A friend has sent me a photograph of representatives of the Orthodox Church opening the Greek Parliament. He described this as an “effective merger of state and church” which “does not speak well for Greek Orthodoxy”. I begged to differ.

Here’s my response:

This is a complex topic. We don’t want the Church to be in the pocket of the government but we do want the government to be answerable to the truths of the Church. I see nothing wrong with the Church opening parliament because it merely shows that the source all authority is God. A far greater problem is that of the Catholic Church in Germany, which is rich (and corrupt) because of state funding. It’s no surprise that the German Church is secularized when it has become dependent on hand-outs from the secular government. It is, therefore, no surprise that the present modernism, seeking to change the Church’s teaching on marriage so that it conforms to secular values, is being championed by Cardinal Kasper and the German bishops.

The moral is that we take the world’s money at our peril. Look, for instance, at the way that so-called Catholic colleges in the United States are dancing to the secular tune in order to qualify for secular funding.  

To summarize, I see no problem with the secular power genuflecting before the Bride of Christ (as is the case with a constitution in which the Church opens parliament) and a huge problem with the Bride of Christ, or more correctly her wayward apostles, genuflecting before the secular power.