Posted by GS on May 04, 2001 at 04:50:31:
In Reply to: Re: The Pope's visit to Greece posted by Somebody on May 03, 2001 at 23:23:46:
First of all I didn't mean that his visit is a farse but his existance and his position as a Pope even at a time when he can barely walk and probably cannot do anything by himself, let alone being the leader of the catholic church (that's why I said it reminds of the late days of Andreas Papandreou, not that he wasn't a great leader once).
When i mentioned especially Greece i didn't mean it in an arrogant way, it's just because I think it's a very long time (maybe even 700 years) that the Pope has visited Greece, because they consider it as the cradle of their main opponetns(of some short).
Actually the Pope was always conducting services in many laguages (up to 54!) but NEVER in Greek. Even when FYROM was formed he went the next year and prayed in the "Macedonian" language!! It was only this year that first time he sent a message in the Greek language for hundreds of years. And let's not forget the congratulations(!!!) he sent to Kemal Ataturk in 1922, let alone the totally inactive role in WWII and more recently in Cyprus and Yugoslavia.
And in the end, it is a fact in all religions (including catholics etc) that whoever disagrees with the church in some basic parts and forms a different church or religion by his own, this religion is considered a heresy and the person a heretic. So if we see things literally, since the Pope dispatched from the original church and created his own religion in effect he is actually considered a heretic by the church of Greece which is the continuation of the first chirch established and later the basis for Byzantium.
The main differences, as I recently read in the papers, is the Filioque, where the catholics added that the holy Gost precedes the son Christ, while in Orthodox it is the Father the Son and the Holy Gost. It actually stems from the fact that the latin language cannot distinguish between "ekporeuetai ek tou patros" and "pempetai ek tou yiou" (I leave the translation to others with better english knowledge).The other is some small differences in the baptism mystery and the holy communion(which are really easy to overcome).
Thirdly, the catholic priests are all unmarried, while in the Orthodox church the lower rank priest can get married, and only the bishops etc are unmarried (although now they consider to change it to married for everyone, which I really think they should).
One of the important issues, is that the Pope is considered by his church to be "unmistakable" and that when he speaks he is protected by the holy gost and he speaks from God, since he is considered to be St Peter himself!!!(Papa Petrus Ipse)
And the last thing is Ounia. This was a church established in Greece by the catholics, which although they were catholics they would dress and act like Orthodox priests in order to persuade the orthodox people to follow them. I don't really know that much about it and what the exact truth is, but I know that the Orthodox church considers them as the "wooden horse" sent by the Pope to try and recruit orthodox acting followers to his own church.
To answer to the below question as well, in the Orthodox church there are fourteen equal churches and whatever is to be decided (important stuff only of course) is decided by the ecoumenical synodos, where the archbishops of all the churches are present and they have to agree all in the same decision. However, in Greece the leader of the Greek church is archbishop Christodoulos.
Finally, I must say that I'm not a very religious person and some "orthodox" people might not consider my life conforming to their standards (long hair, earings, into heavy metal), but I don't care about them. I consider my religion more like a tradition knowadays, but I still respect the church and I believe that it has helped my country a lot in the past and present.
The fact that there is a rock group formed by four young priests, just shows that the greek people and its youth can mingle tradition with modernism or else be the first country to really have a modernised section of church and priests. Now for every new move, there will be the small numbers of old fanatics to object to everything. But who cares about them any more, life and society goes on!!