Greek Church

a branch of the Christian church. It was originally the church of the Byzantine or eastern empire, having its seat at Constantinople. The Greek language and traditions bear much the same relation to the Greek Church that is sustained by the Latin language in the Roman Catholic church. The theological differences are not serious. Both churches are Trinitarian. Each has seven sacraments. The priests of the Greek Church, however, are required to be married before ordination. If the wife of a priest dies, he is required to resign his charge and go into a cloister. The Greek Church rejects the doctrine of purgatory. It allows no carvings, graven, nor cast images, but permits painted images of Christ, Mary the mother, and the saints. This rule is not observed in Russia, however. The people of Greece, Russia, and the small countries of the lower Danube are members, chiefly, of this church. Among adherents elsewhere are 30,000 in Catholic Italy, onefourth of the population of Hungary, and many congregations in Turkey and Asia Minor. The members of the Greek Church would not accept the Gregorian or reformed calendar. Wherever found, even in the United States, they follow their ancient ritual and observe the old dates, so that their dates are twelve days behind ours. Instead of kneeling at prayer, they stand with the face toward the east. The Greek Church has no one head. The Orthodox Greek Church numbers 98,000,000 followers. See Russia; Czar