Everything is permissible in politics except making an ass of oneself. So when the government mishandled the public relations part of a proposal to sell some insignificant rock-islets including Gaidouronisi (Donkey Island) off Crete to help scrounge up a bit of cash, the outrage (and merriment) were deafening. Even cartoonists of pro-government newspapers could not resist illustrating the premier garbed in the dress of a War of Independence hero, astride an ass standing on a rock in the sea beckoning, or begging, prospective EC real estate investors to save his country from bankruptcy.
Part of the mishandling was due to ignoring the fact that Greeks, like their lyric poets ancient and modern, adore their islands. Had there been a proposal to sell off half of Thessaly there would have been less outcry than parting with a pebble in the Aegean, an act equivalent to treason. The flap over the islets was due to the Ship of State going through a rough patch with ill winds blowing from all directions. Captain Karamanlis, who is used to these squalls and has saved the ship from foundering on several occasions, has lately been asked to do so again, this time by, of all people, Andreas Papandreou. He has been asking the president repeatedly to call new elections. What the good man seems to have forgotten is that he himself, as prime minister, stripped the presidency of the power to do so in 1985. Such is life on Donkey Island.
“How are you, Mr President?” asked Papandreou at the start of a chat on October 10.
“I am very well; the problem lies elsewhere,” the Chief of State replied abruptly.
“Greeks are always telling me what to do, and no one listens to what I say.”
Anyone who has lived any length of time amongst Greeks will recognize the truth of this remark. There are always dozens of people around telling you how to fix your carburetor, how to prepare eggplant salad, how to get wine stains off your flocati and how to rearrange your love life – all freely, in detail and so loudly that any further questions are not listened to. It is another reason why Greece always places first in Brussels-based statistics listing the noisiest country in the EC. On Donkey Island, the braying is deafening…
I despise the Greek state, but I adore Hellenism,” is a famous remark made by political pundit, Ion Dragoumis, early in the century. He went on to say that the absurdity of being Greek was only made tolerable by one’s being as well the heir and the transmitter of the ancient and noble Hellenic tradition.
The death of the 261st Oecumenical Patriarch Demetrios I on October 2 and the election of his successor Bartholomeos I on October 22 was sudden, sobering news for a country that has become a bit stoned and over-interiorizing lately on one of its periodic trips of self-doubt. And until recently it was the only free Orthodox state in the world.
International events of the last few years have drawn closer attention to the leader of the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians. One is the collapse of Communism and the renewal of the Orthodox Churches in Russia and Eastern Europe. Another is the rise of Muslim fundamentalism. A third, related phenomenon is the changing position of Turkey with its economic aspirations turned towards the EC while pursuing aggressive policies championing Muslims in the Balkans and southwestern Russia. The most striking result of its elections on October 20 was the ascendance of the Muslim Fundamentalist Welfare Party which polled 17 percent of the vote.
History has made the Oecumenical Patriarchate extraordinary anomalous. Its very title is banned in the country of its residency. Its leader must be a citizen of a non-Christian state. His elections is not decided, but it is administered by a non-Christian government. It is not only that the Patriarchate has continued to exist over 500 years in a Muslim world, but by losing jurisdiction over Christian lands freed from Ottoman domination and by the restrictions of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, and, later, by the harassment of the Greek population, that its spiritual leader of 300 million Christians has today a parish no greater than a village – less than 10,000 people.
Ironically, it has been the Ottoman/ Turkish policy of restricting the Patriarchate to the diocese of Istanbul and its immediate vicinity that has kept its clergy strictly Greek while allowing it to develop a modern oecumenical view, begun by the revered figure of Athenagoras I when he prayed beside Pope Paul VI in Jerusalem in 1964 and continued by the world travels of the late, beloved Demetrios I.
Alternative solutions, like transferring the Patriarchate to the Ecclesiastical Republic of Mount Athos, have been talked of, but the tradition to keep it on the site of what was once the capital of the Greek Empire is too strong – and better so, because it thereby preserves both its Greekness and its greatness as a repository of the Hellenic tradition – which is about as timeless as a kingdom in this world can get.
The restricted position of the Oecumenical Patriarch has channelled his energies to a pastoral role, but given the scourge of Caesaropapism that once bedevilled the West, and the residue of anticlericalism it has left, this is no bad thing.
A movement and a hope is growing, however, for ‘Vaticanizing’ Phanar and this is a good thing for it has suffered humiliation enough. Though it has been restored at last, for decades the patriarchal see showed the damage that ( it suffered by fire in the 1940s, and its recent seige by fundamentalist Moslems was a disgrace. In pastoral tradition of his immediate predecessors, Bartholomeos I will certainly continue spreading the word of Christian love, and this is the best possible oecumenical message today.
