Have they been free of ignorance, obscurantism, superstition, spiritual intolerance, worship of revenue?
THE Enlightenment, often known as the Age of Motive, was an 18th-century mental and cultural motion that emphasised cause over superstition and science over blind religion. Enlightenment luminaries akin to John Locke, Isaac Newton, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant challenged the then accepted data and unfold new concepts of openness, inquiry and non secular tolerance all through Western Europe and America. The literary motion that was created needed to make data accessible to all and struggle obscurantism and ignorance. He demanded tolerance and positioned religion in progress and now not in supernatural powers. Enlightenment philosophers and writers additionally needed to exhibit that the pursuit of happiness must be the purpose of human life. They helped their contemporaries to develop their important sense, to suppose for themselves and to free themselves from all their superstitions. Additionally they fought towards spiritual intolerance. In abstract, the purpose of the Enlightenment was data, equality, freedom from superstition, intolerance and tyranny, the abolition of slavery.
The Enlightenment was a serious turning level in Western civilization, an age of sunshine that changed an age of darkness. Enlightenment concepts have been examined in North America throughout the drafting of the Declaration of Independence after which america Structure (1787). They have been additionally used within the writing of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) throughout the French Revolution. And as unusual because it sounds, the Enlightenment unfold to Greece within the 18th century and gave delivery to revolutionary actions in favor of democracy and human rights. These actions finally pale till a Bavarian prince took over Greece as its king after the wonderful however finally unsuccessful Greek Revolution. (See “New Greek Enlightenment. The political and social concepts”, Paschalis Kitromilidis). The “fading” of the Enlightenment is just not solely as a consequence of King Otho however, primarily, because the well-known historian Eleni Arveler says, to the Church of Greece.
The query arises: have the Hierarchs of Cyprus been influenced by the Enlightenment? Have they been free of ignorance, obscurantism, superstition, spiritual intolerance, worship of revenue? I’d very very like the reply to this query to be a powerful “Sure”! However, sadly, the reply isn’t any.
The Archbishop insists that homosexuality is a “perversion from nature”. However the scientific world and the World Well being Group imagine that homosexuality is just not a matter of alternative, it isn’t a illness or perversion, neither is it as a consequence of detached mother and father or a problematic social setting. It’s one other model of the phenomenon of organic variety. (See (1) “The Biology of Homosexuality” by Jacques Balthazar, College of Crete Publication and (2) Science journal, 2019 Problem). The Archbishop's faulty place, that same-sex attraction is a alternative, justifies condemnation or conversion and results in discrimination and persecution in Cypriot society. However it appears that evidently the members of the Holy Synod wouldn’t have a single line on the difficulty of homosexuality. Metropolitan Neophytos of Morphou disagrees with the Archbishop by presenting a brand new, “revolutionary” clarification for homosexuality. If, he says, the lady has irregular intercourse and likes it, she transfers the will to the kid! On this means, the kid is not going to be “regular” however homosexual. Such theories launched within the twenty first century by our “non secular” leaders are, after all, not associated to the Age of Motive however to the Center Ages.
However there are additionally Hierarchs who promote superstition. I’m quoting from the current round of the Metropolitan of Paphos, Mr. Random. “Allow us to not eat what is obtainable to us by people who find themselves not of God, as a result of often those that cope with demonic issues put one thing in our meals or drink to infect us. To not settle for from them something they provide us even when they provide us costly objects and if somebody has accepted one thing, let him switch it to his non secular to be learn and keep away from them as a lot as we are able to”. The metropolitan didn’t specify which individuals he means who “belong to God”. How will we understand once we go to eating places or overseas that somebody is “of God”? What’s heartbreaking, nevertheless, is the recommendation on easy methods to exorcise demons that may be a relic of the Center Ages. With such recommendation, how can the Church carry younger individuals, most of whom are graduates?
Spiritual intolerance is just not absent amongst our Hierarchs. The Metropolitan of Limassol Athanasios refused to satisfy the Pope within the two visits he made to Cyprus as a result of, in line with Athanasios, the Pope is a heretic! The message of Athanasius is that orthodox Christians ought to abhor non-religious individuals. John Locke in his well-known ebook “A Letter Regarding Toleration” printed in 1685, emphasised that peace, equality and friendship ought to at all times be mutually noticed by the totally different Church buildings. And he explains: “Every Church is orthodox for itself, and faulty and heretical for the others. Due to course, what a Church believes it believes as true, and something on the contrary it condemns as false (p. 147).
In conclusion, the rays of Enlightenment discover it tough to penetrate the darkish clouds above Cyprus.
*Economist, social scientist
