As a famous monk is canonised, there are fresh debates about sacreligious talk in Christian countries
By B.C.
ABOUT a year ago, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom published a short briefing paper on the ways in which blasphemy was punished in various countries. Along with some pretty terrible cases of jailings in Egypt and lynchings in Pakistan, there was one instance of a mainly Christian country punishing the offence: a ten-month suspended sentence imposed on a young man in Greece who had started a Facebook page which made fun of the cult of a famous monk who died in 1994. The monk's name was Paisios; the page was devoted the monastic elder "Pastitsios", in other words a dish of pasta, mince and bechamel sauce, which is hardly the greatest glory of Greek cooking.
It takes a moment to explain who Father Paisios was. One of the paradoxes of Greek history in recent decades is that while most of the country became more Westernised and modernised in its tastes, there was a resurgence in religious circles of a monastic and ascetic tradition going back many centuries. Something very similar happened in Tsarist Russia during the final phase of its existence. The leading figures in the Greek revival were not gorgeously robed bishops or clever theologians, but a handful of monastic teachers, of very modest origins and humble status, who were revered because of the discerning advice they gave to anybody who sought them out. Anybody who has read the novels of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which feature both wise and kindly monks and scheming, worldly ones, will have some sense of this world.
It so happens that several of these revered elders died in the early 1990s; two have recently been canonised by the Istanbul-based Patriarchate of Constantinople. Paisios was proclaimed a saint only last week. As has always been the case with holy people, his memory is revered for a peculiar mixture of good and bad reasons. Some recall his simple, homely utterances; for example, he urged people to be like bees, who seek out beautiful flowers and herbs, rather than flies who search the world for cowpats to land on. He declared that: "Kindness opens up and softens the heart as a oil opens a rusty lock."
In recent years, as an economic crisis has ravaged Greece and people search for answers, Paisios has become better known (especially in nationalist and far-right circles) for eschatological prophecies which are ascribed to him, although some people doubt their authenticity. These prophecies foresee a period of terrible hunger in Greece and a Russo-Turkish war which does not directly involve Greece but somehow works to Greece's benefit.
What the humourist Filippos Loizos was mocking was not so much Paisios himself as the cult of Paisios, with its end-time obsession which recalls the wackier fringes of America's religious right. For many people, the worst aspect of his arrest in September 2012 was that it followed complaints from the far-right Golden Dawn party, and confirmed suspicions that the police had been infiltrated by that movement. Mr Loizos had taunted the ultra-nationalists by inventing a miracle story which they duly republished in far-right media outlets. He spent an unpleasant time in a police cell after his arrest but it seems pretty unlikely that he will go to jail.
Still, it is probably a good thing that a short essay has just been published about the other newly canonised monastic teacher, now known as Saint Porphyrios, who worked for much of his life as chaplain to a medical clinic in a rough area of Athens. People asked Father Porphyrios how they should react when somebody behaved blasphemously, for example by insulting an image of Jesus Christ. Should they take the law into their hands and wreak physical revenge? As the booklet says, the teacher's reply was that people should bite their lips and do nothing at all; their Lord, who willingly endured mockery during his earthly life, was more than capable of looking after himself.
