Sensitisation to the environment and climate change is now one of the main programmes of the Archdiocese of Athens and of Metropolitanates (bishoprics), as Ta Nea reports today.

The initiatives taken by the Metropolitan bishops of the Orthodox Church of Greece regarding the management of one of the most important issues preoccupying the whole world are certainly laudable.

That is both because they turn the attention of the faithful to the major issues concerning the future of the planet and because they are a step toward the modernisation of an institution that is hundreds of years old.

The Church hierarchy has often been accused – sometimes justly and sometimes unjustly, at times in good faith and other times in bad faith – of anachronistic approaches to changes in the society in which the clergy operates.

Yet, adjustment to contemporary conditions and conceptions is necessary even for those who pay less attention to worldly things, and the Church has an opportunity to convey the message of Orthodoxy to far broader audiences than those who listen to the sermons of priests every Sunday

Hence, modernisation should not be viewed as a threat to dogma. On the contrary, it should be seen as a means for making the Church stronger.

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