Tachydromos magazine (2001)
Syros is home to Greece's largest community of Catholic Christians, about equal in number to the island's Orthodox Christians. Today, the many mixed marriages prove the smooth and equal coexistence of the two communities. Things were not always this way. Until not many years ago, Catholics were treated as second-class citizens with questionable national purity. Platon Rivellis, a permanent resident of Syros since last year, conveys his impressions of the bad past and the hopeful present.
Catholics, a tiny minority in the country, constitute a nearly equal (though not entirely equal) religious community with the Orthodox in the capital of the Cyclades. "We always loved each other like siblings. After all, there are always bad people and fortunately they are few." This diplomatic statement was how a kind Catholic priest answered my question about religious racism in Syros. But just scratch a bit the memory of the Syros Catholics, as well as the well-intentioned Orthodox, to collect a plethora of small but insulting incidents for the Catholic minority that everyone over thirty has experienced.
"Go away, you peasant!" This was often heard by a resident of Syros' southern rural areas as an address, or rather, a friendly (?) insult. And this nickname implied (and still implies) the crude peasant. Of course, if one considers that all residents of rural Syros were Christians in religion but Catholics in doctrine, this nickname automatically referred to every Catholic resident. However, there was also the exclusive nickname for Catholics, "flaounes" or "flaounia," of unknown etymological origin but with a very specific derogatory nuance.
"Are you not ashamed to have a Frank chauffeur?" said the deceased Orthodox bishop to a lady of the good society of Ermoupolis, as she conveyed to me. "Franks" were, of course, the Catholics, an adjective with a derogatory nuance to emphasize the difference from the "pure-blooded" Greeks.
"What do you remember hurting you in your childhood in relation to your religion?" I asked a thirty-year-old Catholic living in Ermoupolis. "That they took me out during religious education classes," she replied. Something that would please any child, that is, to miss a school hour, she felt it as an insult, as a stigma.
The peripheral "minorities," unable to accept and claim their cultural and religious difference, resorted (and still resort) to funny and erroneous arguments of similarity, like "we also touch our forehead with three fingers when making the sign of the cross" or "the Creed says to believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church!" A "peasant" Catholic woman replied this to a roommate in the hospital ward when she said "keep your hands off the Holy Scripture." With simplistic cunning she clarified: "I said that to confuse her. I know it doesn’t mean what I implied." But even the stone-throwing that the small (Orthodox) children of Ermoupolis played with the (Catholic) kids of Upper Syros was innocent, like cops and robbers or Panathinaikos and Olympiacos fans. Nonetheless, the distinction remained Catholics-Orthodox.
I do not know if there were ever special regulations, but it does not seem to have been easy for a Greek Catholic to become an officer, teacher, or even less, a theology student. Racism, of course, is not a new phenomenon nor a specific Greek one. After all, every difference leads to discrimination. Even the neighbors from Naxos are treated by the Syros people as foreigners, with all the negative connotations of the word. However, the difference with religious racism is that it is based on the established perception that joining the Orthodox flock is a necessary condition for being part of the Greek nation. To the "every non-Greek is a barbarian" notion, over time was added "every non-Orthodox is not Greek."
"You are right. It is very interesting that Greeks and Catholics coexist in Syros!" said a senior Ministry official responsible for communication with other European countries for joint programs. A slip of the tongue? Possibly. But it shows something.
Athens probably never learned about the religious discrimination that prevailed in the Cyclades. Nor did the few Catholics of the capital (to which I belong due to family) experience such discrimination. I remember, in fact, that my friend Kostas Zouraris jokingly called me (in our youthful days in the early '60s) "Latin lover," obviously emphasizing the Latin at the expense of the Lover. Or even called me Antichrist. However, I never perceived it as a derogatory distinction. Nor did I feel any other discrimination, either in school or in social life. Perhaps because racism thrives better and seems harsher in small communities. Or where it combines with class differences, as happened in Syros. I had to grow up to hear from a beloved student (and theologian by profession) that she cannot fathom that I am Catholic. I had to grow up to hear from a well-known Greek intellectual that my views on photography and art are justified by the doctrine to which I inherently belong. I had to grow up to realize that some of my compatriots in small places felt belittling discriminations from a young age.
The silence around this religious racism may also be due to the silence of the official Catholic Church of Greece, which either did not want to emphasize contrasts and provoke conflicts, or believed that this would ensure the perpetuation of its influence, as there would be no absorption by the dominant Orthodox element. The recent issue with identity cards was probably the first instance where the Catholic Church expressed some positions (not always in the best way, nor with the best representatives) and many Greek citizens became aware of the existence of religious minorities (and sensitivities) among their compatriots. Issues like that of identity cards should always be brought to the fore, without delays and reservations about political cost and other nonsense, because these minor conflicts help societies to progress and learn. And it is enough to prevent an offense against even one person, to ethically counterbalance any political cost.
The Syros clergy (from both sides) trapped in doctrinal differences and ecclesiastical rules contributed to isolation. What really could a Catholic priest do when his bishop (until 1960) asked him to excommunicate believers who entered into mixed marriages? And what really could an average Orthodox priest do when his leadership officially considered (and continues to consider) Catholics as heretics and Catholicism as heresy, with the consequence of not accepting the sacraments performed by Catholics? For example, if the two spouses want to have two religious wedding ceremonies, the Catholic wedding must be held first and then the Orthodox, because the Orthodox Church does not accept the validity of the Catholic sacrament. The opposite cannot happen because once the Catholic Church accepts the validity of the Orthodox wedding, holding a new ceremony would amount to bigamy. Note that according to older provisions of the Civil Code, the two ceremonies were mandatory, something that fortunately no longer applies today.
It is also a fact that religious discriminations were always more intense when accompanied by class distinctions. Catholics, old residents of the island, were overwhelmingly farmers and craftsmen, while the Orthodox, new residents since the Revolution, were also predominantly merchants, industrialists, and shipowners. This polarization remained almost unchanged until the early '60s. Catholics lived on the left hill (Upper Syros) with modest Cycladic houses and the Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral (St. George) at the top, and the Orthodox on the right hill with Ermoupolis and its rich neoclassical houses and the Orthodox Metropolitan Cathedral (of the Resurrection) at the top. Until the mid-20th century, the patricians of Ermoupolis did not allow the plebeians from other areas (regardless of doctrine) to march in the Sunday "peratσάda" walking in the same area of the central square. However, the main difference is that class distinctions can be overcome after two or three generations, without having to renounce anything. While religious differences, especially when they also take on national characteristics, institutionalize the differences, making their transcendence incomparably more difficult.
Gradually, however, the citizens themselves, mainly the new generation, made these distinctions seem from unenforceable to ridiculous. Class approaches also contributed to this. Over the last twenty years, the once-poor Catholics enriched through tourism (their seaside properties gained value), but also through the economic upgrading of technical professions (most construction tradesmen are Catholics). Now many live in Ermoupolis and have become successful merchants or scientists. The class equalization and the mixing of the population inevitably led to the conclusion of more and more mixed marriages between Catholics and Orthodox. Their children are usually baptized in the father's religion, even if the mother has a closer relationship with religion. But this is probably due to another kind of racism with much deeper roots, the one that gives precedence to the man and to society's comments. But the time seems to be up for this racism too.
The Churches were forced to adapt. The Catholic Church had the official seal, as the Second Vatican Council in the early '60s freed the hands of liberal priests and bishops to apply "economically" many provisions of the Canon Law, while many of these were abolished or modified. Such a thing did not happen in the Orthodox Church, but a general climate of tolerance gradually began to prevail, mainly after the enthronement of the new and worthy Metropolitan Dorotheus, who does not seem to harbor the same perceptions as his predecessor and has earned a good testimony from the flock of both doctrines.
However, this small racist adventure in the history of the Syros people made another miracle besides mixed marriages. After so many years of coexistence, possibly and so many years of offenses, defensive reflexes, and conflicts, one can say that the Orthodox of Syros are the most open-minded Orthodox in Greece. Even if they don't realize it. And this happens because they learned to live for a long time with the "different" side by side, so that the "different" became familiar to them. And it is not unlikely that the courtesy, spiritual cultivation, and cultural sensitivity that seem to distinguish the Syros people (according to at least the observations of the island's visitors) are partly due to the fact that, since each doctrine carries its own cultural characteristics, everyone gained by coexisting with another culture. In Syros, the East met the West in practice. The few remaining differences will be erased before we change generation. Very soon, the priests of both doctrines I believe will be able to co-serve, and the dead will be allowed to be buried in the same cemeteries. Since the problem of cohabitation in life has been solved, why should it be difficult to solve after death?
Mixed marriages, once pointed at, are now common practice in Syros, something that no one cares to comment on. It is a phenomenon worthy of note and emphasis only for those outside of Syros. However, it is said that where there are mixed marriages, racism and discrimination have ended. Integration has been achieved. Of course, other significant steps have preceded, such as political and economic integration and upgrading, but the conclusive blow against the discrimination of two communities is always the celebration and acceptance of mixed marriages. After all, the differences do not just disappear. When I asked a Catholic woman, if her husband is also Catholic, she replied: "Yes," adding: "It's the only thing we have in common!"
Mixed couples do not stand out from the non-mixed ones. No one mentions the fact that they belong to different doctrines. If I wasn't in Syros, and if I wasn't interested in the problem of discrimination and lack of tolerance, I wouldn't even think to ask them. The only thing that sometimes betrays a possible cultural difference is perhaps their names. But that is wealth for a language and a place. Frantzeska, Sperantza, Leonardos or Linardos or Lilis, Benouas, Aloisios or Louis along with many other names and toponyms testify and prove that this place was multicultural long before others sought it. After all, not every "Delagratsia" needs to become "Poseidonia." Because soon no one will understand the (Catholic) Vamvakaris.
As for me, I can only be happy about the developments, since my eponymous Corfiot grandfather (a pioneer of equality and tolerance), when appointed director of the English telegraph in Ermoupolis at the end of the last century, married my Orthodox Syros grandmother. He with the hyperdox name Platon and she with the interdox surname Sperantza Kaloudi.
Plato Rivellis