noting that, while payment of priests by the State was decided in 1945, their salary back then was very small and their essential recognition as public servants, iercely claimed by the Church, took place only in 1968 (Emergency Law 469) during the junta, resulting also in their wage equalization. The Church of Greece, then, is clearly a part of the State, albeit a quite particular one, as it enjoys a special and prominent position within the State apparatus. However, one should not conclude from this that the Church alone beneits from this close relationship; this is also true of the State itself, for which the Church functions as a complementary mechanism of legitimization and ideological prestige. There is, in other words, a relationship of mutual appropriation between them: it takes two to tango… 2/ THE CHURCH OF THE “SOCIAL REGIME” It is commonly thought in some circles that the Church has no political ideology and is only interested in its spiritual work. Things, though, are obviously diferent, and this is not some kind of Greek particularity. The Church is a bureaucratic institution, attached to the Greek State and therefore in constant interaction with other institutions, organizations, social groups and lobbies, and this complex relationship is deined by its particular State form. In this sense, not only is it inherently impossible for its members to avoid the temptation of exposing their ideological inluences, but this expression, especially when coming from superior oicials, obtains a particular secular weight because of its State origin. Already from the beginning of the 20th century, and during the interwar period, the Orthodox Church, following the lead of the Catholic Church,118 turned against communist, socialist and letist views and ideas with regard to educational matters (1911, 1925). The crucial historic moments, though, which prove the co-operation of the Church with fascist and dictatorship regimes, came with the two dictatorships: Ioannis Metaxas’ regime (1936-1941) and the Colonels’ Junta (1967-1974). It is telling that a few days ater Metaxas’ dictatorship had been declared, the Church, in its magazine of the same name (Ekklisia), in a text entitled “The Prime Minister’s Reveille”, wrote in praise of Metaxas, mentioning that the President of the Government (he was not referred to as a dictator) had assessed the communist danger seriously threatening the Greek people, and that it was the irst time that such a view – which would shape the future of Greece – was oicially expressed.119 The 1967 military junta constitutes an even more typical example. Despite the immediate intervention of the regime in Church administration, the Church, again in its oicial magazine, spoke about the signiicant and noble vision of the prime minister (once again, Georgios Papadopoulos was not referred to as a 118. 119. 82 | See Ekklisia magazine, 33-34, 22 August 1936, p. 266. Ibid, p. 266. ROSA LUXEMBURG STIFTUNG