Continuing Education and Religious Affairs

Dear George,

We applaud restructuring the Greek cabinet into a contemporary flexible group.  The focus on the environment and on the protection of citizens, is much appreciated.  As is the introduction of deputy-ministers based in Northern Greece.  Maintaining, however, religious affairs as a ministry (no pun intended) was a disappointing choice.

Long have you been an ardent advocate for the separation of church and state.  This was your first chance to make a small, calculable, almost innocuous step into that direction.  You could have restructured religious affairs into a secretariat under the ministry for culture, but you did not.

The ministry of education and religious affairs got a new name that includes continuing education in its title.  Recognizing the importance of continuing education is commendable but hardly a reason to restructure an executive department.

The message to open minded, progressive, rationale thinkers is that church and state  in Greece remain very much entangled.   That a prime minister with such a strong mandate is still uncertain as to how to begin the disentanglement of two institutions that long had fed each others' corrupt and opaque dealings.

Such a lost opportunity.  Such a pity.