The Pope in Athens: Bewaring Greeks . . .

As the weather begins to warm with the coming of summer, it would appear that Pope John Paul II will experience "heat" of a different kind beginning with his visit to Orthodox Greece on Friday.  There have been demonstrations by Orthodox groups calling on the Pope to stay home (as well as some nasty names).  

The Greek Orthodox hierarchy, already under negative public pressure for its failure to come out more strongly against the papal visit, are refusing to either pray or dine with the Pope during his brief stay. John Paul II may be used to meeting those who are indifferent toward him and his message in the West.  He is about to come into contact with people who are radically opposed to him for strong religious and historical reasons . . .

The last Pope to visit Greece did so in the eighth century and he arrived there as a Patriarch in communion with the Orthodox Church.  The Pope and the Patriarch ended their joyful visit with a Pontifical Liturgy in all its splendour in the Cathedral of St Sophia in Constantinople.

Times were to change . . .

After the Schism of AD 1054, western Crusaders sacked Constantinople at the beginning of the thirteenth century which act truly solidified the state of separation between East and West.

The Council of Florence in the fifteenth century, ostensibly part of a very secular effort by the Byzantine Emperor to secure western aid against the Turks, failed theologically as well as politically.  With Constantinople under the Turkish Yoke and their empire overthrown, the Greeks settled into the process of life under a Muslim conqueror with varying degrees of success with respect to the preservation of their religion and culture.

The West never recovered from its low estimation by the Greeks who, quite frankly (no pun intended!), had quite the aversion for the Pope, the Roman Catholic Church and the West as a whole seen as the seat of moral corruption.

The term "Byzantine" was coined in the West to describe a kind of chicanery and dishonesty of character. But it was the Greeks who would always impute the worst of motives to hated Rome for its sacking of Constantinople and Mount Athos as well as its refusal to come to the Byzantines' aid in their great moment of crisis.

On Mount Athos especially where monks were burned alive for refusing to sign church union documents with Rome that the memory of those times continues unabated.

Rome, in fact, has never apologized or made any act of reparation for its historical attacks on the Orthodox Church.  This is odd, given the propensity of modern-day Roman Catholics and their Hierarchy to publicly beat their breasts and blame themselves for all kinds of historical nastiness, among the most recent being the burning of Jan Hus in Bohemia.

And the question could be raised with respect to the apparent great nervousness of the papal visit to Greece on the part of the Church and the demonstrators in Athens.

All the Greek hierarchs at the Council, save and except for St Mark of Ephesus, signed the Union of Florence acknowledging agreement with the Roman Catholic faith and submission to the Papacy. 

It was St Mark of Ephesus who requested that, after his death, the Patriarch and other Greek bishops in union with Rome NOT come to his funeral or otherwise participate in the obsequies.

The capitulation of the Greeks to Rome gave new stimulus to the Russian Church to lay claim to Moscow being the "Third Rome" since the Old and the New were in heresy and schism respectively.

Is it because the Greeks have had a tradition of capitulating to Rome that some groups are very much afraid of even having a Pope stand on Greek soil?

As with that capitulation in Florence, so too will the behaviour of the Greek Orthodox Church and people during the papal visit have an impact that will go far beyond merely religious considerations.

Greece has developed a certain "inwardness" with respect to Europe, even though it is fully incorporated within the European Community.

The Pope, heretic or not, is still a representative of the West per se.  Strong attitudes toward him will necessarily be noted by the other Western nations and might be interpreted as "Greeks bearing rifts."

The Greeks also remember all too well the attitude of their Russian brothers toward them as a "Uniate people" in the aftermath of Florence.  This is why Greeks have usually been appreciative of the struggles of several of the colonized peoples in the Russian imperial orbit, especially the Ukrainians. 

Historically, Ukrainians have always looked to Constantinople as to their spiritual Mother after Kyiv.  Ukrainian Kozaks shared the Greek dream to take the great City of Constantine back and to place a Cross on the dome of Aghia Sophia!

But Ukrainians, Orthodox and Greek Catholic, have enjoyed a much more open relationship with western Europe as a way to counter Russification of their religion and culture.

Latinization, the spiritual result of such far-reaching cultural sharing with the West, has affected both the Ukrainian Orthodox (Kyivan Baroque) and Greek Catholic Churches and people. 

It is no secret that St Peter Mohyla, Metropolitan of Kyiv, widely adopted Jesuit teaching methods and curricula in his Kyivan Mohyla Academy where Latin, not Greek, was the "lingua franca."   

If Greece has had historical reticence about the West, the West certainly did not share it and initiated a Renaissance of celebration of the pre-Christian Greek patrimony.

Although initially preferring the Turkish Yoke to the Papal Tiara, Greece found itself in a life and death struggle where more than 10,000 Greek and other New Martyrs were produced to protect the Greek Church and Hellenic patrimony from certain annihilation.

Greece can be forgiven its insularity, in any event.  But, in spiritual terms, it would seem to have the upper hand in terms of the East-West dialogue for the first time in centuries.

The current Pope is more open to real dialogue with the East and is more amenable to the very real dividing points between Catholicism and Orthodoxy than any in the past.  A Slavic Pope, he understands the Orthodox Church in a way no Italian pope ever could.

If the "Filioque" is a banner cry of anti-Catholicism in Greece, it should be remembered that it was this Pope who allowed for its suppression in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church of Greece and who is strongly considering its suppression through the Roman Church world-wide.

What John Paul II must face is 1,000 years of a Greek boil with respect to the West that has been allowed to fester for too long.

Knowing what to do at the right time is always a challenge.  And this Pope may just be the one to cut the Gordian Knot of Orthodox-Catholic relations, especially in Greece.  

If anything, the Pope will come away from his visit to Greece with a better appreciation for those relations.  He may even quietly begin to prefer western indifferentism to the challenge he is about to face come this Friday.

Dr. Alexander Roman  alex@unicorne.org