Church and culture, from the fall to eucharism. Speech of His Eminence Protopr. Dimitriou Katounis, Director of the School of Byzantine Hagiography of the Holy Metropolis of Dimitrias and Almyrostranslated

Reverend Pastor of Agiotokos and Theophilous province of Etoloakarnania Mr. Damaskine, bless you!

Dear and blessed brothers in Christ, rejoice always!

After words of infinite thanksgiving for the honorable invitation, I come to the podium, in order to submit to Your love some thoughts on the subject: "Church and culture, from the fall to thanksgiving".

An extremely important issue for our self-awareness is the issue of the relationship that exists between the Church and culture. To approach this issue it is necessary to approach and understand the two meanings of the words "Church" and "culture".

It is very difficult to grasp the meaning of the Church, since there is not only one definition that defines it. We say that the Church is the living body of Christ or that it is a God-founded organization or that it is the set of believers who together with the pastors gather in the Churches for the worship of God. All these define parts of the Church, but do not define it as a whole. If we wanted to understand the Church somewhat more precisely, we could say that it is a society of love. It is…