In today's Handelsblatt the remarkable essay by the newspaper's editor in chief, Gabor Steingart, must be read very carefully by all committed to the European idea in one way or another -and especially by those assembled tonight in Brussels in order to lay the foundation of a common governing mechanism. The essay convincingly shows that the federal Europe that some loathed and others pined for was actually inaugurated on May 10, under the alias of the financial support mechanism for those countries in the Eurozone that might in the future face the same debt travails as Greece. This, together with the effective financial takeover of Greece by Brussels, means nothing less than that the old "no bail out" pieties have been thrown overboard and that a new institutional framework of interdependence and mutuality, i.e. of functional political unity, has been embarked on. Otmar Issing, a staunch enemy of such a development, had predicted this eventuality back in February as he argued against any rescue of Greece. He was right in his predictions, wrong in his evaluations.

The Euro in and of itself, naked of all political significance, was just a financial phantom meant to be blown away by the gales of the market sooner or later. In order to save it, the collective will of the European governments was forced to extract the political dimension of this experiment, which some wanted to ignore, but which was uppermost in the minds of all those statesmen who since the fifties took all the crucial initiatives in the direction of a unified economic area.

The ultimate goal of European togetherness was primarily cultural, even philosophical, in conception and intent: an attempt to work against the historical legacy that wreaked havoc on the continent. This means that it was primarily continental in scope: the Brits had no essential place in it, even though they were and are indispensable as partners contributing, advising and influencing from a distance. This is a choice that they themselves have irrevocably made. It is a choice right for themselves, and they are entitled to it.

It is from this perspective that the case of Greece must be analyzed. The decision to include the country in the common market and the Euro area was never an economic one to begin with: neither by the Greek nor by the European leaders. The economic weakness of the country was well known to all, and despite the chicanery that everybody is pouncing on these days all responsible international authorities were fully cognizant of the real situation. This in no way absolves, of course, the Greek ruling classes of their criminal mishandling of the European bonanza that flowed in. But something like that was to be rationally expected. As Ken Rogoff has shown the country has been in a recurring state of financial default from its very inception in the 19th. century. And it was rather a pleasant surprise that a feeble attempt was made under Simitis between 1996 and 2000 to rein in the endemic corruption and waste -an attempt that soon fizzled out of course under the relentless onslaught of the forces of plunder and debauchery represented primarily by Simitis' own party.

Nay, Greece has always been an idea and just an idea in Europe's mind -and the present-day country called Greece owes its existence to the potency of that idea and the irresistible hold it exercised over Europe's collective consciousness. Had the political fate of the country been left to its inhabitants it would never have arisen in the nineteenth century or managed to stand on its own feet in the face of tough reality both in its immediate neighborhood and in the wider European theater. It would have gone under in 1898, reduced once again to an Ottoman province; and later in 1944 it would have been gobbled up as a mere amputated province in Stalin's Balkan Federation.

Its internal society has always been extremely weak and disparate, lacking any solid cultural or moral cohesion. Its varied contents have been constantly at war among themselves -a diagnosis, interestingly, that was only yesterday repeated in a report by the IMF delegation resident here. The various factions have always felt, and continue feel, an intense and consuming hatred primarily against their domestic opponents, on the altar of which they are blindly willing to sacrifice the common country and its collective interests. For, indeed, as far as they are concerned there is no common country, and in the place of the collective interest they place their particular selfish designs. This is a self-destructive political culture, once again splendidly evinced in the present turmoil, in which the ideological obsession of anti-westernism, under leftist or rightist guise, has been the vital motivation of the majority of political formations, including the ruling "socialist" party. That this immovable attachment threatens to cost the country's bankruptcy, i.e. people going without the basics of life, is of complete indifference to all these militant champions of the people.

Greece on the ground is, hence, nothing but geography: the eternal "isles of Greece" sung by Byron that are still today drenched with the glorious spirit of antiquity. It is this spirit that informs the collective soul of Europe, and it was for this spirit's sake that Europe undertook to effect the independence of Greece back in the 1820's. It was that same spirit that prompted and guided the decision to include Greece in the architecture of united Europe. Without Greece the idea of Europe is mutilated. Europe understood this quite well, even though it knew of the decisive discrepancy between this idea and the human and social reality that unfolded within the geographical confines it pointed to. In the same way the Philhellenes of the 19th c. were soon enough disabused of their romantic notions concerning the Greek insurgents as reincarnations of the heroes of antiquity. And if they persevered in the defense of Greece it was out of loyalty to the glowing concept of eternal Hellenism to which they were unwaveringly committed. As to the indigenous tribes they were either oblivious or outright hostile to these ideals, which they rightly perceived as possessions now of the western nations having died out in their geographical place of birth.

The same holds true today. Of the inhabitants of the country only a small minority has any truck or trade with the legacy of classical antiquity, with the very language itself being ground to dust under the feet of the marauding political cliques that have destroyed the country -first the educational system and then inevitably the economy. Among this minority,surely, are found individuals of the highest intellectual and moral quality, capable of shining to world-class achievement under any decent and just political system -and they frequently prove this when they escape from here. But it is these individuals precisely that are trampled underfoot by the ugly nonentities that control the levers of power domestically. So, these unfortunates just hide away in their undergrounds or attics, communicating secretly among themselves and just praying for the wolf-packs in control of public space to go away. Which they won't.

Hence, the concepts of Hellenism -and Latinity for that matter- are among the noblest attributes of the European identity, and the construction of a united Europe has been meant above all as a resurrection of a common civilization founded upon these universal pursuits. Greece, and Italy, as components of Europe were never meant as a money-spinning enterprise. It is quite gross to express it in these terms, but for Europe to affirm itself in its universality, i.e. as a latter day incarnation of the cultural prototypes of classical Greece and Rome, it would indeed have to pay through the nose. If alternatively you chose to integrate Europe on narrow criteria of economic efficiency and financial probity, then you would have to content yourself with a much truncated version thereof, which would forfeit the alluring aura of universality inspiring peoples far and wide to transcend their forlorn and miserable nationalism. The Germans, for one, know full well what it means to sacrifice narrow economic interest in favor of an overriding moral and political idea: they after all granted parity between the East and the West German Mark (a patent economic absurdity, for which they paid dearly in material terms) in order to secure the unification of their people. The same order of priorities applies, then, on a European plane. The Greeks are, of course, not the Germans' "blood brothers". But to express the problem in these terms would mean to drag it further down into the swamp of biology, into which presumably present day Germans would not want to be again sunk.

The integrity of the idea of Europe is comprised of the complementary, but also antithetical, components of a northern culture of austerity and a southern one of vital enjoyment -just ask Goethe about it. If it is rather expensive to achieve it, and the material burden falls inordinately upon the shoulders of the northern puritanical peoples, then this must be suffered and endured. The moral and political greatness of Germany up to now has been to boldly shoulder this. Besides, she has also done pretty well economically out of the arrangement.

We have now reached a threshold of decision and opportunity, i.e. the necessity to proceed to the next inevitable step of closer political union. As for the miscreant Greek elites they are going to be punished anyway -either by being forced to dismantle their evil system of mendacity and exploitation, thus empowering the decent minority to assert itself and truly help the people at large to a new dawn of just well-being; or by being thrown out of the European project altogether. But this is a mere side issue, and it was a huge mistake by Merkel to turn it into the main consideration in the present crisis. The essential challenge, as she herself has belatedly realized, is the further consolidation of European oneness, as a matter not merely of economic prosperity, but also of political peace and cultural progress. The true Europeans, in other words the true Greeks, in Greece will cheer on this epic endeavor from whatever place the harsh winds of history consign them to.

Sometimes silence is the only available stance in the face of an unbearable reality. Language is simply too poor to express the horror that we have lived through this month. The Swedish finance minister spoke some days ago about the "wolf-packs" of speculators trying to tear apart the weaker states of the EU. But we here came face to face with very real wolves with a human countenance who deliberately and in cold blood burned to death three innocent workers trapped in their building which these beasts torched. And all around this horrendous scene the "revolutionary" crowds of protesters cheered the crime, cursed the victims gasping for breath and fought to prevent the fire brigade to come near to put out the fire. That we would be living in such hell on earth today I could never have imagined even in my worst nightmares, despite the face that the depraved condition of this society was quite evident to me within a couple of years of my return.

Meanwhile the government is degenerating into a collection of clueless buffoons, constantly announcing new measures of restructuring that at this point are nothing but a bunch of words. At the same time the greater part of the government itself together with the middle echelons of the state administration are skilfully conspiring to nullify the few changes that have managed to percolate downwards, while the opposition parties are engaged in a destructive politics as usual guaranteed to keep the country under foreign economic tutelage indefinitely -if not actually to push it over the cliff of financial ruin from which it was saved in the last minute. No wonder, then, that no one abroad considers it slightly likely that the country will indeed manage to dig itself out of its self-inflicted disaster.

A glimmer of hope might be left if things had stabilized on the European plane. But even from that planet the news are hugely discouraging. The stubborn self-righteousness of the Germans which initially managed to turn the relatively minor Greek debacle into a full-blown European and then world crisis has in the past couple of days mutated into a panicky sort of maladroitness -unless it be a deliberate strategy to scuttle the Euro so that Germany might once again revert to its splendid Kantian and Prussian aloneness. One is assailed by crazy thoughts like that in the current darkness. In one of my early posts back in February I wrote that the situation could be saved provided that the chief actors did not all of them together manage to screw up completely in all fields at the same time. At this point it seems that they have achieved precisely that exceedingly rare feat.

So, it got to the point where the president of Germany himself, a former director of the IMF no less, had to intervene in order to rein in the thoughtlessness of Merkel in the Greek affair. Devastating commentaries in the press had preceded him, excoriating the chancellor's constant dithering and disruption which ratcheted up uncertainty in the financial markets and thus left the field wide open to speculators to trash Greece beyond any reasonable extent and also to commence the next phase of their onslaught, this time against Portugal and Spain.

Koehler's words at the Munich economic forum today were scathing. In the past few weeks politics in Europe capitulated before the financial markets which have nothing to do with the real economy but are driven by credit and a psychology of reckless gambling. The "sinner" countries must of course radically reform their public finances, but in this climate of speculative frenzy even if they completely kill their economies they stand no chance of emerging from the hole they dug themselves in. It is imperative that they be helped to help themselves. And the greatest help they could have been given from the very first minute was a firm and unequivocal commitment that the Eurozone stood behind them.

Merkel studiously avoided such a declaration, fixated as she has been on the damned Nordrhein-Westfallen election and the antics of her coalition partners rather than on the stability of the European project. The present writer for one, among many others, has been trying hard to give her the benefit of the doubt throughout the period of her irritating deviousness and her false triumphs as "Madame Non" back in March. But it finally reached the point that her obstinacy, presented under the Kantian guise that the sinners must pay the penalty for their infraction of the moral code of sound fiscal behavior, was threatening to bring the whole house down, the sinners and the righteous entangled in each other's arms as the roof fell in. Fiat iustitia, pereat mundus indeed.

The relentless Greek-bashing of the past few days got too much even for those, like me, who have no affection whatsoever for the bunch of thieves and nincompoops who run this country. For the thing is that this vicious, incorrigible, mendacious, double-dealing, benighted ruling class has already thrown in the towel and surrendered the running of the economy (as they ought to, for the benefit of their people) to the international authorities. Whatever measures Merkel wants them to adopt they will indeed, under duress, assent to.

The huge question, surely, is whether they will be carried out. But, given strict international control the chances are that they will be. Still this cannot be ascertained within the space of a few days. Hence, it cannot be a precondition for releasing the aid. The rescue is needed immediately in order to put out the fire that has been spreading under our very eyes in the past forty eight hours. The rest will be systematically and pitilessly achieved over the coming months -pitilessly, that is, with respect to those ravenous cliques that ran the kleptocracy up to now and are presently screaming the loudest against "the foreigners", according to the well-tested recipe of autistic nationalism that has such a grip on the public mind here. For one, including the international representatives, must show pity to the rest of us, who for the past three decades have borne the brunt of our worthless politicians' crimes and are again called upon to foot the bill for the shambles they made of this country.

There will be strikes and demonstrations, of course. But there are signs that an underlying acceptance of the need for drastic overhaul is also penetrating popular mentality. The silly side of the prime minister, feeling obliged to kowtow to the ranting and raving squads of a degenerate leftism in order to pay lip service to his father's wretched "socialism", will also obstruct the course that he himself, either through choice or clumsiness, had to set in motion.

But when all is said and done, the Greek fiscal mess would have remained a relatively minor disturbance at the fringes of Europe, had not Merkel's posturings and her capitulation to her populist press stoked it into a full blown world crisis. Let us hope that she has at last seen the error of her ways -not least because of the severe scolding she suffered at Koehler's hands.

Today could be, under conditions, a historic turning point for Greece. The country is entering a three year period, at least, of international economic control, which if implemented properly could put the place right again after a whole generation of criminal folly by the political parties (including the hegemonic left) and the trade union bosses here.

But the project, which was courageously triggered by the prime minister today, is unfortunately between the hammer and the anvil.

The hammer is external, and it has to do with the continuing narrow-mindedness of the Germans. Just a few minutes after her telephone discussion with Papandreou following the latter's announcement that he was activating the European rescue mechanism she was once again pouring cold water on expectations that the aid was going to be expedited swiftly. This has been her usual behavior ever since the Greek crisis burst the banks of a petty squabble among local politicians eager to go on exploiting the EU and their own people for private gain. She has been dragged kicking and screaming to vaguely worded agreements in international forums, only to begin a spoiling action (basically taking back what she had signed on to) the moment she arrived back home. In all this she sometimes seemed more sensitive to the screaming headlines of the tabloids rather than the state of health of the European project, and hence to the best interest of Germany herself. This has been repeatedly pointed out in thoughtful commentaries in the serious German press -including one yesterday in the flagship of economic conservatism, namely Financial Times Deutschland. And even today she is still giving the impression that what is uppermost in her mind is the May 9th local election and the rantings of her disappointing coalition partner, Mr. Westerwelle. Her finance minister himself has been trying to change course in the past few days as Greece was being pushed over the cliff by what, yesterday in particular, was clearly brutal speculator assault. But he too was sidelined by the obstinate hardliners in his own government. Let us hope that these are the last spasms of a protracted campaign of prevarication and double-speak which has exacerbated the Greek crisis to an extent that could have been prevented.

As for the anvil referred to above, this is the reaction of Greek public opinion inflamed by the civil service unions in particular in an orchestrated campaign of ideological mendacity led by the abominable electronic media. These are the prime beneficiaries of the rotten regime of the past thirty years, and they are still tireless in their lethal work of undermining any effort to impose basic decency and justice to the anomic jumble of filthy private interest at the expense of the common good which they unleashed under the name of "socialism". As bankruptcy was looming they were doing their best to actually bring it about, by targeting the only agents which under the circumstances could be relied on to help us avoid it, namely the IMF-EU team. In this they were abetted by the miserable nullities making up the main opposition party. Their hysterical screams pierced the common people's minds furthering a panic which, yesterday, threatened to turn into a run on the banks. (We barely slept last night). To cater to their warped ideological agendas they were eager to see the little people bite the dust all the while claiming that were defending them. Such is the viciousness of opinion makers here. But here are signs that they no longer exercise the absolute clout that they once did. Their beastly yelling actually forced the prime minister's hand, who might have been disposed (wrongly) to wait until early May, partly to accommodate Merkel it seems, for the declaration that he made this morning against the beautiful backdrop of Kastellorizo (Castelrosso) in the Aegean.

Today we are in a different world -or so it is to be hoped. Relief was palpable, but there are many hurdles on the way. The measures that have been passed in Parliament would have been unthinkable only a few months ago, and the people seem to understand the necessity for them -even additional ones. The IMF-EU overlordship must make sure that they are carried out against the all-too-real opposition of entrenched interests in the state apparatus and the political establishment, first and foremost in the prime minister's own party. But he has staked his very political existence on bringing about this reform, so he cannot turn back. It will hurt terribly, and especially people who are not totally to blame for the catastrophe. But this is the only chance for the country. And if he leads the reformist effort boldly his many prevarications and outright silly mistakes of the past few months will be forgotten.

A country, whose internal system is like the kleptocratic "socialism" we have been enjoying here for decades, has no standing as a nation. It has no honor, and hence can command no respect on the international scene. It is rather more than a failed state, something akin to a fake state, i.e. a state in words and on paper where you can bet your life that behind pompous words about legality and the common good there hide the most sordid actions of private greed at the expense of the commonweal.

A real state is a set of functioning and respected institutions underpinned by a widely diffused moral code, i.e. an internalized social consciousness bent upon checking the functioning of the institutions from the outside, as it were, and preventing them from straying from their concept.

This does not mean that corruption and manipulation of institutions by private interest are absent -far from it. But it does mean that the means for fighting these distortions are internal to the system and are activated more or less effectively when the violations of legal and constitutional propriety assume critical dimensions at any rate. This is, of course, an ongoing struggle with no final and permanent endpoint. But in free and civilized nations this type of rough balance in favor of the public good over private greed is maintained over time and citizens and office holders are constantly vigilant that it should be so.

In this country we have lived through a situation where nothing of the above applies. Prevailing over the collective interest, living at the expense of society, using force and power to bend the law and the institution to serve the selfish designs of minority cliques is the rule. And, what is much more distressing, is that this type of behavior enjoys widespread popular approbation. Certainly the losers in this dogfight complain loudly, yet in their heart of hearts they wish they were in the place of the winners. So in fact they are not on the side of justice, but rather of injustice since their secret wish is that they should occupy the throne of the exploiters and tyrants, rather than ending exploitation. Their stance is one of pure "resentment" in Nietzsche's sense, i.e. they hate the powerful oppressor only because they do not dispose of his power to oppress.

On a funny aside, what we have experienced in this country for the past generation is the actuality of philosophy's worst concepts and insights.

Be that as it may, Greece's behavior inside Europe faithfully mirrored its internal diseased condition. There were ad nauseam declarations of fanatical even commitment to the ideals and institutions of united Europe (united even unto the very completion of a federal union!) coupled however with equally fanatical resistance against the practical enforcement of the obligations flowing from belonging to the EU, either on the economic or the institutional, let alone the cultural level.

A couple of weeks ago a court found in favor of a notorious anti-Semite and Nazi, ruling that his racist rantings were "historical research" and did not constitute incitement to racial hatred. The Greek Jewish witnesses for the prosecution in the case were abused and browbeaten in the courtroom. Antisemitism is a staple of popular television with nobody batting an eyelid. A few months ago the burning of a historical Synagogue in Crete did not stir any notable social reaction -and was rather welcomed with silent popular approbation. These are only a few emblematic examples illustrating the radical divergence of this society from the civilized European norm, whose economic consequences we have been dramatically experiencing recently.

It was in this context that the sickest possible version of nationalism developed since the early nineties, instigated by the present leader of the main opposition party. The "patriotic" party, in ideological control of all political formations from the extreme terrorist left to the extreme right, stoked all kinds of phobias in the masses and imposed upon the government a ridiculous level of military expenditure, in the context of which the most vile thievery of the public purse took place. This insane policy, which again enjoyed wide public support, contributed drastically to the ruining of public finances.

Thus the actions of these "patriots", fiercely promoted by the so called "press" whose chiefs were also in the pay of defense contractors and other businessmen profiting from this rotten merry-go-round, have led Greece to its present predicament of ceding effective sovereignty to Brussels and the IMF. They are also the ones who are presently most vocal against the involvement of the IMF in the rescue of the Greek economy, again on mendacious grounds of national pride and "anti-imperialist" commitment. What is in fact bugging them is that under an IMF-Brussels regime their days of criminal license and impunity are over.

Of course, all the rest of us who had no involvement in their odious deeds will also pay the bill for the destruction of this society that they caused. In any case, since the system here cannot cleanse itself by its own means and free volition, external tutelage is the only alternative. And in the long run, even the very long run, it may bring about a better life for our children -since our own has been effectively and terminally ruined under the reign of this "progressive", "social" and "national" mafia.

So, with every "solution" the problem keeps getting worse and worse. After Feb. 11, March 25 and April 11 we were each time misled to believe that the worst was over and we could now, at least for the time being, turn our thoughts to more substantial and humanly rewarding things. We have been cruelly disabused of these foolish notions.

The solution is impossible because the underlying problem is insoluble. The way the economy was managed, as the private fief of certain gangster cliques covering their filthy arses under the banner of "socialism", is just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath that, you have a public mentality shaped under the most distorted versions of "leftism", i.e. a whole society brought up to think that the meaning of existence is to live at the expense of others and of the community as a whole. This stinking egotism, this manic attachment to private gain, from the least individual all the way up to companies, institutions, political parties etc., was enshrined as the chief motive for social action from the early eighties on, with the unavoidable consequence of destroying the very preconditions for human togetherness and social endeavor. This ingrained inner disposition will take a very long time to change in the slightest -and as far as I am concerned it is way past mending. This is what the country's international environment senses clearly, and that is why it keeps withholding any trust, and even the slightest esteem that one owns to nominally fellow human beings.

This sick concoction of beastly greediness mixed together with militant "revolutionary" declarations has been found out for what it is, namely a mockery of all that is essential to the very concept of humanity. These are painful thoughts to think, let alone to utter publicly. They point to an impending calamity of apocalyptic proportions -which I pray never comes. But they impose themselves. They invade the mind as one watches this miserable bunch of idiotic nonentities calling themselves our leaders, the very ones to whom we owe the present moral and material implosion, going about their usual business, bickering, uttering platitudes, lying through their teeth and generally blaming everyone but themselves for the current shame.

Yesterday even the prime minister himself, who in some respects rises above the laughable herd of his associates and opponents, felt that he had to pay obeisance in parliament to the leader of a miniscule "leftist" party consisting of a collection of silly splinter groups that represent the dregs of stalinism, totalitarian "direct action", romanticized terrorism etc., i.e. everything which the European left (even in its radical expressions) has long jettisoned. He basically apologized for trying to reform things, and his excuse was that he did not really want to, but his hand was forced by the evil forces attacking the country. When sane people, here but most of all abroad, listen to these bathetic, puke-inducing convolutions, is it any wonder that they throw their arms up in the air and wish to see the place consigned to the inner circles of hell?

The whole public establishment here (with a few individual exceptions here and there) are dead set upon saving the dead system at all cost, and hence want to use the half-hearted European solutions as a cover for going back to their customary malfeasance. But the whole world knows this by now, and that is why (woe to us) the whole world is about to let us go down the cliff that we have chosen for ourselves.

The juncture was opportune for spending this year's Easter at Mystra. To begin with the Latin and Greek Easter coincided this year (for the first time since 2004), this being an apt reminder of the unity that ought to exist among those professing to be Christians. It is indeed high time that the pettiness of obscure medieval dogmatism that led to the separation of the two halves of the universal church be superseded, in order for that essential oneness to be restituted.

That togetherness was not of course without internal frictions, mutual antipathies and brutalities such as the massacre of the Latins in Constantinople in 1182 and the equally cruel retaliation of the Crusaders in 1204. This is the way of the world. But it is fair to say that over and above such secular divergences the honest and sincere minds on both sides still clung to that vision of an all inclusive universality which should be a guiding light today more then ever.

The con-celebration has been all the more poignant given the unspeakable scandal presently ravaging the western church. The revelations concerning the pervasive child abuse by western priests the world over amount to a great human tragedy and a brutal travesty of Christian faith. It is a tragedy first and foremost for the helpless victims of the heinous assault which may have lasted for many generations, if not centuries. Their tormentors must expiate for their crimes before ecclesiastical but also civilian criminal courts. This is elementary and must have precedence over any other consideration.

But this is also a tragedy for the Roman Catholic church itself, an institution which -for all its historical perversions and deformations- has also functioned, in the person of its best representatives, as a repository for moral and aesthetic values essential to European civilization. It is thus outrageous that its present leadership has not found the moral courage to face up to the enormity of the situation and by sacrificing itself and its trappings of power to atone for the despicable deeds done under its umbrella and, it seems, under its very protection. Pope Ratzinger may have been, as cardinal, the vaunted "Rottweiler of faith" (more accurately of Roman dogma), but his response to the present crisis has been exceedingly meek, to the extent of actually lending credence to the worst of the swirling suspicions. He has, unexpectedly, been a very inconsequential Pope anyway, given the "iron" reputation that preceded him. But this was an opportunity to show any mettle he may have had. His half-apologies and legalistic excuses, however, have managed to bring out once again the worst aspects of the authoritarian institution which is the Roman ecclesiastical monarchy, in a way that even managed to outline the procedural affinities that this closed and dogmatic system of government has with all other forms of totalitarianism. For it is indeed a universal and trans-historical reflex of despotic systems to blame sinister conspiracies of traitors trying to malign the god-appointed rulers rather than own up to their own egregious misconduct.

The sight of a physically and morally weakened Pope hiding behind lame protestations of ignorance with regard to behaviors that he was personally responsible for rooting out is indeed pathetic. Even if he had not known (which cannot be granted on the facts), he ought to have known. Either way he can no longer lead his institution, and the best service he could render it under the present circumstances would be to take all the blame on himself and resign even while protesting his personal innocence. That would be a true imitatio Christi, and not the specious analogies he made in his Good Friday sermon about "going against worldly opinion". Worldly opinion in this case is that the sexual and other physical torture of helpless children is a ghastly crime, and worldly opinion happens to be true.

For the rest Cardinal Sodano's highly irregular intervention before last Sunday's Ubi et Orbi simply reinforces the impression that the Roman hierarchy are either in a state of denial or in cover-up mode Nixon-style. The worst blunder, of course, in this misguided circling of the wagons was Father Cantalamessa's infuriating claim that the world reaction to the scandal is akin to anti-Semitism. The good father does indeed sing his mass well, but its content unfortunately is one that will not wash with any thinking person, whether believer or atheist. That Cardinal Brady, the Primate of Ireland, is still mulling his position and refusing to relieve us of his presence is another situation that makes the blood boil. Only the Archbishop of Dublin so far has managed to find the right words. This unsavory tumult, incidentally, brings to mind the sexual scandals that rocked the church of Greece a few years ago. But in that case at least the homosexuality which is still rampant among its ranks involves consenting adults. It may violate their pretended moral canons, but it is not a criminal matter, just one of sin. The Roman situation, on the contrary, is criminality pure and simple.

Noting these facts is not tinged with the slightest malice against the institution of the Catholic Church, its clergy or, God forbid, its members and believers. It is rather a cry of despair that they currently lack the moral leadership that they and their cultural contribution deserve -by one who believes moreover that if Greek Christendom had managed to preserve its living ties with its Latin sister the fate of the Greek people as a free and leading component of a pan-European Renaissance would have been infinitely happier.

And this brings us back to Mystra, for that astonishingly beautiful citadel in its brilliant spring attire is the enduring symbol of that double-sourced and double-woven unity of the European spirit.

This aspect of it has, unfortunately, been smothered to death by the platitudes, distortions, silences and outright falsifications of "national" education in the modern Greek state. But no matter. It still breathes a serene and confident universality that transcends temporal borders and hatreds, touching every historically cultivated mind with its sweet synthesis of forms and notions culled from the wide reaches of pan-Christian endeavor.

It was, as is well known, founded by the Franks, and the Latin apse is still the dominant architectural motif on its secular buildings. Later it was ceded to the Constantinopolitans, and eventually under the dominance of its Palaiologue despots it flourished as a focal point of resurgent Hellenism in thought and feeling. Its chief philosophical personage, Plethon, transplanted authentic Platonism to Medici Florence thus igniting one of the most significant episodes of humanist culture. Plethon in old age abandoned Orthodoxy altogether in an effort to revive the classical Hellenic Pantheon. Meanwhile, the imperial policy of the Palaiologues was decidedly and consciously henotic (unionist), i.e. premised the survival of the Greek speaking half of the Roman Empire upon the reaffirmation of the ancient ties with Latin Christianity. And in this they had the support of the flower of Constantinopolitan intelligentsia, secular as well as ecclesiastical.

That this policy did not in the least imply renouncing the distinct Hellenic cultural identity of Byzantium is splendidly in evidence in Mystra, whose astonishing church frescoes although imbued with a naturalistic freshness of western provenance still manage to express in sublime form the mysticism and majesty of Byzantine religious feeling. The exhilarating vitality of Palaiologian art, right on the eve of the Ottoman disaster, is not only a supremely tragic sight, but more importantly a heartening affirmation of the heights of creativity that the human spirit can attain under conditions of cultural osmosis and mutuality.