Greek Orthodox Church

“ We have seen how the only national organizations they have under the Turk are the religious bodies. The Orthodox Church is the Roman nation, and every true son of Hellas must belong to that nation. It is their one bond; it has kept alive the sacred fire of Greek patriotism during the centuries of bondage ”

“ Orthodox in its real sense is just what we believe them not to be. But, in the first place, it seems impossible to find any other name. Eastern is too wide, the Copts and Armenians form Eastern Churches, Schismatic involves the same difficulty, besides being needlessly offensive. We do not in ordinary conversation speak of Protestants as heretics. The name commonly used, Greek, is the worst of all. The only body that ever calls itself, or can with any sort of reason be called the Greek Church, is the Established Church of the kingdom of Greece ”

“ The Greek Church, or, as it calls itself, the Holy Orthodox, Catholic, Apostolic, Oriental Church, has a venerable if not an eventful history. Unlike the Church of the West, it has not been moulded by great political movements, the rise and fall of kingdoms, and the convulsions which have passed over the face of modern society. Its course has been out of the sight of European civilisation, it has grown up among peoples who have been but slightly affected, if they have been affected at all, by the progressive movements of mankind. ”

“ And yet I have always found the Orthodox Church in all its ramifications the most charitable and liberal of all the forms of Christianity with which I have come in contact. No stranger is turned from the doors of a Greek convent or refused such succor as is in the power of its inmates, be he Protestant, atheist, or even of their bitterest enemies, the Roman Catholics. ”

“ More than once have we listened to depreciations of the Greek Church, and the epithet “stagnant” has always been incorporated as a first-rate misdemeanour of the Orthodox Church of the East. The assumption in the epithet is that the Greek Church is not missionary and aggressive, and the implication is that it has been so from earliest times. Until men acquaint themselves with the history of this Church, and open their eyes to facts which are readily accessible, it is useless to attempt to lift them out of their prejudices. ”

“ In the East, as in Scotland, the history of the church is the key to the history of the nation, and in the freedom of the church the Greek saw the freedom and supremacy of his race. For this very reason Orthodox Eastern Christians of alien race felt compelled to resist Greek domination by means of independent ecclesiastical organization, and the structure of the church rather favoured than interfered with the coexistence of separate national churches professing the same faith. ”

“ It is when we pass from the influence of the Church on the conduct of the individual, to ask what was the value of its ethical teaching in regard to national life, whether it ever set before the nation a lofty national ideal, or whether it ever caused a wave of religious enthusiasm which influenced the nation as a whole, that we find the Orthodox Church during the later centuries of its history greatly lacking. Religion was to guide the conduct of the individual and to save him from eternal punishment. There was little or no conception of it as an aid to national righteousness. ”

“ It is with no malicious pleasure that one has to record the fact that, in spite of their inter-communion, the dominant note of these sixteen bodies in our time is their extreme quarrelsomeness. The thing is too patent to be ignored. It is the cause of nearly all their activity. One has only to look at any modern Greek newspaper [2] to see the way they speak of each other; and since the Bulgarian schism (p. 316) especially, the Orthodox Church lifts up her voice and wails in the market-places ”

“ Greek Church, the church of those Christians who follow the ancient rite of the East and accept the first seven councils, rejecting all later innovations and papal supremacy—it is called Orthodox by reason of its vindications of dogma, and Eastern from its geographical distribution ”

“ Theologians also, in treating of the doctrine of the several national churches in communion with the schismatical patriarchate of Constantinople, which they hold in common as their profession of faith, regard it as orthodox, conformed to the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and consequently free 42from any mixture of heresy. The only doctrines in regard to which any one could suppose the Greek Church to be heretical are the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son, and the supreme, infallible authority of the Pope. ”

“ Christianity appeared to be regarded by one party as the best system of philosophy, and by the other, much as the Jew regarded his religion, as a sacred treasure to be kept for his own use and not to be offered to outside unbelievers. His religion in the later centuries never really moved the Greek to engage in missions. Except in regard to personal conduct, to almsgiving, kindness to his fellow-members of the Orthodox Church, and personal and commercial morality, he was incapable of religious sentiment. ”

“ From this moment onwards the party of national liberty fought under a lay flag, and only interested boyars followed the Greek cross, calling for reunion with the Orthodox Empire of the East.
The natural benefits of the church did not, however, cease with the 18th century, in which a copious theological literature as well as a new and florid style were introduced thanks to the bishops, translators and publishers, and to the monastical orders. But the schism between laity and clergy continued. ”

“ With regard .to the question of the relations between the state and the church (article 1) , the new Constitution, following the pattern of a whole series of previous Greek constitution, lead by our country’s history of the last few hundredth anniversaries and abiding by the religious beliefs of the Greek people in its totality, establishes the Eastern Orthodox Church religion as the one prevailing in Greece. The term “prevailing” religion does by no ineans indicate any superiority or all the more so its imposition over any or all the other known religions or creeds. ”

“ The average Russian believes that all outside the orthodox Greek Church are lost; but he does not hate them on that account, and though there has been of late years, during the present reaction, an increase of pressure upon various Christian organizations outside the established church, this has been undeniably from political rather than religious reasons ”

“ The Orthodox Eastern Church acknowledges no other guide and source of doctrine or faith than the Holy Scriptures, as contained in the Old and New Testaments, which are open to all—not proscribed, as is the case in the Romish Church—and are printed in all the languages of the various countries in which the Greek Church has adherents. ”

“ The Orthodox Church, which aided as much as even law in binding the inhabitants of the country together, employed Greek, and Greek almost exclusively, as its language, and, although the great defenders of the term Roman as applied to the population are found among its dignitaries, the Church was essentially Greek as opposed to Roman, both in the character of its thought and teaching and in the language it employed. ”

“ Howe's daughter is playing with the men who, fifty years ago, were her father's companions in arms."
After the simple patriarchal festivity, the return, even to Athens, seemed a return to the commonplace.
A word regarding the Greek church belongs here. Its ritual represents, without doubt, the most ancient form of worship which can have representation in these days. The church calls itself simply orthodox. It classes Christians as orthodox, Romanist, and Protestant, and condemns the two last-named confessions of faith equally as heresies. ”

“ A strong and, I think, an unanswerable case might be made out to show that the religion of the Orthodox Church beneficially influenced the conduct of men and women in their individual capacity and in their relations one with another. ”

“ It is a strong prevailing feeling in the people, that, as the church cannot exist without the people, so the people cannot exist as a nation without the church. The banners of the revolu- tion were constantly blessed by the bishops, and among the first victims of
SUPPLEMENT. 571
that revolution was the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople. In fact the first article of the constitution makes the Greek Church the corner stone of the political fabric. It is as follows: "The dominant religion of Greece ia that of the Orthodox Oriental Church of Christ. ”

“ When we consider how strong, even to-day, is the opposition of the Orthodox Church to the new style, we can understand how gratifying this special exemption must have been to the Greeks of that period. ”

“ The national pride of the Greeks had also created an aversion to foreigners, and made it difficult for such to gain their confidence, or awaken their gratitude by acts of benevolence. Then there were the arrogant assumptions of the Greek Church, more exclusive than the Roman, claiming for her clergy the only apostolical succession, and that her trine immersion, performed by her clergy, was the only baptism, while all not thus baptized were beyond the hope of salvation. Of course all Protestant preachers, whether episcopal or non-episcopal, were regarded by the Greeks as unbaptized heretics. ”

“ Refusing images, but clinging to pictures; allowing the Scriptures to the common people, but discouraging their use of the same; with an unmarried hierarchy of some education, and a married secular clergy of none,—the Greek church seems to me to be too flatly in contradiction with itself and with the spirit of the age to maintain long a social supremacy, a moral efficiency. ”

“ Its supreme direction was committed to a permanent Holy Synod at Athens, instituted by the king but in all internal matters absolutely independent. The king must belong to the national church, but otherwise all religions are on the same footing. Meanwhile the orthodox church is fully represented, the Roman Catholic being strongest, especially in the islands. The University of Athens, opened in 1856 with professors mostly trained in Germany, has not been unsuccessful in its task even in the domain of theology. ”

“ So that wherever a fresh State has been formed, the Greek Church has become national, and the spiritual authority, adapting itself to political changes, has become a separate institution. The most signal example of this is to be seen in Russia, where the Greek Church, being cut off from Constantinople, had its own independent Patriarch up to the time of Peter the Great ”

“ Knowing the strong religious convictions of the Empress and the inborn characteristics of both classes, the Revolutionaries found in Rasputin a fitting agent of Imperial destruction.
The Greek Church is the most mediæval of religions ... it is quite harmless, so to speak, when modern conditions are not introduced into its practice; but modernity, ever a fatal element in religion, is especially fatal to the Greek Church. ”

“ The orthodox Church of Greece, acknowledging our Lord Jesus Christ as its head, is perpetually united in dogma with the great Church of Constantinople and every other church holding the same dogmas, preserving, as they do, immutably the holy canons of the apostles and councils, and the sacred traditions. Nevertheless, it is autocephalous, exercising independently of every other church its rights of jurisdiction, and is administered by a sacred college of bishops. ”

“ Such questions as they cannot solve for themselves they reserve, until some one who can, passes through their village. They have become fully aware, by their study of the New Testament, that the Greek Church is not the one established by the Apostles. One of their earnest questions was, 'Can we find salvation in the Greek Church?' We found one enlightened priest in this village, and spent a half day conversing with him. ”

“ There is another point in which our good friends who like to call themselves Catholics are manifestly either ill-informed or disingenuous. They profess to see a great distinction between the schismatic Greek communion and the Catholic Church, and speak as if there were the slightest hope of any intercourse between themselves and the Eastern sects. The separated Greeks are certainly in a lifeless state, owing to their schism and their slavish subjection to the state; but their standards are as decisive against Protestantism and the English pretensions as even the canons of Trent. ”

“ This little book is intended to supply not so much matter for controversy as a certain amount of information about the Orthodox Church. People in the West have too long forgotten that enormous mass of their fellow Christians who live on the other side of the Adriatic Sea and the river Vistula, and now that Anglicans especially have begun to take an interest in what they look upon as another branch of the Church, it seems regrettable that English Catholics as a rule have only the vaguest and the most inaccurate ideas about the people whom they confuse under the absurd name of "Greeks." ”

“ A majority of Christians are Greek Orthodox; the remainder consists of Roman Catholics, Greek Catholics, Protestants, Syrian Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Copts, Maronites, and Ethiopian Orthodox denominations. ”

“ The Greek Church meanwhile stood fast through much tribulation in the Turkish dominions, and had gradually won the whole great Russian Empire, where, as the people ceased to be barbarous, they became most devout members of the ancient unchanging Greek Catholic Church. ”