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It would be interesting to meet the Koropi policeman who fined a holy temple and his little daughter. He treated the church roughly like a company that deviates from the limit of legality, but, recognizing the peculiarity of the matter, the fine was limited to 1,500 euros, although the young man did not avoid three hundred.
The incident provoked a strong reaction from the local Metropolitan (who triumphed against the citizen who made the corresponding complaint) and tightened a little more the knot of the problem with the operation of the holy temples at festivals. Currently, the restrictive framework provides for the operation of the temples at Christmas and Epiphany with a congregation of nine believers. The Church is “waiting for improved proposals” from the government. And it is expected to propose a service on New Year’s Eve with a number of believers that will be calculated based on the church square, which sounds logical since you cannot put nine people in the Diocese and the same number in a chapel. It is the opening of the hairdressers that gives a handle to the protest: it is not possible, say the hierarchs, to satisfy the need for grooming and not the spiritual thirst of the believer.
And so, with an oriental bazaar between squares and days, with complaints, threats and references to the Day of Judgment (that is, in the elections), a middle ground is expected soon. Say, New Years service and no additional vespers with the theme of the Eucharist untouched in reverent ambiguity – we are the only country where serious scientists reserve the possibility of a miracle.
A very serious hierarch, Demitriados Ignatios, appeared in ERT to express the positions of the Church. And indeed, he asked for one more day, fullness corresponding to the squares, etc. Other hierarchs do not speak with the corresponding meekness, coating their speech with conspiracy theories, cultivating a willingness to disobey measures. The Metropolitan of Mesogaia reminded us that fines to churches will be covered by the Philoptochos Fund. Commonly, for every fine to temples, portions of food will be discounted to those in need!
But, whether you listen to Ignatios or Corfu, the aftertaste of their statements is common. You don’t listen to the hierarchs in charge of the spiritual ministry of the flock. It’s like listening to union members negotiating sectoral issues with a financial perspective. As if you saw the merchants protesting because they are not going to work in a period of higher demand. Tourism professionals who close them in August. An ugly and shapeless adaptation to secular standards. With the Church undermining spirituality for the sake of secular function.
Not a single hierarch addresses his flock, explaining that the search for the Divine is an internal, personal, spiritual process that is not defined by space, it is not limited under domes and in front of images. The condition is ideal for a religious sermon that will recall the interior of the faith and the distance it gives from the perishable, the trivial, the secular. But the behavior of prominent hierarchs tells us, indirectly, that there is only this world, with its passions and mistakes.
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