“Church and Nation under Captivity”
On Thursday, March 21, 2019 the Holy Metropolis of Corfu, Paxoi and Diapontian Islands in cooperation with the Union of Christian Scientists, on the occasion of the National Day, 25th March, organised an event with Mr. George Karampelias, famous author, at the Spiritual Centre. In the event, his latest book was also presented, titled “Church and Nation under Captivity”.
The Bishop of Corfu, Paxoi and Diapontian Islands, Mr. Nektarios, who was in Athens for the work of the Holy Synod, was represented by Archim. father Ioustinos Konstantas, Chancellor of the Holy Metropolis, who, after conveying the paternal wishes and love of His Eminence, welcomed Mr. Karabellias to Corfu. In addition, Father Ioustinos stressed that it is now time to awaken as conscientious Christian Orthodox and Greek citizens. We must not, in any case, remain restless, just seeing what is presumed, the speed of which passes us through.
The event was co-ordinated by FatherThemistocles Mourtzanos, General Prelatic Warden of the HM Corfu, who pointed out that there is a problem with the deconstruction of history in our times and the denial of part of the political and academic elites, the offering of the Church, the rescue of Hellenism during the Ottoman domination, that it was opposed to the Enlightenment and the freedom of the Nation and cooperated with both the Ottoman and the Venetian powers, that there were no hidden schools, shortly the Church was accused by this elite of not offering anything during the Ottoman domination and the Frankish rule.
But from the historical truth and through Karabellia’s book it turns out that the Church was not opposed. There were different views. They were all Orthodox Christians and this identity preserved Greekness. The hidden school, of course, existed because the state of education was tragic during those centuries, as well as the Church helped to keep Hellenism intact, through religious belief and through language and identity. Georgios Mavromichalis, writer and educator, who stressed that George Karampelias, with his book “CHURCH AND NATION UNDER CAPTIVITY”, explores the fate of the Greek Nation when its Byzantine state, as it was at the end of the Hellenistic period and since the Greeks became Christians, it was abolished by the forces of the West Franks and the Turks of the East, until the time of nationalization and the outbreak of the Revolution of 1821, which led to the formation of the modern Greek state. During the first centuries of occupation, when the spiritual life of the Nation focuses on defense against Islamism and Latin infiltration, its greatest spiritual forms will be gathered around the Church.
In closing, Mr. Mavromichalis said that thanks to Orthodoxy, the conquered Greeks would move to the wider geographical region of the Danube countries, the Crimea and Egypt, by supporting a Greek universality that is often ignored by modern historiography and the history of ideas.
Mr. Karampelias gave examples. As for the part of the Ionian Islands, he said that the Frankish rule was as cruel and dynastic as the Ottoman domination. Like the Turks, the Franks and the Venetians did not allow the founding of schools in the Ionian Islands because they were precisely the target of sending their children to study in Padua and Venice, essentially in order to “prick” them. Karampelias pointed out that Saint Cosmas the Aitolian was attended by the Venetians who did not want this dehumanizing operation of the Greek Hieromonk, who, together with Christ preached and Greece. Unfortunately, today the so-called degrading school of the modern sociopolitical-academic elite dominates our country, which in essence tries to deny the irrefutable.
For this reason today, as never before, we need to overcome the divisions, overcome the civil warfare syndrome that leads us and the false distinction between right and left. Now there is only one distinction in our society today. To those who love and struggle for Orthodoxy, for the values of Hellenism, they love their homeland and want to modernize Greece, but not without values, without faith, without language and history on the one hand, and on the other, the ones who want to diminish our Nation , the historians, all this political and academic elite, who feels miserable and complex for our Greekness and wishes to be the “servants” of the West.
In conclusion, Mr. Karabelias stressed that Hellenism and the Church co-existed and only through the Orthodox Church, Hellenism survived during the difficult times of Ottoman domination and Venetian domination. In contemporary school and university books, the words Ottoman and Venetian occupation were replaced by the Ottoman and Venetian period, as if we coexisted with the Turks and the Venetians, respecting the river rivers of the neo-Martyrs and the fact that the Turks commanded the Greeks both the houses, as well as their Churches to build them lower than the Ottoman mansions, thus showing how hard the conquerors were. Today we need to get out of hand again, to mobilize, to get what is healthy inside us, to stop being ashamed of being Greek Orthodox Christians, to keep our traditional values of our homeland and of faith and family, but not with in the way that these three values were used and changed by the ones in power, with the reflection of democracy, but in the way of authentic Greek tradition.
Finally, on behalf of the Union of Christian Scientists, Mrs. Eiris Malaha made a speech.
