Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Ashes and Flames
Ashes and Flames
Parthenon Verlag
Kaiserslautern und Mehlingen
2012
Contents
Foreword ………………………………………………………………….. 7
Introduction ……………………………………………………………….. 9
XII. A Singing Church: Art and Faith in the Orthodox Lifestyle ………… 217
where martyrs of the faith rose. As such, the “Ashes” are the symbol of
the time when the Church was suppressed and targeted for destruction,
by demolition or fire, while the “Flames” stand for the thriving post-1990
communities, where the life of faith thrives, thanks to righteous faithful
and priests dedicated to serving Christ and their neighbour. The focus is
on Orthodoxy in Romania, yet, since the scope of the topics explored is
universal, many statements have broad applicability.
might also argue that communism did not aim to dismantle the whole Church in
Romania, but one key section of the Church, the intellectuals, to prevent them from
articulating publicly the inconsistency of the regime.
2
Cf. works with a joint historical and ecclesiastical focus such as: Nicolae Iorga, Is-
toria Bisericii Româneşti şi a vieţii religioase a românilor, ediţia a II-a [The History
12 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
of the Romanian Church and of the religious life of Romanians, 2nd edition], Editura
Ministerului de Culte, Bucureşti, 1929; Nicolae Dobrescu, Studii de Istoria Bisericii
Române contemporane: Istoria Bisericii din România, 1850-1895 [Studies in the his-
tory of the contemporary Romanian Church: the History of the Church in Romania,
1850-1895], Bucureşti, 1905. Such research referred to the Romanian Church, im-
plicitly the Orthodox Church, viewed as the defining, national church.
3
Gheorghe I. Moisescu (coord.), Istoria Bisericii Române [The History of the Romanian
Church], EIBMBOR, Bucureşti, 1957; Pr. Prof. Dr. Mircea Păcurariu, Istoria Bisericii
Ortodoxe Române [The History of the Romanian Orthodox Church], EIBMBOR,
Bucureşti, 1991. It must be emphasised that due to restrictive publishing policies most
such historical studies were published only in specialist journals of the Church. Lead-
ing nationwide journals included Biserica Ortodoxă Română, Ortodoxia and Studii
Teologice. Additionally, local dioceses edited and published their own magazines and
journals, some with historical focus, although in most cases they were censored.
4
Among others, Rev. Ion Vicovan, Istoria Bisericii Ortodoxe Române [The History of the
Romanian Orthodox Church], 2 volumes, Trinitas, Iaşi, 2002.
I. Orthodoxy: A Living Tradition
From the religious perspective, the trend towards the integration of all
denominations (ecumenism as the movement seeking the unity of all
Christians worldwide) is opposed by the tendency to “privatise” relig-
ion, bending it to the imagination and disposition of the individual who
draws whatever is convenient from the message of faith. Worldwide,
there is an antagonistic tension: on the one hand, there is a movement
towards the rapprochement and union of human communities, on the
other hand, a drive towards individualisation, and, tragically, alienation
of the human person.
Against this backdrop, people search for answers, especially
in the already bewildering area of spiritual life. According to the so-
ciological perspective, each religion or even any denomination can
provide an answer, never satisfactory though, and valid only under cer-
tain circumstances: the development of culture, the concerns and,
especially, the hierarchy of values of the community. As it offers a
credible spiritual alternative, Orthodoxy nowadays stirs increasingly
more interest in the highly developed secular Western societies, ow-
ing to its long experience that is ignored or even derided by modern
technology-minded culture.
Indeed, as one scholar has noted, “Religion, Art and Science are inde-
pendent methods provided to us for examining the facts of our lives and
our world. That these independent methods exist offers humanity a reli-
able way of overcoming our limitations. Our innate difficulty of bridg-
ing differing viewpoints prevents us from achieving reliable beliefs,
precise expression and testable theories. The unity of religion, the con-
tentment of art and the wonderment of science may each be used as
boundary conditions for what may be reasonable and thus acceptable in
the others. We as a species, through a willingness to consider other
mindsets, may achieve a higher level of faith, expression and certainty
than is currently being achieved.”1
Orthodox icons have a twofold, meaningful role: they are the ef-
fect and result of one’s faith, but also a cause and motivation for the faith
of others. Whether austere or richly adorned, icons and frescoes – in-
cluding frescoes painted on the outside of Churches - are visually strik-
ing and inspiring representations of to the Christian message. Religious
sentiment nowadays is expressed in new artistic forms, often drawing
on new technologies and techniques. Nevertheless, beauty as a spiritual
necessity and goal reaches us from the past and endures without losing
any of its value as a reflection of divine beauty itself. To the Orthodox,
the icon serves as a reminder and as a reflection of transcendent reality,
of divine beauty, of the world of holiness.
The iconic image, typical of Orthodoxy, is that of Jesus Christ
the Pantocrator (as God, supporter of whole creation), i.e. the Almighty
or the Ruler of All. It is painted in the dome or the ceiling of each Or-
thodox Church or alternatively on the iconostasis. The icon portrays
Christ looking at the world, protecting it, give it meaning and hope.
This icon of Christ Pantocrator highlights the role of Christ as King
and Saviour, about whom the Apostle Paul says: “fixing our eyes on
1
Frank J. Lucatelli, Why We Disagree: Modal Conflicts among Religion, Art and Sci-
ence, Journal for Interdisciplinary Research on Religion and Science, No. 1, July
2007, p. 273.
I. Orthodoxy: A Living Tradition 15
Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy that was set before
him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right
hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2). That is why the crucifix,
i.e. the dead or agonising Christ, is not specific to the Orthodox world,
where representations of the risen and ascended Christ are predominant.
The crucifix found in Orthodox churches does have a clearly-defined
role, yet it does not hold a central theological and defining role, as it
describes a moment in the salvation of mankind. On the other hand,
the risen Christ is eternally present in humanity and transcendence.
Accordingly, the icon of Christ on the cross is not a depiction of ex-
treme suffering but rather of absolute peace.
On this point, the American Orthodox scholar John Anthony
McGuckin observes: “When the Orthodox come before an icon of
Christ, let us say, they bow down before it so that they can express
their heart’s devotion to the Lord himself. The fundamental theologi-
cal principle of Orthodox veneration, therefore, is that which St Basil the
Great enunciated in the fourth century: ‘The honour given to the im-
age passes over directly to the prototype.’ In other words when an
Orthodox venerates an icon (they never ‘worship’ an icon) they bow
down not to the image but to Christ himself, who is represented in the
image. The reverence of this iconic ‘type’ of Christ passes directly
to the prototype, Christ himself, and thus the reverence of the icon
becomes, in that moment of prayer, the direct and actual worship of
the Resurrected Lord Jesus.”2
in cooperation with the Spirit of God enjoys the strength of the joint
work of the human and the divine. This is what some very common
Romanian expressions allude to (“Dacă dă Dumnezeu!” = “If the Lord
allows”, “Dacă ajută Dumnezeu!” = “If God helps us!” or “Doamne
ajută!” = “May the Lord help us!”). Such permanent reminders are
not often encountered in contemporary Christian culture. The Holy
Spirit signifies the tradition and unity of faith through history. Tradi-
tion does not mean the “reconstruction” of the past by means of ar-
chaeological or biological methods or historical inferences, rather it is
the experience of the same bond that the Church has created and main-
tained in its relationship with the world. This relationship has always
involved periods of crisis and consolidation.
Another particular aspect of Orthodoxy is the special venera-
tion of the Blessed Virgin, viewed as a model for mankind’s rela-
tionship with divinity, expressed by her acquiescent declaration “Let
it be to me according to your word”. Orthodox Christians understand
the relationship between the Virgin and the Son of God as reflecting
the mother-son relationship in human life. Therefore, all chants dedi-
cated to the Virgin praise her beauty and gentleness as though sung by
a loving child to his mother. In turn, the Mother of God has unparal-
leled powers in front of the Son as Judge. Her influence derives not
solely from her purity, but essentially from the bond of motherhood
between them, as He will not refuse anything when she intercedes
for other people.
In promoting the Evangelical teachings, Orthodoxy recommends
compassion for the suffering; com-passion means not only feeling sorry for
someone in pain, but also “suffering together with”, empathising with
the other, which inspires the act of helping. Orthodoxy is human-like so
much so that it may appear naïve. It may not excel in managing social
assistance organisations, but it does exhort its members to contribute
personally to relieving suffering by making it conditional for one’s sal-
vation, because according to the Scripture, Christ is suffering in every
18 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
person. This helps to explain the multitude of poor and beggars one may
find around any Orthodox church. Not an easy image to accept for
modern people, yet a reality that may not be eradicated by any laws so
long as Christians themselves give alms and there is poverty, so the poor,
whether real or imaginary, will always be there.
Distinctively Orthodox is also ideal of hesychasm or inner peace
(hesychia) achieved through ascetical life, humility, meditation and
prayer, embracing one’s ephemeral condition. The associated ceaseless
“Jesus prayer” has often been mistakenly associated with yoga medi-
tation and reciting the mantras. While there are, indeed, apparent
similarities regarding aspects such as solitude, focusing the will on
meditation and breath control, the distinctiveness of this Christian
Orthodox practice lies not in seeking the dissolution of the self into the
original void, but rather in yearning for the divine life and entering
into a personal relationship of love with God. This type of meditation is
ultimately oriented towards the revealed absolute truth: that Christ is the
Son of God, able to save man if the latter chooses His path. Conse-
quently, such meditation is not perceived as physical exercise intended
as a cure or as esoteric philosophical speculation or as easy-going
pietism. Secluded life and the focus on mysticism are balanced by
evangelical devotion expressed by love of one’s enemies, hospitality
offered to the poor, justice for abandoned children and demeaned
women, and denouncing evil wherever it occurs in society.
The current renewed drive towards meditation and intense spiri-
tual life reflects people’s search for a spiritual key to decipher the deeper
meanings of the world and history after the era of communism, which
attempted to de-sacralise life and instate the absolute primacy of matter
and reason over faith, hope and mystery. The world is not only matter,
or even if it were so, matter ought to be eternalised through the work of
man as he strives for godlikeness. Therefore, Orthodoxy brings a new
spiritual dynamism, an appreciation of the ineffable joy of prayer and
love, a revived candour of man in the midst of creation which he must
I. Orthodoxy: A Living Tradition 19
not exploit irrationally, but instead further develop and sanctify it. The
spiritualisation of history is a calling of the modern world, as a reversal
from idolising the world, both in the globalising communist society and
in the consumerist capitalist one.
goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued
to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes
and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoy-
ing the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number
daily those who were being saved.” (2: 42-47).
Therefore, the Church is koinonia or communion, existing and
experienced through love for Christ and love for one's fellows. Whether
celebrated in a grand cathedral or in a modest recluse village church,
the Orthodox Liturgy reflects and reinforces every time the commu-
nity of people who share a belief, an experience and a service in Christ.
The Orthodox liturgy is certainly an elaborate ceremony, instilling in
each participant the sense of mystery of life through awe-inspiring
icons, hymns and ritual, yet its ultimate purpose is to connect par-
ticipants with the experience of holiness through the sacraments of
the Church.
The Church is the work of the Logos through the Holy Spirit, both
sent by the Father. In other words, it is the creation of the Holy Trin-
ity. Its essence is centred on the Gospel of Christ, the Word of God
and is expressed in the Liturgy as a work in the midst of the people of
God.4 A gathering of people of faith, who are convinced that they are
a body where all rejoice or suffer, in the power of the Holy Spirit, and
proclaiming that the Jesus is the Christ, Son of the living God, who
became flesh and rose again. The Spirit incorporates the human be-
ings through faith and Baptism, upon which they are strengthened and
led to union with God through the Divine Liturgy. And because the
Church is one, holy, catholic and apostolic, it means that she is the
work of a unique cooperation between the Logos and the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, the Church is not an independent, self-sufficient organisation,
4
“Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae argued that the Churches’ mission is: calling and receiving the
Spirit, i.e. achievement of the Epiclesis”. Diacon Andreei Kuraev, Moştenirea lui Hristos.
Ceea ce n-a intrat în Evanghelie [Legacy of Christ. What has not entered the Gospel],
Translated from Russian by Nedejda Stahovski, Sofia, Bucharest, p. 83.
I. Orthodoxy: A Living Tradition 21
it is more than a mere gathering of believers, for its very being lies with
God, and believers freely participates in it through the communion with
the Holy Spirit in the risen Chris. Therefore, the Church is at once a
divine and human institution.
The Church relates then to every Person of the Trinity, thus showing
the diversity of ministries in its life. In the Holy Scripture one cannot
find a systematic ecclesiology. The Bible uses images that lead to the
idea and reality of a community where people feel at home with God
and among themselves, such as “people of God” (II Corinthians 6: 16,
Hebrew 8: 10, I Peter 2: 9-10), “Body of Christ “(Ephesians 1: 23, I
Corinthians 12: 12, Romans 12: 5), “temple” or simply “home” of the
Holy Spirit (Eph. 2: 21 and 4: 1-3, I Peter 2: 5). In an inclusive or ex-
clusive way, every term has a Trinitarian dimension, indicating both
unity and diversity of ministries and members.5
From the perspective of its Creator, the Church represents a “union
of all” among themselves and with the same Lord and God Jesus Christ
(Ephesians 1: 10), a drive of the whole humanity and all creation through
human cooperation with the Holy Spirit to their transfiguration. Through
the Church, God extends His abundant mercy and immense love to all
people, to all those who follow the call to be one (John 17: 21). There is
no such a mission of the Church as to multiply the number of its mem-
bers, rather, its fundamental mission is to change ontologically each
member to live the Gospel and to enter the Kingdom of God. Therefore,
the Church embodies in itself the mystery of salvation and transfigura-
tion of human nature, thus serving the whole creation through the Holy
Spirit until the coming of Christ in glory (Matthew 25: 31). This goal is
achieved by taking the cross of suffering, according to the example of
Christ, by serving the weak, the helpless, the marginalised and lonely,
by faithfully proclaiming the teachings of Jesus Christ, Son of God in-
carnate, by restoring all in all and building a new earth (Revelation 21: 1),
the kingdom of God.
5
A study serving as a source is The Nature and Purpose of the Church, Paper no. 181,
WCC Publications, Geneva, 1998, pp. 9 ff.
22 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
political one, which were united by the common social life of the Church
faithful and the State’s citizens.
However, in the Romanian provinces, the Byzantine symphony
was adapted to the realities of the Romanian Principalities and later of
the modern Romanian State, influenced by the secularised Western
spirit. Moreover, the Church-State symphony was never symmetrical in
terms of similar power, but rather most often asymmetric and irregular.
The Church constantly prayed for the State, and often it also pleaded to
the State for help. The State, in its turn, supported the Church, yet it
often tended to subjugate the Church.”2
The autonomy of the Church in relation to the State and the sup-
port given by the latter represent in effect a summing up of the tradition
of coexistence of State and Church ever since the establishment of the
medieval Romanian states in the 14th century.
Christianity on the Romanian territory today is deeply rooted in
the Gospel of Christ, first disseminated by St. Andrew, who is nowa-
days venerated as the “Apostle to Romanians”. It was also shaped by
the Latin, Roman roots of the local populace, making Romanian culture
“arguably the only Latin Orthodox culture in the whole world”3 It was
still the time of the oral tradition of the Gospel, when Andrew reached
Scythia Minor shores of Pontus Euxinus, later known as Dobrogea
province. In the South of the Danube, the space inhabited by the Illyrians,
Thracians, Dacians and Greeks, Christianity was spreading through the
preaching of the Apostle Paul, who travelled as far as Macedonia.
The new environment of the first century of the Christian era in this
territory favoured the spread of the new doctrines, superimposed over
2
Daniel, the Metropolitan of Moldavia and Bucovina, State - Church Relations in
Romania: Tradition and Present-Day Experience. Past and Present, Tradition and
Current Context, address at the symposium Religious freedom in the Romanian and
European Context, organised by the Romanian Ministry of Culture and Asociaţia
Conştiinţă şi Libertate, Bucureşti, 12-13 September 2005.
3
John Anthony McGuckin, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doc-
trine, and Spiritual Culture, Wiley & Sons, 2010, p. 66.
II. How the Romanian Church was Born: A Brief History of a Sacramental Institution 27
conversion of a political leader... but through the slow and quiet penetra-
tion of the new religion into the Dacian and Roman community”.6 This
explains the fact that immediately after the Edict of Milan7, signed by
Emperor Constantine the Great, many local diocesan sees publicly stated
their existence along the Danube river and the Black Sea coast, such as
Singidunum, Viminacium, Bononia, Ratiaria, Oescus, Appiaria, Abritus,
Durostorum, while in the city of Tomis there was a Metropolitan see,
whose primate attended the First Ecumenical Council of Nicene.8
In the sixth century, on the territory of present-day Romania there
were 14 attested bishoprics9 that faced hardships time during the Avar and
Slavic invasions after 602, eventually they disappearing. During the 7th-
10th centuries, Slavs settled in the area now occupied by Bulgaria and
Serbia, exerting massive influence on the populations North of the Danube,
known as Vlachs or Wallachians. After the Slavs’ conversion through
6
Florin Constantiniu, O istorie sinceră a poporului român [A Frank History of the
Romanian People], Univers enciclopedic, Bucharest, 1998, p. 47. Cf. Daniel Ciobotea,
“Creştinismul poporului român, factor de continuitate şi unitate naţională” [Christianity
of the Romanian people, a factor of continuity and national unity”] in the volume
Dăruire şi dăinuire. Raze şi chipuri de lumină din istoria şi spiritualitatea românilor
[Sacrifice and Resilience. Rays and Faces of Light in Romanian History and
Spirituality], Trinitas, Iaşi, 2005, p. 29-35.
7
An official document issued by Emperor Constantine the Great and Licinius in 313
who agreed to recognise the legal status of the Christian Church and to tolerate all re-
ligions equally. Their policy marked the triumph of Christianity over persecution, but
did not “establish” the Church. The document, commonly known as “Edict of Milan”
(it is not an edict and it was not issued at Milan) is viewed as a turning point in the life
of the One Church which was thus free to expand its mission work even beyond the
boundaries of the Roman Empire. See The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church,
second edition, edited by F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, Oxford University Press,
Oxford-London-NY-Toronto, 1974, p. 915.
8
In Vita Constantini, Eusebius of Caesarea (4th century AD) states that “the Scythian
bishop was also among the group”, perhaps in reference to Bishop Mark of Tomis.
Mircea Păcurariu, op. cit., p 108.
9
Mircea Păcurariu, Biserica Ortodoxă Română în secolul XX, [Romanian Orthodox
Church in the twentieth century], in Christine Chaillot, Biserica Ortodoxă din
Europa de Est în secolul XX [The Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe in the Twentieth
Century], translated into Romanian by Liliana Donose Samuelsson, Humanitas,
Bucharest, 2011, p. 178.
II. How the Romanian Church was Born: A Brief History of a Sacramental Institution 29
Saints Cyril and Methodius’ ministry, Old Slavonic was adopted as the
liturgical language of the Church of the Wallach territory.10
This part of Romanian history was later overshadowed by con-
stant invasions of various migratory populations: Goths, Visigoths, Slavs,
Huns, Pecenegs, Cumans and finally Hungarians,11 which forced the
natives to retreat into the forests and mountain valleys, keeping their
distance from the cultural and linguistic influences of the newcomers,
so that they remained faithful to the spiritual and linguistic heritage of
their ancestors of Dacian and Roman extraction.
The trigger for the establishment of a state by the Vlachs was the
settlement in 11th-13th centuries in the western Carpathian mountain range
of Hungarian populations who declared suzerainty over Transylvania and
laid claims to the south and aimed to impose Christianity in its Western
Catholic form.12 The organisation of state-like entities on the territory
of nowadays Romania was recorded as early as the 12th century. Until
then the only institution able to organise Romanian life was the local
Church, in its ecumenical form prior to the Great Schism (1054), with
its hierarchy, which remained in permanent contact with the Byzantine
Empire whose capital was Constantinople, nowadays Istanbul.
The first local rulers who managed to gain political independence
for Wallachia and Moldavia (the provinces which along with Transyl-
vania and Bucovina were the precurors of modern Romania) were
Basarab I (1310-1352), who defeated the Hungarian King Charles I at
Posada and ruled over Wallachia, and Bogdan I (1359-1367), who es-
tablished the Moldavian province, declaring its independence from the
Kingdom of Hungary in 1359.
As regards the local Orthodox Church, Wallachia and Moldova
maintained permanent bonds with Constantinople. The evolution of the
religious and political life of the two provinces was somehow parallel,
10
Anthony-Emil N. Tachiaos, Sfinţii Chiril şi Metodie şi culturalizarea slavilor [Saints
Cyril and Methodius and Enculturation of Slavs], translated by Constantin Făgeţan,
Sofia, Bucharest, 2002.
11
An important yet controversial work dealing with this period, is Laurent Chrzanivski’s
România Medievală [Medieval Romania], Institutul Cultural Român, Bucharest, 2010.
12
Mircea Păcurariu, op. cit., p. 179.
30 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
propaganda. This pastoral care for the Romanians on both sides of the
Carpathian Mountains shows that he felt responsible to preserve the
authentic faith among the people.
A leading figure of the era was Metropolitan Dosoftei (1671-1674
and 1675-1686), widely considered the creator of Romanian language
and culture through the works that he wrote and published in Iasi, espe-
cially the rhyming Psalms (1673), the first psalm versification which
people were urged to read or listen to, which fostered learning and keep-
ing the faith in their own language. After being released from the Met-
ropolitan see of Moldova, for political reasons, Dosoftei continued to
write and translate works on Orthodox theology in the Poland and even
to mediate and mitigate a conflict between the Ukrainian and Russian
Church on issues of Catholic doctrine infiltrated in the service books
through the influence of Ukrainian Uniate Church.
In 1752, Metropolitan Iacob Putneanul (1750-1760) convened a
council that decided that the episcopal seats of Moldova were to be held
by local bishops only, because some prelates of Greek descent (for ex-
ample Nicephorus, Metropolitan Sidis, between 1739 -1750) were not
residing in their Moldavian seats or only held the positions for economic
reasons, without being committed to pursuing pastoral work. Iacob
also organised a theological academy at Putna Monastery to educate
and equip clergy in their struggle to defend the Orthodox faith from
Catholic proselytising at the time of the Habsburg rule.18
The autocephaly or self-governance of Moldavian Church is ex-
plicitly expressed in the “Organic Decree for the establishment of a
central authority for religious affairs”, promulgated by Alexandru Ioan
Cuza in 1864, which proclaimed: “The Romanian Orthodox Church is
and remains independent of any ecclesiastical authority, throughout its
organisation and discipline”.19 The first Romanian Constitution states
18
Ion Vicovan, Istoria Bisericii Ortodoxe Române [Romanian Orthodox Church His-
tory], volume II, Trinitas, Iaşi, 2002, p. 71.
19
Niculae Şerbănescu, “150 de ani de la naşterea lui Alexandru Ioan Cuza (1820 –
20 martie 1970)” [150 Years since the Birth of Alexandru Ioan Cuza (1820 –
March 20, 1970), in Biserica Ortodoxă Română, LXXXVIII (1970), nr. 3-4, in
34 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
Ion Vicovan, Istoria Bisericii Ortodoxe Române [Romanian Orthodox Church His-
tory], p. 172.
20
Ion Vicovan, op.cit., p. 177.
21
Niculae Serbanescu, “Autocefalia Bisericii Ortodoxe Române cu prilejul centenarului
1885-25 aprilie1985” [Romanian Orthodox Church Autocephaly 1885-25 April 1985],
in the volume Centenarul autocefaliei Bisericii Ortodoxe Române 1885-1985
[Centennial anniversary of the autocephaly Romanian Orthodox Church: 1885-1985],
Bucureşti, 1987, p 117.
22
“Dezbaterile Senatului. Discursul P.S. Melchisedec în şedinţa de la 3 decembrie 1885”
[Senate Debates. Speech by H.E. Bishop Melchisedek at the meeting of December 3,
1885], in Biserica Ortodoxă Română, IX (1885), no 12, p. 957 quoted in Alexandru M.
Ioniţă, “Contribuţia episcopului Melchisedec Ştefănescu la recunoaşterea autocefaliei
II. How the Romanian Church was Born: A Brief History of a Sacramental Institution 35
from Sibiel and Ioan from Gales, who died in the same prison, hiero-
monk Nicodim, archpriest Nicolae Pop from Balomir and priest Ioan
from Aciliu, who travelled to Petersburg to get the assistance of tsarina
Elisabeta Petrovna for the Romanians persecuted for their faith, arch-
priest Ioan Piuaru from Sadu, priest Stan from Glamboaca, faithful Ioan
Oancea from Fagaras, the layman Tanase Todoran from Bichigiu, who
was canonised in 2008 – and hundreds of other priests and faithful im-
prisoned or displaced from their villages.
Under such historical conditions one could understand the need of
the local majority Romanian ethnics to seek union with Romania, which
would occur at the end of World War I, on 1 December 1918.24
and Orthodox faith. These two factors led to the formation of Roma-
nian national identity and culture.
The newly formed modern State of 1859 considered the Church a
regular social actor with a major potential for voluntary community work.
It was viewed as a secondary fact that its faith was based on apostolic
authority and had played a capital role in preserving the identity of the
nation. Once marginalised, the Church had to find ways to remain attached
to its faithful and the most credible institution that offered a real message
of hope. The Church authority sought to create a dialogue with a State
that pushed it towards the periphery of the society, depriving it of all the
privileges which she acquired through religious and volunteering sacri-
fice. Thus, the announcement of the Romanian Orthodox Church auto-
cephaly and its recognition by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and other Sister
Orthodox Churches was a natural and long-awaited act. This process was
formally completed only in 1885, granting it the authority of an apostolic
Church, which gave her prestige in relationship with the State.
The main argument used by the Holy Synod of the Romanian Or-
thodox Church to claim autocephaly was the recognition of the apostolic
Christianity in this land: “Romanians did not receive baptism and the
Christian doctrine or their first bishops from Constantinople, for Roma-
nian Christianity is older than the very existence of Constantinople. The
Romans brought the seed of Christianity to Dacia as early as the 2nd
century AD. This seed of Christianity brought to Dacia grew here with
the resources of our own people.”25
The recognition of the Romanian Orthodox Church autocephaly
was enshrined in a Tomos of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, signed
by 10 Metropolitans of the patriarchal synod and promulgated by Patri-
arch Joachim IV (1884-1886), which recognised that the Romanian
Church held firm and intact the true faith received from the Saviour and
the Apostles. It proved not only the ability to lead by itself - always in
25
“Act Sinodal care cuprinde autocefalia Bisericii Ortodoxe Române şi relaţiile ei cu
Patriarhia de Constantinopol” [Synodal Act concerning the Autocephaly of the
Romanian Orthodox Church and its relations with the Patriarchate of Constantinople],
in Biserica Ortodoxă Română,VI (1882), p.745.
II. How the Romanian Church was Born: A Brief History of a Sacramental Institution 39
prison; some died, others were released after years of unjustified deten-
tion, while others chose exile. 31 The usual allegations were that they
opposed government policy, carried out “anti-democratic” measures
and were “enemies of the people”. The Church had to give up philan-
thropic activities, its presence in the public sphere was limited to cele-
brating sacramental and liturgical services, theological education was
excluded from the national education system and greatly restricted, while
dioceses were strictly monitored by officers of a body created for these
purposes, called the State Secretariat for Religious Affairs.32
John Anthony McGuckin, the Nielsen Professor of Early Church
History at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Byzantine
Christian Studies at Columbia University in New York City, draws the
following picture of the situation of the Church under communism:
During the communist years following the Second World War, the con-
dition of the Romanian Orthodox Church was among the best in all the
zone of Soviet satellites, though it was far from happy. Soon after the
communist takeover, 200 priests were imprisoned, and six bishops were
forcibly retired. Patriarch Justinian (1948–77) often annoyed many of
the free exiles by stating the self-evident truth that many of the princi-
ples of Marxism were in harmony with the evangelical spirit of dispos-
session and communion. He and his successors worked out a modus
vivendi with the authorities that, in a sense, continued the prior Romanian
tradition of close political collaboration (in the 1930s, for example, the
patriarch was the prime minister of the state and another bishop headed
its State Department of Religion). The practice of the faith flourished,
31
P. Caravia, V. Constantinescu şi F. Stăncescu, Biserica întemniţată: România 1944-
1989 [The imprisoned Church; Romania 1944-1989], published by Institutul Român
pentru studiul totalitarismului, Academia Română, Bucureşti, 1999, cited in The
Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, edited by John Anthony McGuckin.
Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2011, p. 479.
32
The notorious decree no. 410/1959 forced the closure of monasteries and seminaries,
monks and nuns under the age of 55 being driven out of monasteries to join the “labour
market”. See George Enache and Adrian Nicolae Petcu, Monahismul Ortodox şi puterea
comunistă în România anilor ’50 [Orthodox monasticism and the communist regime in
1950s Romania], Partener, Bucureşti, 2009. See also Răstignirea monahismului
românesc: Decretul 410/1959, Doxologia, Iaşi 2009.
42 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
33
John Anthony McGuckin, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doctrine,
and Spiritual Culture, Wiley & Sons, 2010, p. 68.
II. How the Romanian Church was Born: A Brief History of a Sacramental Institution 43
its prophetic vocation, which proclaims that the eternal life is dependent
upon one’s work in human society yet not limited to it.
After the fall of communism, the Romanian Orthodox Church has
separated from the State35 and made great efforts to recover lost ground
and become a key player in communities. The year 1990 marked the
dawn of a new era for the Church, which had to reassert its authority
among its members and engage them in its redeeming work after dec-
ades of restrictions. It was a merit of the bishops from the younger gen-
eration, who redefined the role of the church as a factor of national
cohesion, opposing societal fragmentation.
The years after the December 1989 change of regime were marked
by social and institutional upheavals, while many disputes ignited over
on the drafting and adoption of a law on the status of religious groups.
This “proved a constant concern of the international community, partly
in response to the apprehensions expressed by non-traditional denomi-
nations and religious minorities. The situation mirrored that in other
Eastern European lands with an Orthodox majority which had to replace
their communist-era laws – and did so, for better or for worse, after de-
lays and tense negotiations among the denominations. In the case of
Romania, the anxiety among religious and non-religious actors lasted
longest because the law came last, in December 2006. The 17-year span
between the fall of communism and the passing of this anticipated act
was rife with inter-denominational arguments and recriminations, inter-
national pleading and arm-twisting, and unexpected turns of events.”36
The Constitution of Romania adopted in 2003, and the previous
one, of 1991, defined the relationship between State and Church or more
precisely the State – Religious denominations relation (Article 29) in
the following manner: “All religious denominations shall be free and
35
According to Article 4 of the Statutes: “The Romanian Orthodox Church is independent
of the State and other institutions. Romanian Orthodox Church establishes relations
of dialogue and cooperation with the States and various institutions to fulfil her pas-
toral, spiritual, cultural, educational, social and philanthropic purposes.”
36
G. Andreescu, L. Andreescu Church and State in Post-communist Romania, Journal
for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, 8, 24 (Winter 2009), p. 23.
II. How the Romanian Church was Born: A Brief History of a Sacramental Institution 45
organised in accordance with their own statutes, under the terms laid
down by law. Religious denominations shall be autonomous from the
State and shall enjoy support from it, including the facilitation of reli-
gious assistance in the army, in hospitals, prisons, homes and orphan-
ages.” (Article 29: 5) The Romanian Orthodox Church was meant to be
the only institution with an important role in preserving the national unity,
the ethos and apostolic faith, a factor of education before the establish-
ment of any form of education but never became a National Church.37
All Christian and non-Christian denominations recognised by the Con-
stitution in this country enjoy the same status.38 However, the Orthodox
Church is radically different owing to the fact that it has always repre-
sented the national expression of faith, ritual and Christian life. This has
established an undivided bond between the Orthodox faith and Roma-
nian nationality or nationalism.
As Patriarch Daniel observed in 2005, at the symposium on Reli-
gious freedom in the Romanian and European Context: “During com-
munism, we were concerned with the question: How do we gain freedom?
Nowadays, we must constantly ask ourselves: How do we make use of
our freedom? Above all, to become more humane, to defend and uphold
dignity of the human person who is created in God’s image. As far as
37
The Statutes for the Organisation and Functioning of the Romanian Orthodox Church,
Article 2 state that: “The Romanian Orthodox Church, of apostolic origin, is and remains
in communion and dogmatic liturgical and canonical unity, with the universal Church.
Romanian Orthodox Church is autocephalous and united in its organisation and pastoral,
missionary and administrative work.” However, Article 5 states that “The Romanian
Orthodox Church is the national and majority church, according to its apostolic age,
tradition, number of believers and outstanding contribution to the life of the Romanian
people. Romanian Orthodox Church is the Church of the Romanian people.” In its
turn, Law 489/2006 on the Freedom of Religion and the General Status of Denomina-
tions states: “There is no State Religion in Romania; the State is neutral towards any
religious persuasion or atheistic ideology. The denominations are equal before the
law and public authorities. The State, though its authorities, shall neither promote nor
support the granting of privileges or the instatement of discrimination towards any
denomination” (see: http://www.culte.ro/DocumenteHtml.aspx?id=1661 where a pdf
English version is available for download).
38
The Constitution of Romania recognises 18 religions with the same powers and duties.
46 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
may be stifled and diverted to secular forms of folk and pietistic type,
irrelevant theologically, socially and historically”.42
Currently, the Romanian Orthodox Church is polarised by two types
of authority, both dependent on the trend towards modern society. Super-
visory authority of the bishops who, once elected and enthroned govern
according to rules that people perceive as external authority, occasionally
neglected by the great majority of the Church members, sometimes sub-
jects of media attacks on the grounds of their involvement or lack of it in
the social life of the communities. A second type of authority is exerted by
the spiritual elders, men of very high moral character, whose spiritual au-
thority is widely recognised and indisputable. This makes the community
of believers, become closer to the monasteries and monastic life. It is said,
therefore sometimes, that monasticism is the foundation of the Church,
which it supports invisibly. Their authority is so great that one could para-
phrase Cyprian’s saying, that there is no salvation outside the Church, “ex-
tra coenobium nulla salus ” (there is no salvation aside from monasticism).
Romanian Orthodoxy, we understand, cannot be suspected of na-
tionalism as an institution, as this would mean a form of internal secu-
larisation. Nationalism is the prerogative of some prelates who want to
impose a certain authority in their speech or actions, as visible signs of
Church authority, without realising that the tools they used can lead to
opposite results. The church is a structural inner need of the faithful,
and probably owing to this foreign evangelisation drives in Romania
were not particularly successful.
Of course, Romanians need a national discourse, leading to internal
cohesion and external brotherly cooperation, a fact that always charac-
terised the Romanian Orthodoxy. The first form of national discourse is
to regard and receive Orthodoxy as the incarnation of the Gospel in
cultures and nations. Each nation must be open to all nations in brother-
hood and love, specifically confessed in the Orthodox faith. In this way,
salvation is somehow dependent on the “ancient law of the land”, which
makes the Church responsible for all her sons and daughters of the same
42
Ioan I. Ică, in the collective volume Pentru un creştinism al noii Europe [For a Chris-
tianity of New Europe], 2007, p. 87.
II. How the Romanian Church was Born: A Brief History of a Sacramental Institution 49
Drawing on its millenary tradition and based on new updated Statues, the
new Patriarch has proposed and is putting into practice a bold vision,
building a Church with authority, both in its relation to the state institutions
and in the internal discipline of the clergy and faithful. Patriarch Daniel’s
discourse highlights, on one hand, genuine commitment of all Christians
to living the Gospel, and, on the other hand, the need to strengthen the au-
thority of the Orthodox Church at the local level and abroad.
A milestone in the recent history of the Romanian Orthodox Church
is the adoption of the new Statutes of 2008, which effected substantial
changes compared to the old bylaws of 1948. This major undertaking
by the Patriarch Daniel, recognised for his ecumenical and European
openness, is the orientation towards mission, a secular vision in the best
possible meaning of the term. Although it strengthens the importance
and authority of hierarchy in the Church, the new Church constitution
grants greater access and opportunities for involvement to lay people
(especially women) in church life. In Article 67, through the Parish
Committee's work, the lay people are expected to get actively involved
and have a leading role, in order to accomplish the social vocation of
the parish community.47Among others, the article includes provisions
that were unlikely a few decades ago, such as: supporting the social
integration of the prisoners released from prisons; helping the social
reintegration of institutionalised youth who left the placement centres
at 18 years old; cooperating with missionary priests employed in the
health system, prisons, the army and in homes for the elderly, orphan-
ages; implementing programmes aimed at preventing and eradicating
violence in the family, combating trafficking in persons; and providing
spiritual and material assistance to migrants’ families. Many Romanian
parishes now operate their own nongovernmental organisations, which
may be considered faith-centred organisations, that allow them to
apply for and secure funding for projects implemented in urban and
47
The Statutes for the Organisation and Functioning of the Romanian Orthodox
Church, English Version available at http://www.patriarhia.ro/upload/documente/
121438488425759490.pdf.
II. How the Romanian Church was Born: A Brief History of a Sacramental Institution 51
both clergy and laity - from parishes and dioceses, have the right to at-
tend the meetings of higher level bodies.
A parish is a community of Orthodox Christians, clergy and laity,
under the authority of the local diocese. It is led by a priest appointed
by the bishop of the respective diocese. There are now approximately
15,000 parishes.
A monastery is a community of monks or nuns or those that are
preparing to monasticism, headed by an abbot or abbess being, assisted
by a spiritual council.
A deanery is a church district which includes several parishes. It
is headed by a dean. There are 170 deaneries in Romania.
A diocese is the territorial subdivision headed by a bishop or
archbishop, which includes the parishes and the monasteries in the re-
spective area. The diocese is headed by a bishop or an archbishop. In
the Romanian Orthodox Church there are 15 archdioceses and 26 dio-
ceses or bishoprics.
A metropolitanate is the canonical and administrative subdivision
consisting of two or three dioceses, headed by a metropolitan. Currently
there are six metropolitanates in the Romanian Orthodox Church within
the national borders: the Metropolitanate of Wallachia and Dobrogea,
the Metropolitanate of Moldavia and Bucovina, the Metropolitanate of
Ardeal, the Metropolitanate of Cluj, Alba, Crisana and Maramures, the
Metropolitanate of Oltenia, and the Metropolitanate of Banat.
Romanian churches of the time (the Church of the Old Kingdom and
the Church in Transylvania), after the Great Union of 1918.
The diaspora of the Romanian Orthodox Church was mainly cre-
ated in two ways: following the establishment of new borders, such as
after the two world wars, when a large number of Romanians were left
outside the previous frontiers; and by emigration, in several waves, the
most substantial after the year 1990. The latest waves of Romanian immi-
gration have swelled the ranks of Romanian temporary labour in the West
and naturally attracted an increase in spiritual needs. The phenomenon
mainly concerns on the Romanian Orthodox Church and a few neo-
protestant denominations (Baptists, Adventists, and Pentecostals).
Most of the Romanian diaspora is young, mobile and dynamic
and mainly includes young professionals or blue-collar workers seeking
better opportunities. In recent years, stable and thriving Romanian
communities have sprung up especially in Italy, Spain, France, and the
United Kingdom. Such communities are now one of the forces driving
the resurgent Christian Orthodoxy in these Western nations. Their en-
thusiasm adds to the experience of second or third generation Roma-
nian immigrants mostly in Australia, Germany and the United States,
now citizens of those countries, who still hold on to their Romanian
heritage. Parishes in these countries are older, have their own places of
worship and are administered without outside help.
New parishes have benefited from the generosity of the Roman
Catholic Church and Lutheran Churches which have granted use of lo-
cal churches and other premises for worship and parish activities. Of
course, the future of such parishes is uncertain and depends on whether
Orthodox Romanians choose to remain abroad. As a result of the ongo-
ing economic crisis, many Romanian have returned home or have relo-
cated less exposed countries (Nordic countries, Arab countries).
Earlier, during the 1948-1989 period, the Romanian Patriarchate
fulfilled its duty of care for Romanians living abroad, despite the restric-
tions imposed by the communist regime. Under the guidance of the Holy
Synod, church organisation abroad was overhauled, more priests and
church singers were assigned and new places of worship were created.
II. How the Romanian Church was Born: A Brief History of a Sacramental Institution 57
tles each local Church to make its own decisions independently from
the others, without bearing on inter-church relations.2 While it is united
in the statement of faith, Orthodoxy has not always been able to also
project “operational unity, clearly visible at historical moments” 3, but
this is an issue for the agenda of future pan-Orthodox assemblies. After
centuries of divisions, the 20th century, marked by intense ecumenical
dialogue, yielded many results in terms of the Churches’ better mutual
knowledge and participation in dialogue. In the 20th century the first
efforts were made towards eliminating the cliché of Western and East-
ern Christianity as two entities antagonistic in their attitude and content:
the Western, guided by Christologically oriented theology and the East-
ern, founded on the Trinitarian theology, expressed Pneumatologically.4
This led to the view of the West as excessively judicial, accurate, scien-
tific, rationalistic, and uncompromising, and the East as conciliatory,
forgiving, accommodating, spiritual, and mystical and focused on living
the faith. The new political reality in 21st-century Europe requires us to
reconsider such clichés and tone down exaggerations that do not benefit
the inhabitants of the continent. As members of the European Union,
Romania and Bulgaria have the opportunity to introduce Orthodoxy in
the West and hope to contribute to the changes in the political, eco-
nomic and ecumenical paradigm. The conditions of freedom and de-
mocracy guaranteed by the present state system help them to develop free
dialogue, without outside pressures, as was the case of the ecumenism
2
Some Orthodox Churches withdrew from the ecumenical movement under pressure
from forces among the younger members of hierarchy in the Church. Their motivation
is faithfulness to the old tradition and the scepticism toward any human construction,
including the inter-confessional structures, and the belief that the leaders of the ecu-
menical movement have shown inconsistency in their programmes and a lack of vi-
sion in which God should hold the central place.
3
Radu Preda, “De la apologie la lobby” (From Apologetics to Lobby), in the collective
volume Un suflet pentru Europa. Dimensiunea religioasă a unui proiect politic (A
Soul for Europe. Religious Dimension of a Political Project), Anastasia, Bucureşti,
2005, p. 189.
4
Emmanuel Clapsis, Orthodoxy in Conversation. Orthodox Ecumenical Engagements,
WCC Publications, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, Brooklin, Massachusetts, 2000, p. 57 sq.
III. Romanian Orthodoxy and its Call for Ecumenicity 67
heavenly Church, comprising those who lived on earth and now form
the “communion of the saints”. For this reason the faithful must never
feel alone in prayer. Populating the walls of the churches with frescoes
of the saints is at once a fruit of the piety of those who painted them and
a coming together of the heavenly and the visible world. In the saint the
material becomes spiritual through virtue and divine grace. In prayer,
one comes nearer to the models of sanctity and becomes aware of one’s
own belonging to God’s great family. The one who believes experiences
the truth of the eternal life in the Liturgy, which is the only time when
the one can feel like the angels, for that is the time one must abandon
“all earthly concerns”.10
Personhood is another focus of Orthodox theology. The human
person is integrated in theology day by day not only in ceremonies. It
manifests its religiousness in all the moments of existence. For this rea-
son the participation in Orthodox worship does not require special con-
ditions on the part of the worshipper: everyone is welcome as they are,
regardless of their social standing, moral stature or age. Worship eter-
nalises the presence of Christ among people according to the biblical
model. He continues to speak, to heal and to help as he is God. In the
traditional Orthodox milieus, one’s personal life is not independent
from one’s faith and one does not have just an occasional interest in
Church ceremonies; one experiences the gift of faith in communion on
a permanent basis.
Closely related to the issue of the human person is the focus on
the environment of human life. Since the earliest times, Orthodoxy has
stressed individually practised and rigorous asceticism. The obligation
to abide by a discipline of life is not restricted to certain members of the
religious community or order. This is perhaps the reason why there are no
monastic orders, but monastic and married clergy. Christians are aware
10
Ion Bria, “Spre plinirea Evangheliei”. Dincolo de apărarea Ortodoxiei: exegeza şi
transmiterea Tradiţiei (For the Fulfillment of the Gospel. Beyond the Defence of Or-
thodoxy: Exegesis and the Transmission of Tradition), Reîntregirea, Alba Iulia, 2002,
p. 134.
III. Romanian Orthodoxy and its Call for Ecumenicity 71
that they were placed in the midst of creation, in relation to which they
have certain obligations, the greatest being that of transfiguring and
bringing creation back to the Creator. The aim of the discipline achieved
by practising fasting and charity is to test one’s will, to reject overin-
dulgence in food and bodily gratification and to ensure careful use of
the vital resources within the creation. This demonstrates a realistic ap-
proach of the created, of the good and the evil that are present in the
world, the aim being the integration of the natural environment in the
spiritual process of salvation. The integrity of creation results in a con-
cern for the integrity of the Church as secret Body of Christ extended in
the world and as an institution of divine origin that makes use of an or-
ganised structure. The Church is organised empirically, according to
human norms and criteria, yet even as a human institution it reflects the
divine principles as foundation and object of mission. The Church is
One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic not because this is what Orthodoxy
chooses, but because this is the will of its Head, Christ. Its “catholicity”
is comprehensive not geographical. This shows how the Orthodox Church
embodied in local Churches has a fully universal character.
The Church is guided towards salvation by Christ through the
Holy Spirit who is the source of grace. According to Orthodox teaching,
grace is an uncreated energy, originating in the One divine person, be-
ing shared to the Church through the Holy Sacraments, as the Church
progresses towards eschaton. The Church is a bringer of hope, thanks to
the extent of its work in cooperation with the Holy Spirit and to the es-
chatological purpose of its mission. Grace is the sine qua non condition on
which the human person is restored in full communion with God and can
“receive the right to eat from the tree of life” (Revelation 2: 7). One can
then realise that the tradition of the Church is not unilaterally Christologi-
cal, but involves the participation through grace in the Trinitarian life.
The human being is not historically independent from Christ. The
link between God’s world and the human world was restored by Christ
through Mary, hence the importance of Mariology, in close connection
with ecclesiology. Without Mary the believer may claim philosophic
72 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
fulfilment but will fail to grasp the material nature of Christ who became
human and will not share in His life and sacrifice. Through her will
(Luke 1: 38), the inexpressible and ineffable transcendence of the Old
Testament is humanised and causes God to be present in the world and in
the human life as a personal experience. Thanks to Mary, the faithful has
the permanent liturgical experience of resurrection as an act of Christ’s
benevolent omnipotence. The role of Mary is symbolically highlighted
by her being painted on the altar apse, bearing the Infant Christ in a
medallion on her chest, a symbol of Christ-bearing Humanity.
The sphere of Tradition also includes the worship of saints and
the veneration of icons, which are grounded in a specific anthropology:
the human person is the image (eikona) of Christ, Who is the image of
God (Philippians 2: 6 – 11). Human nature is historically sanctified
through and in the Church, through the Holy Sacraments. The role of
the Church is not primarily to change the behaviour of the people, but
to give them the freedom to become children of God, by choosing inde-
pendence from the created things and becoming aware of man’s superi-
ority as master, prophet and servant of creation. Asceticism is the means
to exercise the power to become detached from material things. Only
through asceticism can man realise that God’s love is more important
than matter. Most of the saints were great ascetics; they did not hate
matter, but sanctified it and offered it as a gift of Liturgy.
Given that the aspects mentioned above are among the features
of the Church tradition, it is not surprising that in the 21st century there
is a movement towards rediscovering genuine tradition (and traditions),
which in the latter half of the 20th century was suppressed or distorted in
a series of works, often making sarcastic or even denigrating statements
about the “Orthodox world” or the “Balkan area”.11
a challenge both for the political and social world and for the religious
one, too. The Christian voice must be heard at the highest levels of
European fora on issues that call for consensus with the rest of Euro-
pean Christianity. It is not an unproblematic time, as the Metropolitan
Daniel of Moldavia and Bucovina highlighted in the Christmas Pastoral
Address in 2006: “The European Union is an area of religious indiffer-
ence and secularisation, understood as life without personal or commu-
nal prayer.” A first shortcoming besides those related to deviations from
Christian moral, was thus highlighted before Romania’s full accession.
The European enlargement makes globalisation an irreversible process,
associated with uniformisation and levelling of ethnic, cultural and reli-
gious identity. It does have many positive effects, but besides these there
is conspicuous lack of compassion for particular human problems and for
the human community in general, which are the object of the Churches’
ministries.12 As a world reality, globalisation is “associated with free-
market economics and the consumer culture promoted throughout the
world by commercial media”, as stated by the WCC General Secretary,
pastor Samuel Kobia. He adds: “conveyed and defended by militarised
western powers”, this form of globalisation includes trends towards eco-
nomic and social Darwinism of a dog-eat-dog world.”13
Under the circumstances (traditional values versus globalisation
values) one can understand why some have been suspicious of Ortho-
doxy and have labelled it an obstacle on the way to modernisation and
social emancipation. Such prejudice went so far that, in 2006, Western
politicians could declare that “Europe ends where Orthodoxy begins”.
Genuine ecumenical relations would have helped many lay people to
evaluate fairly an apostolic faith such as Orthodoxy. The statement is
12
Constantin Rus, “De la participare la parteneriat. Bisericile Ortodoxe în Consiliul
Ecumenic al Bisericilor” [From participation to partnership. The Orthodox Churches
in the World Council of Churches], in volume Simpozionul internaţional: Ortodoxia
Românească şi rolul ei în mişcarea ecumenică (International Symposium: Romanian
Orthodoxy and its Role in the Ecumenical Movement), Vasiliana 98, Constanţa,
2006, p. 33.
13
In an address delivered in India, February 2007, www.oikoumene.org
74 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
honesty and love for Christ. In the dialogue with the Roman-Catholic
Church convergence points are found that go back to the theological
experience of the first millennium, of the Church of the Synods and
of shared history. Such convergence refers to the patristic tradition
of the seven Ecumenical Synods, the sacramental doctrine and practice,
the apostolic succession of episcopacy and priesthood, the existence
of common martyrs, ecclesiological convergence, the lifting of the
1054 anathema. It is worthwhile recalling a statement of the Cardinal
Christoph Schonborn of Vienna: “Faith is generally the same, what
is different is the place of the Pope of Rome in the hierarchy of Chris-
tianity”.17
The attempts at dialogue with the Roman-Catholic Church after
the schism, with the famous councils of Lyon (1274) and Ferarra-
Florence (1438-1439), failed because the basis of dialogue was not
the search for Christian unity, but political and military reasons. The
two Churches developed in parallel, constantly growing apart, so
that the experience of the separation was most keenly felt in the 20th
century, when the anathema was mutually lifted. Major obstacles in
ecumenical witness included the crusades, the establishment of Latin
patriarchates in the West and a certain “form of “ecumenism”, practised
by Rome, which led to social and religious turmoil and the emergence
of the Uniate or Greek Catholic Church. Hilarion Alfeiev, the Rus-
sian Orthodox bishop of Vienna considers that the stalemate in the
dialogue with the Vatican is caused by the positive interpretation
that Vatican gives to the uniate method. Although there are many
theological points of convergence, the dialogue with the Catholic is
difficult because there remain obstacles in understanding divergent
theological perspectives, “historically accumulated and politically
manipulated.”18
17
Coman on www.ortodoxie-catolicism.ro/category/ortodoxie/ecumenism.
18
Bogdan Tătaru Cazaban, “Pentru un ecumenism al contemplativilor”, in Un suflet
pentru Europa. Dimensiunea religioasă a unui proiect politic [A soul for Europe. The
religious dimension of a political project], Anastasia, Bucharest, 2005, p. 189.
III. Romanian Orthodoxy and its Call for Ecumenicity 77
pilgrimage that has been going on for almost a century. After the Gen-
eral Assembly in Porto Alegre there has been much talk of an “ecu-
menical spirituality”, intended as an impetus for the coming together of
the Churches, apparently against generalised apathy. Although it is
biblical, ecumenical spirituality is deficient, due to the lack of interest in
the Holy Scriptures and an increased unilateral interest in political and
social issues where ecumenical dialogue often seeks refuge. There is
diminishing focus on theology, on inter-community, on understanding
God’s plan, which has caused modern man to be reluctant to the ideal
of Christian unity.
Finally, impatience is characteristic of the enthusiasts who want
to see unity accomplished, by casually overcoming specific differences.
This attitude can lead to more problems than solutions. The ecumenical
pilgrimage is long and strenuous and involves a thorough understanding
of the mystery of Christ. Diplomatic and ecclesiastical compromise risks
causing more difficulties, which is why honest and open dialogue must
be preferred. From the Orthodox perspective, the ecumenical movement
is not called to build a new Church or a super-Church, but to create a
favourable environment for theological dialogue and exchange between
cultures, communities and peoples.23 Unfortunately, viewed from the
East, it involves actions, documents and official relations, at national
and international official and clerical level, which at grass roots level
are perceived as everyday news.
in this area, as that made by Rev. Viorel Ionita, who pointed out, in the
article ‘Churches and Ecumenism in the present Romania’27, that there
is not a consistent plan for the teaching of ecumenism in the 14 Facul-
ties of theology of Romania: ‘We cannot evaluate how ecumenism is
taught in these theological academies, and even less we are able to de-
termine what is said about the image of the others. But we do know that
the subject of ecumenism has a low priority. If lectured it is done from
an apologetic perspective. The intention is mainly not to learn from the
others, but to affirm one’s own identity’.28 The critique of this marginal
position of the subject ecumenism in theological faculties does not refer
only to the Romanian situation. It can nowadays be found all over Europe.
It is generally known that the professors who teach the subject are, as a
rule, systematic theologians, who tend not to search for connection points
among the Christian traditions.” Many of the decision-makers in education
are steadfast in their attitude towards any type of ecumenism, which they
assimilate to the “art of confessional compromise”.
A second factor that facilitates and encourages mutually revealing
dialogue is the migration of people from former communist countries to
the West and also the mobility of European citizens in general, such as
foreign investors in the East European business environment. Thus
people come into contact with members of other Churches, prompt-
ing them to ask questions that they never considered while living in a
monochrome religious environment. Some of them are former nominal
Christians who develop an interest in religious life and become more
aware of their own identity thanks to the comparison with others. When
their religious needs are met in another Church, they experience a feel-
ing of familiarity and mutual understanding with its members. In prac-
tice, nowadays there is no reference to East and West in Europe, partly
owing to the contribution of practical ecumenism, which welcomes,
provides aid and witness and seems to overtake institutionalised theo-
logical ecumenism.
27
Viorel Ionita, “Kirchen und Ökumene im heutigen Rumänien”, Glaube in der 2. Welt
29/7-8, (2001), pp. 12-17.
28
Ibidem.
III. Romanian Orthodoxy and its Call for Ecumenicity 83
33
Maria Neagu (ed.), Religious Life, No. 533, 2003.
IV. The Silent Side of Orthodoxy: The Monastic Ideal
Monasteries have been called “mirrors of the kingdom of heavens” for
their beauty and also “laboratories of resurrection”1 owing to their vi-
brant religious life. In Romania, “there are thousands of faithful who go
to monasteries not as tourists but as pilgrims who seek a higher dimen-
sion of their earthly lives”2. In the Orthodox world, especially in Ro-
mania, an abiding, unbreakable bond exists between monasteries and
the faithful in the world, in villages or cities.
The Romanian Orthodox Church is now engaged in an unprece-
dented development of social work, striving to meet specific require-
ments of the Romanian society both culturally and socially. Though the
Church's social activities are not related to ecclesiology, but rather to
the moral and social philosophy, which has developed in the West since
the eighteenth century in parallel with the Church's sacramental life, the
Romanian Orthodoxy seeks to adjust to the need of people wherever it
finds its vocation.3 As such, the relationship between monastic and lay
communities has expanded beyond the boundaries of liturgical celebra-
tion and charity work, leading to the emergence of monasteries as
strongholds of local communities and of the entire nation, for instance
during the communist era, when they were havens of deep spiritual ex-
istence, inspiration and support for those living in the outside world.
1. Historical insights
Monasticism in the Orthodox teaching claims its roots in the example
of Saint John the Baptist who was wandering in the wilderness and
1
Metropolitan Daniel, of Moldavia and Bucovina, Dăruire și dăinuire – raze și chipuri
de lumină din istoria și spiritualitatea românească [Devotion and Permanence – Rays
and Faces of Light in the Romanian History and Spiritual Life], Trinitas, 2005, p. 380.
2
Ibidem.
3
Metropolitan Daniel Ciobotea, Confessing the Truth in Love. Orthodox Perceptions of
Life, Mission and Unity, Trinitas, Iaşi, 2001, p. 145.
90 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
feet of those who were lesser than Him (cf. John 13:5 – 17) and stated
that this way of being was equal to perfection”9.
4. Ora et Labora
Similarly to the monastic life in other parts of the Christian world, Or-
thodox monks/nuns pursue certain “obediences” in the monastery. Among
the most important, it is worth mentioning prayer. Monastic community
prayer in Romania follows the pattern of the ancient Byzantine style.
Offices are ordered in such a way that the whole day and night must be
marked by prayer and meditation, fragmenting the normal activity in
order to avoid passion for a particular activity. It is the reason for which
10
Details on the organisation of monastic life and its amazing role in the Romanian
history and tradition, see Bishop Serafim Joantă, Romania: Its Hesychast Tradition
and Culture, St. Xenia Skete, 1992. For the role and reason of monasticism in the
Byzantine space please refer to John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, Mombrays,
London & Oxford, 1974, p. 54 ff.
11
It is celebrated in the evening, at dusk, and symbolises the expectation of Christ’s
Coming as He is the Light of the World.
IV. The Silent Side of Orthodoxy: The Monastic Ideal 95
indicates both man's problem and God's solution. Jesus is the Saviour,
the anointed king, the one who has mercy.”16
who is the key concern for the monastic’s sense of life, there is a freely
accepted authority of the spiritual father and the abbot. This authority is
based on love of both sides.
The spiritual father is always an experienced monk who guides a
few novices individually. He is invested with an authority which is not
dictated. Every novice can choose his confessor, and can change him if
he does not feel a satisfactory spiritual progress. The confessor should
only be concerned with the individual life of the novice who must be
guided to live the Gospel in his personal life. A large part of the spiritual
father's daily service is to handle with the problems of daily life faced
by those who seek his spiritual counsel. As such, he is at once teacher,
judge and doctor for those who seek his counsel and support.
As one western theologian noted, “to a westerner the institution
of spiritual fatherhood sounds very strange. It can appear that the spiri-
tual father is autocratic and authoritarian, and that a person who relies
on such a spiritual father is abrogating his independence.
It was one of the moving aspects of this research to discover the
relationship of love which exists between disciples and spiritual fathers.
All witnessed to the love that they themselves found: spiritual father as
the powerful image of Christ in the disciple's life, a figure that encour-
ages openness, the “duhovnic” (confessor) as a father that takes it upon
himself to pray for his sons.”17
The Abbot/Staretz is the administrative responsible for all mem-
bers of a monastic community, and he is given full obedience, in his
quality of the “Father”, “Mother” respectively of the community. He will
always be given a priority as the one who cares and works for the spiri-
tual welfare of his spiritual disciples, novices, monks or nuns. Very often,
authority in a monastery is also given by the ordination into priesthood.
They all have to observe the Regulations valid for all monasteries and
aim continuously to the service of God and personal salvation.
17
Nicholas Stebbing, “Father Cleopa and the tradition of spiritual fathers”, in Orthodox
Christianity and Contemporary Europe, Jonathan Sutton, William Peter Van Den
Bercken (eds.), Peeters Publishers, 2003, p. 537.
100 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
18
Dan Zamfirescu, Paisianismul, un moment românesc în istoria spiritualităţii euro-
pene [The Hesychast Movement of St. Paisius, a Romanian Moment in the History of
European Spirituality], Bucharest, 1996, p. 71, quoted in Nica, The Social and Pas-
toral Role of Monasticism…, p. 172.
V. Lay Persons and their Role in the Church1
Laity is the foundation of the Church, as a “royal priesthood, and a holy
nation” (I Peter 2, 9), but often they may not given a very important
serving role in the life of the community. In daily life, one way of prac-
tising the faith is the ascetic path, of those who belong to monastic or-
ders, adhere to strict schedules of prayer and work. For the lay members
of the Church faith plays an equally important role in life expressed
differently. The lay faithful are generally members of a parish commu-
nity and must seek to create a bond with the parish priest and other
members. In Romania, the Orthodox Church has parishes in each city,
including areas inhabited mostly by minority ethnic groups. Obviously
the connection between the individual and the parish and its ministers is
a matter of personal choice. Church services delivered by the Church
do not create any legal obligations on the part of the faithful and docu-
ments issued by the church are not binding. Thus, funding for religious
activities or facilities is not mandatory or binding.
Nevertheless, in expressing his faith, man is urged to follow the
precepts of the Gospel in his personal life and participate in community
life of the church in its various aspects, liturgical, economic and social.
Liturgical participation involves attendance of the service on Sundays
and feast days, dedicated to a particular event in the life of Jesus Christ
or a saint. Along the same lines, the practising Orthodox is expected to
respect sacred things, especially icons and objects of the liturgical space
and church assets. Romanian Orthodox religiosity tends to manifest
itself either in a moralistic or formal-ritualistic manner. As regards the
evangelical precepts, often one may sense a superficial treatment of the
truths of faith.
1
According to the 2011 Census, only 8,524 Romanians declared they were atheists and
12,825 unaffiliated with any religion out of a total of 19,042,936 stable residents, cf.
www.insse.ro/cms/files/RPL2002INS/vol4/tabele/t18.pdf.
102 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
In keeping with the evangelical principle “do not let your left
hand know what your right hand is doing” (Matthew 6: 3), Romanian
orthodoxy has developed a whole system of charitable action, in which
the “practicing” faithful offers goods or money to poor people to ob-
serve one of his evangelical duties. Needless to say for the “poor” that
flock around churches and monasteries, where the chances to receive
such gifts are high as kind believers respond to the moralising sermons
of their priests. The system has evolved into deviant forms of organised
begging, staking out begging areas, gang exploitation of minors, which
have spawned a whole underground flow of money collected from beg-
ging and subsequently used in other forms of crime. This type of char-
ity not only does not solve any problems, but breeds social parasitism
and criminality.
The Church is now free to set up and run social programs, coor-
dinated by professionals, to address and eliminate the causes of beg-
ging, at social and personal and, most importantly, to rehabilitate and
reintegrate in society all those involved. Such projects are either funded
by the public budget, public-private partnerships, own funds or dona-
tions. Funds raised by the Church from donations are used for mainte-
nance and renovation of existing churches and facilities.
The church has a role in coalescing communities around social
priorities, especially in this time of economic crisis. The Church can
encourage volunteering to be essential and become a form of commu-
nity involvement. The principles underlying the financing activities are:
free competition, effective use of public funds, transparency, equal
treatment, with at least 20% of the applicants, and involving the com-
munity, ensuring participation of all denominations, associations and
foundations. The law covers the following categories: children in need,
adults with disabilities, elderly people without income, the homeless,
people with disabilities and ill, who cannot provide for themselves, people
who have suffered from natural disasters, poor families who, because of
limited financial resources cannot ensure adequate child care and edu-
cation, have no access to healthcare services and are not included in the
104 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
been reopened, the curricula have been updated to account for the
evolving context of a society in transition.
Indeed, studying theology nowadays especially as the Church has
embraced the Bologna process involves vibrant exchanges with educa-
tional partners in Western and Eastern Europe, renewed and inclusive
course syllabi and curricula and integrating ICTs into the course rooms
and libraries.
Reflecting on recent changes that have Rev. Professor Gheorghe
Popa recently stated: “In the current context of a united Europe, theol-
ogy must assume again on campuses its edifying role and vocation.
Both the medieval period and in recent times, European universities
were founded on the faculties of Theology, Law, Philosophy and Let-
ters. The values promoted by these colleges have always been and must
remain grounded on the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman values,
which were the source of European civilisation. Obviously, these values
are now secular and separated from the theological and ecclesiastical
sphere, yet the current academic orientation towards European interdis-
ciplinary research offers a good opportunity for faculties of theology to
redefine their identity and mission.”5
As part of the educational process, theological education mirrors
the missionary and social condition of a particular society and Church
at a specific point in history. In the case of post-communist Romania,
the central authorities have acknowledged the social and missionary
significance of education for the future priests, religion teachers, social
workers, ecclesiastical art restorers, painters and lay missionary, and
have created channels of cooperation with the established education
institutions. The level of education of priests and teaching profession-
als, in a predominantly Christian Orthodox society, impacts the devel-
opment of communities, e.g. parishes.
5
Gh. Popa, Roadele unui dialog onest între Religie și Științe [The fruits of a honest
dialogue between Religion and Sciences], article published in the Sunday supplement
Lumina de Duminică, 10 April 201.
110 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
and pastoral needs of the faithful, as opposed to the purely laic orienta-
tion of the secular universities of the 19th and 20th centuries.
During the communist era, the degrees awarded by the theologi-
cal schools, governed by the Church, were only valid within the Church.
Despite its accomplishments in that period,10 the Romanian theological
school was critically marginalised, with the clear purpose of reducing
its influence in society as much as possible. Until 1989, there were six
Theological Seminaries, in Bucharest, Buzau, Neamt Monastery, Cluj
Napoca, Craiova and Caransebes, along with the two theological insti-
tutes of faculty rank (Bucharest and Sibiu), which, despite all the re-
strictions they had to tolerate, were able to train clergy that the Church
needed. Given the obstructive regime, the theological training had to be
oriented to moral and pious issues rather than to theological debate and
the problems of the society at large.
In 1990, the first year of post-communist freedom, the Faculty of
Theology of Iasi, closed in 1941, was reopened, first as a Theological
Institute of faculty rank, under Church authority, which in 1991 was
transformed into the Faculty of Theology and integrated in the “Al. I.
Cuza” University of Iasi. The need to train young people to teach relig-
ion in state schools has been a great challenge for the higher theological
education, and for this reason two other departments were created
within the faculty, namely Theology and Letters and Social Theology,
10
We should thus point out that the main specialist journals “Studii Teologice” and
“Ortodoxia” continued to be published, along with the periodical bulletins issued by
each diocese. Other publications included Învăţătura de Credinţă Creştină Ortodoxă
[the Christian Orthodox Faith Guide], manuals, such as Teologia Dogmatică pentru
seminare [Dogmatic Theology for seminaries], the three volumes of Teologia Dog-
matică Ortodoxă [Orthodox Dogmatic Theology], by Fr. D. Stăniloae, Istoria
Bisericii Ortodoxe Române [The History of the Romanian Orthodox Church] by Fr.
M. Păcurariu, Patrologia [Patristics] by Fr. I.G. Coman, Liturgica [Liturgics] by Fr.
E. Branişte, Teologia Morală [Moral Theology] by Metropolitan N. Mladin, Istoria
Religiilor [The History of Religions] by Fr. Emilian Vasilescu, classical languages
handbooks; the Philokalia, translated by Fr. D. Stăniloae (12 volumes) and the collec-
tion “Părinţi şi Scriitori Bisericeşti” [Church Fathers and Writers], initiated by Patriarch
Iustin Moisescu.
114 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
the latter with the aim of training social workers. In 1993, another de-
partment was established, Cultural Heritage Restoration and Conserva-
tion, to train specialists in the restoration of Church art. Most of the
other Romanian theological Faculties have adopted the organisation
model implemented for the first time in Iasi. Nowadays, the Faculty is
located in the buildings which once hosted the “Veniamin Costachi”
Theological Seminary and has a chapel and a library. There are now
about 1,100 students enrolled in undergraduate, postgraduate and doc-
toral programmes.
into account the fact that the dogmatic and historical practice of the
Church is a call to communion.19
The invasion of the new religious movements, the experience of
syncretism involved in the lay culture, promoted by all the media chan-
nels20 have led to the emergence of a ‘defensive’ trend in the Romanian
Orthodoxy, spearheaded by certain monastics, which is sometimes felt in
the reserved and non-communicative attitude of some theology teachers.
In each faculty, two groups can be distinguished: those who defend the
“traditional faith” which they associate with nationalism and the set of
traditional Romanian values and those who are open, ready to connect
with the society at large, with members of the other Christian Churches
and denominations, and equipped for missionary projects.
Academic theology nowadays plays a very important role, al-
though the response of the target audience is not always as expected.
Openness and dialogue are quite often perceived as a renunciation of
Orthodox values, whereas reclusion is proposed as a solution to avoid
problems and focuses theological work on learning unrelated Patristic
texts. The ecumenical disciplines often have a formal advertising role,
because in reality they are treated as “sectology”. The immediate result
is an isolation of Orthodoxy, which is perceived sometimes as a medie-
val faith. “Our theology seems to be out of time and irremediably locked
in the past. It is appropriate to emphasise the absence of the prophetic
dimension of the theologians’ work, which can only be activated when
they become the messengers of a living God for a living people, here
and now,” as Fr. Constantin Coman remarked. 21 The walled-in attitude
of a traditional Orthodoxy causes it to be threatened by liturgical for-
malism, traditionalism and even a centrifugal tendency, generated by
19
Ioan Tulcan, Bisericile in dialog. Seminar internaţional cu tema “Reconcilierea dintre
Bisericile Europene. O contribuţie a şcolilor teologice” [Churches in dialogue. Inter-
national dialogue on the theme 'Reconciliation among European Churches. A contri-
bution of theological schools'], in “Teologia”, III (1999), no. 3-4, p. 145.
20
There are confessional and New-Age TV channels which propose a combination of
traditional Orthodox life with meditation and yoga practices of far Eastern origins and
which advertise themselves as a religious alternative for the future.
21
Constantin Coman, art. cit., p. 162.
124 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
27
www.jirrs.org
28
www.ftoub.ro/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=250&Itemid=440
29
www.it4s.ro/index.htm
30
www.ejst.tuiasi.ro/editorial.html
VII. Bridges: Science, Theology and Religious
Education in the Public Schools
The Patriarchate seeks to create and foster opportunities for encounters
and exchanges between scientific data and theories and the religious
and philosophical discourses in the Romanian educational arena. The
teaching of religion in schools, part of the curriculum for grades 1 to 8
(primary and middle school) and 9 – 12 (high school) in Romanian
state schools, provides opportunities for such dialogue. This is nowa-
days possible particularly because, since the late 20th century, science
and many fields of philosophy and social sciences have embraced a
new vision, triggered by the great discoveries of physics, quantum me-
chanics, medicine and the neurosciences. As a result, the dialogue of
the natural sciences with theology and philosophy has developed in
many prestigious foreign universities, through the establishment of re-
search centres or MA and PhD programs, and lately there have been
decisive moves to institutionalise and formalise academic dialogue and
exchange on the relationship between scientific, theological and phi-
losophical knowledge.
New, updated curricula and course programmes seek to engage
the recent advances in technology and sciences. One major example is
the ongoing, multi-annual project Courses on the Relation Among Sci-
ence, Religion and Philosophy from an Orthodox Christian Perspec-
tive, funded by the US-based John Templeton Foundation and jointly
implemented by the Romanian Patriarchate, the state Universities of
Bucharest and Iasi, through their respective research centres on theol-
ogy and science. The project involves the organisation and delivery of
certified courses at postgraduate level, seminars and summer schools
focused on the dialogue of Science with Philosophy and Religion, as
part of a broader cooperation with the John Templeton Foundation.
The project has received the blessing and full endorsement of Pa-
triarch Daniel who on various occasions has reaffirmed the edifying
128 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
2. Children of a city
Taking a leap in time to tackle the issues of pre-school education itself,
as it is practised nowadays in the educational system, against the back-
ground of a young democracy, we will focus on the modern urban envi-
ronment, where the little children that Christ was talking about almost
two thousand years ago are born, raised and educated.
Most city residents were born and raised in the villages and then
determined to migrate and acclimatise to the cities being built in the
period of fast industrialisation during communism. The work places
and houses were granted by the regime, according to random criteria.
That is why nowadays in a typical apartment block there live people of
various backgrounds: university teachers, lawyers, doctors, skilled and
non-skilled workers, unemployed and retired persons. The limited
available space and the multi-cultural feature generate volens-nolens a
silent tension related to the cohabitation norms determined by each per-
son’s level of education. The areas destined for shared use are far from
promoting a good image and the relations between the inhabitants are
merely conventional in most cases.
Two features of the Romanian urban milieu stand out: the rela-
tively low average age of the population and the vertical development
of urban architecture, driven by the policy of the communist regime.
Taking into account these two specific features we can outline the envi-
ronment in which many children live and the mission of the Church in
the work of evangelising the little children and not only. The urban re-
ligious communities have heterogeneous membership, consisting of
people who settle in the new environment by moving to an apartment in
a previously unknown area. Beyond the threshold of one’s door, the
new inhabitant sees a group of strangers and for this reason the scope of
human connections is limited, confined to friends and relatives who
visit occasionally. Built vertically, without adequate open areas, over-
populated, lacking aesthetic sense, the housing estates in Romanian
cities have become huge parish communities which, from a pastoral
134 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
point of view, cannot be properly served. Daily realities show that the
size of the parish is one of the most crucial factors in establishing the
quality of the missionary and pastoral work. We cannot imagine a par-
ish with 5,000 families where the shepherd of souls has the actual time
to know and teach everyone.
Communication with the priest among new comers or those who
have just left is non-existent; there are few cases in which decisions to
move are made known to the parish priest. That is why pastoral work is
chiefly directed towards those who are already close to the parish, to
the local church and who have appropriate religious education. Inevita-
bly we come to the issue of the feeling of personal “belonging” to the
parish community. The English specialists in urban mission have put
the terms “believing” and “belonging” side by side and have concluded
that the greatest problem of modern people is not that they do not be-
lieve, but rather that they do not feel that they belong to a certain com-
munity (people believe but do not belong).
Obviously in cities the religious options are greater, ranging from
the preference for a certain place of worship, a serving priest or the
spiritual background of the service (existence of a choir, quality of
singing, personal experience in the liturgical space, quality of the ser-
mon, etc) to the decision to abandon one’s faith and become a member
of another, Christian or non-Christian, community. The lack of the feel-
ing of belonging seems to be one of the main reasons why some Chris-
tians choose to separate themselves from their original Church. When
they do not feel at home in the parish they move to, they either reject it
or they accept the missionary “offer” of derived denominations, where
they feel like they are welcome.
In the urban setting, there is also conspicuous religious ignorance,
even among intellectuals, against the background of the atheist educa-
tion of large swaths of the population. People accept more easily the
information disseminated by the media. 4 They shape their religious
4
In a recent interview, Ms. Anne Graham, the daughter of the great American preacher
Billy Graham stated that modern people easily accept what newspapers say but are
questioning the Scripture.
VII. Bridges: Science, Theology and Religious Education in the Public Schools 135
5
Francoise Dolto, Ce să spunem copiilor, translation by Delia Şepeţean Vasiliu, Edi-
tura Trei, Bucharest, 2005, p. 19.
VII. Bridges: Science, Theology and Religious Education in the Public Schools 137
just as painters lay the paint on the canvas while it is still wet and able
to be processed; education must involve good judgment and wisdom,
just like birds do not teach their young to fly in one day, but tactfully
and wisely accompany them to the appropriate height; education must
be done with love, mercy and good humour, which means that correc-
tions, discussions and reproaches must be made with love, in order to
guarantee their usefulness; education with love must not be prohibitive
but positive, by showing to the child the alternative to the visible evil;
education presupposes the art of story-telling, to which the child is highly
receptive; education must be sincere and realistic, that is able to prepare
the children for the world of today, showing them what is good and also
what is bad in this world where they are called to live; education in-
volves the agreement between teachings and deeds on the part of the
educator, and the lack of agreement can cause disappointments and dis-
illusions to the young ones; finally, the children must be properly moni-
tored and reprimanded in such a way as to contribute to the assimilation
of knowledge and the realisation of the significance of education. 8
From a pedagogic point of view, in order to meet the educa-
tional requirements, children must go through a process of levelling and
equalisation of their opportunities, given their varied educational and
social backgrounds, and this process is achieved in kindergarten. The
Church has benefited from the reintroduction of religion in the national
curricula, received enthusiastically at first, yet the results of this are
below expectations, on the one hand due to the methodology of teach-
ing, on the other hand because of the family environment that does not
encourage active religious life.
This is why the Church has begun to organise religious education
in kindergartens too. At this stage what is important is not the transmis-
sion of information, but rather the creation of an environment that can
favour the access to the triggers of religious sensitivity, an environment
that should be as close as possible to the actual one, of the home or of
the church. The presence of the liturgical objects such as the icon, the
8
Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, Psihoterapia Ortodoxă, translated by Prof. Ion
Diaconescu and Prof. Nicolae Ionescu, Sofia, Bucharest, 2001, pp. 168-174 passim.
VII. Bridges: Science, Theology and Religious Education in the Public Schools 139
candleholder, the holy water, the communion bread, the candles, and
sacred music all play a role in sensitising and in creating a different en-
vironment to the usual one, from home or the daily life. Such experi-
ments were made earlier on and they proved that, ever since a very
early age, children are highly receptive to religious activities, such as:
keeping quiet in a sacred space, taking care not to touch certain sacred
objects, lighting candles, cautios walking and movement in the spiritual
area. Pedagogues state that all these induce feelings of gratitude,
inner joy and a sense of one’s personal importance. Children are at-
tracted by everything solemn, majestic, out of the ordinary. For exam-
ple, they are impressed by priestly vestments, by the ornaments, by ges-
tures such as kneeling, kissing the icons and by the sign of the cross,
which they imitate and whose deeper meanings they may know better
as they grow older.
It has been noted that the children who have received a religious
education since early on in their lives develop a remarkable resilience
to difficulty, endurance in overcoming life problems and exhibit such
virtues as self-control, courage and philanthropy. Above all, they un-
conditionally acknowledge that God is the giver and sustainer of life,
the reason why cultivating faith is essential from an early age. 9
Some have objected that children come to Church because there
they get to do less common things, such as lighting candles. By the
same token, the opponents claim, they could learn arithmetic, by count-
ing the lit candles, say from one to ten, without instilling any religious
feelings connected to that simple act. The difference in objectives is
however considerable: while the child needs less than a week to learn to
count, and afterwards will get tired of lighting candles to count them, in
the religious feeling of the gesture he will preserve the same sacred
feeling each time he lights a candle, all through his life, knowing that
he does it in the name of God, out of a spiritual and not arithmetical
motivation.
9
Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child, transl. by M. Joseph Costelloe, S.J,
Ballantine Books, New York, 1967, p. 299.
140 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
for at least 2,000 priests and teachers of religion; activities for children:
trainers deliver catecheses and training in their communities, for at least
18,000 children and youth at risk of leaving school and potential delin-
quent activity; creative camps for children: taking place during the summer
holidays. Each camp runs for a minimum of five days; contests - the aim
of writing, arts and multimedia contests is to create awareness about the
role of education in the child's life and the opportunities it can offer in
terms of labour market integration and preventing early school leaving and
delinquency. 12 In the summer of 2012, over 3,000 children are participat-
ing in the summer camps in the mountain resort of Durau at St. Daniel the
Hermit Cultural-Pastoral Centre and at Caraiman in Prahova county.
12
http://www.worldvision.ro.
VIII. Romanian Orthodox Media: An Emerging Voice
in the National Media Landscape
The media is unquestionably a dominant actor in the modern era, its
force lying in the capacity to inform and to shape attitudes and behav-
iour. The information-driven age has profoundly influenced the way
people understand life, the world and their own existence, areas which
are the remit and concern of the Church. Against this background, the
Church must bear witness and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ
to the faithful and the world, teaching the right faith and confronting
challenges from heterodoxy, atheism and secularism.
Unfortunately, access to information delivered by the media is not
always beneficial, in terms of its formative role. At times it seems that
the media fails to build on its many potential benefits, instead becoming
an instrument of evil. The aggressive approach of contemporary media
in imposing its own images in the public mind often clashes with the
spiritual aspirations of the individual or the society as a whole. Cer-
tainly the media can exert both positive and negative influence, helping
to promote or inhibit the development of customs, traditions, ideas,
principles, and civilisation in general, or it may accelerate or stifle spiri-
tual, intellectual and cultural progress of the person or the community.1
The Romanian Orthodox Church seeks to leverage the opportunities
offered by emerging and ever more complex technologies to communi-
cate a balanced response to the challenges of the digital age: indeed, while
media outlets may seem marginal, a daily paper such as Ziarul Lumina
now has wide circulation around Romania and its contributors and col-
umnists are medical doctors, philosophers, economists alongside priests
and educators who seek to offer comprehensive perspective on current
political, economic and social stories.
The year 1990 marked the opening up of new channels and op-
portunities for providing information and expressing attitudes and
1
Liviu Stoinea, Pentru o teologie a comunicarii [For a theology of communication], in
Vestitorul Ortodoxiei, nr. 4/1996.
144 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths
beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has
been his counsellor? (Romans 11: 33-34). The Apostle himself declares
that certain suffering enables him to realistically understand God’s plan
for him: “To keep me from becoming conceited of these surpassingly
great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger
of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it
away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for
my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the
more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on
me.” (II Corinthians 12: 7-9).
The search for physical wellbeing at all costs and the avoidance
of suffering has fostered a sensationalist approach to healing through
faith, by promoting practices that the Church itself discourages, on the
basis of Scriptural arguments. Christ warns of the danger of seeking
miracles and signs, while ignoring the true way of alleviating suffering,
i.e. God’s love, as reflected in the world in the love for one’s fellow
human persons, which must not be just a theory. The parable of the
prodigal son provides the model of social service based on neighbourly
love and communion between people, in keeping with a certain disci-
pline. In short, a man saves a stranger, compassion being the only moti-
vation for his act (Luke 10: 30 – 37). The parable’s aim is to show that
there is hope for each person when there is charity, while without char-
ity not even one’s blood brother can be one’s ‘neighbour’.
In following Christ’s model, Christianity has been aware of and
has embraced physical suffering and ailment as instruments that give
man the meaning of his metaphysical existence which one is unable to
grasp independently from the divine power. 2 Therefore, the message of
2
St. Theophan the Recluse considers that both in illness and in alleviation or cure it is
important for man to be aware of God’s plan for oneself and above all to not lose pa-
tience and serenity when thinking about the ‘trial’ that God has in store for one or
about one’s meeting with Him. St. Theophan the Recluse, Boala şi moartea [Illness
and Death], Sofia, Bucureşti, 2002, pp. 21-43 passim.
150 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
the chain of causality, for the one who forgives you takes upon himself
the consequences of your actions. Therefore, forgiveness always in-
volves a sacrifice”.4 Christ’s life was indeed the ultimate sacrifice was
He took upon himself the sins of the world and healed human nature
from within, bringing it up to theosis.
Man generally views wellbeing in his earthly life in terms of
primarily material welfare and spiritual wellness. For a theologian,
wellbeing is primarily a state of mind. It begins with a certain discipline
that one must acquire and exercise: first one must rank his wishes, and
then set a transcendent ideal to follow steadfastly. Finally, as one aims
for this ideal, one must relate to one’s fellow, because spiritual progress
is only achieved by relating with other people. In the Eastern Christian
experience, starting from the example of the first Christian congrega-
tions (Acts 2), welbeing cannot be accepted as an individual fulfilment
but as communal achievement wherein man disciplines his own desires
and selflessness and is aware of sacrifice. Providing help to the neighbour
becomes, for the practising Christian, his contribution to the establish-
ment of God’s kingdom on earth as a visible and attainable ideal. Giv-
ing presupposes forgiveness, that is, a positive spiritual state.
The Church embraced from the earliest times the concern for the
welfare of those in need, seeking relief for their social plight. 5 One
must note that in achieving this stated purpose the Church and the State
work as two complementary social entities. This was the actual situa-
tion in the Byzantine Empire where the two institutions cooperated in
seeking the material and spiritual progress of citizens. Yet as the
government gradually abandoned this ideal in favour of politics, the
Church took on several prerogatives such as its continuing service of
the faithful. The Church cannot repudiate or distance itself from the
faithful, as it would then cease to be a Church, yet this does not mean
4
Dag Hammarskjöld, Makings, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2001, p. 197.
5
Stanley Samuel Harakas, Living the Faith. The Praxis of Eastern Orthodox Eth-
icsm, Light and Life Publishing Company, Minneapolis, 1992, p. 362.
152 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
that it becomes a social institution like all others. The Church values of
philanthropy, love and care for the people have become general values
adopted by the state and the society at large, yet the Church preserves
the transcendental dimension of the care for the human person.
In lay terms, health has two components: on a practical level, it is
the state of physical wellbeing, meaning that a person does not suffer
from temporary or constant pain and is not impaired or disabled; on a
spiritual level, health is the state of peace, gratitude and fulfilment
wherein the intellectual, the mental and the affective activities are in
harmony. When referring to ‘health’ in one’s relationship with God,
things become more complicated: “health” in theological terms means
“redemption” (the Greek soteria), i.e. that state of harmony within the
person, between the person and the outside, which is the created nature
and God. It is therefore clear that physiological health is not a goal of
theology in itself. The Church seeks primarily the spiritual health. For
example, a physically impaired person who is spiritually healthy can
experience physiological suffering as theological health, depending on
how he approaches suffering. This leads to the paradox which states
that through suffering man comes closer to God, to the source of health,
while through health a (spiritually unhealthy) man can distance himself
from God.
The care for the neighbour manifested by the civilian authority is
not necessarily founded on love for the neighbour, but rather emerges
from the cold calculation that in order to preserve its stability and secu-
rity, society needs to develop social services and a safety net the disad-
vantaged. This is where the main distinction between social services
and philanthropy lies: the local community, through the safety net sys-
tem helps a person in times of suffering or social challenge, providing
the necessities within the boundaries of the law, in agreement with the
interests of the political majority. Christian philanthropy is not simply
confined to giving the poor and the sick what they need for biological
existence. Philanthropy is always accompanied by catechisation or
IX. A Church Is Called to Listen and Bring Relief 153
teaching and bears Christ’s message. Its target is not the body in itself,
but the person as a psychological and somatic entity6 that seeks spiritual
release or salvation. It would be a mistake to mistake the implementa-
tion of social assistance regulations as prescribed by State laws with
philanthropy, which is a state of human communication with eternity.
The kind of social assistance that the Church practises aims to
promote values and eliminate immoderation in dealing with material
things, to teach the economical use of resources, thus creating a space
where selfishness, self-centredness and greed should no longer exist. It
discourages individualistic orientations, the get-rich-quick attitude and
avaricious excesses, while promoting care for the community, respon-
sibility towards the neighbour and compassion for the weak and help-
less, in agreement with the biblical commandments: “Then the King
will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Fa-
ther; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the
creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to
eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger
and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick
and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
“Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hun-
gry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did
we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe
you? When have we seen you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
“The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of
the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'“ (Matthew 25: 34-40).
One can conclude therefore that the philanthropic work carried out within
the Church, if deprived of the theological component, would amount to
philanthropy done as a job, emptied of the transcendental essence, i.e.
6
For the definition of personalism in theology, see Christos Yannaras, Elements of
Faith (Bucharest: Bizantina, 1996), pp. 42-45. Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae calls man an
“undying being” and shows how man can become eternal through the union with the
hypostasis of Christ made man. Cf. Chipul nemuritor al lui Dumnezeu [God’s Eternal
Image], Editura Mitropoliei Olteniei, Craiova, 1987, p. 138 et seq.
154 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
the love of God and of people. When resources run out, such a pro-
gramme will inevitably be cancelled.
One example is in this respect is the work carried out by Provi-
denţa [Providence] Medical Centre, established in Iasi at the initiative
of His Eminences Daniel, then the Metropolitan of Moldavia and Bu-
covina. In promoting its services, this church-based medical centre as-
serts the spiritual approach to healing: “Reflecting the superior quality
of our medical services are the modern medical equipment and facilities
built according to Western standards, in addition to the integrated, «body
and soul» approach to the medical pursuit of healing human beings,
with the purpose of re-discovering and affirming their personal dignity.
Therefore, at Providenţa Medical Centre, and at the other medical fa-
cilities established within the Metropolitanate, patients are treated as
individuals rather than as ailing bodies”.
We will not explore the criteria of God’s work together with man
for this holistic approach to health, but will only highlight the fact that
God does not allow illness in order to bring people closer to Him, but
rather to enable them to interpret its message themselves. There are
people who bear illnesses without being burdened, accepting them as
pedagogical ways leading to Christ. Christ healed the physiological ill-
ness only after making a clear hierarchical distinction, by emphasising
that the first step towards recovery is the understanding of the meaning
of the physiological disorder, underlying a spiritual deficiency, upon
which he would perform the healing itself. He has always been the
healer par excellence, showing that divine power is above suffering and
that He wants everyone to be healed, through the forgiveness of sins
and banishing of weakness.
The opening chapter of the Bible tells that Adam was created a
healthy man, enjoying in Eden the created nature and bodily health
(implied by his harmony with the Creator). It is stated that work was a
pleasant activity that helped him be an active person and maintain his
physical powers. The notion of pain emerges after his sin, as work
IX. A Church Is Called to Listen and Bring Relief 155
show that in the face of the unbridled nature and of the “signs of times”
there are no rich or poor countries and that each can be brought down to
its knees. That is why the economic situation is not an argument that
can support the fight against life. The faith in God and the care for His
creation must become normative for the formation of the child in the
spirit of faith, to preoccupy the Christian family and society, regardless
of whether they are post-modern or self-sufficient.
One can conclude that man needs to reconsider two terms: clean-
ness and cleanliness, the former referring to the soul, the latter to the
biological self and the environment. By sinning, man does not harm
God, but “kicks against the goads” (Acts 9: 5), meaning that he harms
himself, as he loses the “garden” of harmony, suffers from disease and
is estranged from his neighbour. Paradise in the Apocalypse, as de-
scribed by St. John the Evangelist, is a garden in the middle of which
lies the Tree of Life whose fruit the redeemed (i.e. the “healthy”) will
taste, thus restoring harmony with the universe.
that death does not exist or God does not exist (etsi dues non daretur). For a classical
discussion of this issue from a Christian Orthodox perspective, cf. Alexander
Schmemann, For the Life of the World, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, New York,
1973, pp. 98-99 and 117 et seq. and Rev. Gheorghe Popa, Comuniune şi înnoire spi-
rituală în contextul secularizării lumii moderne [Spiritual Communion and Renewal in
the Context of the Secularisation of the Modern World], Trinitas, Iasi, 2000, p. 21.
158 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
the neighbour’s health and property against greed, the responsibility for
the neighbour’s freedom, the responsibility for the neighbour’s salva-
tion, empathising with the joys and trials of one’s neighbour, regardless
of their social standing and also irrespective of the way they actually
react to Christian love.
The first step that the loving religious community makes is to
urge its members to join in solidarity with those in need and provide
instant aid. A long process of aid and education ensues, aimed at over-
coming deprivation and providing health care, shelter and food. There
will also be religion-themed visits, activities promoting better knowl-
edge of faith, inclusion in social life and raising the awareness of one’s
personal responsibility.
top of this, the worldwide economic crisis, experts have shown particu-
larly strikes the poor and vulnerable groups in the less developed coun-
tries in Europe.
Since 1990, the Romanian Orthodox Church has been able to re-
sume its traditional activities in the social field, which have greatly ex-
panded and diversified, focusing on an ever larger number of people
and dealing with a multitude of social issues generated by the socio-
economic transformations in Romania. The years after the Romanian
revolution have brought to light a reality that neither the theologians
nor the sociologists had expected: the strength and vitality of a Chris-
tian faith which, although oppressed through decades of communism,
did not surrender, but paradoxically was able to emerge stronger in in-
tensity and service. As is widely known, the final years of communism
were unfavourable to the Church, which was not allowed to carry out
its social work in society or to establish and maintain places of worship.
Not even the sympathisers of the communist regimes were spared, due
to obstructions, for example, on buying private houses. As a result, after
regaining freedom in 1989, besides the desire to have their own homes,
Christians embarked on a building a great many churches. The priority
was to offer the community a place for meeting with God, based on the
belief that where there is prayer, there is will also be human solidarity.
On 27 May 1997, the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox
Church decided to establish the Social assistance network within the
Church and to approve the Rules for the management and operation of
the social assistance system in the Romanian Orthodox Church, which
would establish a coherent framework for the social and charitable ac-
tivity.11 In agreement with the objectives of its social services network,12
11
For a detailed analysis of the social work of the Church after 1990, see Ioan Vicovan,
Daţi-le voi să mănânce. Filantropia creştină – istorie şi spiritualitate, Trinitas,
Iasi, 2001, p. 197 et seq.
12
Fulfil the mission of the Church. To deliver primary services of social and medical
specialisation, community support, establish social-medical care facilities, design and
162 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
implement social practices, partnerships with the specialised public services, raise
public awareness about social issues (Article 3).
13
In Iasi Archdiocese, whose situation I know directly, there is a series of wide-ranging
programmes in these fields, including the establishment of a social care charity called
‘Solidarity and Hope’, a medical centre, a dental clinic, social care and preventative
education facilities, shelters and day centres for street children and community pro-
jects implemented by parishes which address all the sections of society.
IX. A Church Is Called to Listen and Bring Relief 163
(LTCOR), the National Society of Romanian Orthodox Women (SNFOR), the Medi-
cal-Christian Association “Cristiana” and “PRO-VITA” Association, and numerous
other NGOs affiliated with dioceses, deaneries and parishes.
16
http://www.asociatiaprovita.org/
IX. A Church Is Called to Listen and Bring Relief 165
social point of view. The Church is thus able to fully realise the prom-
ise and potential of Church teachings, because “liturgical piety has no
effect unless it impacts the social behaviour of Christians, the Liturgy
being an icon and a paradigm of social liturgy, which must be effec-
tively applied in the life of society”19.
19
Cristian Muraru, Diaconia sociala la moment aniversar [A celebration of social di-
aconal work], in the volume “Priveghind si lucrând pentru mântuire” [Being ever
Vigilant and Working for Salvation], Trinitas, Iasi, 2000, p. 166.
X. Orthodoxy and Human Rights or the Universal
Concern for Human Life and Dignity
1. Human Rights as social redress
The notion of “rights of man” derived from the experience of abuse. In
its advance towards progress and economic development, the world has
witnessed dire attacks against human life in particular and against the
natural life of the planet. The brutality of the 20th century emboldened
mankind to attempt to find solutions to avoid a repeat of the horrors of
the past: world wars, holocaust, gulags and genocides. This effort began
with the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in
1948, followed by the establishment of related organisations and the
adoption of numerous targeted international laws on the defence of hu-
man life and dignity, some of which were put into practice while others
were drafted as conference papers and never enacted. The declaration
was founded on the secular philosophies of the time. Reflecting a pre-
dominantly social-cultural point of view, the document outlined several
levels of priorities and actions, whose implementation was linked to the
message they conveyed to individual cultures. The effectiveness of the
enactment of these principles would be dependent on how they corre-
lated with the fundamental moral codes of populations living in hetero-
geneous settings. For example, in the same historical era, there were
distinct views on the rights on the person in communist countries and in
capitalist ones, respectively. The hypothetical abolishment of the two
antagonistic ideologies might have indicated that neither social system
had the capacity to achieve the purposes for which it had been established
and put into practice. Certainly both attempted to create conditions to
ensure a decent life and the respect of the dignity of each person by equal
access to resources and education.
If we consider human life and dignity as matters of legislative
regulation, we are bound to state a priori that they were the focus of
170 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
the Church long before they became a priority for the global Human
Rights movement. The reconsideration of life’s values by Christ, the
re-establishment of the values of earthly life, the importance of man as
a divine creature, the commandment of love for one’s neighbour as a
primary Christian duty, as transmitted by the divine Teacher and mag-
nificently explored by the Apostle Paul (I Corinthians 13), the elimina-
tion of discrimination between men and women, the change in attitude
towards wealth-poverty-eternal life are some of the examples that illus-
trate the importance of the human person in relationship with other per-
sons and with the eternal divine values. Applying these values in daily
life has remained a constant challenge to this day.
The situation is different when seen from the secularist-materialistic
perspective on the values of man. Until the end of the last century, the
ideal of modern society consisted of increased globalisation, trade lib-
eralisation and corporate investment. Much less emphasis was put on
eradicating poverty, upholding justice and developing the human poten-
tial. The Human Rights Declaration originated from the belief that no
social system can ignore deprivation, disabilities or disease, or social
freedoms and precepts of community life. Now, in the modern or rather
the post-modern age, we are at a moment when these priorities are once
again brought forward, combining the philosophy of Human Rights
with Christian theology and the practice of socially engaged spiritual
life. The world or more precisely the “spirit” of the world today is fo-
cused on economic, political and social development, which rules out
the concern for the person1, as the fundamental entity of the human
1
We have noticed with surprise that in the latest version of the Romanian translation of
the Declaration of Human Rights, published by the Romanian Institute for Human
Rights, the translator opted to make no distinction between “individual” and “per-
son”, treating them as synonyms, perhaps in an effort to alternate terms and avoid
repetition. Thus, persoană (EN: person) in “Orice persoană are dreptul la libertatea
gândirii….” [“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought] (Art. 18) may wrongly
appear to have the same meaning as individ (EN: individual) in “Orice individ are
dreptul la libertatea de opinie şi de exprimare…” [Everyone has the right to freedom of
opinion and expression] (Art. 19). Theology makes an unequivocal and clear distinction
X. Orthodoxy and Human Rights or the Universal Concern for Human Life and Dignity 171
between the two notions, as it focuses not on the individuality of membership of a par-
ticular species (individual), but on the purpose that the person fulfils in life, i.e. being
the only rational and relational being in the universe, other than God Himself.
2
“Political correctness” refers to a particular structuring of language, ideas, policies and
behaviour intended not to offend any person, including oneself, for reasons related to
gender, race, age or group identity. What is viewed as “politically incorrect” is claimed
to be derived from an authoritarian system, with established rules and responsibilities.
Political correctness started out as a Marxist movement, supported by the Frankfurt
School, but when it arrived in the United States, during the Second World War, it
172 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
any rule, but rather the approach to other, in a permanent revelation and
inter-personal relationship. He proposes going beyond obligation or
beyond what everyone is due, a result of visible justice, and insists on
righting relations among people by doing more than is expected of one-
self: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that
you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on
the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighte-
ous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not
even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers,
what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?”
(Matthew 5: 44-47). Therefore, the right is derived from faith, yet it is
not claimed, but instead offered, and involves a relationship, with God
and with the neighbour.
For the Christian, the right to life and to resources, to education
and to peace, to free expression and circulation all derive from the
value of the other person (“neighbour”), who is an image of God, a free
and aware reason part of the universal Reason, from the restoration of
human being through Christ’s redemption and from human’s destiny,
which is to enter, together with all who are redeemed, into an eternal
and unrepeatable relationship with God.
The church is the living body of Christ, founded on sacrifice and
sent in the world to be engaged in serving people, for the purpose of
their social and spiritual wellbeing, more accurately for the true devel-
opment of humanity. Social and educational action is a major part of
the Church’s calling, following the example of its Founder, Jesus Christ,
who tackled all the major social issues of the time. The Church is not a
gained ground by declaring every person’s right to criticise any indoctrinating attitude,
ranging from issues related to the capitalist political and social system to the ordinary
public services. It has taken strange forms such as the sexual emancipation in 1960s,
the critique of social systems and institutions, the revolt against anything that was
considered an abuse, the discrediting of certain political systems etc. The term is used
in a pejorative sense as opposed to “politically incorrect” which points to irrefutable
values, proven by history, and related to the common experience of mankind.
X. Orthodoxy and Human Rights or the Universal Concern for Human Life and Dignity 173
franca of global moral thought, as English has become the lingua franca
of the global economy”.4 The engagement of Christianity in actions
pertaining to justice, cooperation, dialogue and equity among states,
can ensure that Human Rights elude the suspicion of idolatry, which is
an instance of humanism worshipping itself. As human rights were de-
fined and transmitted, they entered a competition with the precepts of
religion, as they instituted, in the place of recommendations freely ac-
cepted and practiced by the faithful, international laws and regulations
under the authority of humanism. Adopted under the influence of hu-
manism, they naturally raise questions such as “What is human?” and
“What makes a person human?” especially as genocides were ordered
by beings who were “human”, or, more topically, “What makes a per-
son more human than its clone?”
Biblical precepts refer to philanthropy and do not involve rights
that must be enforced or claimed by some external authority. The value
of the precept resides in the statement itself and in its relevance for the
beneficiary of man’s actions. In the Old Testament, the prophets were
sent by God to teach the leaders of the people to implement social jus-
tice for the benefit of those who were victimised: “learn to do right!
Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the father-
less, plead the case of the widow” (Isaiah 1:17). Christ’s own message
proclaims life, the purpose of His coming: “I have come that they may
have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10), life being viewed here in
both its expressions, earthly and eternal. God in his benevolence gives
life to person. In his turn, man must embrace this benevolence as a
model of action: “Look upon our shield, O God; look with favour on
your anointed one. Better is one day in your courts than a thousand
elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than
dwell in the tents of the wicked. For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
the Lord bestows favour and honour; no good thing does he withhold
from those whose walk is blameless” (Psalm 84:9-11). Based on the
4
Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, Oxford, Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2001, p. 53.
X. Orthodoxy and Human Rights or the Universal Concern for Human Life and Dignity 175
offered the most irrefutable proof of the importance of human life and
of man’s dignity. The wounded man who is fallen, humiliated, deprived
of any dignity deserves careful attention, regardless of his status or eth-
nicity. The Lord Jesus shows that his life, even as a pagan, hold su-
preme value even in an enclosed environment as was the Jewish one,
where the notion of elected people was an ethnic and religious policy.
As regards the destiny of man, by divine decision, he has the
dignity to participate in the resurrection, following the example of
Christ. The Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Shenouda III,
points out that the resurrection of the bodies is a necessity with respect
to God’s justice and the dignity he granted man by the destiny he re-
served to him in relation to the finite world.10 Through the resurrection,
the body partakes in the reward for the good acts made in the world,
and the dignity of those with disabilities or who have suffered mutila-
tions in accidents independent of their will is also re-established, as
they will be restored to the same status as those who enjoyed perfect
health on earth.
Salvation itself means healing of ailments of the soul or the body,
release from the domination of evil and of demonic powers, the deliv-
erance from “all affliction, wrath, danger, and distress” and the granting
of eternal life. It is only possible through the sacrifice of Christ, who
restored man’s original dignity of likeness with God the Creator. Salva-
tion includes the thirsty, the hungry and the oppressed because God
Himself looks after them. Salvation is the state of fulfilment of all of the
highest aspirations of the human being, which were not accomplished
on earth. It emerges as a right that God gave to man. If God does not
grant something as a right, man cannot claim it, that is why authentic
Christianity cannot easily accept the idea that Human Rights are exclu-
sively rooted in the Western view on individual autonomy, according to
which everyone can choose their own ends and means to achieve them,
and because the consequences of acts cannot be treated as a-moral by
10
H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Contemplations on the Resurrection, J.C. Centre, Dar El
Tebaa El Kawmia, 1990, pp. 33 passim.
X. Orthodoxy and Human Rights or the Universal Concern for Human Life and Dignity 179
the Christian teaching and praxis on which the law of European states
was founded.
It is indeed difficult to talk about rights of those who do not have means
to strive for them; from the Christian perspective, people have rights
only when they experience them in their own lives, when state authori-
ties enforce such rights fairly, uncompromisingly and indiscriminately.
Neither statements nor promises guarantee the application of a certain
right, but the quality of personal life as a gift from God to man in rela-
tionship to the neighbour. Peace, development and rights are facets of
the reality of the promotion of the human rights of each person and for
the benefit of each community.
The establishment of the United Nations Human Rights Council18
in 2006 is an important and encouraging step forward, as it is intended
as a more effective instrument promoting the proposals of the Human
Rights Commission. This forum, in addition to engaging the contribu-
tion of international church organisations, such as the World Council of
Churches or the Conference of European Churches, must also listen to
the voices of those whose Human Rights are violated and involve non-
governmental organisations which work with the deprived and vulner-
able. The Council can mean a new beginning, perhaps even a new era,
in the promotion and defence of Human Rights, not as political action,
but as an organisation which represents people, seeking to educate the
population worldwide in the spirit of the respect for those with whom
we share the same nature and to foster human dignity as the most pre-
cious feature of the human person.
18
http://www2.ohchr.org, consulted on 17 October 2008.
XI. “The Earth Is the Lord’s, and Everything in It!”
(Psalm 24: 1). Benchmarks for an Orthodox Approach
of Eco-Theology
1. In the beginning there was the Reason
The Church's teachings and vision on stewardship of nature, especially
in the context of issues such as depletion of resources, global warming,
pollution, deforestation, agricultural expansion and food security derive
from the fundamental belief that all creation is a gift and a sacrament of
divine love to be exalted and defended. For the spiritual man, the intel-
ligible reasons behind all the sensitive creatures and material things
provide spiritual food for thought. The whole created world appears as
the space where people celebrate and glorify God’s astonishing work.
One premise of the Orthodox view on environmental issues is
that matter has always been considered to be good since its origins are
divine. It was the result of will, given to man to manage and use, and as
such it serves as an instrument that enables man to acknowledge the
authority of the Maker and provides him with a favourable living envi-
ronment. Matter was offered to man for use before the original sin, yet
its harmony with him was maintained even afterwards. Man coexists
with matter until the end. Theology teaches that the Universe has a ra-
tional Creator and that it fulfils its preordained vocation in relation to
Him. It is clear that what God judged to be “good” was not only the
form of His work, but rather the essence and the role of the material
world in relation to the Logos. Matter is a part of the Creator’s eschato-
logical plan. If one failed to grasp the meaning and the fate of creation,
faith would become an ideology, and the biblical truth would dilute into
systems of thought.1
1
Pierre Gannet, La création, Les Editions du Cerf, Paris 1979, p. 18, apud Adrian Lemeni,
Sensul eshatologic al creaţiei, Editura Asab, Bucharest, 2004, p. 128, note 127.
186 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
separate from that of the universe. Rather, the redeemed man takes mat-
ter along with himself to the Creator, according to the injunction given
in the Garden of Eden.
Therefore, matter potentially bears sanctity in itself, yet not by it-
self or on account of its usefulness to man, but by what God embedded
in its very essence, namely the harmony and the beauty that are testi-
monies of its creator. Through it man connects with the true God; history
shows that those who failed to understand this persisted in “venerating
the creatures”, as is the case of primitive religions.
The teaching about a monolithic creation, even having its origins
in God, yet reduced to an object status, has led to the “secularisation” of
nature. Regarded as external to man, matter turned into an object of
exploitation. The humankind’s concern for ecology as an independent
and self-sufficient subject carries the risk of pantheism, a teaching that
attenuates God’s transcendence and also the risk of the conviction that
man is able to solve the major problems of eco-systems on his own irre-
spective of God the Maker. The phrase eco-theology combines the no-
tion of man’s shared participation and responsibility in God’s work in
the visible world and also avoids politicising distortions.
incorporates all the levels of existence of the material world, which pre-
ceded it in the created order, that it is not ranked below the other creatures
of the physical world, which it actually subdues. Made of earth, on the
sixth day, man is the quintessence of earth and a crowning of creation. One
may say that the world is integrated in the human being and vice versa.
An protestant theologian, Wolfhart Pannenberg, states that many
creatures have the “life spirit”, but man is unlike them in that he does
not simply have a life spirit but is “the image of God” beyond which
no evolution is possible.8 He transcends the material world, participat-
ing in God’s life through grace, consciously, as a link between the two
worlds, the material and the spiritual. This role makes him the trustee of
the integrity of the created universe He was to be aware that he rules it
towards the natural vocation.
As early as the 4th c. AD, St. Gregory the Theologian argued that
man is connected with the material world by his physical nature. Human
nature does not travel alone on its path towards deification. It carries
along a part of the created nature wherein it existed. If man turns away
from God, the world joins him in suffering (Romans 8: 19 – 22). This
reveals the meaning of man’s capacity and obligation to exert his “rul-
ing” over the earth, being fully accountable for the destiny of the
work of God’s hands (cf. Genesis 1: 28). Through creation, man be-
comes king of creatures, priest and steward, all of which indicate that
he must show affection for the things making up the surrounding world;
a king without love for his subjects becomes a tyrant, a priest becomes
a mercenary, while a stewards turns into a robber. Man’s dignity, con-
ferred through the creation, is to make creation perfect by opening it to
God, by sanctifying it and by his own deification.
5. Life-giving Earth
God embedded a unique inner power in the earth, which has produced,
in cooperation with God, highly evolved forms of life. Possessing the
10
Emmanuel Clapsis, Orthodoxy in Conversation. Orthodox Ecumenical Engagements,
WCC Publications, Geneva, 2000, p. 210.
11
M. Polany, Personal Knowledge, Towards a Post-critical Philosophy, Routlege and
Kegan Paul, London, 1978, p. 118.
192 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
power to make the land bring forth vegetation and life, the Jewish peo-
ple understood that land belonged to God and was not meant as an ob-
ject of trade: “The land must not be sold permanently, because the land
is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants.” (Leviticus 25: 23) God’s
control of the earth is the doctrine that links theology to economy. God
created the earth and everything on it, loves it and guides it towards the
heights of divinity, making it more than a mere object.
At creation, the earth received the power to bring into being mar-
vels of life and such beautiful things as the myriad creatures, scents,
colour and shapes (Genesis 1: 11). As it constituted the basic element of
man’s materiality, the earth is treated as being “someone” and receives
God’s gifts, as gifts can only be given to a person.
God’s Kingdom itself is established on earth, according to the
heavenly model, as indicated in the Lord’s Prayer and matter will even-
tually make up the “new earth”. From the first to the last chapter of the
Holy Scripture the earth goes from non-existence to transfiguration.
Considered in all its complexity, the earth appears as a huge organism,
a mystery that enables the human being acknowledge God’s power,
mercy, love and goodness. In some prayers, the earth is personified12,
becoming “the compelling visible symbol of the great work by which
God shares his love”13.
Through the making of man of earth, by God’s hands, dust be-
comes a part of the human being. Man is earth in the most concrete
sense of the word, due to his own perishable nature. Yet man is much
more once we see that he is perpetually in motion: work, nourishment,
knowledge, contemplation, sacrifice, science. By knowing earth, man
gets to know himself, as he is the bodily self and one with the whole
universe. The earth therefore “grows” together with man, through love
and respect. Man tends to miss this point and take things for granted.
12
A prayer said in times at danger from earthquake shows earth suffering under man’s
attack and crying out: “Why do you all pollute me with so many evils?”
13
Scott McCarthy, Creation Theology: An Earth-Centred Theology of Worship, San
Jose, Resource Publications, 1987, p. VII.
XI. “The Earth Is the Lord’s, and Everything in It!” (Psalm 24: 1) 193
Earth is so present that man fails to notice it. One can make a reference
to the imaginary documentary A Chairy Tale, by Norman McLaren and
Claude Jutra14, in which the chair refuses to allow any person to sit in it
so long as they are occupied with other things (reading, eating) and do
not pay any attention to it. Only when the person understands how im-
portant the chair is for them, does the chair allow them to sit and the
two become one. By the same token, man and earth were created for
shared existence and assistance towards the transfiguration through
grace. Every major event in the life of mankind has also involved the
life environment.15
After the fall, the tension between the natural world and the hu-
man nature replaced harmony: man began to dominate and exploit the
earth beyond his own needs, which he interpreted in a hedonistic man-
ner, a passion that is a point of reference in the history of humanity.
Corruption and disintegration were ultimately expressed by decay and
death, when the earth again receives man. Fear of death has caused men
anguish, anxiety, hatred and despair. The need to evade death has
caused them to seek refuge even more intensely in the material ele-
ments, which in the end generates life not death. Disorder has taken
various forms characteristic to each period of history, economic exploi-
tation, racial oppression, social injustice, war and genocide being all the
consequences of the fear of death and the collective signs of its pres-
ence in human nature.
Modern man manifests his position in relation to earth in two
ways. Outwardly, through the desire to dominate it by science and
technology, seeking to extract ever more from earth as part of the proc-
ess inaptly named “development”. The motivation presented is that
productivity is required to feed the ever-expanding population. In real-
ity, development only benefits a limited number of people who have
14
A Canadian production, known as Il était une chaise in the French version, first staged
in 1957, still broadcast and distributed owing to its powerful message.
15
One could mention the catastrophic flood, when all the created beings were punished.
(Genesis, chapters 6-9)
194 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
fundamental role in maintaining life and the serious issues caused by the
lack of water. Water is a central issue for the United Nations and the
worldwide Church fora that affirm the right to water of all people and
the risks entailed by the recent phenomenon of “privatisation of wa-
ter”.19 From a theological point of view, water is not an inextinguish-
able means that ensures a comfortable life, but a resource that must be
shared equally among all people. Orthodoxy has a rich liturgical ritual
that features water, which it blesses and regards as the symbol of the
Life-giving Spirit Itself.
In the Holy Scripture, water is very often present at the crucial
stages of the history of Salvation that one may speak about an actual
“theology of water”. One ought to mention two examples in the New
Testament where water holds a central place. The first is Christ’s meet-
ing with Nicodemus (John 3: 1 - 21), when water is said to be the only
material element that mediates the entry into life eternal. The second is
Christ’s encounter with the Samaritan woman (John 4: 4 – 42), where
water is said to be “alive”, and the well, deep.20 Water is alive when
drawn from the depths of earth and kept in stone-walled wells.21 Re-
searchers have shown that when water loses its curative qualities and
even the freshness that quenches thirst when it does not go through the
19
At The Fourth Assembly of the European Christian Environmental Network at Volos,
Greece, in 2003, water was the general theme. The same topic was dealt with exten-
sively at the 9th General Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Porto Alegre,
Brazil, in February 2006, where it was shown that the privatisation of water utilities
has tremendous social consequences, leads to displacement of people and is an attack
on the dignity of the human person. There is even an International Water Convention
set up by the United Nations.
20
Olof Alexandresson wrote a book with the title Living Water (Gateway, Bath, 1982),
an introduction to to Viktor Schauberger’s discoveries, which show the phenomenal
properties of water, which mankind is hardly aware of. Water “lives”, emits reactions,
“feels” and “dies”. See also Masaru Emoto, Mesajele ascunse din apă. Puterea rugă-
ciunii, translated into Romanian by Laura-Corina Miron, Ed. Adevăr divin, Braşov,
2006, p. 18 sq.
21
Bartolomeu Valeriu Anania, Apa cea vie a Ortodoxiei [The living water of Or-
thodoxy], Editura Renaşterea, Cluj Napoca, 2002, p. 49.
196 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
7. The restoration of nature: Christ and the Holy Spirit in the world
God’s care for the universe was made manifest in the pouring of the
Spirit out in the creation. The Spirit was present from the beginning
over the waters, and the prophet Joel proclaimed to his contemporaries:
“I will pour out my Spirit on all people; your sons and daughters will
prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see
visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my
Spirit in those days.” (2: 28 – 29) This is a testimony of the profusion
of the Spirit in the world.
The Son of God in His turn, when the times have reached their
fulfilment, becomes incarnate in order to restore the world to life,
22
Masaru Emoto, op. cit., pp. 101-102.
23
Rugăciunea la sfinţirea apei, Aghiazmatar [Prayer for the blessing of the water, in
the Small Euchologion], EIBMBOR, 1992, p. 179.
24
Rugăciunea de sfinţire a apei la Botez [Prayer for the blessing of the water at Bap-
tism], op. cit., p. 33.
XI. “The Earth Is the Lord’s, and Everything in It!” (Psalm 24: 1) 197
The text provides several enlightening conclusions for our topic: what
we have is the gift of God’s goodness; man’s duty is to cultivate, God is
the multiplier; man must take from nature only what is needed and only
when needed (the crowd were hungry); man must make a minimal con-
tribution (five loaves and two fish is nothing compared to the quantities
needed to feed several thousand people); Christ does not create out of
nothing, because the act of creation was complete; God’s gift must be
received carefully and orderly (the people sat down on the grass in groups
of hundreds and fifties. Cf. Mark 6: 40 and Luke 9: 14); after receiving
the gift man must not waste what is left over, for everything that comes
from God is given out of generosity and is not intended to be wasted.
loves someone else, one desires that the subject of one’s love live for
ever. Extrapolating, one could say that if one loves nature, one helps it
to live eternally. There is much discussion about safeguarding the crea-
tion and specific ways and means are sought. What would be the reason
why something needed to be saved? There is only one answer: love, for
one cannot save that which one does not love.
Besides the role of servant, man is asked to be a king of creation.
A good king is one who loves his subjects, otherwise, sooner or later,
they will revolt against their lord. “Man the king” was not commanded
to subdue nature through humiliation or for fulfilling his own selfish
desires. Ruling over the earth means guiding it towards God, not claim-
ing it for oneself. Ruling involves moral and spiritual transformation
that should mainly concern the self.
Man is also called to be a priest of creation, in that he should
bring as sacrifice, purify and offer to be sanctified everything that is
material. He talks with God on behalf of all creatures. The Orthodox
tradition manifests this dimension through the cultivation of “theocen-
trism” in all the expressions of religious life. “Theocentrism” is the sign
of the freedom of the human person to choose a road that was different
from Adam’s, a guarantee of genuine repentance. As a priest, man humbly
accepts primarily God’s authority. It is not unintentionally that every
consecration prayer in the Orthodox tradition includes a secret part
when the priest performs an act of individual repentance, of forgiveness
and humility before approaching the matter that is to be transformed so
that the Holy Spirit should purify him and afterwards the gifts or the
matter. Only when in a state of repentance can man become a recepta-
cle of the divine activity within creation. The Church has preserved in
its liturgical life a special attitude towards matter, raising the awareness
of the faithful of the true purpose of matter. This is best reflected in the
formula used when offering the Eucharistic gifts of the bread and wine
to God, when the man, on behalf of the creation says: “Your own of
Your own we offer You, in every way and for everything!”
200 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
their evangelic value only when they lead to the practice of virtue (Acts
2 and 4) and the cultivation of the common good.
and for a more moderate style of life are either ignored or suppressed31,
as science has been subjugated by economy. Biotechnology and genetic
engineering cannot be rejected since they can bring new insights in the
fight for life, if they are approached in the light of the Holy Spirit be-
cause without proper knowledge of the transcendent vocation and of the
spiritual nature of mankind the new techniques can lead to biological
imbalances that can cause mutations with disastrous effects for the exis-
tence of life on earth.
Human creativity and freedom are positive so long as they are
rooted in the divine wisdom. According to Rev. Prof. Dumitru Popescu,
the problem of modern man lies in the pathological need for autonomy
in relation to God. Man has created his won secularised culture whose
ideal is to subdue nature for selfish purposes. It is important to realise how
humanity, in 80,000 years of earthly existence, did not change the envi-
ronment as irreversibly as it has in the last 200 years of industrial devel-
opment. Secularised culture has been accompanied by certain theologies
that have made a radical separation between the natural and the supra-
natural, mistaking transcendence for God’s absence from creation, even
before the establishment of the principles of the Enlightenment.32
The restoration of creation today means above all sincere and un-
conditional repentance and the determination to put into practice a new
31
There is the notorious case of the Rosia Montana exploitation in the Western Carpa-
thians, Romania. Yet there are many other cases. For example, around Lake Victoria
in Africa, there used to live tribal communities with ancient traditions and culture
who relied on fishing. With the arrival of the big Western industrial fishing compa-
nies the social and natural ecosystem was destroyed, which forced the native inhabi-
tants to migrate. The local culture was wiped out for economic reasons, and there was
poverty, depletion of the lake’s fish population and pollution of the water because of
excessive industrial activity.
32
Dumitru Popescu, Toward an Orthodox Ecological Education: Theological and
Spiritual Principles, manuscript, p. 3. Cf. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theol-
ogy, vol. II, translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, T&T Clark Ltd, Edinburgh, 1993:
“Man’s separation from religion occurred as early as the 16th-17th c. Faith in a simple
and transcendent God of the Bible led in fact to the de-divinisation of nature and to it
being transferred to us to rule over it”; p. 204.
XI. “The Earth Is the Lord’s, and Everything in It!” (Psalm 24: 1) 203
life style that should be accepted and applied by the whole of humanity.
The contemporary world must first acknowledge the abuse and the mis-
takes it has committed in its relationship with the environment, put an
end to them, reassess its attitude towards nature, which should be
united, just as the relationship between the soul and the body are in the
human being, and realise that ecology is more than simple conserva-
tionism. Pollution can be, if not stopped, at least reduced, since the life
of the planet itself is at stake.
after confiscating them from private owners after 1947. Given the new
context of freedom, the state must cede back to the rightful owners their
former property, forests included. Restitution causes difficult problems,
as it involves the disbandment of certain structures within the ministry
for Agriculture and Forestry, which affects certain political interests.
Communist mentality, according to which the state has full ownership
of property and distributes it as it wishes, still persists in the minds of
the country’s leaders. The mentality is all the more obvious when the
religious denominations are involved. The Church is viewed as an insti-
tution that delivers religious services and does not need any possessions.
On the other hand, the Church believes that in order to fulfil its social
role it must have access to certain resources, among them the forests,
which can be a source of financing for heritage sites and disadvantaged
parishes and monasteries.
In addition to the political aspect (the great majority of the elec-
torate is Orthodox, which is why, in the politicians’ view, any endorse-
ment from the Church guarantees votes during elections) the forests
have become the target of economic interests, even within the national
authority charged with managing forests. After 1990, Romania has
dealt with large-scale selling of forest land and deforestation, massive
timber exports at incredibly low prices, all for the benefit of business-
persons for whim the forests constitute just a source of income. These
issues featured extensively in the media and eventually more strict
regulations on forestry exploitations were adopted (the Forestry Law
was only passed in 2006), yet irrational deforestation during 15 years
has led to climate change and unprecedented landslides.
An example of economic greed, which the authorities still con-
done, is a famous gold mining project in the Western Carpathian Moun-
tains, an area with featuring the most diverse forest species in Romania
and millenarian traditional settlements. The project at Roşia Montană is
intended to create a gold mining facility that would result in the reloca-
tion of more than 10 villages, the demolition of churches, the digging
out and translocation of a whole mountain slope and the discharge of
250 million tonnes of cyanide in the earth to extract gold from the ore.
206 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
spiritual father urged his disciples to love the trees; this must be a con-
cern for all the inhabitants of the earth. Otherwise, we can state together
with the specialists that, unless practical solutions are applied to rejuve-
nate forests and save the diversity of their ecosystem, the death of the
forests is the tip of the iceberg that announces a planetary catastrophe.
only at the institutional level but in all of society.35 There are also church
bodies such as the European Christian Environmental Network (ECEN),36
which promotes ecological initiatives at institutional levels.
Orthodoxy can shape environmental education through its teach-
ings on the divine energies, present in creation, and the eschatological
destiny of matter. Eschatology has played a major role in Eastern theo-
logical developments and can help one find solutions to the concrete
issues of governing the material world. Orthodox eschatology has a
realistic outlook compared with later, alarmed and absolutist, escha-
tologists, due to the fact that it makes use of history and cosmology.37
Orthodox Christianity considers that every opportunity must be used to
act so as to encourage the community to pay more attention to non-
polluting science and technologies that are intended to facilitate the
process of restoring the integrity of the earth. The key moment of the
Revelation was Christ’s first coming and his restoration of the human
nature; it is time that the human nature in its turn restored the environ-
ment given to it to inhabit so that it can return it to God.
It is not an easy task to propose a Christian life style, modest,
confined to the bare necessities, without extravagance, modelled on that
of the Church Fathers. Nevertheless the concern for the preservation of
the creation must constitute a permanent injunction to Christians to
practise discipline and the spiritual renewal appropriate for a Christian
life, regardless of one’s social standing.
Devout Christians must see the world as their home and each
person as their brother or sister whom Christ loves. Mass education of
mankind in the spirit of responsibility for the creation is still treated
superficially.38 There are no methods and practices that can determine
35
See www.unece.org.
36
See www.ecen.org.
37
Adrian Lemeni, op. cit., p. 511.
38
Certain churches, such as the Roman Catholic Church in Italy, frequently organise
meetings on ecological issues, while the National Service for Cultural Projects of the
Catholic Church published a book, Responsabilitá per il Creato, Elledici, 2002.
XI. “The Earth Is the Lord’s, and Everything in It!” (Psalm 24: 1) 209
regular day in the life of a faithful used to begin with the morning
prayer, and included work in the field that delivered their livelihood,
thanksgiving prayer for every meal and harvest received from God,
family life and participation in the life of the parish community, and
finally the prayer giving thanks for all of God’s gifts of the past day and
asking for peace for the night to follow.
Christianity advocates moderation in everything as it does not
regard accumulation of goods as a vocation, as does the modern man. It
seeks to preserve the boundary between nature as object of human ex-
ploitation and nature as an illusion, asserting that nature is the means by
which man can gain access to the life eternal. The patristic teaching on
the issue is clear-cut: nature is not a “thing”: it is similar to] a being that
cooperates with another nature, that is man.41
Asceticism represents the austere side of the care for the environ-
ment, in conjunction with the focusing of attention on God and the spiri-
tual growth. Its message is simple: it is not man who should rule over the
earth but God, a situation that would be greatly beneficial to man.
“The image of God” in man does not refer only to man’s soul,
but also to his body. Asceticism as an attitude towards matter has been
practised ever since early Christianity, having a twofold significance:
restraint from indulging into the desires of the body as the effects of
dissipation, the strengthening of the will to reject individual desires,
gladly accepting what is pleasing to God. A disciple’s daily obedience
of his spiritual father or of the abbot is an act of will focused on what
the disciple does not want (unwillingness) but accepts for the sake of
higher ideals. The aim of asceticism is to fortify the will, discipline the
spirit and the body, dominate the passions and break with anything ma-
terial, rejecting what is negative, in order to restore the human nature
according to the edenic model.
Alongside abstention from things that are not spiritually benefi-
cial, the ascetic intensifies the spiritual and liturgical practice, in a con-
stant state of thanksgiving to the Lord for everything that He has given
41
Emmanuel Clapsis, Orthodoxy in Conversation..., pp. 209 – 215.
XI. “The Earth Is the Lord’s, and Everything in It!” (Psalm 24: 1) 211
to the world. That is why the monk spends much of his time praying
and contemplating. The moderation that he exercises is the normal state
that Adam had to respect in the Garden of Eden. This is the understand-
ing of the statement that the monk bears the “angelic face”.
Beyond the strengthening of the will and the practising of disci-
pline, a monk’s temperance is also a token of respect for the creation
which he does not exploit excessively; he only takes what nature offers.
It is not a case of abhorrence of anything material, but rather a different
understanding of divine gifts. In many cases the ascetic achieves perfect
harmony with the wilderness and the beasts, which seem to be respon-
sive to his spiritual message. Drawing on reason and will, the ascetic
makes the world serve spiritual ideals such as the control of passions
and primitive desires related to property, reproduction and pride (I John
2: 16). What matters to the ascetic is not his own life, but his relation-
ship with God and his neighbours for the sake of the eternal life and the
constant state of thanksgiving to the Creator, which has caused certain
theologians to refer to man as “homo eucharisticus” (a man capable of
thanksgiving).
The ascetic, therefore, forsakes the world dominated by man
without hating it or his fellow human beings, realising that the true path
is different. He follows the injunction of the prophet Joel: “Rend your
heart and not your garments, return to the Lord your God, for he is gra-
cious and compassionate […] He may turn and have pity and leave be-
hind a blessing – grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your
God.” (Joel 2, 13 – 14) The Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios called this
attitude the “ascetic spirit”, meaning a form of voluntary renunciation
and greater simplicity of daily life.
The ecological crisis, providing that it can be attenuated, can find
relief in the ascetic model. It involves the will of man to limit consump-
tion and possessions, not only food but any type of consumption that
exhausts non-renewable resources. The genuine distinction between
wanting and having is crucial, as it governs the relationship between
selfish desires and natural necessities. The place of man in the universe
212 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
can only be understood when he has the capacity to say ‘no’ to every-
thing that defines sin.
reveals its beauty. The saint is most able to perceive it, thanks to his puri-
fied soul. This was noted by the anonymous Russian pilgrim from the
19th century who felt his heart filling up with infinite love for all the
creation when, on his way through endless forests, he said the Prayer of
the heart: “When I prayed in my heart, everything around me seemed
delightful and marvellous. The trees, the grass, the birds, the air, the
light seemed to be telling me that they existed for man's sake, that they
witnessed to the love of God for man, that all things prayed to God and
sang his praise. I understood what is written in the Philokalia: to have
knowledge of the language of the creation.”44
The Eucharist involves effort and renunciation. To avoid the loss
of its spiritual dimension, the shared participation in the Liturgy requires
that participants are educated in a spiritual, moral and ecological sense
about nature, the monastic and ecclesiastical communities, their internal
organisation, the attitude towards historical monuments and natural
sites, the matter that is to be sanctified and given as a gift. Through the
Liturgy, the meeting with other people, worshipping, listening to the
Word of God create a sense of the sacredness of matter. The education
for the Eucharist can be an effective alternative for the temptations of
the modern world marked by violence, neglect of the community and
hedonism.
and renews the earth.46 This ideal is embodied within the life of the par-
ish and monastic community which best fit the idea of sustainable de-
velopment. They are organised according to religious, moral and ca-
nonical criteria withdrawn from the Bible. Such communities believe
that the rightful owner of the land is God, that land must be consecrated
and cultivated, that one must give thanks for everything and use it ac-
cording to rules and necessities (the guiding principle is the suppression
of the will) and share with the needy out of brotherly love. Monastics
do not work in order to amass riches but to give to the poor, they re-
spect God’s authority over nature, and the organisation, processing and
construction of their dwellings are in harmony with nature. From the
earliest days, those who have established monastic communities have
made sure that they do not affect the environment and misuse the avail-
able resources.
has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only
so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait
eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8: 19 - 23)
46
“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accor-
dance with the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and un-
derstanding. And He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His
good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will
have reached their fulfilment – to bring all things in heaven and on earth together un-
der one head, even Christ”(Ephesians 1: 7 - 10).
47
Mystagogia, PG 91, 657-717, apud Dumitru Stăniloae, op. cit, pp. 21 sq.
XI. “The Earth Is the Lord’s, and Everything in It!” (Psalm 24: 1) 215
nature as being in close communion with the human nature, from the
moment of creation until the Final Judgment that all will attend, be they
plants, animals or people. The world has a beginning and must have an
end, but its end must not be forced, determined prematurely, against
God’s will. According to St. John Chrysostom, nothing in the world is
evil except sin, because of which nature suffers and incurs God’s pun-
ishment. That is why, he wrote, “God is good and loves all people not
only when He pours out His blessings but also when he punishes. For
His punishments are blessings and show His care for mankind. So when
you see famine, plague, draught, flooding and storms in the heaven or
anything else that punishes the human nature, do not despair, do not
lose hope, but pray to the One who works and glorify His power. For
all these happen so that your soul may be wiser!” In other words, man
alone can determine neither the end nor the salvation of the planet, but
can return to God, acknowledge His rationality, goodness and love for
people and seek to follow His will and plan on behalf of the creation,
respecting his own dignity as priest, servant and king of creation.
In parallel with the political and social decisions of the European
bodies, the Church plays an important role in the education for the
preservation and transfiguration of matter, as it has done throughout its
age-old tradition. The notion of symphony from the Byzantine tradition
must not be limited to Church – State relations, but must extend to
cover the Church – universe relation.
The Church, as a divine-human institution, is called to fully take
on its formative and educational role. Thus, prophetically, it must voice
the realities of faith and proclaim the divine message as the instrument
that forms one’s opinion about creation, also showing its destiny. From
an educational point of view, the Church must teach the faithful to ap-
ply in their daily lives the care for what has been given to them as a
gift, showing concern for the future generations who are equally enti-
tled to a healthy life. In terms of communication, the Church is called to
link the school, the family, the parish, the non-governmental organisa-
216 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
tions and foundations and generally people who share particular inter-
ests. It must expand the model of education for moderation, specific to
Orthodoxy, which experiences fasting as a method to strengthen the
will of the person, to care for the soul and limit consumption in favour
of generosity and communion.
In the dialogue with other Christian denominations, Orthodoxy
can propose the integration of cosmology in the liturgical space of the
life of all Christians who have lost this dimension. Current EU facilities
can enable monastic communities to practise sustainable agriculture
and produce organic food. Education through pilgrimage can also be
promoted, by changing the mentality of tourists towards greater care for
the religious and natural sites and towards cultivating the observance
and importance of the Eucharist in the daily life.
Religious education is called to accommodate among its classical
themes the newer aspects of the theology of creation, not only the origin
of life from God, but also man’s responsibility for the created world, on
the way towards transformation.48 It’s not the apocalyptic panic that is
the hallmark of true faith, for the ages are in the hands of God, but the
effort to become responsible Eucharistic creatures.
48
The works of Adrian Lemeni and Doru Costache are useful and can provide a basis
for the act of reconsidering the meaning and the destiny of the created world in dia-
logue with science. An exhaustive bibliography is available at www.geocities.com/
ccistd/bibliographyro.
XII. A Singing Church: Art and Faith in the
Orthodox Lifestyle
An old tradition says that God spoke to Adam, in the Garden of Eden,
in such a harmonious and sweet voice that the later could never forget it
afterwards. After Adam, all people have been striving to rediscover that
harmony and to address Him by song, a superlative form of spiritual
elevation. This might be the reason why the faith in God is expressed in
singing by people who thus voice their desire for eternity, their daily
sorrows and their hope for a better future or for eternal life.
The Church members share in the life of the Triune God by three
means: through the word (singing or reading), through imagery (vener-
ating icon) and through communion (taking the Holy Eucharist). The
word is chanted and enchants a fact that has elevated sacred music to
unsurpassed stylistic heights. The earliest catechetical doctrines in the
Orthodox Faith spread among the masses through song. Singing facili-
tates the learning of dogmas and deeply touches everyone’s soul. Whereas
Orthodox icons have been called “windows to heaven”, Church music
can be named “the angels’ chant”. Singers have always been associated
with the angels who proclaimed Christ’s Good News, while during the
Holy Liturgy the faithful join the angelic hosts who “sing and pray in-
visibly”, as one reads in the prayer book. The aesthetics of icons and
the harmony of music take the people’s spirit higher, to feelings that are
hard to define in words. Thus Orthodoxy has become not only a “Church
of the word”, but also has a mystical component by virtue of its music
and the theology of the “uncreated energies” that source from the free
will to reveal of God Himself.
Feelings that cannot be easily expressed in words are magnifi-
cently expressed by ecclesiastical art: icons, poetry, and hymns. Faith is
not made explicit through exhaustive dialectic reasoning but is lived
naturally through art. Gregory of Nazianzus states: “One can only talk
about God in verses and hymns of praise”. Sacred music is different
218 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
from stage music; it does not cater to individual feeling but creates a
state of communion. In a concert hall, people sit without knowing one
another and “consume” music. In the Orthodox Church, attending the
liturgical life, people pilgrim, the role of music being to turn all people
into an Eucharistic body, and to participate in their shared communion
as brothers and sisters, children of a Father for all.
The ritual of the Orthodox Church is the product of a long and
complex evolution; it preserves much of the celebrations of early Chris-
tians and for this reason it may be described as archaic. It has three chan-
nels of expression: the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, celebrated daily
in monasteries and at the city cathedrals, and every Sunday in the parish
communities; the other sacraments or mysteries (Baptism, Confirmation,
Confession, Marriage, Unction and Ordination)1; and, finally, various
types of public offices, not sacramental, consisting of reading the Holy
Scriptures, reciting prayers and singing hymns and psalms.2
1. “Come and Pray!” – Instrumental Music?
Liturgy starts in every community, be it monastic or a parish, with a
call, the call to prayer which must be both powerful and encouraging.
The first call to prayer was addressed to the Romanian territories by the
“first called among Apostles”, Andrew, who preached the Gospel in
this part of the world. We can presume that from those ancient times,
the call of the community members to prayer was made with a unique
instrument, toaca (Romanian) or simandron, talanto, klepalo or seman-
tron (Greek). It is typical for the Eastern Church to use it along with
bells, but much older as an instrument inherent in the religious life of
the Church. What is a semantron? There are two major types of seman-
tron, the long wooden board struck rhythmically with one of two ham-
mers: the first type is held in the left hand, while the right hand is strik-
ing with the hammer, and the player walks around the church building;
the second hangs in a upper tower or by the church and is struck by two
1
For details on the way they are celebrated, see A Pastoral Guide to the Holy Mysteries,
Aquila, Cambridge, 2001.
2
Nicolas Zernov, op. cit., p. 239 ş.u.
XII. A Singing Church: Art and Faith in the Orthodox Lifestyle 219
wooden hammers. The handheld type can be of about six feet long, nar-
row with a notch at the centre for balancing, occasionally with holes
drilled at each end to improve resonance. The instrument exists in a
variety of forms. The suspended type can be thick and large, made of
wood or metal, or with metal nails onto the wood.
As for the significance of playing the semantron, some explained
exotically that it was used to frighten the vampires that might be lurk-
ing nearby the church or monastic site and keep them at bay. The fact is
that the rhythm of the semantron playing announces the hours of prayer
in an Orthodox community or announces weddings, social meetings,
emergencies or any other special situation in which they wanted to get
people to come from wherever they were scattered, from up the moun-
tains or from far distances to gather and take part in the event. The basic
rhythm played is based on the words similar to the sound it produces, in
Romanian and Bulgarian “Touka, touka, touka, touka, vsichki touka”
(Hither, hither, hither, hither, all come hither). In Greek it is a chant that
encourages the monks or religious to use their talents for the glory of
God: “To ta-la-ton, to ta-lan-ton, to ta, to ta, to ta-lan-ton”, “talanton”
being the Greek for “talent” or “weight”. Some authors say that the
sound the simantron produces is meant to remind the faithful of the
crucifixion, the hammering of nails: touk, touk, touk.
The semantron is, conceptually, another kind of bell. It may have
been used especially after the Byzantine ruling, when ringing the bells
was banned or simply because bells were expensive, whereas wood was
not. No special or fancy wood is designated for the semantron; it can be
carved in whatever is readily available, though some essences produce
a better sound. So, many churches or monasteries that could not afford
bells would use the semantron instead. Even when bells are on hand,
they are not always considered appropriate to the occasion. Semantrons
are sometimes used in lieu of bells, as a matter of protocol, and often in
conjunction with bells. Their play can be regarded as life-affirming,
having wonderful music qualities, that we can all appreciate and enjoy,
whatever our creed or practice. Remarkably, the semantron, simple as it
is, produces a symphony of sounds that is unique to Orthodox worship.
220 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
Instruments of this kind and their traditions are celebratory and can up-
lift people spiritually.
2. Human Voice – God-created Instrument
After the semantron’s call, the church service proceeds with the calls
and hymns raised by the human voice. Members of the Orthodox com-
munities express their praise to the Lord, their joy and sorrow, extend-
ing to their fellow-people a permanent invitation to prayer or to sharing
in the church life. Religious music is recognised for outstanding aes-
thetic, theological and catechetic value. It is both beautiful and difficult.
In the Liturgy music plays the role of prayer, which it becomes; it has
no magnitude or instrumental powerful sounds (the Orthodox do not
have instruments in their churches), but rather gentleness and depth that
only the human voice can offer. Romanian Orthodox spirituality has a
rich legacy of sacred hymns, most of them of biblical content: psalms,
hymns dedicated to the Holy Virgin, chants created by the first hymno-
graphs and composers of the 4th century onwards as, for instance, Roman
Melodist (4 century), John of Damascus and Cosma Melodist (8 cen-
tury) Joseph and Theodore of Studion Monastery (8-9 century) or An-
drew of Crete (d. 726), and more recent Byzantine hymns by composers
such as: Filothei Jipa, Ioan and Radu Duma Braşoveanul, Naum Rîm-
niceanul, Iosif of Neamţ, Mihalache Vlahul, Nil Poponea, Visarion
Hieromonk of Neamţ, Macarie the Hieromonk (1775-1836), Anton
Pann (1797-1854) (who printed more that 14 books in his printing
house in less that 14 years), then more recently Ştefanache Popescu
(1824-1910), Ion Popescu-Pasărea (1871-1943), Ieromonahul Varlaam
(1808-1894), Arhimandritul Ghelasie of Bessarabia (d. 1854), Neagu
Ionescu (1837-1917) and Nicolae Severeanu (1864-1941), Amfilohe
Iordănescu (1870-1934), Anton Uncu (1909-1976) and many others.
3. Singing the Word of God
The Church has embraced the kind of music which corresponded theo-
logically and morally to her missionary purposes, specially the Byzan-
tine music, and rejected hymns such as the folk or heretic, theatre, pop
XII. A Singing Church: Art and Faith in the Orthodox Lifestyle 221
a famed cultural, political and religious hub of the Middle Ages. The
music composed in churches at that time was later known as “Byzan-
tine music”. It was most probably performed in the local popular Latin
language, later in old Slavonic or Greek, and was definitively introduced
in Romanian language at a local synod, as late as 1568.
Church music is a synthesis, equally universal and local, spread
worldwide from Byzantium, the former imperial capital. Politically, this
music constituted the main element of cohesion among the peoples that
recognised the See of Constantinople as the spiritual centre of Ortho-
doxy. It is the only way to understand how, after the fall of Constantin-
ople under the Ottoman domination, its music continued to stay and
develop within the local churches, such as the Greek, Bulgarian or Ro-
manian Church. The fundamental character of the Byzantine music is to
be performed vocally only. The singing is monadic, meaning that it is
sung by the community on one party only. Its melodic colour becomes
thus the essential component, to which, in order to avoid monotony,
one exercises other elements such as an impressive text, changing of
rhythms, specific melodic formulas, musical adornments creating an
ideal fusion between text and music.
Byzantine music has its own complex rules regarding composi-
tion and performance that may not be easily understood at first. It is
sober, does not seek to impress itself through exterior ornament, rather
it insists on the depths of spiritual life expressed both in its austerity
and its monumental construction. Such music has its own particular
types of hymns (troparia, kondakion and canon) and notation. Lately, it
has drawn the interest of scholars.
The Romanian term “cântec” (chant or song) is derived from the
Latin “canticum”, which refers only to vocal singing, be it secular or
ecclesiastical. It is assumed that carols were staged and sung in churches
in the earliest centuries of Romanian Christianity3. Their inspiration
was Mediterranean music, transposed into Latin, Slavonic or Greek
3
Mircea Păcurariu, Istoria Bisericii Ortodoxe Române [The History of the Roma-
nian Orthodox Church], volume I, Trinitas, Iaşi, 2004, p. 360.
XII. A Singing Church: Art and Faith in the Orthodox Lifestyle 223
Music books including the two parallel notations, Byzantine and Western,
made the old music accessible to all people who wanted to learn more
about it.
The study of music in the Romanian Orthodox Church has lately
been given more importance: classes of music are taught at every level
of theological schools; parish communities encourage young people to
take part on a voluntary basis in church singing, organising local con-
gregational choirs or simply joining the singing community upon the
celebration of the Liturgy. Ancient hymns have been reworked into
chants for choir performance. Such reworks have been produced by
Romanian composers for about a century, combining Western musi-
cal techniques developed over the centuries, namely harmony and po-
lyphony, with the Eastern musical style, where the monody of the 8-tune
musical system carries the entire semantic content of the words in the
chants intoned during religious services.
The reworks have a rich and beautiful melodic line, sustained by
simple harmony that manages to capture the specific modal nature of
monody, while polyphony is apparent in the subtle interventions which
animate, support, enhance or emphasise the content and the audience
meaning of words. Thus, these musical techniques serve the religious
feeling and the prayers specific to each liturgical moment, music acting
therefore as a mediator. The sacred music does not distract one`s attention
from religious feelings and states by resorting to overdone techniques.
progress for the nation, involved changes that asserted the role of the
Church in the emerging Romanian democracy.
The complex, time-tested and generous Romanian Orthodox vi-
sion, shaped by a millenarian tradition, deep contemplation and insights
into the meanings of human existence, and the lived experience of
community, service and justice, is a vision that, we hope, will play an
increasing role in building a new world, that will forever avoid the trauma
of the past century when millions perished and many more were silenced
and abused under de-humanised and God-less ideologies.
The Orthodox Church in general and Romanian Orthodox Church
in particular, are drawing on their recent painful historical experiences
and on the resurgent commitment to the biblical teachings of a younger
generation, and emerge stronger in a new social and cultural context
that poses both challenges and offers wonderful avenues for meaningful
change in communities and in personal existence. As people and com-
munities seek ways to adjust to the creeping consumerism, restricting
scientism, and controlling technologies, Orthodoxy, can proclaim, to
the Western world and to all nations, a message of renewed hope, per-
sonal dignity and abiding faith in Christ, helping to realise, here and
now, the Lord's call to solidarity and service.
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