The new Archbishop looks, prima facie, like a low-profile person; and less ambitious, compared to his predecessor. (How, really, could one be MORE ambitious than the late Christodoulos?) He is also said to be in favour of well-educated clerics and to be in good terms with the Patriarch. What I would personally like to see is a man who would not try to convince us that he is ‘our Hieronymus’. Because, if populism is obnoxious when exercised by politicians, journalists or other public figures, when it becomes a key characteristic of a cleric it’s something even worse: inappropriate. I therefore wish that the new leader of the Greek Orthodox Church proves worthy of his role as a religious leader in a modern European nation-state; and less ambitious than his predecessor as another kind of leader. I refer of course to the Archbishop as an opinion leader. As a man who has the power to lead to the formation of social tendencies, awaken or quieten passions, prejudices and beliefs and who influences decisively millions of modern Greeks in their attitudes. (By the way, I didn’t see, in the Greek newspapers, any articles on the quite significant, in modern Greece, role of Hieronymus or his predecessor as opinion leaders.) So, let this man prove to be indeed low-profile, modest and humble. In other words, what the ministers of another low-profile but overambitious person were not. I am referring to our prime-minister and his cabinet, who proved that ambition and modesty do not go well together, as they never did. I am not saying that one should not be ambitious. But the quality of our ambitions is, alas, equivalent to the quality of the society in which we live and prosper; and, of course, relentlessly equivalent to the very quality of our personality. Modesty, on the other hand, is in Greece a high speed train. I am not, of course, referring any more to the Archbishop or the government officials, but to the rest of us. For whom modesty is, I think, a very fast train – compared to which the French TGV looks ridiculously slow – with the Terminal Station ‘Margins of Society’ as its destination.
Saturday 9 February 2008
Can an opinion leader keep a low profile?
The new Archbishop looks, prima facie, like a low-profile person; and less ambitious, compared to his predecessor. (How, really, could one be MORE ambitious than the late Christodoulos?) He is also said to be in favour of well-educated clerics and to be in good terms with the Patriarch. What I would personally like to see is a man who would not try to convince us that he is ‘our Hieronymus’. Because, if populism is obnoxious when exercised by politicians, journalists or other public figures, when it becomes a key characteristic of a cleric it’s something even worse: inappropriate. I therefore wish that the new leader of the Greek Orthodox Church proves worthy of his role as a religious leader in a modern European nation-state; and less ambitious than his predecessor as another kind of leader. I refer of course to the Archbishop as an opinion leader. As a man who has the power to lead to the formation of social tendencies, awaken or quieten passions, prejudices and beliefs and who influences decisively millions of modern Greeks in their attitudes. (By the way, I didn’t see, in the Greek newspapers, any articles on the quite significant, in modern Greece, role of Hieronymus or his predecessor as opinion leaders.) So, let this man prove to be indeed low-profile, modest and humble. In other words, what the ministers of another low-profile but overambitious person were not. I am referring to our prime-minister and his cabinet, who proved that ambition and modesty do not go well together, as they never did. I am not saying that one should not be ambitious. But the quality of our ambitions is, alas, equivalent to the quality of the society in which we live and prosper; and, of course, relentlessly equivalent to the very quality of our personality. Modesty, on the other hand, is in Greece a high speed train. I am not, of course, referring any more to the Archbishop or the government officials, but to the rest of us. For whom modesty is, I think, a very fast train – compared to which the French TGV looks ridiculously slow – with the Terminal Station ‘Margins of Society’ as its destination.
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