Marrickville has many poor people here. The people in our parish are pensioners”, he said. “The new bells (a gift from the church) cost about 60,000 (Australian) dollars (53,187 USD 1.603 million Roubles 38,071 Euros 33,279 UK Pounds) altogether and the council has put a stop to them being used”. The mechanical bells rang at 07.30 on Sunday as a call to worship, on Saturday afternoons after weddings, during funerals, at midnight at Easter, and late on feast days. Council reports said it first became aware of community concerns regarding “offensive noise” in November 2008. An anti-bell petition containing 77 signatures followed, sparking a yearlong council investigation. That ended a month ago when the church was banned from tolling the pre-programmed melodies. Now, only an old hand-pulled bell is permitted for 07.30 services. “That is our faith, our tradition, our custom. It’s a call to say there is a service on and a way to praise God”, Fr Terry said.
3 February 2010
Vikki Campion
Daily Telegraph (Sydney, Australia)
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/property/campaign-tolls-an-end-to-churchs-new-bells/story-fn3006z3-1225826099414?from=public_rss
Editor’s Note:
I would tell my Russian friends, “This is what the secularists from the US and the EU (and their Russian running-dog-lackeys) wish to impose upon you”. All too many Orthodox parishes in the West have sold out to the zeitgeist. Certainly, some of the seminaries have. Pass the word about this… the Western liberals (and their Renovationist collaborators in Orthodoxy) are caught with their gotchies around their ankles, for the entire world to see. Ponder the meaning of “freedom”… we can’t silence the Larry Flynts of this world, but we can silence God’s bells. For shame! THIS is what the West stands for. Give me Vova any day over this. He’d tell the whingers where to go, and right smartly too.
Fr Terry… we’re with ya!
BMD
