A letter to the judiciary
Writing letters is not the archbishop’s forte. Following his missive to Stylianos Pattakos, in which Christodoulos praised the junta leaders’ «unfeigned patriotic sentiment» and «exceptional virtues,» and following his epistolary support for the cantor from Messolongi – where he described the carnival tradition as a «disease of the spirit, corruption of conscience and contamination of the fatherland» – his correspondence with the judiciary has now emerged. The Church’s head and his representatives insist on the pastoral character of these epistles. They are probably right, except that the «flock» is not made up of some brethern who happened to stray but of those who serve justice. The symbolic weight of the Church has fallen on them in order to guide them to a specific decision. Jesus himself said, «Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s,» but this does not mean that we cannot respect his words, as we do so many others. The archbishop has expressed political views and staked his claim on that which is Caesar’s from the beginning. And from the outset he deemed that he could use the right hand of the Lord as a weapon in matters that were blatantly political and far from spiritual. Thus he became part of the daily spectacle since he transformed his pulpit into a platform from which to fire off political sermons, believing that the best pulpit is the television screen. Half the church followed his example. Now TV itself, which the Church saw superficially as a privileged arena, has proved to be an abyss yawning before the just and the unjust, those who are fasting (from the pleasure of power and material goods) and those who are not. And it’s far too late for the faithful to heed the order of Anthimos, Bishop of Thessaloniki, to turn off the TV.
