Christophoros Panagiotopoulos (1770-1861), commonly known as "Papoulakos", was a simple preacher who helped truly bring enlightenment to the Greek people of the Peloponnese following the victory of the Greek nation against Ottoman rule. Within a decade Papoulakos managed to shake up the sociological make up of the newborn Greek state, which was slowly becoming westernized with an Enlightenment ideology, and he helped bring the Greek people to their roots in Orthodoxy and the Christian ideal. For this he faced much persecution from both the Church and State and died in exile.
Atheistic writings have brushed aside the saints and strugglers, and put into the head of the Nation foreign and atheist educators who want to falsify our life. Atheistic writings place the Nation at a dead end and prevent it from enjoying its freedom.
It is our shame, for a generation which fortified its freedom with its blood, which climbed the difficult ascent, to accept that it is not possible to travel a straight road when it is peaceful, and that we do not know how to tidy the house which we freed by our blood, but they who did not fight know how to tidy it, they who did not believe in the struggle, these who attempt to cut us off from Christ, and they spare no effort to throw us in slavery to another master, who is more demonic than the Turks. For all that the Turk holds venerable, they throw aside atheistic writings and uproot them.
They vanquish the monasteries, ridicule the monks and nuns, they steal holy chalices and sell them for silver to decorate dirty women. They take the holy of holies and put it under the feet of their authority, prohibiting anything against their interest. Atheistic writings weave the shroud of the Nation.
Will our children therefore learn these writings? Even if all the atheistic educators were gathered and squeezed out like a lemon, they would still not be able to succeed in writing a sentence which is worth one line from the Gospels. But what am I saying, a sentence? Not even a word resembles this God-bearing book. This is because everything within is the word of the Lord, it is correct wisdom, and whatever a creature says cannot reach the heights of the Creator. Instead of teaching our children the holy synaxaria and how the saints of Christianity lived and how they were martyred for the love of Christ, we teach them the history of the cursed world. For there are two teachings about history: the sacred and the cursed history. Continuously we reveal the cursed image of the world and little by little we have managed to believe that this image is the genuine image of man, and how outside this no other life stands. All these things are disgraceful lies. Atheistic writings are weeds which have been sown in the Lord’s field.
They speak to us of the ancients. And I, the humble and illiterate preacher of the word of our Christ says to you that not one of the ancients surpassed in bravery, greatness and glory Saint Kosmas, the martyrs and the great ascetics. And if they have died for a country, Saint Kosmas died for a Greece belonging to Christ and not a Greece enslaved to the antichrist.
- Excerpt from the book by Kosti Bastia, Papoulakos, Athens, 1987. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
Atheistic writings have brushed aside the saints and strugglers, and put into the head of the Nation foreign and atheist educators who want to falsify our life. Atheistic writings place the Nation at a dead end and prevent it from enjoying its freedom.
It is our shame, for a generation which fortified its freedom with its blood, which climbed the difficult ascent, to accept that it is not possible to travel a straight road when it is peaceful, and that we do not know how to tidy the house which we freed by our blood, but they who did not fight know how to tidy it, they who did not believe in the struggle, these who attempt to cut us off from Christ, and they spare no effort to throw us in slavery to another master, who is more demonic than the Turks. For all that the Turk holds venerable, they throw aside atheistic writings and uproot them.
They vanquish the monasteries, ridicule the monks and nuns, they steal holy chalices and sell them for silver to decorate dirty women. They take the holy of holies and put it under the feet of their authority, prohibiting anything against their interest. Atheistic writings weave the shroud of the Nation.
Will our children therefore learn these writings? Even if all the atheistic educators were gathered and squeezed out like a lemon, they would still not be able to succeed in writing a sentence which is worth one line from the Gospels. But what am I saying, a sentence? Not even a word resembles this God-bearing book. This is because everything within is the word of the Lord, it is correct wisdom, and whatever a creature says cannot reach the heights of the Creator. Instead of teaching our children the holy synaxaria and how the saints of Christianity lived and how they were martyred for the love of Christ, we teach them the history of the cursed world. For there are two teachings about history: the sacred and the cursed history. Continuously we reveal the cursed image of the world and little by little we have managed to believe that this image is the genuine image of man, and how outside this no other life stands. All these things are disgraceful lies. Atheistic writings are weeds which have been sown in the Lord’s field.
They speak to us of the ancients. And I, the humble and illiterate preacher of the word of our Christ says to you that not one of the ancients surpassed in bravery, greatness and glory Saint Kosmas, the martyrs and the great ascetics. And if they have died for a country, Saint Kosmas died for a Greece belonging to Christ and not a Greece enslaved to the antichrist.
- Excerpt from the book by Kosti Bastia, Papoulakos, Athens, 1987. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.