Deal to loosen cozy church-state ties falls apart

A tentative agreement between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Archbishop Ieronymos to move Greek clerics off the state payroll, ceasing to characterize them as civil servants, appeared to have all but collapsed on Tuesday following a session of the Holy Synod. 

Ieronymos made it clear after the emergency session that the deal, which he and Tsipras announced last November, was not acceptable to the Holy Synod while also condemning clerics who criticized the deal without proposing alternative solutions.

Indeed, he blamed the entire synod for "stifling the right to free discussion" during the sessions of a special panel of church and government officials set up to discuss all aspects of the proposed changes.

Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Messinia commented that the government had originally committed to drafting a bill setting out the proposed changes but had not...