<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default">Check top of <a href="http://www.topontiki.gr/skitsografies/85370">http://www.topontiki.gr/skitsografies/85370</a> for a somewhat related cartoon!</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 11:57 AM, Akis Gavriilidis <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:cr33396@telenet.be" target="_blank">cr33396@telenet.be</a>></span> wrote:</div><div class="gmail_quote"><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<div>One pragmatic correction:<br>
SYRIZA is NOT committed to separating church and state.<br>
The "veteran of the communist youth movement" recently visited
Mount Athos and expressed his admiration for the Orthodox monastic
lifestyle. He made no hint whatsoever about any plans to limit the
dominant position of the Church ideologically, economically or
otherwise.<br>
<a href="http://www.tovima.gr/politics/article/?aid=622115" target="_blank">http://www.tovima.gr/politics/article/?aid=622115</a><div><div class="h5"><br>
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On 22/11/2014 21:55, June Samaras wrote:<br>
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<div>Church and state in Greece - A new concordat?</div>
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<div><a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2014/11/church-and-state-greece" target="_blank">http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2014/11/church-and-state-greece</a><br>
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<div>Nov 21st 2014, 14:48 BY B.C. | THESSALONIKI</div>
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<div>IN THE churches of this country's second city, some of
which date from the Byzantine era, there was a decent turnout
of worshippers this morning for one of the most enigmatic and
mystical rites of the Greek church calendar: a service
commemorating the moment when the Virgin Mary, as a young
girl, is said to have gone to live in the Jerusalem Temple and
prepared to become a new kind of "temple" herself by carrying
a divine child in her womb. </div>
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<div>The liturgical poetry was reassuringly familiar, but there
is nervousness in the chilly autumn air. Apart from the
personal hardship that many church-goers are facing because of
a lingering economic crisis, they face a new uncertainty in
the coming months—the possible advent of a leftist government
which is committed to separating church and state in what has
hitherto been one of the most "theocratic" countries in
Europe. If, as seems very possible, the current legislature
fails to muster the necessary votes to elevate a new state
president early next year, there will be early parliamentary
elections, and the leftist Syriza party—led by a veteran of
the communist youth movement, Alexis Tsipras—could well top
the poll.</div>
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<div>At full stretch, severing the connection between church and
state would presumably mean: i) stripping the Orthodox church
of its constitutionally guaranteed role as the "prevailing
religion" in Greece; ii) ending the arrangement where priests
and many other people who work for the church are on the state
pay-roll; iii) tidying up and in some cases sequestering the
church's vast and ill-defined property portfolio; iv) putting
a stop to the prayers and confessional instruction which are
part of the daily diet for almost all pupils at state schools;
v) ending all tax exemptions for religious institutions.
Certainly there are plenty of secular leftists in Greece who
would love to do all that. At a time when Greece's old
left-right fissures are widening again, there is lots of
anti-clerical feeling among socialists who suspect the church
leadership of colluding with the political right or even
far-right. But in reality, say people close to the world of
church-state relations, the old ties are loosening already and
this process might not accelerate all that much under a
hard-leftist government.</div>
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<div>Already, under a conservative-led government, the rate at
which priests are being ordained, and hence joining the state
pay-roll, has slowed to a trickle—not for any ideological
reason but because of internationally-mandated budget cuts.
And the old practice of inculcating school-children with
Orthodox Christian doctrine is giving way to something more
like "religious studies" as classrooms fill up with migrants
from places ranging from Albania to China.</div>
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<div>And for several reasons, a Syriza-led government would hold
probably hold back from a head-on confrontation with the
church. One is that the church has played a big role in
providing food, medicine and other basics to victims of the
economic crisis who would otherwise be desperate; Syriza might
not like that state of affairs, but it can't be changed
overnight. Another is that changing any part of the Greek
constitution is a burdensome procedure—it can't be done in the
lifetime of a single parliament—and stripping out all the
provisions which privilege the church and various monasteries
would take an enormous amount of political energy and time.
Yet another is that Greece has a small but modestly
flourishing tradition of "religious leftism"—people who
combine religious faith with radical political ideas—and that
is one of the many impulses that Syriza seeks to harness.</div>
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<div>A new biography has just appeared of one of Greece's
better-known champions of the political left. A turbulent
cleric called Father George Pirounakis who opposed the
right-wing dictatorship of 1967-1974, supported student
uprisings against the junta, and later demanded that bishops
who had succoured the tyrants should be held to account.
During the 1980s, he was temporarily suspended from
ecclesiastical life because he agreed to help an initiative by
a Socialist government that would have stripped the church of
some of its land. By the end of his life in 1988, he was
disappointed by the fact that church and state leadership had
settled their differences by striking a cosy political bargain
that left the property holdings intact. Such bargains have
been struck many times in the past, and the chances are that
there will be plenty more. </div>
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-- <br>
<div>June Samaras<br>
2020 Old Station Rd<br>
Streetsville,Ontario<br>
Canada L5M 2V1<br>
Tel : <a href="tel:905-542-1877" value="+19055421877" target="_blank">905-542-1877</a><br>
E-mail : <a href="mailto:june.samaras@gmail.com" target="_blank">june.samaras@gmail.com</a><br>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><br>Γιώργος Μπαλόγλου -- Θεσσαλονίκη<br><br><a href="http://www.oswego.edu/~baloglou" target="_blank">http://www.oswego.edu/~baloglou</a> (1988 - 2008)<br><br><a href="http://crystallomath.wordpress.com" target="_blank">http://crystallomath.wordpress.com</a> (2009 - )<br></div>
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