I read this article from Reuters News Service yesterday:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/20/us-greece-church-idUSBRE83J1A820120420

Please remember our Greek brethren in your prayers.

Of course this will give our American Protestant missionary types the opening they need to move in. They have loads of cash for overseas missions.

There is something to be said for our American system in which each church has to figure out how to manage on its own rather than depend on government largesse. Of course Hellenic Food Fesitvals would be a tad redundant in Greece!

This confused me:

To cover the shortage of priests, some bishops are permitting laymen to take services. These volunteers receive no state wages and don't wear the characteristic vestments.

For instance, a retired army officer recently started holding mass at Avantas, a village close to the eastern border with Turkey, said Father Irinaios.

Can I assume it is simply the ignorance of the journalist?

Babochka,

I think it's fair to assume the journalist just meant reader's services. So, yes, probably just ignorance.

Alexis

Oh, and I would like to know, since the cash-strapped State is reneging on its promise to fund the GOC's priests (judging from the fact that the Government will only pay for 1 new priest for every 10 that die/retire and that they're dropping their pay $12,000 euros a year - which may or may not amount to technical "reneging" since I don't know the terms of the agreement) - does the GOC get some of the land they gave away back?

If they don't, I hardly see how it's fair for the State to keep the land, which was bargained for apparently with the understanding that the nation's GOC priests will be supported.

Alexis

Huh? I thought in Greece, since the Orthodox Church is the state Church, it's illegal for missionaries to go in prosletyzing any religion.

No, they can't do that (EU Charter and all that) but they can make life difficult for those they don't like.

Oh man. A State, stealing from the Church. What will they think of next?

It's the Church that made the pact with the devil. Established Churches supported by tax funding never work in the long run. They get fat, happy and complacent, they become too closely identified with the government, eventually they lose members. Weekly church attendance in Greece is right up there with that of Great Britain; i.e., hovering somewhere around 5%. Nobody tithes--why bother, when the Church gets its money from taxation? An independent Greek Church would be in a healthier position.

As for governments stealing, actually more like the entire Greek nation, unless you know another word for writing checks you can't cover. I'd say they were spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave, except that, when the sailor is out of money, he has to stop spending. Not so Greece. It's not just clerics who aren't getting paid--tens of thousands of government workers, hundreds of thousands of private sector workers, all have gone without paychecks for periods varying from weeks to months.

The government can't pay them because there is no money. That's not theft, that's just reality. The only way out for Greece is to leave the Euro Zone and readopt the Drachma--a greatly devalued drachma with which to pay off its debts. Greece will then go back to being the poor, but solvent, country that it was before all the free money came pouring in from over the Alps. It will take the Greeks decades to get over their bender. With any luck, they learned their lesson.

Now hope that Spain can learn its lesson before it's too late, because Spain is the world's sixth largest economy, and if it goes under, we'll all get burned.

I don't think the 'Europeans' will allow that.

Actually, the Germans, the Swedes, the Fins, the Danes, and most of the northern tier would be ecstatic--the Germans especially. It's mainly France that is committed to the Euro, without which France is just another penny-ante state in the shadow of Germany. The problem is, France eats its cake and wants it, too--it wants a strong Euro, but it doesn't want to take the steps necessary to get its own financial house in order. It would prefer to use the Euro as a way of transferring wealth from the prosperous, industrious north to the impoverished, indolent south (of which France is, faut de mieux, a member).

Thinking about this at some length, it may be the best solution is not to kick the PIGS out of the Eurozone, but for Germany voluntarily to abandon the Euro in favor of a strong Deutschmark. Without Germany, the value of the Euro would decline to something below parity with the dollar, which would allow the less economically developed states to regain solvency and competitiveness. It would, of course, mean the end of the dream of "united Europe". But the need for the dream disappeared long ago: the risk of another Franco-German war is less than nil. Germany in particular is totally debellicized.

Oh, I didn't mean the actual European people. By 'Europeans' I meant the professional ones; the blind visionaries.

Oh, the transnational technocratic elite? They're going to go the way of the aristos in the French Revolution. They share much the same mindset, except they compare degrees instead of pedigrees.

Not before they make a lot of things a lot worse for a lot of people.

A valid point and one in which churches found themselves 'whipsawed' during the post Reformation period and beyond as the secular rulers vacilatted between Catholicism and Lutheranism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy etc...Jefferson recognized this issue in his Virgina constitution draft of 1776 which stated: "All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution." Hence the patchwork of competing religious institutions in the New World.