Father Peter Cade: Transcript

Greek Orthodox priest
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I think it is a calling in the sense, you just know. When the glove fits and you choose not to where it, you can’t be content, you can’t be fulfilled. And when you put the glove on that fits you, then you find that life is fulfilling and meaningful. And that is what I have most certainly found being a Greek Orthodox priest.

When I was in a store in West Des Moines when I first moved to Des Moines a lady saw me dressed in my clerical collar, and she said, “Oh, what church are you with?” And I said, “I am with the Greek Orthodox Church of St. George.” And she said, “Oh, my coworker in the other room, she’s Jewish also.” And at that point I realized that central Iowans were not accustomed to conversing about Orthodox Christianity, which is the second largest branch of Christianity in the world. So, I knew that I had my work cut out for me.

We have 168 member families. Of course not all of the families are Greek but a large portion are most certainly of Greek descent. The Greek immigration to Iowa began approximately 1880. That was when the mass of Greek immigrants and others from the Balkans came to the United States searching for a better way of life. They were fleeing poverty and war. They came to Iowa to work in mines and other manual labor type jobs. They then went into restaurant business, candy store business. They like to work for themselves.

For the first 11 centuries, the Church was as the Creed says “One holy Catholic and apostolic Church.” So, in essence, you had one Church. There was a schism between the Roman Pope and the other four patriarchates over an addition into the Creed, and the worst tragedy in Christendom took place. And that was the great schism that took place in the eleventh century. We have basically kept and maintained the essence and the practices, the traditions, the beliefs of early Christianity.

Years ago, every child of Greek descent who was part of the church, which they all were, would go to Greek school. We have rekindled that over the last few years. But the reality of being able to teach kids, raised in America how to converse in the Greek language, is a very difficult thing. So we do teach them some history, some cultural things. We do teach them how to cook Greek because Greek food is so good, and they will try to get a basic understanding of their identity.

When I went to Greece a few years ago, a cab driver said, “So do you feel more Greek or American?” And I said to him “What does it mean to be an American? What does it mean to have an American identity?”

And I believe that America has yet to truly form an American identity. To say that, for example, I am a quarter Greek. My grandfather came from Greece. Well, that is very meaningful to me. It means that that is the religion I choose to practice. It means that that is the food I choose to eat and enjoy. It means my thinking is formed by some of those kinds of things, as well. Our religion and culture—it just intermeshes. It is just very difficult to divide those things up into different categories.