Casanova's Law

...After the split between Constantinople and Rome in 1054 the Greek Patriarch ruled in the Byzantine Empire as first among equals in the Orthodox hierarchy...

...It's like burning down the house every time you want roast pig---or lamb, as the case may be...

...Joseph Ratzinger, the theologian who has been made Archbishop of Munich...

...The divorce bill might also be a case of moving too fast...

...In the Vatican years ago, he received a delegation from the dissident Florentine parish Isolotto...

...Diplomats accredited to the Vatican praise his competence...

...In spreading its own puritan ethic the regime used the Church to pronounce the "Greece of Christian Greeks...

...Will he maintain this attitude in _9 Florenc~ which has always been a turbulent diocese...

...As the archbishop's spokesman put it, "Here we know pain and sin and know it's impossible to be without sin...

...After postgraduate studies at the Jesuit Gregorian University in Rome, he entered the Vatican diplomatic corps in 1948...

...Greeks are drifting away from their strong ties with the Church for two main reasons: the natural evolution of life styles as the nation becomes more urbanized...

...So divisions caused by the divorce bill strike at deeply rooted elements of Greek society...

...In an attempt to regain its authority and answer the needs of the urban dweller and the young Greek, the Church moves cautiously...

...Among other things, Benelli virtually told them not to throw the penny catechism at him...

...If they do they could further erode their power because the government might then be forced to enact a law allowing for civil marriage, which currently doesn't exist in Greece...

...Eventually, Members of Congress are going to choose, most of them at least, the obvious, easy and practical way to get the money into the hands of their constituents, namely put it in those hands...

...In Florence Benelli may find some waiting for him who will match him in brusqueness...

...He was born one of three children of middle-class parents in a small hamlet, Poggiole di Vernio, near Pistoia, Tuscany...

...Church leaders threaten to refuse remarriage to persons divorced under the new law...

...Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus serves as a 'living holdover from that traditionmas the patriarch of the Cypriot Church he was the natural selection as the new nation's first president in 1960...

...It is in response to them that priests in Greece maintain the black robes, high hats, long hair and beards that make their appearance so forbidding...

...The junta replaced members of the Holy Synod with bishops of its own choice without any objection from the rest of the hierarchy...

...If abortion or birth control laws had ever come to Parliament, the Church might have been forced to take a stand against the practices of most of its members...

...His abrasive manner also got many backs up...

...As a result young people today view the Church as yet another wing of the establishment and discredit it along with the monarchy and the military...

...On the other hand, the congressman will be entirely free to make a loan or gift to his brotherin-law's dry cleaning business if that seems to him the most sensible and equitable way to increase jobs and spending power in the district...

...In the Vatican, he was totally indifferent to the antipathies he aroused...

...As substitute to the Secretary of State for the past decade, Benelli has become known to all cardinals...

...When students occupying the Polytechnic University asked then Archbishop Ieronymous to negotiate between them and the government they were ignored, and the massacre of students by police followed...

...Religious leaders recognize "disharmonies" between the people and the priests but, as with everything in Greek society, a delicate balance must be maintained between the forces of change and the forces of conservatism...

...But others disagree...

...Religion is taught in public schools, priests are civil servants paid out of taxes, the archbishop administers oaths of political office and the President presides at every major religious feast...

...Few others in the cardinalate college can rival his personal knowledge of other cardinals and familiarity with Vatican policy...

...If Paul were still pope, he could then succeed him...

...The consistory, then, according to Vatican opinion, was made by a Substitute for a Substitute just as was Paul's 1967 reform of the Church's central administration, the Roman Curia...

...The Constitution of 1974, implemented after the overthrow of the military regime, guarantees freedom of religion and safeguards the self-government of the Orthodox Church but church and state remain firmly intertwined...

...What we need instead is a recognized sliding scale, based on seniority, chairmanships held and the size of the state or district, each Member of Congress to receive annually the sum so arrived at as a personal discretionary fund...

...These trends are common in societies changing from traditional to modern ways but they have never been forced into the public arena here before the open debate on the divorce bill...

...After Greece won independence in 1830 a king was imported from Bavaria, since there was no one political leader, and the Church assumed many civic functions, particularly those relating to family matters such as marriage and divorce...

...Paul probably wanted to avoid a repetition of his own experience: when Pins XII made him Archbishop of Milan, after he had been Substitute to the Secretary of State, he did not make him a cardinal...

...When the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453 the patriarch became "ethnarch," the political as well as religious leader of the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire...

...There remains the problem, and there's no use pretending it's easy, of what to do with the hundreds of potentially unemployed, perhaps otherwise unemployable, Pentagon lobbyists who traditionally spend their days prowling the halls of Congress signing up members and important aides for free trips in those flying saloons the Air Force keeps for that purpose...

...In defense of the Church's passivity some argue that it has no tradition of resistance against Greek regimes but only against foreign oppressors...

...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Papabile Cardinal B e n e l l i In making Giovanni Benelli a cardinal, Pope Paul has not quite designated his successor...

...Moral authority has suffered a breakdown, however, as a result of the seven years of military rule...

...But here church and state would unite because of the official view that Greece is underpopulated...

...Thus issues which have caused such dissent in the Catholic Church, primarily birth control and abortion, have never created a problem here...

...Village society dictates observance of Church rules such as the strict Lenten fast or the prohibition against new mothers leaving the house for forty days after childbirth...

...The June 27 consistory, the sixth of Paul's reign, was held solely for Benelli, in the opinion of Vatican sources...

...He speaks excellent French and Spanish, good English and Portuguese and gets by in German...

...some Church and government officials believe that a referendum on the new proposal would meet with defeat...

...Athos...

...The key man in the Secretariat was not so much the Secretary (Villot) as Benelli, largely because of his extraordinary dynamism which earned him the nickname of Monsignor Efficiency...

...Although 98 percent of the Greek populace adheres to Orthodoxy, the pressures of modem life are driving a wedge between the people and their spiritual leaders...

...5 August 1977:488...

...Granted the soundness of the theory behind that, building the B-1 is still an awfully cumbersome way to give congressmen and -women handouts to hand out to their constituents...

...Even as recently as the period following the German occupation in World War II the archbishop served as regent for a year...

...As Substitute he was accused of throttling initiatives deriving from the Vatican Council But although Benelli is a disciplinarian in internal church affairs, on social issues he is not a reactionary...

...Supporters of the bill, some of whom are government ministers talking about their own marital status, say the current situation leads to social prob5 Augu~ 1977:486 lems...

...Benelli is a Tuscan with all their brusqueness...

...Any change causes disrnption-when the modern calendar was adopted in 1922 it created a schism that still causes occasional demonstrations at monasteries on Mt...

...But he has ensured at least that Benelli plays a key role in the next papal election...

...Life is an attempt to better ourselves...

...The new law would make it possible for couples who have been separated for six years or more to obtain a divorce no matter which partner seeks it...

...Church and state grew up together, at least in part, because of the 400 years of Turkish occupation...

...Divorce and remarriage are permitted up to three times in the Greek Church, but the "wronged" party must request the dissolution of the marriage...

...This centralized power within the Secretariat of State which became a kind of Prime Minister's Department, not only coordinating but supervising all the other Ministries (Congregations, Commissions, etc...

...When the present Secretary of State, the French Cardinal Jean Villot, turns 75 in 3 years time BeneUi could well return to the Vatican as Secretary of State...

...If you do you are likely to be greeted by an uneducated priest who has not begun to deal with the problems faced by city-dwellers...

...During that time the Church kept quiet about the abrogation of rights by the colonels, and about their use of torture against political prisoners...

...It sees its teaching as the perfection for mankind to seek, not as an expectation of daily behavior...

...Fortunately, problems often bring their solutions with them and so it is here...

...For two years he was private secretary to the future Pope Paul who at that time was Substitute (or Deputy) to the Secretary of State...

...Phidas said of the villagers, "If they see a priest in a suit and another in a robe, they believe that the holier one is the one in the robe...

...Balding Benelli is stockily built, moves like a rugby player and relaxes by driving fast...

...the Dominican Luigi Ciappi, theologian of the papal household...

...As Mr...

...Obviously he is a man to watch...

...DESMOND O'GRADY (Desmond O'Grady is an Australian journalist long resident in Rome...

...Since then the Church, in conjunction with the highly organized lobby of abandoned women--who dubbed the proposal "Casanova's Law"--has been trying to prevent the bill from coming to the floor...

...At least when Vatican representative in Spain, he irritated the Franco regime by recommending that socially active priests be made bishops...

...They can't all become travel agents without making the country even more footloose than it is now, which is plenty...

...Benelli served in the Vatican diplomatic corps in Dublin, Paris, and Rio de Janeiro before his Madrid posting...

...and the apostolic administrator of Prague, Frantisek Tomasek...

...At that point, the unemployed lobbyists get back in the picture, shoveling out $20 bills from B-52s flying regular routes across the country, each bill tied to a label: You can thank your senator or congressman for this, you lucky stiff...

...After it, he was Vatican Observer at UNESCO in Paris and in 1966 was sent on his last posting before becoming Substitute: pro-nuncio to West Africa...

...An unpleasant six-day work week in an overcrowded city also argues against staying in town on Sunday, so most Athenians head for the mountains or beach instead of the local parish, although some listen to the liturgy on cassettes cleverly marketed by the Church...

...Traditionally church and state have been virtually inseparable and many Greeks believe that Orthodoxy and Hellenism are one...

...But he would certainly be an influential figure within the conclave...

...Consequently he could not participate in the election after Pius XII's death...

...The Church is officially against both, and established orphanages to try to discourage them, but they are both widely practiced by church members...

...He was appointed Archbishop of Florence, a cardinalate see, but he could have waited for elevation to the cardinalate as could the others who shared the honor: the African Bernadin Gantin, head of the Pontifical Justice and Peace Commission...

...They argue that a more modern Greece, movCommonweal: 487 ing toward union with Europe, requires a more modern church...

...If the Church is willing to relinquish some of its power, as in the case of marriage and divorce, it won't be stripped of it...

...If the election were held tomorrow, Benelli is both too young (56) and with too little pastoral experience to be a likely successor to Paul VI...

...For instance, the Commission for the Revision of Canon Law might find its recommendations, fruit of a year's work, abruptly amended after Benelli had handed them to some of his advisors...

...They point to families where men have been living with other women for decades--such as the couple who have been living together for 53 years whose children and grandchildren have no legal rights because the first wife won't grant a divorce...

...Naturally, the member will be free to give the money to any military supplier in the neighborhood and at first, no doubt, many will do that simply from habit...

...FRANK GETLEIN 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 CHURCH-STATE IN GREECE CHSHNO VH 'S WV The Greek Parliament might soon enact a divorce bill which could cause deep fissures between the government and the Orthodox Church...

...Since in this society that almost always means the woman, there are hundreds of cases of women refusing to give their husbands divorces because they fear the economic consequences...

...Sunday church-going is no longer the major social event of the week, and no one in Athens knows whether you go or not...

...And he is also young enough to succeed Paul's successor...

...The Greek Orthodox Church has been quick to recognize human frailty...

...The proposed bill came to Parliament last November after two years of study and then it was unanimously approved by the Justice Committee...

...Even then it would not be an "automatic" divorce, as the Church claims, but each case would be decided individually and women and children in need of support would be protected...

...Others reply that Greeks won't accept an authority that offers itself only when there is no danger involved...

...This seems a more likely explanation of Benelli's immediate elevation to the cardinalate than that Paul VI intends to retire on September 25, when he reaches 80, or that he feels death is close...

...The Education Ministry's General Director of Religious Affairs, Vlassios Phidas, described the loss of moral suasion: "The Church was silent for seven years when the Greek people were going through a crisis of conscience...

...With flight pay, of course...

...Recognizing that the two-child family is here to stay, the Church has been wise enough not to undermine its moral authority by insisting on strict adherence to all its teachings...

...Villagers would react strongly against any radical reforms in the Church they want their religion to remain comfortable and recognizable...

...In the city they're easy to avoid...

...If it is willing to adjust the "disharmonies," then Hellenism and Greek Orthodoxy might once again be o n e . cogIE ROBERTS (CoMe Roberts, a previous contributor, is an American newspaper and radio journalist based in Athens...

...As Greeks flock to the cities--one-third of the nation's population now lives in Athens--they leave behind the village customs that tied them to religious practices...

...The Holy Synod has called civil marriage "contrary to Greek Christian traditions" but many people here feel the populace is rapidly becoming more liberal than the Church...

...Many curialists were furious to find that Benelli changed their expert recommendations...

...And these are merely outward manifestations of the tradition of unity-- religious customs thread their way through the pattern of everyday life...

...Now, as cardinal, he can participate in the next papal election...

...It is expected that, early in the new year, Pope Paul will make Benelli president of the Italian episcopacy, a post presently held by Cardinal Antonio Poma, archbishop of Bologna, who does not enjoy good health...

...and the unnatural ruptures between priests and people caused by the role of the Church throughout the military dictatorship...