The Mother Church was the repository of memory - our Mnemosyne, if you will - during those difficult centuries, and we who continue that tradition today are her children. But let us be clear about this: the memory preserved by the church during the Ottoman years was not of a single ethnic group, whether Greek of otherwise. As shown in Dr. Runciman's great books, the memory preserved by the Mother Church throughout the centuries was the memory of an Orthodox ecumenical civilization.

But in the early 19th century Mnemosyne smiled upon individual ethnic histories while Lethe swallowed up ecumenical Orthodoxy. And almost two centuries later, as the chief representative of the Orthodox oikoumene stands here amid some of the greatest monuments of ancient Greece, we have yet to reconcile nationalism and Orthodoxy.

The Mother Church believes that before this reconciliation can occur, Mnemosyne must reclaim ecumenical orthodoxy - the wayward child we gave up early last century. We must recover our Orthodox faith and heritage and proclaim its virtues.