Ashes and Flames

Rumänien in Europa
© 2012 Parthenon Verlag Alexander Rubel

Kaiserslautern und Mehlingen, www.parthenon-verlag.de
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
ISBN: 978-3-942994-05-7
Hergestellt in der EU
Layout: Bogdan Piftor

Umschlaggestaltung: Liviu Nichiţuş
Dan Sandu
Ashes and Flames:

Orthodoxy as Faith in
Romania
Parthenon Verlag
Kaiserslautern und Mehlingen
2012
Contents
Foreword ………………………………………………………………….. 7
Introduction ……………………………………………………………….. 9
I. Orthodoxy: A Living Tradition …………………………………………. 13
II. How the Romanian Church was Born: A Brief History of a

Sacramental Institution ……………………………………………. 25
III. Romanian Orthodoxy and its Call for Ecumenicity …………………... 65
IV. The Silent Side of Orthodoxy: The Monastic Ideal …………………... 89
V. Lay Persons and their Role in the Church …………………………….. 101
VI. “Seek first the Kingdom of God”: Higher Theological Education in

Romania …………………………………………………………… 107
VII. Bridges: Science, Theology and Religious Education in the Public

Schools ……………………………………………………………. 127
VIII. Romanian Orthodox Media: An Emerging Voice in the National

Media Landscape ………………………………………………….. 143
IX. A Church Is Called to Listen and Bring Relief. The Philanthropic

Vocation of the Romanian Orthodox Church ……………………... 147
X. Orthodoxy and Human Rights or the Universal Concern for Human

Life and Dignity …………………………………………………… 169
XI. “The Earth Is the Lord’s, and Everything in It!” (Psalm 24: 1).
Benchmarks for an Orthodox Approach of Eco-Theology ……….. 185
XII. A Singing Church: Art and Faith in the Orthodox Lifestyle ………… 217
Conclusions ……………………………………………………………….. 227
Bibliography ……………………………………………………………… 229

Foreword
Over the past twenty years, I have travelled around the world as a rep-
resentative of Romanian Orthodoxy in various heterodox environments,
in European and global ecumenical bodies; I have also been growing
together with the Orthodox Church in Romania, from my childhood
through adult life, since, in the latter days of communism, I tasted the
“ashes” of the faith which had remained after the red fire of commu-
nism, while afterwards I began rising again, together with Her, as an
ordained member of the Church, in a context of regained freedom. I have
felt her spasms, I have heard her sorrow, and I have seen her struggle of
rebirth in a new social environment featuring actors who to this day have
not escaped communist prejudice.
My experience prompted me to collect in a book several articles I
have written for various conferences, where I sought to capture how
faith, here represented predominantly by the Orthodox Church, can be
lived and witnessed at the beginning of the third millennium. The book
is not a comprehensive historical review but rather an appeal for an un-
biased understanding of Romanian Orthodoxy as a specific way of life,
and less as a religion, as openness to dialogue with science and the
needs of society, and as a chance given by God to a nation and every
member to fulfill their spiritual ideal.
Orthodoxy is unique yet takes on a variety of cultural forms, de-
pending on the setting where it has developed, and can achieve a syn-
thesis of worship and culture so that it matches the noblest aspirations
of the human person in any given social, cultural and geographical mi-
lieu. Orthodoxy is ancient but not obsolete, traditional but not tradition-
alist, faithful to the Gospel but not anachronistic, pragmatic but not
ideological, eschatological but not unrealistic.
As the book will show, Orthodoxy faced the longest and most
widespread suffering among all Christian forms of organisation, from its
beginning proclaimed by Christ on earth to the era of communist prisons
8 Foreword
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.
I would like to extend my gratitude, without mentioning their

names, in keeping with the Orthodox spirit, to all those who have in-
spired, encouraged and assisted me in preparing, developing, and trans-
lating these texts in a widely spoken language in order to raise awareness
of Romanian Orthodoxy among many of those who may view Romanian
Orthodoxy as being in a grey area.
Introduction
The Romanian Orthodoxy is a millenary tradition and staunch proclaimer of
Christ's message of love, justice and communion. The Church in Romania
has stepped into the 21st century with renewed confidence in its Orthodox
heritage and fully committed to respectful and mutually beneficial dialogue
with the State, with civil society stakeholders, and with other Churches,
denominations or religions. The ultimate goal of the Romanian Orthodox
Church in the new climate of liberty is to serve the Lord and live out His
teachings, thereby fostering the creation of a society built on Christ-like
love that upholds the rule of law and unwavering moral principles.
Romania certainly faces daunting challenges posed by aggressive
consumerism, economic and the financial crisis, political convulsions,
environmental damage and decline in morality. In negotiating the diffi-
cult terrain of the ever-changing post-modern world, Romanians now
find in the Orthodox Church a set of time-tested and clearly articulated
principles and a vision built on centuries of service and authentic living
of the faith, in keeping with biblical teachings.
All of this has prompted us to attempt to provide an admittedly
simplified overview of post-communist Romanian Orthodox Church, a
presentation that is not aimed solely at members of the Church and does
not serve political or group interests, but rather seeks to steer clear of
arid historicism, by offering a pragmatic and sociological perspective
on the role of religious people, communities and institutions in the con-
temporary Romanian society.
A point that we shall emphasise and demonstrate is that Romanian
society was built on a Christian foundation with the religious structures
playing a decisive role in the formation of lay government structures.
Originally highly uniform, the religious setup of the Romanian society
has experienced significant diversification in recent years, a process
that the historical, Orthodox church has viewed tolerantly. The most
difficult period in its history arguably spanned the four decades of
communist totalitarian regime, when government institutions fought
to suppress, prohibit and eradicate any kind of religious experience,
10 Ashes and Flames: Orthodoxy as Faith in Romania
including its organisational form, the Church. To general amazement,

the secularisation imposed by the communist system had the opposite
effect, so that, after communism collapsed in Romania, the Church
came to rank highest in public confidence, the Romanian society re-
maining until today one of the most religious in Europe.
The overthrow of communism was determined in part by an ob-
viously religious component, prepared over the years by representatives
in the Western Diaspora of nations in the former Eastern Bloc. The year
1990 marks the dawn of an era focused on building a democratic society,
guaranteeing respect for civil liberties and fostering progress. It has been
a transitional period, with numerous stakeholders, not only political
ones, being engaged in building democracy in the whole Eastern
European countries. The main institution that is called to effect change
is certainly the State, with support from opinion-shaping nongovern-
mental organisations, the foremost being the Church.
The resurgent role of the Church in contemporary society is due
to the fact that, prior to communism, the territory now occupied by the
Romanian people was a space of faith, where people felt an integral
part of the ecclesiastical community, not merely its servants or benefi-
ciaries of religious services, as is the case in secular societies. The in-
tensity of communism was tempered by the unprofessed presence of
faith within each Romanian and in family life, that were not structurally
affected by atheistic propaganda. It is an overstatement that in Romania
communism succeeded in destroying the consciousness of the people,
as it did in Russia, or that the Church was captive, as was the case in
Albania. Romania certainly experienced its own type of communism,
under which, the Church was able to proclaim the Gospel, despite hav-
ing to cope with various restrictions, whereas the proponents of atheism
were engaged in militancy rather than mission, as they themselves did
not believe in communist values1.
1
We must certainly remember the many priests and Church representatives that were
persecuted, tortured and killed in communist prisons. They were mainly harassed as
promoters of religious culture and as opinion makers. The demolition of churches in
Bucharest late in the Ceausescu era was a sacrifice of what the “great leader” viewed
as insignificant old churches for the sake of pharaonic development projects. One
Introduction 11
A majority of Romanian citizens are members of the Romanian

Orthodox Church, which also includes faithful of other nationalities
(Roma, Ukrainians, Moldovans, Bulgarians and others). The Romanian
Orthodox Church maintains dogmatic, canonical and worship relations
with all Orthodox Churches, and includes not only Orthodox faithful
residing in country, but also Orthodox Christians living abroad. The
Church has had a decisive contribution in educating and raising aware-
ness among the citizens who are in vast numbers members of Churches
and Christian denominations. In many respects, today, we witness a return
to the interwar model. Expectations for a priest have been the largely simi-
lar since the events of 1990: the scholarly priest, well-read and intellectu-
ally curious can emerge as a new role model for the Romanian society, as
was the case in the past. Yet if the priest needs deeper interdisciplinary
education, it is no less important that scientists themselves pursue a
richer theological culture, life of prayer and authentic spirituality.
The Orthodox Church therefore is neither a competitor to the State
nor its servant, even though some historians support such interpretations
of particular stages in the Church’s history. The Church can at most be
a partner of local and central government in programs to improve social
conditions and eliminate or mitigate social anomalies such as exploitation,
poverty and disease that affect human dignity. On the other hand, the
Church can and should be a critic of the state, when the interests of the
latter may not be in harmony with the ideals of the community it serves.
Romanian Orthodox Church History has been approached in dif-
ferent ways in modern times. Some historians incorporated the ecclesi-
astical history into the broader national history, viewed as an interaction
of historical events and geographical, social, cultural and political
elements2. In the mid-20th century, two parallel histories emerged:
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
one designed and propagated by the communist regime consistent

with Marxist-Leninist doctrine, proposed by “lay” scholars, the other
told by the Church, which sought to promote its own story, supported
by historians faithful to historical truth 3 . Nowadays, post-communist
authors, lay or religious, examine the more or less comfortable realities
of history, and their books command a wide circulation. 4
Romanian society is on a path of unprecedented change, hence the
opportunities, risks and dangers that the Church must confront, avoid or
build upon. They are accompanied by the sweeping expectations of a
society increasingly de-sacralised and hostile to all forms of institutional
organisation. In an increasingly “unchurched” world, the Romanian
Orthodox Church offers a perspective built on contemplation and en-
gagement, tradition and dialogue, love and sacrifice which are all ex-
periences that lead the community of faithful on the path of development
and ultimate salvation under Christ.
In this book, therefore, we shall explore and illuminate certain
relevant developments in the Romanian Orthodox Church, starting from
the assumption that the Romanian people has always had a natural in-
clination to the Christian precepts and values, to ecclesiastical disci-
pline and to religious life in general.
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.
1. Icons, Windows to the Kingdom of Heaven

Orthodoxy has become known in the Western world in recent decades
mainly thanks to the icon, a most complex expression of faith and artis-
tic sense for beauty and perfection. From an inter-denominational point
of view, icons and representation in general have been a contentious
area between Western and Eastern Christian Churches. Nowadays, this
divergence seems to be receding: in many Western churches, icons ex-
ist in more or less stylised form and offer an opportunity for different
faith communities to look at each other’s traditions and representations.
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
2. The Orthodox path

The word “Orthodox” means “right-believing” or also “rightly-praising” or
“rightly-honouring”, yet today its meaning in the Western languages has
come to be a synonym for: “traditionalist”, “old”, “accepted”, “conform-
ist”, “conventional”, “right”, “doctrinal”, “regular”, “fixed “, “official”,
2
John Anthony McGuckin, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doc-
trine, and Spiritual Culture, Wiley & Sons, 2010, p. 355.
“received”, “true”, “well-established”. Orthodoxy would mean, on the

one hand, a stereotypical tradition labelled as conservative in terms of
ritual, worship and liturgy, radical in the doctrine of faith, maximalist in
terms of asceticism and spirituality, patriarchal in ecclesiastical organisa-
tion and the rights of lay members.
From the perspective of the members of the Orthodox Church, Or-
thodoxy is a way of life that has been preserved and passed on for 2,000
years and applies to both lay persons and priests and monks, who share
the desire to enter into a relationship of perfect love and achieve a state of
eternal happiness. It defines a noetic approach to God, not only through
one’s mind, or merely through pietist meditation, but through one’s heart
and mind cleared of chaotic passions. If one accepts that the ultimate
value and purpose of man’s life on earth lies in the loving relationship
with God and one’s fellows, then Orthodoxy means entering into the
mysterious world of God. It is “the solution” that Jesus Christ proposes
for personally achieving this ideal and founding the kingdom of God
here and now, not in an abstract and elusive world.
In order to gain a valuable insight into Orthodoxy, it is necessary
to review some of its key features. As mentioned above, iconography is
specific to the Orthodox Church. It is closely linked to ecclesiastical
and spiritual life.
Another defining feature is the incessant epiclesis or the per-
manent invocation of the Holy Spirit, Whose descent upon the Apos-
tles during Pentecost marks the beginning of the Church on earth and
makes it the guide of any Christian as an individual and in the com-
munity. All services begin by a prayer to the “Heavenly King...”, call-
ing upon the Spirit to cleanse the mind and heart of those who start a
prayer or any daily activity. The bread and wine at the Divine Lit-
urgy, the oil, water, the candidate for priesthood, and man in general
are transformed through the divine work of the Holy Spirit invoked by
the priest. The Spirit communicates the invisible grace of God in daily
life, is a link between here and beyond. Only that which is achieved
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
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
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.
3. Ekklesia, the call to community

Building an ekklesia3 is to make oneself available to God, within a
community which is not initiated by a person alone, but is the result
of the joint work of several people determined to open themselves to
the call of the Holy Spirit, in keeping with the commandments of Christ.
The Apostle Paul speaks of sacrifice when he defines the Church:
“Continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from
the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and
that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which
I, Paul, have become a servant. Now I rejoice in what I am suffering
for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to
Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.”
(Colossians 1: 23-25).
The term ekklesia (church) did not originally mean institution,
but coexistence of those who believe, common service and shared
joys and rights. This is illustrated by the following description in the
Bible book The Acts of the Apostles: “They devoted themselves to the
apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and
to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and mi-
raculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were to-
gether and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and
3
The Greek word ekklesia (assembly) designates the worshiping assembly called forth
by God. The theological study of the church is called ecclesiology. It was first identi-
fied exclusively with the Christian community. Not until the admission of the Gen-
tiles did the distinction between the church and Judaism became prominent. There-
after, the word ekklesia applied to the Christian assembly alone. See A New Dictionary
of Christian Theology, edited by Alan Richardson and John Bowden, SCM Press,
London, 1996, p. 108.
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.
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.
4. Encounters with modernity and science

The Orthodox position to the awe-inspiring world is one of joyous mar-
vel, of giving praise to the Lord for the infinite opportunities for learning,
sharing and community that His creation offers. An Orthodox faithful
who is also a scientist, a theologian or a physician, while thoroughly
engaged in exploring and advancing knowledge, also appreciates the
mystery of the universe, of the earth and of the human mind and body.
One may argue that there is a tension between Orthodoxy, mod-
ernity and science, yet recently all have made significant efforts towards
rapprochement. Such tension is artificial in our view as conflicts be-
tween religion and science have not existed in the history of Orthodoxy,
and as Orthodoxy has never been against science. Indeed, there is no
martyr called “Galileo” in the Orthodox world. Nevertheless, because it
does not rule out the mystery of creation, Orthodoxy is often labelled a
supporter of anachronism in science. Orthodoxy is certainly critical of
certain sciences, but only of those which seek the absolute autonomy of
secularism, allowing history to operate accordingly and under the sole
control of the created creatures and not of the Creator.
Whereas for Modernism the world only means science, tech-
nology and social activism, for Orthodoxy matter and the body hold
infinite value, not by virtue of what they are but by what they become.
Man can have access to transcendence only through the body, against
the background of visible material and, therefore, the value of matter
becomes eternal. At this point, Orthodoxy meets ecology. From the
Orthodox standpoint, the secular should not be different from the sa-
cred, rather they must merge and blend to give meaning to the full-
ness of life.
While they may be separate or conflicting, the views of religion
and or science do not demolish or banish each other but instead are
complementary, as each proposes a distinct path to various areas of
knowledge. Indeed, the scope of dialogue between theology and science
is vast and encompasses topics as diverse as bioethics and medicine,

environmental protection, and the role of technology in human life.
Patriarch Daniel has set out to articulate and implement a vision
for the dialogue between faith and science grounded in the theology of
the Church Fathers, most significantly that of St. Basil the Great.
According to this time-tested model, science and faith do not substitute
each other they are complementary, as they contribute to knowledge,
without eliminating mystery. As Patriarch Daniel observed, “scientific
exploration of outer space, and philosophical reflection that seeks to
embrace and illuminate the secret space of the human person, and the
overarching focus on human community as a space of solidarity and
joint action of the people, prove to be meaningful in terms of spiritual
life, as human endeavours that seek explanations for the spirituality of
the world and gain a sense of meaning.”6
What Orthodoxy calls for is a commitment by science to recog-
nise the intrinsic value of human ethics, morality, aesthetics, personal
talent and of religious experience which can never be pigeonholed,
quantified or reduced to scientific formulas. It affirms the value that
sciences, religion, spiritual and artistic experience all hold in promoting
human knowledge and development, a concern shared equally by the-
ology, social and natural sciences.
Reflecting its commitment to dialogue and exchange the Roma-
nian Orthodox Church has initiated and expanded a number of projects
organised jointly with the state Universities in the capital Bucharest
and in Iasi, which include post-graduate courses and summer schools
delivered by outstanding scholars in such diverse fields as physics,
chemistry, information technology, ethics, sociology, economics,
philosophy, and Orthodox moral, social and pastoral theology. Such
6
Patriarch Daniel, Towards Integral Knowledge, Message delivered on the occa-
sion of the fourth edition of the National Symposium on “The Dialogue among
Theology, Philosophy and Science”, with the theme “The reality and meaning of
space – a theological, philosophical and scientific”, 29 September – 02 Octom-
ber 2011.
postgraduate programmes and short courses bring together scholars,

scientists, researchers, students, teachers and priests to foster debate
and exchanges on interdisciplinary topics, the ultimate aim being to
disseminate and replicate the conclusions and experiences of such
exchanges in academia, in secondary schools, and in parishes, whether
in larger cities or in remote villages.
II. How the Romanian Church was Born:
A Brief History of a Sacramental Institution
Although we explore the condition of the local Romanian Orthodox
Church, we will also attempt an overview in terms of its mission and
vocation, as integral embodiment of the one universal “Church”.
At the North of the Danube river, Orthodoxy has been in a per-
manent process of construction as ekklesia, spanning the period from its
emergence to the present day: first, there were the foundations of faith
established by apostolic preaching; then followed the period of Avar
and Slav invasions, which almost destroyed the Christian foundations;
it experienced reconstruction of 14th-19th centuries, when the local church
autonomy was recognised; the 19th century brought the formal recogni-
tion of the Church autocephaly (self-governance) 1 in the enlarged
Romania; at the beginning of the twentieth century the local church was
granted the dignity of a Patriarchal Church; it almost disappeared during
the communist regime but rose again from the ashes of the commu-
nist propaganda after 1989.
Emphasising the deeply-rooted elements Church-State relation-
ship in the Orthodox world, Patriarch Daniel, then the Metropolitan of
Moldavia and Bucovina, declared in 2005: “Traditionally, the Church-
State relations in predominantly Orthodox countries have observed the
Byzantine principle of symphony that is of harmony, understanding and
cooperation between two distinct institutions: a spiritual one and a
1
“Autocephaly signifies the right of a local church to be completely self-governing, and
elect its own hierarchs without the intervention of any other ecclesiastical jurisdiction
other than its own local synod. Autonomous status can represent a degree of self-
regulation lower than autocephaly, where the supervisory oversight of an older patri-
archate can still be combined with more or less complete local self governance in
day-to-day affairs. The word ‘autocephaly’ means 'head of its own affairs’, with
its own ruling synod. Such synods will be led by a metropolitan archbishop or a
patriarch.” John Anthony McGuckin, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its
History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture, Wiley & Sons, 2010, pp. 84-85.
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
the local monotheism,4 therefore more easily assimilated by most of the

illiterate population by simple oral sermons. Local traditions call St.
Andrew the “Apostle of wolves” reflecting the fact the Dacian symbol
was a wolf head. 5
The Roman expeditions of 101-102 AD, and 105-106 AD respec-
tively, led by Emperor Trajan himself, found a religiously sensitive
population north of the river Danube, where the Christian doctrines had
just been transmitted. Some veteran Roman soldiers were Christian, and
once released from military service, settled in the new Roman province
North of Danube, while their descendants remained after the withdrawal
of Roman legions to the South of the Danube, after the year 271 AD.
They were then joined by Christian traders and settlers, who docked in
the Black Sea ports. It is possible that in these territories Christianity
spread more quickly, as the Roman imperial persecution of the 1st and
2nd century AD was hampered by difficult access routes, linguistic bar-
riers and the mainly monotheistic Dacian religion, which may have fa-
cilitated the assimilation of Christian doctrines.
Archaeological and linguistic evidence demonstrating basic
knowledge of Christian faith prove that this authentic Latin Christianity
spread far beyond the Carpathian chain, up to what was to be called later
Transylvania. Complementing the metaphoric preaching of St. Andrew,
attested only by tradition, is the more plausible theory of “slow and
progressive Christianisation”, which led to cultural and social conflicts
between the locals who adopted Christianity and the migrant populations
who continued to belong to ancient religions. “Christianity came into
Romania not by preaching by a great missionary, ... neither by the
4
Daniel Ciobotea, “Elemente ale religiei geto-dacilor favorabile procesului de creş-
tinare a strămoşilor” [Elements of the Dacians’ religion favourable to the Chris-
tianisation of ancient Romanians], in Studii Teologice, XXVIII (1976), no. 7-10,
pp. 621-622.
5
Theodor Damian, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of Romania, in The Encyclopedia of
Eastern Orthodox Christianity, edited by John Anthony McGuckin. Wiley-Blackwell,
Oxford, 2011, p. 472. See an extensive study by Mircea Păcurariu, Istoria Bisericii
Ortodoxe Române [History of Romanian Orthodox Church], vol. I, Iaşi, Trinitas,
2004, p. 58-60.
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.
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.
each being granted a preliminary form of autocephaly, Wallachia in 1359,

and Moldova in 1401, from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Metro-
politans served as the closest advisors to the local ruling princes, their
episcopal sees located in the political capitals and the local Church
functioning de facto as an autocephalous one, as we shall see below.
Surrounded by Ukrainians, Russians, Tatars, Poles, Serbs, and
Bulgarians during the first millennium, Romanians have fought for two
essential goals: to defend the Orthodox faith from pagan religions, later
on Islam and Western Christianity and to safeguard territorial integrity
positively from covetous invaders. A fact that is hardly recognised by
historians, these local provinces constituted the main bulwark against
the Turkish or Tatar inroads into the whole of Europe. The most illus-
trious example was, at the end of the fifteenth century, the ruling prince
of Moldavia, Stephen the Great (1457-1504)13, who was called the “ath-
lete of Christ” by the Pope himself.
1. The Romanian Church in the Middle Ages:

Autonomy and Mission
In a recent study,14 Rev. Professor Ion Vicovan proposes a distinction
between the behaviour of the Church of the land as autocephalous and the
13
In documents of the time, he was celebrated as an athlete of the Christian faith. A useful
series of reference books on Stephen the Great, was published by Putna monastery: Atlet
al credinţei creştine, Portret în cronică, Portret în istorie, Portret în legendă [Athlete of
the Christian Faith. A Portrait in chronicles, history and legend], published by Putna Mon-
astery, 2004. Stephen the Great was canonised in 1992 by the Romanian Orthodox
Church. The main reasons that contributed to him being viewed as Champion of the
faith was his awareness and assertion of religious identity as glorifier and defender of
“Christianity” and his desire to establish places of worship not for himself, but for others.
He had 40 churches built in his name, yet currently there are data attesting 30 of them.
Attacks on the holiness of his life come from a loose intelligentsia, which lacks con-
stant religious concern, but believes it is entitled to opinions from its comfy position.
14
Ion Vicovan, Momente şi personalităţi din Moldova în drumul spre autocefalia
Bisericii Ortodoxe Române [Moments and figures of Moldavia on the path to Roma-
nian Orthodox Church Autocephaly] in the volume Autocefalia Bisericii şi mărturi-
sirea credinţei [Church Autocephaly and the Confession of Faith], Doxologia, Iaşi,
2011, pp. 503-525.
Romanian Orthodox Church autocephaly, only recognised formally by

the Patriarchate of Constantinople, in April 25, 1885. One could argue
that as early as the 14th century, the local church was organised accord-
ing to autocephaly criteria complying with Byzantine rules of organisa-
tion, from which the local Church inherited “the liturgical ceremony, the
sacred canons, considered as the second foundation of Orthodoxy, the
second criterion in addition to the dogma.”15 The political structure al-
ways mirrored church organisation, as two factors of cohesion in faith and
local culture. Thus, in 1386 the Moldavian Orthodox Church was organ-
ised as a Metropolitanate, during the reign of Peter Musat (1375-1391),
when the head of the Church was his brother, Iosif Musat, who would
officially become the first Metropolitan of Moldavia recognised by the
Ecumenical Patriarchate, in July 26, 1401. On this occasion, the Metro-
politan see was established in the same city as the capital of Moldavia,
i.e. Suceava, and in order to increase its prestige the relics of St. John the
New were brought from Cetatea Alba. Another milestone of so called
“autonomy before autocephaly” was the ordination of Metropolitan
Teoctist I, in 1453, by the Patriarch Nicodemus of Ipek (Peci), in nowa-
days Serbia. This move was motivated by the idea that, given that the
Serbian Church did not send a representative to the union Council of
Ferrara and Florence (1438-1439), it was regarded as the defender of
the true Orthodox faith, although normally it should have happened in
Constantinople. Therefore, what mattered for the Moldavian clergy was
not the place of ordination, but the authenticity of faith of bishops who
celebrated the ordination.16
The sixteenth century was a key moment in the history of the lo-
cal church, celebrated for the flourishing ecclesiastical art illustrated by
the painted monasteries in northern Moldavia. Beyond the aesthetic
beauty, the exquisite frescoes deliver a profound theological message.
15
Liviu Stan, “Pravila lui Alexandru cel Bun şi vechea autocefalie a Mitropoliei
Moldovei” [The Chronicle of Prince Alexander the Good and the old autocephaly of
the Moldavian Metropolitanate], in Mitropolia Moldovei şi Sucevei, XXXVI (1960),
nr. 3-4, p. 194-195, in Ion Vicovan, op. cit., p. 505.
16
Ion Vicovan, op. cit., p. 514.
They describe in images the theology of the Old Testament as a prepa-

ration for the incarnation of the Lord, the plan of redemption brought
by Jesus Christ, the seven ecumenical councils and the doctrine of the
Church within the territory of the Byzantine Empire or Moldavia. A
rough conclusion is that they benefited from high-level theological edu-
cation, presumably in local schools or seminaries, had a clear idea of
Eastern theology and identity and had a very well organised church life.
It is worth noting that by then some of the spiritual characters of the church
life were already represented with a saints’ halo including Daniel the
Hermit (some ten years after his passing away), though the canonisation
of saints was the prerogative of an autocephalous church.
In the seventeenth century, a council was convened by Metro-
politan Anastasie Crimca (1608-1617 and 1619-1629) at Suceava, which
regulated the local monastic life, without the consent of Constantinople.
In the same century, there was another Council convened in Iasi by the
ruling prince Vasile Lupu, hosted by the Three Holy Hierarchs Monastery
(1642), assembling representatives of all Orthodox Churches around the
world. They reviewed, corrected and approved the Orthodox Confession
(Expositio Fidei) written by Peter Moghila, Metropolitan of Kiev, of
Moldovan descent.17 At this time, the Metropolitan of Moldavia was
Varlaam, a highly educated bishop who was the only one to be pro-
posed to be elected as an Ecumenical Patriarch in July 1, 1639. He
also wrote theological Orthodox apologetic works to help the Ortho-
dox across the mountains in Transylvania to keep their faith, organ-
ised fundraising actions to help those under the Jesuit or Reformed
17
“Peter Moghila (1596-1646), the metropolitan of Kiev, wrote Expositio Fidei [Statement
of Faith], also known as the Orthodox Confession), a description of Christian Ortho-
doxy in a question and answer format. Tough this treatise had already been approved
by a Synod held in Kiev, yet two doctrinal issues were considered to be of western
catholic origin, namely the existence of Purgatory and the time of the transformation
of the gifts of bread and wine into the Lord's body and blood. Accordingly, Moghila's
Expositio Fidei was reviewed and amended at the Synod of Iasi by Orthodox scholars
of theology and the synod of bishops. It became the most authoritative statement on
Orthodox doctrine afterwards for centuries.” See Dan Sandu, Iasi (Jassy), Synod of
(1642), in The Eastern Orthodox Encyclopedia of Christianity, volume 1, p. 325.
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
unequivocally: “The Romanian Orthodox Church is and remains al-

ways independent from any foreign bishop, but keeping the unity with
the ecumenical Church of the East on dogmas.”20
Finally, the consecration, for the first time by the Romanian hier-
archs of the Holy Chrism, in March 25, 1882,21 triggered a tough response
from the Ecumenical Patriarch, who sent a letter of criticism to the
Holy Synod of the Church in Romania. The synod answered with a let-
ter composed by the highly esteemed bishop and professor Melchisedec
Stefanescu: “Gentlemen, as soon as I started to have skill and I could
use a pencil ... I learned that we have supported our strong national
faith, that our Church is independent, and this faith, we proclaim today,
was inherited. Those who have read history know that for centuries know
that we have had an autocephalous Church. When they came to us from
anywhere or from a Patriarchate with any claim attacking the autoceph-
aly of our Church, our Metropolitans and our boyars rejected them. And
be aware that in times past patriarchs wielded great power. Why? Be-
cause they were close to the Sultan... However, in those times, when
the Patriarchate had any claim on any right of our Church, it was re-
jected. And this has gone on continuously until today ... We were inde-
pendent within our own borders... The official document recognising
the autocephaly proclaims something that we all have long recognised:
Our church is autocephalous and in control of its destiny.”22 As we
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
shall see, the following Ecumenical Patriarch recognised the autoceph-

aly of the Romanian Church.
2. The Romanian Church in Transylvania

in the 14th - 18th centuries
As the province of Transylvania (Western part of nowadays Romania)
had been under the foreign domination since the early 12th century up to
the year 1918, we will explore its medieval history separately. There is
certain evidence that, in Transylvania – ruled by a “voievod” until
1541 – there were some Orthodox archbishops and metropolitans ever
since the first quarter of the 14th century. Thus, not long ago, an inscrip-
tion was discovered in the church of the Monastery of Ramet (county
of Alba) mentioning the name of bishop Ghelasie and the year 1377. As
soon as Alba Iulia became the capital town of the autonomous princi-
pality of Transylvania, when Hungary was turned into an Ottoman prov-
ince – the seat of the Metropolitanate of Transylvania was established
in this town (perhaps in 1572), where it remained until the beginning of
the 18th century. Here one can mention the pastoral service of the follow-
ing metropolitans: Ghenadie I (1579-1585), a supporter of deacon and
printer Coresi form Brasov; Ioan from Prislop (about 1585-1605), dur-
ing whose tenure Michael the Brave built a new cathedral and a metro-
politan residence in Alba Iulia (1597); Teoctist (around 1605); Ghenadie II
(1627-1640); Ilie Iorest (1640-1643); Simion Stefan (1643-1656),
during whose tenure the first Romanian edition of New Testament from
Alba Iulia was printed, in 1648; Sava Brancovici (1656-1680), who
fought the attempts to convert the Romanians or other people to Calvin-
ism. To honour their sacrifice in defending Orthodoxy, and according to
Bisericii noastre” [Bishop Melchisedek Stefanescu’s Contribution to the granting of

autocephaly to the Romanian Church] in the volume Centenarul autocefaliei Bisericii
Ortodoxe Române 1885-1985 [Centennial anniversary of the Autocephaly of the
Romanian Orthodox Church: 1885-1985], Bucureşti, 1987, p. 441. Cf. Ion Vico-
van, Momente şi personalităţi..., p. 524.
a conciliar decision, Metropolitans Ilie Iorest and Sava Brancovici were

officially canonised in 1955.
As soon as Transylvania came under the Habsburgs’ rule (1688-
1918), a small number of the Romanian clergy and faithful were obliged,
through pressure and deceit, to accept the “union” with the Church of
Rome (1698-1701), at the time of metropolitan Atanasie Anghel. Con-
sequently, a “split” in the Romanian Orthodox Church occurred, for-
mal only, as except for the acceptance of the papal primacy, all the
doctrine, rite and organisation of the Uniate Church23 remained un-
changed. Monks, priests and faithful that fought to defend Orthodoxy
included: hieromonk (priestmonk) Visarion Sarai (1744), who died in
Kufstein prison, in Austria, hieromonk Sofronie from Cioara, leader of
a peasants’ upheaval between 1759-1761, Oprea Miclaus from Salistea
Sibiului, who travelled three times to Vienna with petitions of the Or-
thodox Romanians and who died in Kufstein, priests Moise Macinic
23
The Romanian Church United with Rome, Greek-Catholic (Romanian: Biserica Română
Unită cu Roma, Greco-Catolică) is an Eastern Catholic Church which is in full union
with the Roman Catholic Church. It uses the Byzantine liturgical rite in the Romanian
language. It was formed in 1698-1700 when a group of Deans of the Romanian Or-
thodox Church acknowledged papal supremacy in the province of Transylvania. The
gesture was politically and socially significant, as the Orthodox Romanians wanted to
have the same rights as the Reformed, Catholic, Lutheran and Unitarian minorities by
accepting a religious compromise. However, it was followed by the acceptance of the
Roman Catholic creed, while retaining its married clergy and Orthodox Liturgy. Al-
though a return to Orthodoxy began 50 years later, around 1750, about half the popu-
lation of Transylvanian Romanians stayed with the new Church, which acquired an
identity of its own and even became an important repository of Romanian culture and
national consciousness in the Austro-Hungarian ruled province. It officially ceased to
exist in 1948 when, for reasons no less political than those that created it – it was forced
to dissolve and a great many of its clergy and faithful joined the Orthodox Church.
Philip Walters (ed.), World Christianity. Eastern Europe, Marc, Eastonburne, 1988,
p. 261. In 1990 it was given the freedom to come into being, organise and claim some
of its former rights and asstes. According to the census of 2002, their number was
737.900 faithful, 716 priests and 347 seminarians, according to www.bru.ro, visited
on July 10, 2012. Cf. Ernst Christoph Suttner, Das religiöse Moment in seiner Bedeu-
tung für Gesellschaft, Nationsbildung und Kultur Südosteuropas, în: Ernst Christoph
Suttner, Kirche und Nationen, Würzburg 1997.
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
3. An Independent Romanian Church in an

Independent Romanian State
The modern Romanian State was formed in the image and likeness of
the French model, i.e. on secular principles. However, one may argue
that the symbiosis between the national identity and the Orthodox faith
was an element of historical continuity, though government was not and
is not formally bound to comply with Christian governance principles.
Some of the first measures taken by Al. I. Cuza were against the Church,
including the secularisation of church assets and the elimination, where
possible, of the Church from the political and social sphere and the
transformation of clergy into public officers.
Under these conditions, sensing the risk of a definite rupture
between the Christian and the national ideal, the most famous Ro-
manian poet, Mihai Eminescu, was the first to label the Orthodox
Church as “Mother of the Romanian people”. This catchphrase was em-
braced by church representatives, who would publicly assert that the
Romanian nation was the product or a symbiosis of Latin language
24
The ethnical composition of these recovered territories, i.e. Transylvania, was so varied
that Romania after 1918 saw unprecedented ethnical diversity coupled with religious
diversity. This is then how the first germs of religious pluralism appeared in a context
dominated by the Romanian Orthodox Church which was elevated to the status of
Patriarchate, its standing in the Romanian state thus considerably strengthened.
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.
communion with other Orthodox Churches – but had the charisma of

particular service through the difficult historical moments of universal
Orthodoxy.26 The Church was recognised as autocephalous, i.e. it had
the right to have its own management and governance bodies. The head
of the Romanian Orthodox Church has the duty to recall in the Divine
Liturgy the Ecumenical Patriarch and the other patriarchs of the sister
Orthodox Churches. Namely the commemoration and con-celebration
of the “primates of autocephalous and autonomous sister Churches dur-
ing the Eucharistic Liturgy is the most intense affirmation of conciliarity,
i.e. adherence to the authority of the synods, and universal Orthodox
unity. It shows that Orthodoxy is at once local and national ecumenical
or universal”.27 The Metropolitan Meliton of Chalcedon mentioned that
“The Romanian Orthodox Church created a civilisation as a symphony
between “cultus” and “culture”, a synthesis that is neither Roman nor
Greek, nor Slavic, but typical Romanian”.28
4. The Church, a beacon of light in a dark era.

The Church under the Communist Spectrum:
the State prevails, the Church submits
After the Second World War, in Romania the government installed by
the Russian army was communist but the nation was Christian, which
prevented the Church from disappearing as a public institution. It was
26
Metropolitan Damaskinos of Switzerland, “Autocefalia Bisericii Ortodoxe Române”
[Autocephaly of the Romanian Orthodox Church], in Mitropolia Banatului (1985),
no. 5-6, p. 301.
27
Daniel, Mitropolitul Moldovei şi Bucovinei, “Aduceţi-vă aminte de înaintaşii voştri;
110 ani de la acordarea autocefaliei” [Remember of your Ancestors, 110 Years Anniver-
sary of the Granting of Autocephaly], in Teologie şi Viaţă, nr.10-12/1995, p. 17.
28
Address of Metropolitan Meliton of Chalcedon, delivered on 15 January 1977, on
receiving the Doctor Honoris Causa degree awarded by the University Theological
Institute of Bucharest, in Ciprian Dumitrache, “Recunoaşterea autocefaliei Bisericii
Ortodoxe Române şi urmările ei pe plan liturgic” [Recognition of Romanian Ortho-
dox Church Autocephaly and its Liturgical Consequences], in the volume Autocefalia
Bisericii şi mărturisirea credinţei [Church Autocephaly and the Confession of Faith],
Doxologia, Iasi, 2011, p 541.
impossible to imagine how difficult it was to be a convinced atheist in a

Christian nation, a lot more difficult than to be a practising Christian in
an atheistic regime. Romanians had an interesting combination of the
two: there were formal communists in a real Christian Nation and real
Christians under a formal Communist regime.
The Church acted as a bulwark that defended and sustain the cul-
tural and historical heritage of a people faced with the levelling and de-
humanising drive of communist ideology and practice. As the British
analyst Tom Gallagher noted, the “Orthodox Church was the only ma-
jor national institution whose inner life was not destroyed by the party
in order to conform fully with communist norms.”29
Communism was a time of trial and learning for the Church, like
in early Christianity, as churches mirrored ancient catacombs. The Church
certainly suffered from restrictions on its potential, its mission and ac-
tivities. Soon after the establishment of the communists, they believed in
the system and that made the life of the Church a nightmare. Communists
took control of the Orthodox Church and other religious denominations
after the adoption the Law on religious affairs30 of 1948. The Patriarchate
was supposed to operate under direct control of the communist regime,
the bishops had to be endorsed by the political authority, church assets
were confiscated to a largest extent, while the United Church or Greek
Catholic Church was dismantled by Decree 358/1948, its members
automatically becoming members of the Orthodox Church.
Religious leaders and priests experienced severe persecution, re-
sulting in arrests and illegal imprisonment, torture, forced labour and
killings, especially between the years 1958-1962. It has been ascertained
that around 4,000 Orthodox priests were sentenced to forced labour or
29
Tom Gallagher, Theft of a Nation: Romania since Communism, C Hurst & Co Pub-
lishers Ltd, 2005, p. 65. Gallagher goes on to note that at his death in 1977 “Patriarch
Justinian left 10,000 parishes adequately staffed and two or three applicants for each
place at the seminaries.”
30
On 27 December 2006, shortly before Romania joined the European Union, the president
signed the law 2006 on the Freedom of Religion and the General Status of Denomi-
nations. It is worth emphasising that for 17 years after the fall of communism the 1948
law remained in force.
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.
and was deeply rooted in the personal lives of millions of ordinary

Romanians. Church activity was officially hampered, but one-third of
the salaries of the clergy was paid by the state. In 1955, when the Church
of Romania celebrated its seventieth anniversary of independence, the
government made much fuss about it as a symbol of national pride. At the
same time, however, thirteen bishops and hundreds of priests languished
in Romanian gaols. From time to time the flourishing condition of the
church drew disapproving remarks from the central Soviet leaders, re-
sulting in periods of church demolition and visibly heavier oppression.
The state secret police, the Securitate, were especially brutal in com-
munist Romania, and there have been many examples of the suppres-
sion of individual dissidents, monks, and priests, which have amounted
to many bloodless (as well as bloody) martyrdoms in the course of the
last two generations. In 1958 there was a sustained crackdown against
the church, as the authorities took fright at the programme of renewal
over which Patriarch Justinian was presiding. Five hundred priests and
leading monks were arrested and subjected to the infamous communist
show-trials. Two mass trials were held, inflicting sentences of between
eight and twenty-five years in gaols and labour camps. The aspirants of
the women’s monastery at Agapia were taken from their college, and
sent en masse to a labour camp.”33
Exploring the same issues, another foreign observer writes: “The
year 1948 was a critical one for all the Romanian churches. A Commu-
nist government with its Marxist-Leninist ideology was then in full
control and a new Law of Religious Cults carefully delineated the rela-
tionships between Church and State. This law spelled out what were
considered to be the constitutional rights of freedom of conscience and
religious freedom under the Communist regime, and it established a
comprehensive – and at times ruthless – system of State control over all
the religious communities. The churches were under the direct jurisdic-
tion of what was called the Department of Cults, a very important agency
33
John Anthony McGuckin, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doctrine,
and Spiritual Culture, Wiley & Sons, 2010, p. 68.
run by a nationwide network of highly skilled personnel. This agency

had impressive resources at its command whereby it could be certain
that the religious legislation and a variety of even more stringent oral
interpretations, which often blatantly subverted the constitutional free-
dom of believers and their communities, were carefully monitored. In-
deed it has been considered little more than an agency of the dreaded
Securitate or secret police.”34
A relative “period of freedom” ensued after 1962, as the Church
drew the tacit allegiance of many lay intellectuals who did not collabo-
rate with the communist structures. They formed a new generation of
church historians who would not interpret the history in the communist
manipulating way, published journals of theology (though censored),
and objective history was written, compared with the “official” history
dictated by communist propaganda. Theologians were trained in high
quality schools fully financed by the Church, and were occasionally
allowed to travel and study abroad; therefore they published a new kind
of literature that the refined intellectuals would understand and inspire
them to support the Church. One of the most amazing religious events
in this period was the printing of the Romanian version of Philokalia,
translated and annotated by Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, together with some
of his most informative books.
Despite the many trials it faced under communism and earlier
pressures from transient Turkish, Hungarian or Russian military or po-
litical masters, the Romanian Church remained the repository of a
unique cultural heritage rooted in the Dacian, Latin, Greek and Slavic
civilisations.
5. Romanian Orthodoxy and the Burden of Freedom

Since 1990 the Church has sought to reclaim its status as the main driver
in the formation of the Romanian social consciousness, as the work and
mission of the Church transcends mere social partnership by virtue of
34
Pope, Earl A. “The Role of Religion in the Romanian Revolution” in the journal Religion
in Eastern Europe (REE), Volume XII, Number 2 March, 1992, pp. 1-18.
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.
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.
the Church is concerned, there is a need for profound theological reflec-

tion on the link between ethics and politics, between spiritual and so-
cial, between national and universal, between local and global. Special
attention must be given to the shared reflection on the nature and end
purpose of freedom, and also on the relationship between freedom and
responsibility in society today, and especially on the relation between
individual freedom and social solidarity.”39
In liturgical terms, 1992 is an important milestone as that year
the Romanian Church proclaimed 19 people as Romanian saints, and
their subsequent canonisation, highlighting the major role that it played
in society, in the midst of a flow of evangelists from overseas who
came into Romania as to a new destination of evangelism. The can-
onisation process still continues, and has led to the consolidation of the
Church as a contributor to the heritage of all Orthodoxy. The previ-
ous canonisation of 1955, under Patriarch Justinian was, for political
reasons, incomplete and limited. The event of 1992 can be considered as
a moment when the Romanian Orthodox Church acted as “national”
although it never had these prerogatives compared with the other 18
churches, denominations or religions recognised through the Roma-
nian Constitution.
Another achievement was the introduction of holidays honouring
Romanian Saints in the lay State calendar, especially the feast of “Bringing
of the relics of St. Andrew to Iasi”, in October 13, 1996. Soon after this
the Feast of St. Andrew (November 30) was declared a national holiday,
a prelude to the 1st of December when Romanians celebrate the unification
of Transylvania with Romania. The canonisations and other religious
events have given rise to a religious movement including national pil-
grimages, publication of religious literature, monographs of churches
39
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,
in Bucharest, 12-13 September 2005.
and monasteries, orthodox historiography, literature, theology, and so-

cial solidarity programs.40
The Church has also worked tirelessly to compensate for decades of
neglect of historic ecclesiastical monuments and abandoned churches,
rebuilding those that had been demolished by the communists, building
parish churches in the crowded suburbs of the newly developed cities
and towns, where the construction of churches was forbidden during the
communist era, the recovery of movable and immovable assets.
However, freedom of expression and organisation brought about
the opening of the Church to an increasingly secularised world. Church
perceives a danger in the import of secularisation, an indifference to the
religious and traditional cultural values. Secularisation also touches the
Church inner structures themselves making phenomenologists of relig-
ion to be critical, not always without reason, concerning the criteria by
which the Church seeks to become a public actor: “The source of inter-
nal secularisation of Christian Churches was their desire to be powerful
in the image and likeness of the State. To survive, Christianity needs to
understand not so much of its potential power, as the time of its visible
power has to stop. In other words, should the internal secularisation of
Christian churches to be destroyed. How? Metaphorically speaking, our
Fr. André Scrima said, get back in the catacombs. “Back” meaning to the
faith of Christians of the first centuries, when, as John Chrysostom says
(already in the fourth century!), altars were of wood, and the priests of
gold unlike now, when there are golden altars and wooden priests.”41 On
the other hand, Deacon Ioan I. Ică writes: “Conservative nationalism
and traditionalism became a corollary of faith that risks to discourage a
self-critical, philosophical and historical reflection in order to sustain a
confrontation with modernity ... Orthodox Christianity's spiritual potential
40
Iuliana Conovici, Ortodoxia în România postcomunistă [Orthodoxy in post-communist
Romania], Volume I, Eikon, Cluj Napoca, 2009, p. 326.
41
Patapievici, Patapievici şi Părintele André Scrima [Patapievici and Fr. André Scrima],
in http://artzar.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/patapievici-si-parintele-andre-scrima/, link
accessed on 14.02.2012.
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.
ethnicity.43 On the other hand, there is a developing national discourse

amidst spiritual monastic tradition, which states that salvation is a personal
undertaking. One must seek the freedom in the Spirit and brotherhood
of all with Jesus Christ, a way of saying that everyone is part of “God’s
people”. Key figures in this direction are Arsenie Muscalu44 and Savatie
Bastovoi.45 Finally, a special form of the national discourse on Roma-
nian Orthodoxy asserts its universal meanings, rooted in its early ap-
ostolic connections, specific local features and worship vocation.46
Besides the canonisation of saints and other achievements of the
Church in the lay society, the Church is being fully recognised as a key
player in the Romanian society, a partner of the State, enjoying the highest
confidence rate among all public institutions, well above the Army or
the Parliament of Romania. It was actively engaged in the dialogue with
other Churches and Christian denominations, especially with the World
Council Churches and the Conference of European Churches, but also
at bilateral level, the relationship with the Roman Catholic Church,
Romania being the first majority Orthodox country ever to be visited by
the bishop of Rome, in 1999.
6. Building a vigorous church to meet the challenges and

opportunities of the 21st century
On the internal arena, the Church consolidated its position especially after
the ascension to the Patriarchal throne of His Beatitude Daniel Ciobotea.
43
Metropolitan Bartolomeu Anania drew on Fr. Stăniloae’s idea, arguing that the two
notions, the Church and Nation can neither be divided nor separated and that the
Romanians are the bridge between Latin West by their language and Orthodox East
by their faith, which may become a state policy”. In Apa cea vie a Ortodoxiei [The
Living Water of Orthodoxy], Renaşterea, Cluj Napoca, 2005, p 34.
44
Arsenie Muscalu, Fărâmituri duhovniceşti [Spiritual Fragments], Aşezământul Vasi-
liada, Bucharest, 2007, p. 37.
45
“National consciousness” is not an absolute prerequisite for salvation, says Bastovoi.
See Iuliana Conovici, Ortodoxia în România postcomunistă [Orthodoxy in post-
communist Romania], volume I, Cluj Napoca, Eikon, p. 315.
46
Daniel Ciobotea, Confesing the Truth in Love, pp. 138-139.
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.
rural areas under the framework of EU Structural Funds and Regional

Development programmes. Projects include local development ini-
tiatives, setting up day care centres, social inclusion and sustainable
farming.
In the missionary area, the lay people are called to promote
the spreading and reading of the Holy Scripture and of the spiritual
books; to make missionary visits to hospitals, prisons, and homes for
children, elderly and families in distress; to seek and support persons
faced with spiritual and religious questions, in order to strengthen
their faith and participation in the church life. They also play a cul-
tural role, by supporting the acquisition and distribution of books
and icons, encouraging the community members to read books and
parish publications, encouraging, alongside teachers of religious edu-
cation pupils’ participation in the Divine Liturgy and other religious
services, and extracurricular activities which promote the Orthodox
Christian faith, supporting the setting up of chapels in schools set-
ting up and providing scholarships and aid to high-achieving pupils,
and for those from low-income families, engaging the intelligentsia
in the parish in the activity designed to promote the Orthodox faith
and Romanian culture.
As for the youth, the Statutes encourage young parish mem-
bers to: hold meetings with bishops, priests, theology professors;
offer books to the top students in the community, from welfare insti-
tutions or from challenged or problem families; support the parish
priest carrying out duties laid down by the Holy Synod or of the di-
ocesan Bishop concerning education, pilgrimages, trips and youth
camps.
Articles 135-139 lay out the social assistance structure in the Or-
thodox Church, another aspect that did not exist in the older Statutes
and even in the practice of the Church due to the rules imposed by the
communist regime, which claimed that in communist communities
there were no social cases and people in need.
7. Strong governance and increased communion:

because salvation is social and communal
Upholding the belief that salvation is social and communal, not isolated
and individualistic, the Church builds and relies on strong institutions,
rules and principles to conduct its work on earth inspired and driven by
the teachings of Christ and the experience of Church martyrs, educators
and theologians.
Salvation engages the actions of all the Church. The work that
each Christian is called to in order to attain salvation is ecclesiastical,
shared and lived out in the community. As Bishop Kallistos Ware ob-
served “We are not to set bounds to God's saving power, and it may be
that in His mercy He will grant salvation to many people who in this
present life have never been visibly members of any church community.
But, so far as we on our side are concerned, the appointed means to sal-
vation is always in and through the community of the Church.”48 The
Church thus emerges as an inclusive space and a community of minds,
actions and beliefs for all those who seek to become Christ-like.
The Orthodox Churches are hierarchical in their organisation. As
in all respective Churches, the Romanian Church serves the community
through the three major orders: bishops, priests and deacons. Beneath
this threefold structure are minor orders, including deputy deacons,
readers and clerks working in church administration. Each office has its
own ordination ceremony, a sacred ritual which confers both the bless-
ing of the Holy Spirit and the approval of the Church as a whole. At the
top of the hierarchy are the bishops who represent the highest source of
authority, as they mystically represent Christ ministering and serving
the world. From all the bishops of the Church, one is elected as the Pa-
triarch or head of the Church, with administration and representation
prerogatives. He is elected from amongst all the bishops, members of
the Holy Synod, the highest collective authority, and acts as the Presi-
dent of this decision making body.
48
Kallistos (Timothy) Ware, How are we saved? The Understanding of Salvation in the
Orthodox Tradition, Minneapolis, Light and Life Publishing, 1996, p. 68.
Under the Patriarch come the Metropolitans, the heads of several

dioceses, then the Archbishops and Bishops. They can all be given the
title of bishop in regard of their sacramental duties and powers, but the
more elaborate distinction has an institutional role. The bishops are
concerned with all aspects of religious life and worship. They oversee
churches and monasteries, ecclesiastical assets, including the charitable
foundations, church organisations and associations, hospitals or schools.
In their administrative roles, bishops are running all affairs in their dio-
cese, in harmony with the universal Church. They act as God’s represen-
tatives in the world, administering the sacraments and teaching the faith.
Quite early in the Church there was decided that the bishop should come
from amongst the monks, therefore they are unmarried and ideally celi-
bate. The patriarch, metropolitans and bishops are elected by the Holy
Synod by secret ballot vote, after consultation with the clergy and laity,
through church organisations, within a 60 day term from vacancy.
Considering the great number of official duties, the bishops man-
date some of their responsibilities to priests, a second order in the hier-
archy of the Church, though originally they only had the duty to assist the
local bishop in administrative and teaching matters. Priests have sacra-
mental duties in the parish community, being required to preach, teach,
lead the congregation and handle parish relations with secular or church
organisations. Unlike the Western tradition of celibacy, orthodox priests
are allowed to marry, which is in fact a prerequisite for a parish priest.
Humble village priests often also work farming land or teaching in the
local school. Matrimony also serves to keep priests and deacons closely
involved in their communities and aware of the joys and difficulties of
family life.
As for the deacons, they have rather limited sacramental duties,
and are expected to assist priests and bishops in their activities. Even if
women could be ordained as deaconesses up to the 11th century, today
only men are eligible to become deacons. Deacons most often work
directly with a bishop, acting as his secretaries, helping him in the cele-
bration of the Holy Eucharist or other functions.
The Romanian Orthodox Church is organised as Patriarchate,

with the title “Romanian Patriarchate” or the Patriarchal Church of
Romania. The Romanian Orthodox Church is governed by representa-
tive bodies, composed of clergy and laity, in accordance with the Holy
Canons, the provisions of the Statutes adopted in 2008 and other relevant
church regulations. The governing bodies are divided into two catego-
ries, central and local.
The Holy Synod has the highest central authority in dogmatic,
canonical and general church matters. It is composed of the patriarch,
who is its president, and leading prelates (metropolitans, archbishops,
bishops, deputy bishops and auxiliary bishops). In the time periods be-
tween sessions of the Holy Synod, any matters that may arise are exam-
ined and resolved by the Standing Committee, composed of the Patri-
arch and bishops in office.
Another body of the Romanian Orthodox Church, dealing with
administrative and economic matters, is the National Church Assembly,
composed of three representatives from each diocese (one clergy and
two lay people).
The chief administrative body is the National Church Council
comprised of twelve members of the National Church Assembly, one
clergy and one lay person from each metropolitanate. The central gov-
erning structure includes several specialised departments: the depart-
ment of theology and educational affairs; the department of social work
and philanthropy; the economic and financial department; the cultural
heritage department; the department of asset management; the depart-
ment for inter-church and interreligious relations; external communica-
tions department; the communications and public relations department;
the oversight and control bodies.
The local subdivisions of the Romanian Orthodox Church are the
parish, the monastery, the deanery, the vicariate, the diocese, and the
metropolitanate. Each of the subdivisions constituting the Romanian
Orthodox Church has the right to manage and govern itself independ-
ently of the other same-level subdivisions. Their elected representatives,
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.
8. Striking out on their own: the Romanian Orthodox Diaspora

Over the past three decades, Eastern Orthodoxy has moved from being
largely unknown to Western Christians to being a significant presence
in the diverse and unfamiliar religious landscape of North America,
Australia and Great Britain. With over 4 million members, the Roma-
nian Orthodox community abroad now boasts the third largest diaspora,
after the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Moscow Patriarchate. It in-
cludes the Romanian ethnics in countries bordering Romania. Prior to
World War I, the Romanian diaspora was organised and led by two
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.
Although communist authorities denied them any connection with

the country, the Romanian Orthodox faithful living abroad grouped in
two main church structures: the Romanian Orthodox Missionary Arch-
diocese in the United States and Canada, headquartered in Detroit and
the Romanian Orthodox Missionary Archdiocese of Central and Western
Europe, based in Paris. The latter managed, with difficulty, to become
part of the Romanian Patriarchate. The old US archdiocese founded in
1934 has not maintained administrative links with the Romanian Patri-
archy, becoming an Archdiocese in its own right.
While church activity was monitored by the Ministry of Culture,
and afterwards by the Religious Affairs Department, parishes were es-
tablished and became genuine landmarks in the life of the Romanian
church abroad (London 1964, Stockholm 1971, Melbourne 1972, Milan
1975, Madrid 1975).
Now, 23 years on from the fall of communism in Eastern Europe,
Romania is a member of the European Union and NATO and the Church
has engaged in unprecedented activity abroad reaching out to Romanian
Orthodox that are affiliated with other communities of the same faith and
encouraging them to return to the Romanian Orthodox Church.
The Romanian Patriarchate seeks to ensure appropriate facilities
and human resources for all its foreign branches. The Romanian Ortho-
dox communities abroad are supported with regular deliveries of books
and objects of worship, theological literature, vestments, icons and cal-
endars. The Patriarchate pays the statutory social security and health
insurance taxes and contributions. Furthermore, it grants scholarships to
Romanian students to theological schools abroad. All these efforts con-
tribute to the development of a dynamic schedule of ministry and reli-
gious education, and to the preservation of the faith, habits and customs,
and of the love for the nation and the Church.
The Romanian Orthodox Church has a right and a duty to care for
its faithful residing abroad, a point raised by its delegates to Pan-Orthodox
meetings and supported on historical, canonical and ecclesiological
grounds, recognised by foreign Orthodox counterparts. The principle of
reciprocity is to be applied whenever Orthodox believers settle on the
territory of a canonical, autocephalous Orthodox Church and wish to set

up communities, associations, etc. By virtue of the duty of care, the ter-
ritorial and canonical principle must therefore combine with the pas-
toral and cultural (linguistic) principle, since it is not the lands that are
shepherded by the Church but real human beings. The goal of Orthodox
inter-cooperation is the joint preservation of the true faith and fraternal
communion (without any constraints).
9. Romanian Orthodox dioceses abroad

In Western European countries two metropolitanates are now responsible
for the guidance of several million Romanians that have left the country.
Foreigners converted to Orthodoxy are also members of Romanian par-
ishes abroad. Following personal revelation, marriage with a practising
Orthodox or negative experiences they may have had in their original
churches, in recent years, many on the American continent, but also in
Western Europe or in Japan and Australia have come to the Orthodox faith.
One offshoot of strong Romanian migration to Western Europe
has been the strengthening of the relationship with the Catholic Church,
as Orthodox believers have been granted use of local Catholic churches.
This involves either shared, alternate use of places of worship or tem-
porary transfers of premises that Catholics no longer use.
Patriarch Justinian oversaw the establishment of numerous parishes
abroad in the early 1970 (in Australia, Italy, Spain, Germany, United
Kingdom, Scandinavia, etc.), while his successor, Patriarch Teoctist, be-
sides multiplying the number of parishes and support network, established
new bishoprics (the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of Hungary and the
Diocese of Dacia Felix) and reinstated the Metropolitanate of Bessarabia.49
A milestone in the external outreach of the Romanian Patriarchy
has been the reorganisation of Romanian Orthodox communities abroad,
initiated by His Beatitude Daniel. New new dioceses were established
49
Tom Gallagher, Theft of a Nation: Romania since Communism, C Hurst & Co Publi-
shers Ltd, 2005, p. 65.
(the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of Australia, the Romanian Ortho-

dox Episcopate of Italy, Spain and Portugal, the Romanian Orthodox
Episcopate of Northern Europe), while parishes were founded in remote
countries where Romanians growing numbers of Romanians have relo-
cated in recent years (e.g. Japan, Syria).
At the initiative of His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel, the first Sunday
after the feast of the Assumption (August 15) is dedicated to Romanian
migrants every diocese. The main purpose of this special feast day is to
foster Christian love and brotherly cooperation with all those that work or
study away from the country, abroad. It is an occasion for prayer and
thanksgiving and an opportunity to tackle the dangers of alienation that
arise when families and communities are separated by great distances.
Before 1990, only 17 clergy served the Romanian communities
abroad; in the period 1990-2007, 137 were assigned to parishes estab-
lished under the new conditions of freedom and free movement. By
now, more than 300 Romanian ordained priests have taken upon them-
selves the mission of serving communities and providing spiritual care
abroad. The Romanian Patriarchy covers a share of taxes and health
insurance contributions on clergy salaries, while some clerics are paid
exclusively from the funding of dioceses. Additionally the clergy working
in America, who, under U.S. law, may not receive salaries from another
country, are supported through donations of liturgical vestments, books
of worship and other religious objects.
Although the Romanian Patriarchate can take pride in the multi-
tude of faithful, dioceses and parishes abroad, much remains to be done
to address the challenges posed by current phenomena such as seculari-
sation, atheism and anti-clericalism, which have also plagued Romanian
communities.
In France alone there are nine Orthodox monastic communities
under the jurisdiction of the Romanian Orthodox Church. Moreover,
there are five more in Italy and one in the UK.
The number of Romanian parishes is particularly high in Spain,
Portugal, Italy, and Germany, where Romanians migrated massively
before 1990 or after.
The Romanian Orthodox Metropolitanate of Western and Southern

Europe oversees Romanian communities in France, Switzerland, Spain,
Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium, England and Ireland.
Founded in 1949 by Bishop Visarion Puiu, “Romanian Orthodox
Eparchy in Western Europe” was formally incorporated into the Romanian
Orthodox Church in 1972 (by Holy Synod decision no. 1157/28 April
1972). In 1974 the diocese was elevated to archdiocese with the title
“Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese in Central and Western Europe”.
Currently the diocese is headed by His Eminence Metropolitan Iosif
Pop, assisted by His Grace Auxiliary Bishop Marc Nemţeanul.
The Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of Italy, based in Rome,
was established by decision of the Holy Synod of the Romanian Ortho-
dox Church no. 2707/2 July 2007 and is headed by His Grace Bishop
Siluan Şpan.
The Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of Spain and Portugal, based
in Madrid, was established by decision of the Romanian Orthodox Church
Holy Synod of 4587/22 October 2007 and is headed by His Grace Bishop
Timotei Lauran.
The Romanian Orthodox Metropolitanate of Germany, Central
and Northern Europe comprises the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese
of Germany, Austria and Luxembourg, and the Romanian Orthodox
Episcopate of Northern Europe. The first one, with the see in Nurem-
berg, Germany is headed by His Eminence Metropolitan Seraphim, as-
sisted by His Grace Auxiliary Bishop Sofian Brasoveanul.
In 1993, the Holy Synod approved the establishment of “The
Romanian Orthodox Metropolitanate of Germany and Europe”, while
in 2002 as its title was changed to “The Romanian Orthodox Metropoli-
tanate for Germany, Central and Northern Europe”. Since 2008, it has
been known as “The Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese of Germany,
Austria and Luxembourg”.
By decision no. 4586/22 October 2007, the Holy Synod approved
the establishment and organisation of the Romanian Orthodox Episco-
pate of Northern Europe, with the see in Stockholm, as a suffragan
diocese of the Romanian Orthodox Metropolitanate of Germany, Cen-

tral and Northern Europe. The diocese is headed by His Grace Bishop
Macarie Drăgoi.
At the initiative of faithful on the American soil, the Holy Synod
decided in 1930 to create “Romanian Orthodox Missionary Episcopate in
America.” In 1974, the Holy Synod of the diocese raised its rank to arch-
diocese. Since 1991 it has been known as “Romanian Orthodox Archdio-
cese of the Americas”. The archdiocesan see is in Chicago and is headed
by His Eminence Archbishop Nicolae Condrea, assisted by Rev. Fr. Ioan
Casian of Vicina, Auxiliary Bishop. The archdiocese includes 63 parishes,
missions, monasteries and a diocesan centre, organised as a parish in
Chicago. Parishes are divided as follows: 19 parishes, 11 missions and
2 monasteries in the U.S., 20 parishes, 7 missions and two monasteries
in Canada; 1 parish in Venezuela; and 1 mission in Argentina.
On October 22, 2007, the Romanian Orthodox Church Holy Synod
approved the elevation of the Vicariate for Australia and New Zealand
to the rank of bishopric, with the title of the Romanian Orthodox Epis-
copate of Australia and New Zealand. Diocese see is in Melbourne and
is headed by His Grace Bishop Mihail Filimon.
The episcopate structure consists of 15 parishes, one monastery
and 7 parishes currently being formed in Australia; four already existing
parishes and three currently froming parishes in New Zealand.
Romanian establishments on Mount Athos (Prodromou, Lacu
and various hermitages or monks’ cells), although under the canonical
jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, they maintain spiritual and
cultural relations with the Romanian Patriarchy and receive support
from Romania.
The Romanian establishments in the Holy Land (Jerusalem, Jordan
and Jericho) are directly and canonically dependent to Romanian Patri-
archate and are headed by the Most Reverend Fr. Ieronim Cretu, elected
Patriarchal Auxiliary Bishop and Father Superior of Romanian estab-
lishments in the Holy Land.
Other Romanian Orthodox communities abroad include the Ro-
manian Orthodox Community in Cyprus, headed by Fr. Matei Petre, with
the blessing of His Beatitude Chrysostom II, Archbishop of New Justiniana

and All Cyprus, Peter. The parish was established in 1995 and operates
as part of the Alliance of Romanian in Cyprus, in the four cities in the
Greek area of Cyprus; the Romanian Orthodox Parish in Istanbul, Turkey
related to the holy Martyr Paraskevi Church, the place of worship of the
Romanian Orthodox community in Turkey, located in the European part
of Istanbul, on the eastern shore of the Golden Horn Bay. The Ecumenical
Patriarchate of Constantinople granted use of the premises for religious
services. The church was completely rebuilt in 1692 with a donation
made by the worthy ruling Prince Constantine Brâncoveanu, on the site
of an ancient Byzantine church in the Prikidion district. The parish was
established in 2001 and the current parish priest is Rev. Marcel Sergiu
Vlad; the Romanian Orthodox Parish in Johannesburg, South Africa,
formally founded in 2000. The parish priest is Rev. Vasile Razvan Tatu
appointed in 2008. The parish is under the jurisdiction of the Patriar-
chate of Alexandria; the Romanian Orthodox Parish of St. George, in
Tokyo, Japan, established in 2008. Rev. Alexandru Nicodim is the part-
time parish priest; the Romanian Orthodox Parish of the Resurrection,
Osaka-Nagoya, Japan, established initially as a Mission in 2008. Cur-
rently, Rev. Alexandru Nicodim is the part-time parish priest; the Ro-
manian Orthodox Parish in Damascus, Syria where Rev. Costea George
a speaker of Arabic has been the parish priest of the community. With
assistance from the Romanian Embassy in Damascus and the Patriar-
chate of Antioch the community has been given access to St. Nicholas
church in the Mezze district to celebrate religious services.
10. The Diaspora: Challenges of worship and

witness in unfamiliar territory
The Romanian Orthodox Church has experienced unprecedented insti-
tutional development over the recent years. Romanians residing abroad,
often helped by those back home, have built many new churches in the
last 10-15 years, from Australia and Japan to the European countries
where most migrant Romanians live, i.e. Spain and Italy.
Yet the establishment of new dioceses or parishes has also posed

challenges, even for dialogue with Sister Orthodox Churches, which
sometimes claimed such actions were an encroachment on their legiti-
mate canonical territory. Disagreements persist over the rights of eth-
nics to pray in their own language. The Romanian Church considers
that such rights are not subject to negotiation and compromise, as no
canon or rule of law, religious or secular, can stop a church from exert-
ing its duty of care for the sons and daughters of Christ living within
national borders or abroad.
One cause for disorder and confusion among Romanian faithful
has been the fact that Romanian clergy are affiliated with other Ortho-
dox jurisdictions. In early 2010, the Holy Synod issued an Appeal to all
Romanian Orthodox clergy and lay persons living abroad who, without
blessing are affiliated with other Orthodox Churches and establishments,
urging them to return to direct communion with the Romanian Church,
i.e. the canonical jurisdiction of the Holy Synod of the Romanian Or-
thodox Church. The appeal asserted that the return to the Romanian
Orthodox Church is in keeping with the Statutes for the organisation
and functioning of the Romanian Orthodox Church, which states that
the Romanian Orthodox Church is the church of Romanians people living
in the country or abroad. This position is consistent with the decision of
the Pre-Conciliar Pan-Orthodox Conference in Chambésy, Switzerland
(June 6 to 13, 2009), which declared the right of each self-governing
Orthodox Church serve the faithful on its territory.
The Romanian Orthodox Church cannot be insensitive to the pas-
toral needs of the Romanian Orthodox believers temporarily or perma-
nently residing in countries that are traditionally Orthodox, with no
self-governing Orthodox Churches. That is why new dioceses were es-
tablished and new parishes were created in various parts of the globe, to
deliver appropriate responsible pastoral care to Romanian-speaking
Orthodox faithful.
Local Orthodox Churches should adjust their ministry to the con-
temporary challenges and find the best means for effective Orthodox
witness. Church governance principles do not apply to abstract situa-

tions, rather, depending on specific circumstances such as population
movements and geopolitical developments, the Church can create new
management structures to support its ministry. In such cases, in accor-
dance with the canons, local Orthodox churches, even of those of dif-
ferent ethnic background, must act in conjunction as an expression of
fraternal communion.
Most disagreements among Orthodox hierarchs abroad arise
from lack of communication and of common pastoral-missionary strat-
egy putting Orthodox unity in diversity at the forefront of any action.
The existence of several Orthodox bishops in the same region must
therefore viewed as a means to achieve diversity in mission, validated
by the increasing number of believers, while using the local languages
in church services can serve to reconcile and harmonise traditions and
foster Orthodox unity.
Orthodox unity in foreign territories does not rest on the exis-
tence of a single, supranational centre, purportedly neutral, rather it is
the outcome of good understanding, consultation and practical coopera-
tion among all Orthodox in diaspora, sharing the responsibility to pro-
mote the Christian faith. The principle of territorial jurisdiction and the
presence of a single Orthodox bishop in any one canonical territory is
widely accepted in Orthodoxy, not exclusively, but as a way of fulfilling
Church mission. It is therefore necessary that the Churches factor in the
cultural and linguistic diversity and offer suitable pastoral care for a
genuine experience of Orthodox values.
Pending a final and unanimously accepted resolution of outstanding
issues related to the Orthodox diaspora, by the Holy Synod, the current
set up based on the principle of self-governance must be maintained, in
a spirit of unity and peace.
III. Romanian Orthodoxy and its Call for Ecumenicity
Ecumenicity has been a feature of the Church since the moment of the
Pentecost, when Christ’s message was shared to receivers from the dif-
ferent cultures of the world, in many languages. It has been variously
expressed through the centuries, a fact which has not created more unity,
but constant fractioning. Ecumenical dialogue was institutionalised be-
cause it was widely believed that division compromised the Gospel.
Today, ecumenical dialogue is pursued against a very complex
political and social background: we witness on the one hand the ad-
vance of globalisation and, on the other, war, violence and conflict for
which often religious motives are claimed. If one adds the irreversible
mutations that the planet is undergoing as a result of climate change
and mass social phenomena, such as migration, a picture of common
responsibility emerges. The ecumenism of the 1940-60s, enthusiastic
and assertive, now undergoes crisis and change that ought to enable it
to face the local and international issues, on which the Church must
provide guidance. This presentation will be confined to highlighting
several aspects of the pre-ecumenical identity of Orthodoxy1, from a
rather personal perspective, its ecumenical vocation in the contempo-
rary world and the difficulties that could prevent it from promoting in-
ter-confessional dialogue.
The Romanian Orthodox Church is engaged in international
ecumenical dialogue at all levels. The autocephalous organisation enti-
1
We would like to emphasise that by “Orthodox” we never mean traditionalist, ultra-
traditionalist, nationalist or other connotations that have emerged in various languages,
but refer to the doctrine of the Orthodox Church, by which we designate the Eastern
Church. We speak of the faith of the Ecumenical Councils to which now belong local
Churches such as the Greek Church, including Mt Athos, the Russian Church, the
Serbian Church, the Romanian Church, the Bulgarian Church, and their Diasporas
around the world. The honorary primate of the Orthodox Church is the Ecumenical
Patriarch of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), but de facto each local Church has
a collegiate leadership presided over by a Patriarch.
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
politically initiated, sponsored and controlled during the communist years,

through the well-known Interdenominational conferences, held before
1989.5 In the new European political context, the Churches in the two
countries cannot and do not want to be isolated from initiatives that may
promote the chances of their specific witness in an enlarged Europe.
1. “Called to be the One Church”. Unity as a desideratum

The ecclesiological document with the title quoted above, proposed by
the 9th General Assembly of the World Council of Churches to be re-
flected on by the member Churches, shows their desire to be the “One
Church” in an international sense. Christian unity is the fruit of God’s
work, when he is not impeded by people. Christ prayed for unity (John
17: 21), His Church prays for unity incessantly and it formulated its
first dogmatic, canonical and disciplinary decisions, focused on unity,
during the whole ecumenical period of synods involving all Christen-
dom. The apostle’s witness (martiria) is one of unity, expounded in the
writings of the Church Fathers and actualised or spread in the world
through the hierarchy of apostolic succession. The Orthodox Church
has only produced and celebrated services and prayers for unity and
peace. All discord is not from God, and Jesus firmly kept in check any
movement towards disunity among the Apostles (Matthew 20: 21-28).
I noted above that the Orthodox Church consists of local auto-
cephalous Churches. Their autocephaly is not a plurality independent
from the will of Christ the founder, but the witness of the Gospel in a
given geographical context in conciliary communion. Orthodox con-
ciliarity is expressed by liturgical meetings or “synaxes” that proclaim
unity. These ways of expressing the unity, apostolicity, conciliarity and
holiness of the Church constituted the main elements of the dogmatic
formulations, the liturgical practice, and the canonical and missionary
5
Huub Vogelaar, “An Ecumenical Journey in Romania: Orthodox Protestant Relation-
ships since 1989”, in Analele Ştiinţifice ale Universităţii Al.I. Cuza din Iaşi, tome XI,
2006, p. 482.
organisation in the early Christian centuries, i.e. what is now known as

the Church Tradition.
Since it is an aim of the Lord Saviour, unity must be the main fo-
cus of every Church. From a current ecumenical perspective, one can
refer to the unity of the baptism made in the name of the Holy Trinity,
yet this unity is not similar to that before the great schism, as it does not
involve partaking communion from the same chalice and is not reflected
in the “visible union of the Churches”. The Ecumenical Patriarch6 Bar-
tholomew I recently stated that confessional unity is the sign of genuine
commitment on the way towards symphonic or ecumenical unity within
Christianity: “Whoever does not support the unity of Orthodoxy cannot
claim sincere and constructive participation in ecumenical dialogue”.7
By extrapolation, this statement is also valid in the Churches of the
Reformation. The Orthodox faithful does not pray only for those who
share his confession, but also “for the peace of the whole world, for the
stability of the holy churches of God, and for the unity of all.”8. The
peace and unity of the Liturgies of St John Chrysostom and St Basil the
Great (4th c. AD) became the ideals of the world ecumenical movement
at the turn of the 20th century.
In the post-communist societies, the unity of Orthodoxy rests on
three pillars that constitute the “ecclesia domestica” (the Church of
home): the family, the school and the parish. These are institutions that
provide religious education and their declining status is not only a so-
ciological or cultural concern but also a vital and religious one. Reli-
gious life requires therefore that we keep the light of baptism burning,
which is symbolised in worship by the candle lit in the church. That is
why the candle is used at the most important moments in life: when
6
As has been reported in the media, a recent ruling by a Turkish court has prohibited
the use of the title “ecumenical” to the Patriarch of Constantinople, a fact that under-
lines even more the need for Christian cohesion.
7
Interview with Dr. Ştefan Toma, in Telegraful Român, year 155, no. 15-16/15 April
2007, p. 7.
8
Formula used in the Great Litany, chanted at every service in Orthodox worship. See
Liturghierul (Hieratikon), EIBMBOR, Bucureşti, 1995, p. 118.
praying, when receiving the Holy Communion, at Easter, at baptism

and at the funeral service, hence in everything that prepares one’s en-
trance into the light of resurrection.
2. Tradition as faithfulness in Christian life

Tradition is the legacy of the guidance, worship and spiritual life for-
mulated by the Church through the Ecumenical Synods. Tradition passes
on faithfully the teaching of the Saviour Jesus Christ. Orthodoxy makes
a distinction between the Holy Tradition, the repository of the Revela-
tion, together with the Scriptures, which extends to the 8th century and
the dynamic tradition, i.e. the subsequent theological formulations and
developments that help the faithful in their genuine experience of the
Gospel. Tradition is ecumenical, and ecumenicity is its chief feature.
The Patriarch of Constantinople did not become “ecumenical” in order
to demarcate a geographical area, but to guarantee the unity of Christi-
anity and the uniformity of the Gospel in the entire inhabited world
(oikoumene). The “ecumenical” Church was from the earliest times
called “Heaven on earth” as it celebrates the Eucharistic experience of a
world that undergoes unification and transfiguration; in the “ecumenical”
Church, the work and sacrifice of Christ for the world are constantly
actualised as a factual, not ceremonious reality. In Orthodoxy tradition
is expressed in worship, the expression of the beautiful experience of
the Gospel through chanting and communion, because worship prefig-
ures the kingdom of God. The biblical truth of faith was first expressed
in worship, and afterwards formulated as a dogma to spell out the crite-
ria of salvation to those who seek God.
As long as the goal of all Christians is to serve God and achieve
personal salvation, their work begins with the “Eucharist” or the “pub-
lic thanksgiving”. According to a Russian theologian, “prayer is the path
to God.”9 Communal prayer means entering into communion with the
9
Ignatie Briancianinov, Despre Rugăciunea lui Iisus: experienţe extatice (On Jesus
Prayer : Extatic Experiences), Volume One, translated from Russian by Adrian and
Xenia Tănăsescu Vlas, Cartea Ortodoxă, Bucharest, 2004, p. 168.
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.
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
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
3. Globalisation, uniformisation and Orthodox identity

The European Union is now “richer” and more diverse from a religious
point of view with the membership of 25 million Orthodox. This poses
11
Ion Bria, Spre plinirea Evangheliei..., p. 5.
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
a result of partial knowledge and also of the subjectivity of mediaeval

Western theology that presented it in simplistic manner as an institution
of liturgical anachronism.
Another prejudice regarding Orthodoxy is the notion of ascetic
and spiritual maximalism. It is claimed that severe, frugal life would be
the only path to God, not only for monastics but also for the laity. As-
ceticism is also supposedly supplemented by dogmatic radicalism, which
makes some people who are unfamiliar with Orthodox spirituality con-
sider that membership of this Church directly involves a touch of fun-
damentalism. In a recent article, Elisabeth Ber Siegl wrote that in the
West Orthodoxy is treated as “Religious nationalism, primitive anti-
Western attitude, integrism and obscurantism”. Further claims refer to
the patriarchal organisation and the relations between the hierarchy and
the faithful lay people. This picture is fuelled, and therefore partly justi-
fied, by the anti-Western stance of certain conservative Orthodox cir-
cles. They consider that globalisation is a satanic work and ecumenism
an ecclesiological heresy that corrupts the qualities of the One, Holy,
Catholic and Apostolic Church.14 Through ecclesiology, it would also
affect apostolic teachings such as the teaching about grace15, about the
possibility of holiness, about divine hierarchy and others. To give an
insight into the tone of these conservative circles, I will quote a remark
about the Orthodox participation in the European Ecumenical Assembly,
held on 4 – 9 September 2007 in Sibiu: “Let us pray that God will pro-
tect us from the renewal of the right faith and hope that our Church
hierarchs who have planned the Assembly be guarded by the demons of
“renewal” that will be brought along by the swarm of heretic leaders
from across Europe, who will congregate in Sibiu this autumn”.16
14
See the Athonite Letter, on www.credo.ro, checked on 12 July 2007.
15
An attempt to re-consider the role of the grace in the the contemporary theology was
made by the VIIth General Assembly of WCC in Canberra. It eventually failed given the
different understanding from the Free Churches of the Spirit which led to a tension in
the relationships among the Free Churches and the traditionalists that determined the
constitution of the Special Commission of WCC for Dialogue with the Orthodox.
16
See www.ortodoxie-ecumenism.com.
One must therefore conclude that Orthodoxy must be known as it

actually is, not through the prism of prejudice. Its virtue is not anachro-
nism but the capacity to preserve the identity of communities by incor-
porating their culture in the liturgy, even in the midst of the process of
globalisation. It goes along the lines of the initial goals of the founders
of the European Union who in the 1970 declared: “We do not align na-
tions, we unite people” or “When the cultural and spiritual identity de-
clines the Union can no longer be called ‘European’”.
Given the importance of the person in Orthodoxy, the popular
culture predominant in the West and exported all over the world through
consumer goods, media and entertainment, is now being questioned.
Orthodoxy advocates international action, but only for the purpose of
evangelisation and of spreading the Good News. All the experiences of
preaching Christ according to imperialist criteria have proven to be ut-
ter failures and sad moments in the life of the Church that promoted
them. Orthodoxy has the gift of not imposing one culture over another,
through the Gospel, but of incorporating their culture in the liturgy
without a loss of identity.
4. Romanian Orthodoxy – a faith of dialogue?

In light of the above statements, this appears as a legitimate question.
The answer is a firm “Yes! It is a faith of dialogue!”, with the amend-
ments made by Fr. Staniloae ever since the 1980s. He noted that the
future role of Orthodoxy depended on three factors: the fidelity to Christ,
expressed in the Holy Scripture and the Holy Tradition, eternally ex-
perienced in the Church; the accountability to the faithful of the particu-
lar time when theology is pursued; the openness to the eschatological
future, i.e. the fulfilment of the faithful and the concern for the deifica-
tion of matter.
In its ecumenical engagement, Orthodoxy has proven that it
possesses the essential elements for the dialogue with the other his-
torical Christian Churches, when dialogue is undertaken in a spirit of
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.
In relation to the Protestant Churches, Orthodoxy manifested

openness ever since the 17th century with the famous correspondence
between the Patriarch Jeremiah of Constantinople and Protestant
theologians from Tubingen. There are elements that can be explored in
common by the Churches. This explains the decision of Orthodox
Churches to join the predominantly Protestant World Council of Churches
in 1961, at the Third General Assembly in New Delhi. Among the con-
vergence points with Protestantism, one should mention the theology of
the Holy Spirit, the concept of local Church, the relationship between
Gospel and culture, the search for visible unity in theological plural-
ity.19 The dialogue with the Churches of the Reformation seems there-
fore to be more accessible as there are many aspects that need to be
rediscovered and mutually shared.20
Beyond these general aspects, there are certain obstacles in the
modern world that prevent productive ecumenical dialogue. Accord-
ing to the Catholic Archbishop of London, Murphy O’Connor, they
are distrust, apathy and impatience. 21 Distrust is the fruit of igno-
rance. It is fuelled by the fear of contamination and sustained by radical
confessionalism. Consequently, the opportunities for dialogue are
avoided and the other confessions are presented in terms of their differ-
ences from one’s own confession. The Romanian theologian Ion
Bria considers that genuine dialogue between the West and the East
will only be possible when “provocative and exclusivist representa-
tions” will stop.22
Apathy is caused by the fact that, individually, everyone tends to
use the faith in proportion to their own spiritual needs, according to the
market economy mentality. Apathy feeds on the frustration caused by
the failure to solve certain problems in the dialogue, in an ecumenical
19
Ion Bria, Ortodoxia în Europa. Locul spiritualităţii române (Orthodoxy in Europe.
The Place of Romanian Spirituality), Trinitas, Iaşi, pp. 155-156.
20
Bogdan Tătaru Cazaban, art. cit, p. 189.
21
Donato Giordano, “Le prospettive dell’ecumenismo e del dialogo in Italia”, in Odigos
(XXVI), no. 1/2007, p. 20
22
Ion Bria, Spre plinirea Evangheliei..., p. 122.
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.
5. Challenges and risks of institutional ecumenism

Spiritual life is a victim of the phenomenon of laicisation and desacrali-
sation of the modern society. Through the instruments it employs, its
guiding ideas, focus and language, ecumenism follows the same line.
At ecumenical conferences, the Orthodox have emphasised that per-
sonal faith must not be replaced with social activism. The main focus of
Christians must be mission as evangelisation or re-evangelisation and
23
Constantin Rus, op. cit., p. 32.
not the substitution of civil organisations. For the Christian Orthodox,

the Church is the environment, the place and the state of prayer and of
meeting with God. This explains why even in relatively poor areas peo-
ple are very generous and sacrificial when it comes to contributing to
the building of a church.
Some Orthodox do not accept ecumenism because they do not
see the connection between “prayer, mystic silence, the celebration of
the Eucharist and the abolishment of the death penalty, debt relief for
poor countries, consumer society, women’s cultural and political rights;
between fasting, voluntary poverty and the accumulation of wealth.”24
The excessive focus on economic, political, ecological or sexual issues
causes inner void and eccentricity of outfits. The fear of “contamina-
tion” explains the reservations in certain Orthodox circles as regards
their involvement in wide-ranging ecumenical action.
Laicisation also leads to a tendency to promote spirituality with-
out religion, in which metaphysical search becomes a personal issue.
Spirituality, it is now claimed, has dethroned religion. There are various
forms of such “privatisation of religious life”, where God is received
and “formatted” but the Church or any similar institution has no place.
The hunger for the new and the exotic apparently makes any kind of
spirituality to be substituted to the Christian one. As we noted above, of
crucial importance in Christian life is the Trinitarian spirituality expressed
pneumatologically throughout the Church tradition.
A major risk is the tendency to promote activist, circumstantial
ecumenism that lacks genuine spirituality. It disrupts not only the mis-
sion of ecumenical institutions but also that of the local Church, its ac-
tual raison d’etre. Being ecumenical does not necessitate calculations,
does not depend on the social and political progress of a particular system,
but is a sincere conviction coming from a purified heart. It is a state of
humility and desire for Communion. According to the Bulgarian theo-
logian Emil Traycev, the beginning of authentic ecumenism lies in “the
24
Ion Bria, op. cit., p. 128.
voluntary acknowledgment of human failing, which leads one to the need

of Eucharistic communion with Christ and with the others.”25 In other
words, when detached from the Church’s liturgical experience, when
lacking sincere metanoia and Eucharistic koinonia, ecumenism can be
easily mistaken for just a department for ecclesiastical diplomacy.
Another aspect that causes concern among the Orthodox with re-
spect to the object of ecumenical dialogue was highlighted by the 7th
General Assembly of the World Council of Churches, held in Canberra.
For the first time the theme of the assembly referred to pneumatology,
yet Orthodox participants were surprised by the confusion that promi-
nent new-protestant theologians made between the Person of the Holy
Spirit and “spirits” of animistic type, going flagrantly against the Church’s
millenarian tradition. Further anxieties included the propensity towards
syncretism, the inclusive language, pressures from feminist movements
and the increasing place of sexual minorities. For the first time the
Orthodox realised that in ecumenical milieus their voice had not been
considered, due to their minority status in decision-making bodies. Can-
berra marked the start of a series of unilateral decisions from the Or-
thodox, some Churches, such as the Georgian and the Bulgarian choos-
ing to leave WCC, while the Russian Church reconsidered its participa-
tion in voting sessions in its capacity as voting member. Orthodox in
general adopted after that moment a more reserved attitude in relation
to certain topics.
Orthodox anxiety regarding ecumenical themes also focuses on
the risk of syncretism and relativising of the doctrinal foundations of
apostolic Christianity. It is not unexpected that, while in many cases
ecumenism led to unifying actions among Churches from the same fam-
ily, it has also had contrary effects, the Orthodox milieu being particu-
larly affected. One can identify two directions in the Orthodox Church,
25
Emil Traycev, “A Symphony of Hearts”, in the volume Simpozionul internaţional:
Ortodoxia Românească şi rolul ei în mişcarea ecumenică (International Symposium:
Romanian Orthodoxy and its Role in the Ecumenical Movement), Vasiliana 98, Con-
stanţa, 2006, p. 20.
the pro-ecumenical and anti-ecumenical, the former being keenly focused

on the new, on dialogue and on originality, the latter remaining faithful to
the apostolic truth. To a lesser extent this situation applies at inter-Church
level, where certain Orthodox Churches manifest more openness to dia-
logue and others are wary of the results of such dialogue.
6. Orthodoxy is needed in ecumenism

There have been many articles detailing the Orthodox contribution to
the ecumenical movement, which is why we will not concentrate on
this aspect.26 There has been mutual contribution, which is primarily
beneficial to the faithful. During the communist regime, the participa-
tion of the Orthodox Churches in the ecumenical dialogue was facili-
tated most likely by their opposition to militant atheism. Ecumenism
was the hand that the Churches in the West extended to the Orthodox
Churches confined behind the “iron curtain” and served as a setting for
the Orthodox to express themselves freely, at least in part. Then, Or-
thodox theologians were educated in a spirit of mutual understanding
and dialogue, the disadvantaged social groups were helped and the
Church could rely on foreign support.
The freedom brought by the changes in Eastern Europe caused
fundamental shifts, from government to the freedom of belief and ex-
pression. In promoting ecumenical attitude after 1990 a key role was
held by newly established schools of theology and the introduction of
religious education in public education. The teaching of religion has
provided a unique opportunity for pupils to be genuinely informed, in
irenic spirit, about the other religions and denominations. However,
results have been modest since there is no common syllabus for ecu-
menical training. The teaching of religion on a confessional basis causes
the results to be dependent on the teacher and the priest or pastor, and
on their qualification and openness to dialogue. There exists self-criticism
26
An article on this issue, Dr. Daniel Ciobotea, “Le témoignage orthodoxe dans le
Movement Oecuménique”, in Nouvelles de l’Eglise Orthodoxe Roumaine, XIX,
no. 6/1988, pp. 61-65 and no. 1/1989, pp. 48-53.
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.
The need for confessional identity is an important factor in the

dialogue with other religions. The awareness of one’s own religious
tradition diminishes damaging relativism. It is known that certain as-
pects of this relativism were the chief motives for disputes, separations
and schisms. The awareness of the personal identities of participants in
discussions gives a real and irenic importance to dialogue.
7. Orthodoxy in the ecumenical world: a self-critical perspective

Beyond the official Orthodox position in relation to the other denomi-
nations, within itself there is a growing gap between Orthodoxy as a
tradition and the Christian Orthodox faithful who experiences the tradi-
tion. Orthodoxy has sometimes been presented in triumphant tone. It
has been condescending and critical of the fallen West, whose theology
developed chaotically after the schism of 1054 and which gave rise to
Enlightenment and Rationalism, de-sacralising the human society. Or-
thodoxy has not been free from similar influences which, though not
affecting its essence, affect Church members in equal measure. Reli-
gious indifference, rationalism and agnosticism, the movement towards
syncretism and indistinct spirituality are nowadays present in tradition-
ally Orthodox milieus. Their incidence is increasing as social differences
emerge and in proportion to one’s freedom to choose and to express
oneself. Therefore a self-critical assessment of Orthodox mission may
benefit its engagement in the ecumenical movement.
Regarded as “holy” and placed alongside the Scriptures, Tradi-
tion is often mistaken for superstitions, while dogma is confused with
theological opinion or pious yet superficial ideas. The confrontational
attitude towards other Christian denominations, the theology built on
the “words” of the Church Fathers (quoted randomly and out of con-
text), the liturgical legalism by which some evade moral demands, cause
certain Orthodox Christians to not feel any more part of the “Church”
of Christ. Living according to the spirit of the Tradition requires fidel-
ity, love and generosity, and the openness and humility to learn from
one another.
A local problem that Orthodoxy is facing is that its voice is much

less heard in the midst of the world where it exists. One can refer to the
magnificent patristic tradition, yet it only remains a nostalgic ideal, no
longer applied to daily life. Despite their criticism of the West, the Or-
thodox must learn from its fight against secularism and the ills of the
modern society. Outside, the practice and rites of the Church established
by the original Tradition have been faithfully preserved, yet inside not
much progress has been made in “attaining to the whole measure the
fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4: 13). For some being Orthodox nowa-
days means having an antiquated faith, knowing dogmas by heart and
repeating liturgical formulae they do not understand.
Life in keeping with the Tradition of the Church means becoming
a member of “God’s people” (laos), as highlighted by the Metropolitan
Anthony of Sourozh, whom I shall quote in extenso: “There is no such
thing as a single Christian, an individual Christian. To be a Christian
means to be a member, a limb – a real limb like a hand – of the Body of
Christ. To be constituted in this way is a very earnest problem because
in a body, as St. Paul puts it, when a limb suffers, the whole body is
sick. When one of us falls, we do not say that “my hand is painful”: the
whole body suffers. We have lost this sense of being a body. Oh yes,
we try these day to recapture it by saying that “we must be a commu-
nity”. No! We must not become a community. To become one of many
communities of people who are like-minded, who share the same tastes,
who believe in the same God, who proclaim the same things, amounts
to a sort of religious association. It is not enough to become Christ’s
own club! A body is not a collection of individuals who have nothing to
do in common, except share the objectives while never caring for each
other. And if we care, it should not be simply social care, a sort of cour-
tesy and kindness and good behaviour. A body is not that! Neither is
the body the laos of the party as contrasted with the clergy. The laos as
the people of God is the total Body of Christ. A priest, a bishop, a patri-
arch is part of this laos. There is hierarchy in the Church, but it is a hi-
erarchy of service, not of power. We should be able to proclaim the
gospel with conviction and authority because of what people see in us

as a living body, and as persons connected one to another, not because
we have power. A hierarchy of submission, obedience and subjection
on all levels is a heresy against the Church. We must recapture another
attitude of conciliarity, unanimity – all united in the mind of Christ and
in the guidance of the Holy Spirit. To be the laos of God, as clergy or
lay persons, is to recognise that in this world in which God has no rec-
ognised place, where He is an outsider, a tramp, we are the place of His
indwelling presence. To be the laos of God is to be sent out into the
world to bring joy, hope, light and newness of life.”29
To conclude, to be Orthodox in keeping with the tradition means
not only to show fidelity to the faith of the “primitive” Church,30 to add
interpretations, dogmatic scholia and critical commentaries to the pa-
tristic theological legacy, but also to live and to meditate on the Gospel
in the context of the Eucharistic and post-Eucharistic liturgy. To be in
the spirit of the tradition means to assign theological designations to
new ecclesiastical experiences. This does not mean that the modern
man should abandon the pre-Constantinian dynamism of transcultural
coverage. Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae shows that the place of “the theologian
is where the divine revelation meets human history and the transfigura-
tion of the world occurs. To be in the spirit of the tradition is to redefine
those parts of the trans-cultural heritage that have not been expressed
due to political and social restrictions, those imposed not only by com-
munism, but also by Enlightenment and Rationalism. It means a return
to the origins or a re-emergence of the religious.31
8. Can an Orthodox traditionalist be an ecumenist?

From the above reflections certain necessary conclusions can be drawn
for those who wish to understand what it means to be traditionally formed
29
Andrew Walker and Costa Carras (eds), Living Orthodoxy in the Modern World, St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestood, New York, 2000, pp. 236-237.
30
Andrew Walker and Costa Carras (eds), op. cit., pp. 1-3.
31
Ion Bria, op. cit., p. 1415.
in an ecumenical world and ecumenically minded in a traditionalist so-

ciety. There are both positive and negative sides to this ecumenical ef-
fervescence. A limited number of Christians, usually those with broad
cultural outlook, are committed to ecumenical initiatives under condi-
tions of freedom. Unfortunately, most of the lay persons in this category
have only relative knowledge and superficial experience of Orthodox
life, being ready for easy, “fashionable” ecumenism. The ecumenical
climate has generally deteriorated in the last 22 years due to the rapid
changes in the social conditions which the Orthodox Church has had to
face: on the one hand, the expectations of society, which hopes that the
Church will solve all kinds of social and educational issues, and on the
other the missionary undermining from liberal Christian denominations
and critics in the civil society. The tendency to fill the public space,
formerly reserved only for government authorities, has triggered a com-
petition among the Churches or denominations, resulting in a tense at-
mosphere. In Romania there are issues such as the restitution of Church
assets, the relations between the Orthodox Church and the Greek-Catholic
Church, the Catholic presence at all levels in Romanian society after
1989 and also the proselytism practised by Free Churches in the name
of the freedom of expression, issues that make ecumenical dialogue very
complicated. One of the few ongoing joint programmes was the estab-
lishment in Romania of the Interdenominational Bible Society, compris-
ing 12 member Churches, the object of its activity being the publication
of the Holy Scripture. It does not claim to be an ecumenical but an in-
terdenominational body, given that Neo-Protestant Churches regard ecu-
menism as an ambiguous formula that dilutes Christian identity.
Since there was ecumenical participation during communism too,
often the former regime and ecumenism are equated. Interdenomina-
tional conferences set up before 1989 focused on themes similar to po-
litical issues. After the fall of communism nationalist sentiment re-emerged
aggressively along with a rejection of ecumenical thinking, which re-
minded of the bad reputation of politically supervised meetings. In gen-
eral Orthodox is allegedly phyletism, and the life of the Church is pre-
sented jointly with that of the ethnic history.
Genuine ecumenism could be promoted through theological

schools, where it is part of the curriculum, though it is presented in an
apologetic Orthodox perspective that highlights differences of heterodox
Churches or denominations. The practise applies in all the theological
schools, regardless of confession and country. There is a structure for
inter-church dialogue, AIDRom, the Ecumenical Association for Inter-
Church Aid in Romania, established by WCC as an agency in 1991,
which seeks to function as a platform for ecumenical dialogue. More
than 10 years ago there was a proposal to transform it into a National
Council of Churches, but the idea was abandoned. The activity of this
body has become less intense in the last few years as ecumenical rela-
tions have been confined to the top of the hierarchy. The Roman-Catholic
Church and the Neo-Protestant denominations are not part of this organ-
ism. Though there is openness to dialogue among the Church hierarchy,
it is mostly due to diplomatic activity. Among the faithful practical
ecumenism is practised, involving assistance and peaceful coexistence,
with mutual respect of the identity of the other, yet actions are not con-
sistent in this field. Interdenominational dialogue must go forward, yet
no final goal is foreseen. Local attempts soon fail when fundamental
issues of theology and liturgical life are approached.
Theologians are aware of the differences that separate the Churches
and do not foresee more profound unity in the near future. An example
is provided by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I who declared
at the 12th General Meeting of the Conference of European Churches in
Norway: ‘Our unity is genuine, but it is still incomplete. Despite all the
progress that has been made in our quest for visible unity – and for this
we glorify God – we Orthodox remain convinced that the time has not
yet come for us to share together at the Lord’s Table in His sacramental
Body and Blood. There continues to be serious doctrinal questions over
which, as Churches, we still are in disagreement; and so, according to
our Orthodox understanding of the Eucharist, it would be unrealistic,
and even untruthful, for us to share in Holy Communion’32. Cardinal
32
See www.cec-kek.org.
Walter Kasper made a similar statement during an ecumenical, Ortho-

dox-Catholic meeting: “There is no ecumenism without conversion. The
Lord’s mandate goes a step further. The ecumenical dialogue is an ex-
change not only of ideas but – as Pope John II emphasised – of spiritual
gifts. Both of our churches are rich in gifts of the Spirit. Both of us have
rich liturgical, spiritual theological traditions which are not contradic-
tory but complementary, as was so clearly recognised in times past. The
full communion we envisage will not be and cannot be an impoverished
uniformity but a rich and flourishing unity in pluriformity. Unfortu-
nately we cannot yet meet around the Lord’s Table of the spiritual poor,
and of all those in our time who are thirsting and are exhausted, where
we can serve them together. Together we can speak up for justice and
peace, for forgiveness and mercy.33
I would like to end this section on a more optimistic note, by quot-
ing a contemporary theologian who states that the alternative to ecumen-
ism is not anti-ecumenism but improved ecumenism. Romania, which
is recognised as the Orthodox country most open to ecumenical dialogue,
has the experience of practical ecumenism rather than interdenomina-
tional rapprochement. Perhaps this is essentially the purpose of coop-
eration, to assist those in prisons, hospitals, orphanages, or the streets in
acts of recognition of Christ’s will to follow His example. In this way, a
traditionalist realises his usefulness in a multicultural world, and the
modern people can understand and become part of the millenarian Tra-
dition of the Church.
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.
proclaiming the coming of Jesus, in continence and hard lifestyle, freely

accepted. Following in his steps an ascetic, be it a monk or a nun, should
deny himself/herself and proclaim the Risen Lord throughout his/her
life. The luminaries of Christian monasticism include: St. Paul of Thebes,
St. Anthony the Great, St. Macarios of Alexandria, St. Macarios of
Egypt, who were representatives of anchorite (eremitic or recluse liv-
ing) monasticism, while St. Pachomius the Great, St. Basil the Great,
St. Benedict of Nursia, St. John Cassian were the forerunners of ceno-
bitic monastic life (life in monasteries).
Monasticism appeared in Romanian history as early as the 4th
century when the first archaeological evidences have revealed an organ-
ised monastic life. The first monks seemed to have come from a Chris-
tian population that was dislocated in Cappadocia by the Goths. Some
are believed to have been disciples of Basil the Great, whose Regula-
tions they were observing, in South-Eastern Romania, which was called
Scithhia Minor (present Dobruja). They proclaimed the Gospel among
pagan Dacians. There are caves in Dobrogea region where Christian
symbols were found on the walls. One should also mention the “psalm
singing” of which a martyr of the 4th century, Sava the Goth, was ac-
cused by prosecutors. From the very beginning they were organised in
monastic communities, and not as solitary individuals, sharing all in
common, according to the apostolic tradition.
Monasticism developed throughout history in an uninterrupted
succession to the present days. Romania has been blessed by God with
many monasteries. The fathers who founded or later reordered Roma-
nian monasticism include St. Nicodemus of Tismana, St. Basil of Poiana
Marului and St. Paisius of Neamt. They believed that the essence of
monastic life extended beyond the cultivation of ascetic virtues, as
these may be practised by lay people also. The specific aim of monasti-
cism is the social and pastoral relationship, creating a new world within
this world yet also beyond this world. Monastics act as lights guiding
the world towards salvation or as models of virtue that show the path to
spiritual growth.
IV. The Silent Side of Orthodoxy: The Monastic Ideal 91
The care of Romanian monasteries for people in need was evi-

denced since the Middle Ages by the establishment in Vallachia of
hospices at Sarindar and Ghergita Monasteries, near Bucharest, homes
for the sick at the monasteries Cozia, Bistrita, Hurezi, Polovragi,
Dintr-un Lemn, Sadova, Tismana, Vodita, hospitals at Coltea and
Pantelimon monasteries and Brâncoveanu Hospital in Bucharest, and
the orphanage for girls at All-Saints’ Monastery. In Moldavia too
the local princes, founders and benefactors of monasteries, set up
social services such as the homes for the sick at the monasteries of
Putna, Neamt, Patrauti, Secu, Dragomirna, Rasca, Slatina, Horaita,
Varatec, Agapia, Adam, the hospices at the monasteries of Neamţ,
Galata, Golia, the hospitals at Dragomirna monastery (17th century),
St. Spyridon (Iasi, 18th century) and the one at Targu Neamt, under
the patronage of Neamţ Monastery (19th century).4 Today monasti-
cism is flourishing given the new context of freedom, as long as more
than 8,000 monks and nuns serve in the country’s 637 monasteries
and convents.5 In the Archdiocese of Iasi, the diocese with the larg-
est number of monasteries (in the Orthodox world), there are now
107 monasteries and sketes with 1,939 members (825 monks and
1,068 nuns). They include 56 monasteries, 39 sketes; 48 monasteries
for monks and 13 monasteries for nuns; 43 sketes for monks and 4
sketes for nuns.6
However, the number of monks and nuns is decreasing and the
commitment to the real asceticism is harder to assume individually, as
the monasteries are sometimes at risk of becoming places of interest for
tourists or even retreats, where visitors are bringing with them influ-
ences of the modern secularised world.
4
For extensive information on the topic refer to Ion Vicovan, Istoria Bisericii Or-
todoxe Române [The History of the Romanian Orthodox Church], vol. II, Trinitas,
Iasi, 2002, pp. 276-297.
5
Norris J. Chumley, Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer, HarperOne, New York, 2011,
p. 114.
6
http://www.patriarhia.ro/ro/scurta_prezentare_ro.html
2. “Monks must become friends of people, like Jesus”7

The Lord Jesus Christ is the extraordinary living model for the pastoral
actions that monastics carry out among the faithful, especially in Ro-
manian monasticism. Monks have always prayed for the world, in times
of peace and in times of great trials and persecution.8 Oftentimes, through-
out history, with the agreement of the local bishop, monks served as
parish priests in villages or cities, becoming friends of people. Consid-
ering a broader social context, monasteries – despite their inherent dis-
tinct status – were often the first places where new institutions and
practices emerged and evolved.
Indeed, in the Romanian lands some of the very first libraries,
printing houses, schools and painting, engraving and textile apprentice-
ships were established at monasteries such as Neamt, Putna, Tismana or
Agapia. Monks, called to a life of unwavering service to the Lord,
eventually fully realised this call by serving their communities and dis-
seminating knowledge, artistic excellence and new skills.
As the late Dr. Antonie Plămădeală, metropolitan of Ardeal, duly
observed, “the serving monk is the model of the monastic for the pre-
sent age. A serving monk is a serving Church. The monk as a volunteer
of service is ready to help desperate people, orphans, elderly persons
with no means of support, isolated sick persons. The monk should be an
angel with a human face. Such people are rare, but they are much needed
in the world.(…) The type of serving monk is attainable and may be a
progress compared with the traditional model, all while maintaining
their example and not being in contradiction with it. This is not some-
thing completely new. Rather, it is a type of a Christian who is closer to
Christ’s teachings. The Lord came in the world to serve, he washed the
7
Dr. Antonie Plamadeala, Metropolitan of Ardeal, Traditie si libertate în spiritualitatea
româneasca [Tradition and Liberty in Romanian Spiritual Life], 1995, p. 302.
8
See Emilian Nica, The Social and Pastoral Role of Monasticism in the Romanian
Society, in Journal of Interdisciplinary Research on Religion and Science, issue 5,
July 2009, p. 178.
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.
3. Profession into monasticism
A candidate to monasticism must first and foremost apply to enter a

monastery out of a real vocation to serve God with absolute commit-
ment. The vocation for monasticism is the key point and weights when
the decision to be accepted must be taken by the superior of a monas-
tery. It is for this particular reason that a candidate is first questioned
about the reasons to join in that community, then follows a period of
tests. This includes: three months of “temptation”, followed by the
blessing to start practicing the obedience which normally takes 3 years;
it can be extended if necessary. This period is followed by training in
theology, in a monastic seminary, ending with the monastic tonsure, or
the profession into monasticism, which is a life lasting decision. During
this testing period, the novice should have daily talks with his/her con-
fessor, and must practice piety, obedience and faith.
The service of profession itself is similar to both: a wedding and
a burial. First, the candidate is engaged with the community and takes
upon himself the entire stewardship of Christ and His Church. Second,
he/she dies to the world in order to be born again into a new life. It is the
reason for which the name is changed. Being dressed up, after the vow,
he/she receives every piece of clothing with a special meaning and sym-
bolism for the future monastic life, which should never be abandoned.
Every person professed into monasticism should observe the three
vows for the rest of his/her life: unlimited obedience, absolute chastity,
complete poverty.
As an alternative to parish life, Orthodox believers can choose
monastic life, by joining a monastery. Fundamentally, monastic life
means abandoning the worldly life and embracing a life of more intense
9
Antonie Plamadeala, Metropolitan of Ardeal, op. cit., p. 302-303.
prayer, deeper relationship with God and detachment from material

goods.10 Monasteries are organised communities of men or women, led
by an abbot or abbess. Daily life blends work and prayer. According to
the Byzantine tradition, at a monastery, the day begins with the night
before, when monks attend the Vespers service.11 Rest time is frag-
mented to allow attendance of Midnight Office, followed by the Matins
and Liturgy, ending around 3.00 am. The morning begins with other
prayers, known as the Hours, followed by Akathist hymns dedicated to
the saint of the day. Such hymns focus on meaningful stories in saints’
lives and on their virtues and worthy deeds. Demands of monastic life
are fully accepted after taking the three monastic vows, of uncondi-
tional obedience, chastity of life and absolute poverty. A monk or nun
is not a master of him/herself, but dedicates him/herself completely to
God, who, in the monastic community, is represented by the abbot or
the abbess and the spiritual father of each religious, whose command-
ments and orders must be obeyed unconditionally.
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.
the “obediences” are often rotating from a member to another to avoid

routine or hobby. The only passion of the monastic should be prayer for
himself or herself and for those in the world who do not have time to
pray and meditate. An Orthodox religious will spend between 7 and 8
hours in church every day. Private prayer plays an equally important
role and aims at directing his/her solitude to the personal dialogue with
God. The normal personal office of a monk takes about one hour every
morning and evening. Additionally, they must read psalms, various lit-
erature on piety and meditation.
Almost every monastery has an agrarian piece of land on which
vegetables and crops are grown for the community needs. Consequently,
all members are expected, to work in the field or practice other activi-
ties, for two reasons, to keep the members busy and avoid dissipation in
worldly thought, and to earn their living. Other activities include wood
carving, painting, tapestry, embroidery, carpet weaving, icon painting
etc. Today there have developed other activities such as computing,
publishing, translating, social programmes etc.
One should also know that a normal day in a monastery include
two light meals. There is no breakfast at all. An important role in the
monastic life plays the strict continence from products of animal origin
and strict fasting. Fasting is observed every Monday, Wednesday and
Friday, and during the four fasting periods of the year: Lent, Advent,
Dormition and Saint Apostle Peter and Paul’s fast.
It is worth noting that nowadays “monks also carry out pastoral
work in schools, in the army, in hospitals, in prisons, wherever generosity,
love, compassion and strength are needed. There are villages located
near to monasteries where the monks teach religion classes in school,
there are also military bases where monks carry out pastoral activities
and Church hospitals where nuns work (certain monasteries have also
established dental surgeries where monastics are employed), while
competent hieromonks provide services in detention centres.”12 Efforts
12
Emilian Nica, op. cit., p. 180.
by monastic communities to engage with and support local and more

distant communities include the establishment of homes for the elderly
and medical facilities in the Suceava Archdiocese, at Petru Vodă Mon-
astery, at Recea monastery (Mureş county), Pasărea monastery (in Bu-
charest) and at Varatec monastery (Neamţ county).
5. The Jesus Prayer: the Orthodox message in a nutshell

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”, the prayer
of the heart or the Jesus prayer is of ineffable simplicity and sums up
the Christian Orthodox perspective. In addition to work duties, the reli-
gious must pray, alongside others or privately, permanently reciting the
prayer of the heart or the Jesus Prayer, a form of constant invocation of
Christ which empties the heart and mind of all that is mundane and
brings such profound inner peace, that the monk may be able to see
Christ with his physical eyes, in the light that was experienced by Peter,
James and John on the Tabor hill at the Transfiguration.13
As Bishop Kallistos Ware observed, “the Jesus Prayer is a prayer
of marvellous versatility. It is a prayer for beginners, but equally a prayer
that leads to the deepest mysteries of the contemplative life.”14
As has been noted, “the one to whom the prayer is raised is the
transcendent one, the “Lord” who is the “Son of God.” But he is ad-
dressed by the human name given to him, “Jesus”: he is one of us, genu-
inely human as he also is genuinely divine. The prayer thus includes
confession that he is the incarnate Son of God, the one promised to our
first parents (Gen 3:15). This prayer thus implicitly acknowledges the
whole history of redemption, culminating in the incarnation, life, suf-
fering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”15 “The Jesus Prayer, then,
13
Kallistos Ware, The Power of the Name. The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality,
The Sisters of the Love of God, 1986.
14
Kallistos (Timothy) Ware, The Orthodox Church, 2nd ed., Penguin, New York, 1993,
p. 305.
15
James R. Payton, Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox
Tradition, InterVarsity Press, Illinois, 2007, p. 211.
indicates both man's problem and God's solution. Jesus is the Saviour,
the anointed king, the one who has mercy.”16
6. Organisation of monastic life

The monastic life is organised in three ways: coenobitic, when mem-
bers in a monastery share everything under the leadership of an abbot
or a hegoumenos. The idiorrhythmic monasticism is organised around a
monastery, in smaller communities which provide their own living, but
share in the liturgical life of the community and submit a superior of the
whole community. Finally, but not less important is the eremitic life,
comprising the solitaries that abandon the world and live an austere life
in wilderness, especially in the caves of the mountains. Their only con-
cern is prayer but they keep regular ties with the nearest monastery
where they take the Holy Communion.
This type of monastic life developed rapidly after the 14th cen-
tury. Local stories tell of the “hermits that were abundantly populating
the Mountains of Neamt”, a scenic region in North East of the country.
As a result of various adversities, many of the ancient monastic settle-
ments there disappeared. Other churches and monasteries fortress-like
monasteries were erected in hardly accessible places, in order to protect
against invasions; many last to these days. The monasteries with the
outside frescoes or the monasteries in Neamt region are a proof of the
new development.
The 18th century saw a development of the monastic spirituality
in Moldavia caused by the movement initiated by Paisius Velicikovsky
in Dragomirna, Secu and finally in Neamt monastery which came to know
the most important part of their history; the monastery reached an in-
credible number of 900 disciples, translations from Greek and Slavonic
were made, liturgical books were printed with great impact on the Ro-
manian society and the neighbouring countries.
16
Kallistos (Timothy) Ware, The Orthodox Way, rev. ed, Crestwood, New York,
St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1995, p. 69.
A dramatic year in the history of Romanian monasticism was

1959 when the communist authorities forcibly expelled more than 3000
monks and nuns from their monasteries. They had to give up their voca-
tion, monasteries were demolished or abandoned, and a testing time for
monasticism began. There were times when young people were forbid-
den to join enter the monastic communities, when older monks had to
hide in the forests, when censure and control from the communist au-
thorities was imposed to monasteries.
The new monasteries that are being built after 1990 are not new
endeavours, but a re-construction of what had existed before. One could
easily note that the religious life of the Romanian society can be expressed
in these two ways: parish life and monastic vocation. Consequently, the
Romanian Orthodoxy ordains two categories of priests, parish priests that
must necessarily be married before they are ordained and hieromonks or
the priests of a monastery, who must be professed into monasticism be-
fore ordination. The parish community and the monastic community are
in an interdependent connection, supporting one another: the traditional
family offers the monasteries material donations, and future candidates to
monastic life. In the opposite sense, the monastics have always been mili-
tant supporters of the family values such as love, understanding, tolerance,
peace, and mutual help. Local history has proved that when the family in-
stitution was strong, the monastic life was flourishing and the opposite.
The parish priests visit the monasteries often with groups of
pilgrims to strengthen their faith and provide occasions to reflect and medi-
tate upon their spiritual life. The faithful are saying regularly their con-
fession in monasteries, organise pilgrimages, or simply go to visit and
have retreats. When a parish comes to temporary vacancy, the priest’s
responsibilities can be taken over temporarily by the hieromonks (or-
dained monks) of the nearest monastery.
7. The Spiritual Father – a Christ-like figure

According to the monastic regulations, a monastic community is based
on an authority which is freely accepted. Beyond the authority of God
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.
The openness of Romanian monasticism reflects the fraternal love,

which characterises the life of the monastic community founded on God’s
love for man. As has been noted by a Romanian author, “the paradox of
the missionary vocation of monastics lies in their life and work, as they
renounce the world, dedicate themselves in solitude to God and brings
to the outside world the testimony of their spiritual life and experience,
sharing with the world the spirit of love and beauty discovered by serv-
ing and living together with Christ”.18
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.
After 1989, personal religiosity has become more conspicuous in

dress, language and attitudes towards the priorities of modern life. Par-
ish churches, especially rural ones, are closed throughout the week. On
weekdays, the faithful express their religiosity in more private forms.
Practising Christians attach great importance to their daily morning and
evening prayers, avoid any reprehensible act, and observe the fasting
days, Wednesday and Friday respectively or any days thus marked in
the Orthodox calendar. This private religiosity, however, has not led to
the elimination or reduction of major moral challenges such as abortion,
crime, alcoholism, divorce and corruption. Hence, the suspicion of “su-
perficiality” in religious expression, which are not the same thing as
leading an authentic Christian life. It is a fact that the majority of faith-
ful participate in Church services, beginning with baptism and ending
with the last rites, vastly outnumbering those who do not attend or re-
ject Church services. In rural areas, Church services are varied and in-
clude even the blessing of crops and prayers to dispel evil spirits in the
home or to cure livestock.
In the social field, the believer is called to solidarity and empathy
with those in need. The social focus in Orthodox tradition has a theo-
logical and moral counterpart in private life: salvation is conditional
upon the way in which someone fulfils his social duties. The mercy for
those ostracised and abandoned has been a distinctive feature of the
Church since its beginnings, in keeping with the mandate given by Christ
(Luke 14, 13, Matthew 25, 34-44). The social efforts of each faithful may
range from discreet philanthropy, participation in church programs, in-
cluding voluntary labour, to providing supplies or financial contributions,
sponsorships, institutional or private donations. Social involvement
therefore is not a matter of ethics, but is aimed at building a special re-
lationship with God, with oneself, balancing mind and soul with the body,
adhering to a sound attitude toward life and others, to fulfil ones duties
and rights to one’s neighbour, family, nation and ethnic group2.
2
Stanley Samuel Harakas, Living the Faith. The praxis of Eastern Orthodox Ethics,
Light and Life Publishing Companz, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1992.
V. Lay Persons and their Role in the Church 103
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
state social protection system. In their capacity as service providers,

under the law, the churches can set up social services directly, through
their own departments and units or through associations and founda-
tions established for these purposes. Local government authorities will
become partners in the projects by providing land, buildings and money
necessary to the performance of funded actions.
Obviously, Churches in general, and specially in former commu-
nist countries need to restore the authentic primitive Christianity, and
regain the sense of missionary enthusiasm and willingness to sacrifice
that Christians had in the first centuries, even more now when the resi-
dential areas become a growing desert.
Although the Romanian Orthodox Church was formed and de-
veloped in symphony with the State in the medieval period, today one
cannot talk about a State and Church acting in symphony, for two rea-
sons: the State is a secular organisation, which does not operate on the
foundations of Christian values, and uses the Church as a necessary tool
in certain social activities; the Church is an ally of the State, but com-
petes as an institution where it has to face the strong temptation of gain-
ing power. ”Churches are destroyed by their temporal power, because
power can be exercised only as a state religion and the state is the op-
posite: a church cannot save people with the means that the state pos-
sesses, therefore it only serves as an imperfect double to the state. While
the reasoning is either Church or State, modern people have rightly chosen
the State, which has much better means to drain and collect taxes. The
Church must reclaim its other power, which does not lie in domination
and in whose name the Good News came.”3
The Church must enjoy autonomy as this is the only way it be-
comes able to care for its faithful, regardless of their ethnicity or na-
tionality. The visible calling of the Church into the modern ever lonelier
society is to proclaim that nobody is alone, nobody is left out. Therefore it
3
H.R. Patapievici, Patapievici şi Părintele André Scrima [Patapievici and Fr André
Scrima], in http://artzar.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/patapievici-si-parintele-andre-
scrima/, link accessed on 14.02.2012.
V. Lay Persons and their Role in the Church 105
must be politically neutral, but not indifferent to the problems of the

Romanian society. It should be a factor of social peace, help and soli-
darity with those who experience difficult times because of the prolonged
economic crisis, regardless of their political choices. However, the
Church cannot be reduced to the status of a human institution or “reli-
gious services provider” because its nature is transcendent and this is
best highlighted in the liturgical life of the Orthodox Church, where the
Eucharist is considered a foretaste of the Kingdom of God, calling on
each believer to seek salvation.
The assertion that the Orthodox Church is less socially involved
is not justified. It remains faithful to the mission given by Christ to pro-
claim that every believer is called to salvation, and sacramentally the
Church fulfils its mission: “Go teach all nations...” (Matthew 28:19-20).
However, in Romania the government and the Church agreed on a part-
nership, aimed at implementing the social programmes. The law stipu-
lates a transfer of social responsibility to the Church, with an 80%
financial participation from government and 20% from the Church.
Overall, the agreement is intended to finance social care projects initi-
ated by churches, associations and foundations established by churches,
and ecumenical associations: social services, charity, volunteer training
and training bodies, education and training activities including the care
of addicted people, and mediation. The main objective of the law is to
facilitate the engagement of the Church with local authorities and the
community in social services.
VI. “Seek first the Kingdom of God”: Higher
Theological Education in Romania
1. Doing theological studies or “making theology”?
Throughout history only three Church figures have been called “theo-
logians”: St. John the Theologian, St. Gregory the Theologian and
St. Symeon the New Theologian. However, all those who attend theol-
ogy courses are called, more or less justifiably, “theologians”. The dif-
ference lies in the fact that doing theological studies is an open and
public opportunity, while making theology is “to lay one’s head on
Jesus’ chest, that is to know God through experience” (St. John), “not
mistaking theology for technology, that is distinguishing between the
genuine experience of God and the ability to interpret words” (St.
Gregory) and “to see God in the light, through the tears of repentance”,
which is the highest form of theology (St. Symeon).1 Theology presup-
poses the capacity first to experience, then to communicate by word
and deed “that […] which we have seen with our eyes, which we have
looked at and our hands have touched.” (I John 1: 1)
St. Gregory Palamas classifies theologians in three categories:
the saints, meaning those who see God through experience (those who
made theology), those who believe the saints, that is the servants of the
Word (those who did theological studies, but not exclusively), and
those who do not believe the saints and do not possess the required
depth of experience. Strictly speaking, only the former can be called
“theologians.” The professors of theology can only be placed in the
second category, which includes those who believe the saints and pass
on the depth of the divine teaching, while the third category comprises
the “technologians”, whose discourses have no meaning and among
1
Bishop Maximos of Pittsburg makes an interesting observation, stating that apart from
the three “theologians”, the others are “theologizing”, a sort of expression of God and
His relation with the world. Cited in the article Educaţia teologică in context ecu-
menic şi pluralist, translated into Romanian by Mihai Brânzea, in “Studii Teologice”,
Seria a II-a, XLVII(1995), no. 1-3, p. 98.
whom heretics can be included too. The standard of training in theo-

logical schools seems to consist sometimes in acquiring the capacity to
transmit the message of the saints with scientific accuracy.2 Making
theology involves the commitment of the whole human person, not just
of reason, but also of spiritual intuition and of wisdom.
Despite the fact that too often the study of theology claimed to be
the science of God or the knowledge of God, it is more probably the
positive reaction of the human person to the revelation of God (John 1:
18), as He is not an object of discursive knowledge, but a dynamic, in-
teractive subject. To make theology means therefore possessing cha-
risma, accepting sacraments as a form of manifestation of divine pres-
ence, proceeding on a path of personal purification, and attaining hesy-
chia.3 Theology must lead then to the discovery of the truth (I Timothy
2: 4 and John 17: 3) and living it by discerning the spirits in this world
(I John 4: 1 and Matthew 16: 3).4
Theology is not the truth, but the expression or witness we present
about the truth, because the Truth in absolute terms is God, who is un-
known and impenetrable. Theology speaks of the truth, assessing itself
only by living the expressed Truth. The final aim of the theological dis-
course must be the desire and practice of living in communion with God.
In conclusion, doing theological studies must lead to making
theology.
2. Romanian theological training at the

beginning of the third millennium
In the educational arena, the Romanian Orthodox Church has emerged
as an important player. Over the past two decades old schools have
2
Kallistos Ware, Educaţia Teologică in Scriptură şi la Sfinţii Părinţi [Theological
Education in Scripture and the Fathers], translated into Romanian by Anişoara Carol,
in “ST”, II, XLVI (1994), no. 4-6, p. 89.
3
Kallistos Ware, art. cit., p. 90.
4
Pr. Thomas Hopko, Educaţia teologică şi modernitatea [Theological Education and
Modernity], translated into Romanian by Anişoara Carol, in “ST”, II, XLVI (1994),
no. 4-6, p. 91.
VI. “Seek first the Kingdom of God”: Higher Theological Education in Romania 109
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.
Theological education in Romania is thus focused on four direc-

tions: the pastoral and missionary training of future priests, a millenary
vocation of the Romanian Orthodox Church; the scientific, methodo-
logical and pedagogical training in religion and theology of researchers
and teaching professionals; training in Church art restoration and con-
servation; training social workers and lay members of the Church who
are eager to study theology for their spiritual progress.
The structure of theological education is organised on two classi-
cal education levels: seminary education and higher (university) educa-
tion. We will first present a brief historical account of the higher educa-
tion in the region of Moldavia, then we will reflect on the vocation and
results of higher theological education today, and will review some of
the challenges that theology in Romania must address in the modern
and post-modern context.
3. A long historical tradition of higher theological education

Higher theological education in Romania is a product of the modern
era. The establishment of the first theological academy in Moldavia, in
the 19th century, did not represent an innovation. It had been preceded
in the medieval times by the church schools established in the monas-
teries, where the candidates for priesthood were trained, such as the
College set up by the ruling prince Vasile Lupu at the Three Holy Hier-
archs Monastery in Iasi (1640) or the Spiritual Academy of Putna Mon-
astery, founded by Metropolitan Iacob Putneanul (1765)6.
Higher education in Iasi began with the Academy established by
the ruling prince Mihail Sturza in 1835, which comprised three facul-
ties: Philosophy, Law and Theology, with teaching staff brought from
Transylvania and Bucovina and a public library. It operated initially as
part of the “Veniamina” Seminary. The disciplines taught there were
6
Mihai Vizitiu, Dragoş Bahrim, A. Timofti (eds.), Două secole de învăţământ teologic
seminarial (1803-2003), Trinitas, Iaşi, 2003, pp. 86-109. Cf. Adrian Lemeni and
Bogdan Dedu (eds.), Învăţământul religios şi teologic în Romania, Tehno Media,
Sibiu, 2006.
theology, philosophy, exegesis and Latin.7 It functioned as part of the

Seminary but in 1860 it was incorporated in the newly established Uni-
versity along with the faculties of philosophy, law, and medicine. The
Faculty of Theology existed until 1864 when a new Education Law im-
posed its closure due to an alleged lack of teachers and students,8 while
the seminaries where turned into public schools.
In those times, Moldavia included territories to the north and east
and the cities of Cernauti and Chisinau (in present-day Ukraine and the
Republic of Moldova respectively). The theological education system
initiated in Iasi was continued at Cernauti with the establishment of a
faculty by Metropolitan Isaia Baloşescu around 1827 which offered
four-year courses. The faculty boasted well-known teachers, European
cultural and ecumenical openness, and visiting professors from all the
main theological centres in Europe and by 1934-1935 there were 1,325
students enrolled. However the Faculty was closed during World War II
war, in 1941, and was transferred to Bucharest and then to Chisinau. It
survived intermittently until 1945, when for political and social reasons
it was transferred to Suceava. The faculty of Suceava was then closed
in 1948, being incorporated in the Faculty of Theology of Bucharest.
An important development occurred in parallel at the beginning
of the 20th century in Iasi. On the basis of the Higher Education Law of
1910, which stipulated that each university should include a faculty of
theology, the University of Iasi belatedly agreed, in 1926, to re-open
the Faculty of Theology but located it in Chisinau, despite the protests
of the Church authorities of Iasi, who considered that it was appropriate
and beneficial that the Faculty of Theology should function within the
7
Further details in Virginica Popa, Monografia Facultăţii de Teologie din Iaşi [The
Monograph of the Faculty of Theology of Iasi], manuscript under publication.
8
The reason for the closure seems to have been wholly different, since other faculties
had fewer professors and students and were not closed. The real reason should be
found either in the political sphere or in the adaptation of the Romanian education
system to the Belgian or French one which at the time did not include theology facul-
ties in universities.
University, in an internationally recognised academic centre such as Iasi.9

The Faculty continued to exist until 1938 when its decline started as some
departments were merged and teaching staff transferred to the Faculty of
Letters in Iasi. In 1940, the Soviet Bolshevik forced faculty members to
take refuge in Iasi, and eventually it was closed in 1941. From 1926 to
1941, 6,440 students attended the courses of the Faculty of Theology.
In 1948, under the new Law on the General Organisation of Re-
ligious Affairs, many theological schools were suppressed or relocated,
because some of the teaching staff or students were opposing the newly
imposed communist regime. At the same time, under the Decree no. 176
of 2 August 1948, all the Church properties and assets used for educa-
tion purposes were confiscated.
This marked the brutal end to a glorious tradition of a type of
education which had trained great lay figures and thousands of priests,
who were devoted to the spiritual advancement and education of the
Romanian people. Many seminary graduates continued their studies in
Law or Medicine, History or Letters, against the background of silent
persecutions by the developing communist regime.
The same Decree 176 ruled that theological education was to be
provided exclusively by the Church, under strict government supervi-
sion through a special body. By excluding theological training from the
public education, the communist state attempted to push it to the pe-
riphery of the education system. One positive element was that the Church
regained its authority and tutelage over the theological formation, giv-
ing it a spiritual and formative dimension, focused on the missionary
9
The Romanian Orthodox Church Holy Synod in an official document, laid out the ar-
guments for the establishment of the Faculty in the city of Iasi: the students of theol-
ogy and the other students would have created friendships and thus since their student
years they would have shared plans and ideals; the students would have had access to
greater knowledge, by participating in the courses of other faculties; theologians would
have been able to use the university and seminary libraries, which were better equipped;
and the academic and cultural tradition of Iasi would have contributed to shaping the
mentalities of the students. Cf. Patriarch Miron, Congresul Naţional şi Facultatea de
Teologie [The National Congress and the Faculty of Theology], in “Mitropolia Mol-
dovei”, II (1926), no. 10, pp. 220-221.
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.
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.
4. Present-day Romanian theological education at a glance

Twenty-three years after the events in December 1989, the configura-
tion of the Romanian higher education in general is difficult to summa-
rise due to the dynamics of the transformations determined by frequent
politically-motivated changes of the management at the Education min-
istry. The state higher education system maintains high academic stan-
dards, while in private higher education the level of training depends on
the funding available.
Orthodox theological education is an integral part of the state
education system, under the Protocols of agreement no. 9870 of 30 May
1991 and no. 124 of 31 May 1991, jointly signed by the Romanian Pa-
triarchate and the Education and Research Ministry. The teaching of theol-
ogy is under the joint jurisdiction of the Church in matters of faith and of
the Education Ministry, in terms of organisation and financing. Follow-
ing these decisions theological study is accessible to the general public
after 50 years of marginalisation; dialogue with other faculties is pro-
moted; and the Church, through its teaching professionals and students,
can play an important part in the moral and spiritual revival of the soci-
ety. Owing to the enthusiasm of the first years after the revolution and
the freedom that the Church enjoyed, besides the schools existing dur-
ing communism (2 faculties and 6 seminaries), many seminaries and
faculties were established or re-established in various cities and tradi-
tional university centres (36 seminaries, 11 faculties of theology and 4
departments of Orthodox theology).11 The seminaries were founded in

dioceses to serve their pastoral and missionary needs (training church
chanters, formation of church choirs, and preparation for university
studies a. o.).
Both in terms of their numbers and the financial and human re-
sources secured, theological schools play a part in the social develop-
ment of the country, all the more so since the Church enjoys the highest
approval rating of all the national institutions (87%).
5. Modern reforms in the educational system

There is a genuine desire for educational reform on both sides, clerical
and lay, yet each side regards it in a particular manner: the Church fa-
vours a change in quality and methodology that should not impact the
fidelity to the tradition, the revealed content of theological teaching,
threatened by the secularising trend, whereas the Education Ministry
calls for comprehensive reform, in agreement with transformations at
national and European level, focusing on increased harmonisation with
the European higher education and tending to elude the deeper issues of
content and purpose of theological training.
The positive feature of this cohabitation is that the Church, through
the Romanian Orthodox Church Holy Synod, decides on the subjects to
be studied, the curricula, and communicates to the Education Ministry
the decisions taken by the Liturgical and Education Commission within
the Patriarchate. Of course, decisions are made in accordance with the
Education Law in force. Thus, for instance, at the suggestion of the fac-
ulties, the Holy Synod has decided not to change the disciplines taught
within the Pastoral Theology Departments,12 to focus on the Sacraments,
11
Faculties of theology in Bucureşti, Iaşi, Sibiu, Cluj Napoca, Alba Iulia, Craiova, Oradea,
Arad, Constanţa, Târgovişte and Piteşti, and departments of Orthodox theology at the
Universities of Galaţi, Timişoara, Baia Mare and Reşiţa.
12
The following is the list of theological disciplines being studied by students of the
Pastoral Theology Departments: Study of the Old Testament, Study of the New
Testament, Universal Church History, Byzantinology, History of the Romanian Or-
while students of Restoration / Heritage Conservation Departments can

take up further specialisations, namely conservation, painting and mu-
seum studies. Since the aim of a Faculty of theology is to train compe-
tent people (priests, teachers of religion, social workers, and restoration
specialists) who can teach others and especially guide them towards the
life in communion with God, the vocation of the faculties of theology
matches the vocation of the Church itself, 13 without damaging academic
autonomy. Patriarch Teoctist wrote: “Academic autonomy must exist
as a form of expression of the innovating academic spirit, yet when the
purpose is unbridled empty freedom, it can turn into anarchy and as such
it can become detrimental.” 14
6. The reform from the point of view of the Church

In parallel to the participation in the academic and scientific life of
Universities to which they belong, the Romanian Faculties of Theology
have decided to set up distinct bodies, namely the Deans’ Conference,
which is convened annually, and the Congress of the Faculties of The-
ology in Romania, held every two years. These meetings are necessary
in the context of a certain crisis experienced by the contemporary Ro-
manian theological theory and practice. Citing the Archimandrite Geor-
gios Kapsanis, Rev. Constantin Coman, of the “Patriarch Justinian”
Faculty of Theology of Bucharest argues that Orthodox theological
education today is detached from God, the Church and the contemporary
thodox Church, Patristics and Post-Patristic Literature, Fundamental Theology,

Dogmatics and Symbolics, Christian Moral and Orthodox Spirituality, Missiology
and Ecumenism, History and Philosophy of Religions, Liturgical Theology, Pastoral
Theology and Practice, Church Law and Church Administration, Catechetics and
Homiletics, Christian Art, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Church Music and Ritual, Spiritual
training and Liturgical Practice.
13
Nicolae Achimescu, Relaţia dintre facultate şi Biserică, in “ST”, III, I (2005),
no. 1, p. 194.
14
The Address of His Beatitude Teoctist at the Second Congress of the Faculties of
Theology, in “Vestitorul Ortodoxiei”, XVI (2005), no. 365, pp. 1-2
human person15, which indicates a serious crisis. Therefore, the above

mentioned reunions have been initiated with the purpose of making pro-
posals for the improvement of the quality of theological education.
The first Romanian Congress of Faculties of Theology was held
in Durau, from 8 to 10 September 2003. It was decided that the teachers
of theology, who are generally clergymen, should have pastoral experi-
ence in a parish, in order to exercise the missionary side of the theology
they teach. Moreover, the teaching activity can only be done with the
agreement of the local bishop who is responsible for the Orthodoxy of
the teacher’s faith. Also before being accepted to the Faculties of The-
ology, the candidates are required to pass an entrance exam. The theo-
logical training is no longer primarily focused on training the clergy,
but on educating the lay people in the theological spirit for missionary
activities in other fields of activity, for more effective mission outside
the place of worship.
The second Congress, with the theme The Faculty of Theology in
the life and mission of the Church, was organised at Brâncoveanu Mon-
astery, Sâmbata de Sus, from 25 to 28 September 2005. This second
meeting produced several decisions regarding: the creation of a com-
mission for academic ethics that should purge any negative aspects in
the activity of the faculties; the involvement of the professors of Facul-
ties in parish activities so that they should come into contact with the
reality of mission; the adaptation of the curriculum to the present needs
of the redeeming work of the Church in society and in agreement with
the reforms planned within the framework of the Bologna process; the
greater focus on liturgical and spiritual training, in order to curb the
effects of secularisation.16
Whereas in the traditional theological schools, students were
supposed to acquire a certain amount of knowledge to help them shep-
herd the faithful in the existing parishes, today theological education is
15
Constantin Coman, Teologia ortodoxă românească in epoca post-Stăniloae, in “Studii
Teologice”, Seria a III-a, I (2005), no. 1, p. 160.
16
Final document, published in Analele Ştiinţifice al Universităţii Bucureşti, 2005 and
“Telegraful Român”, no. 37-40/2005, pp. 1 and 7.
called to train missionary priests who must face such unprecedented

issues as: massive migration to heterodox areas; the risk of the disloca-
tion of the traditional family; illiteracy; increasing juvenile delinquency;
increasing suicide rates, especially among young people. Besides these
issues, priests must be able to tackle, in their communities, residual so-
cial evils generated by the communist past such as graft, academic
fraud, and incompetence. To combat the disintegration of theological
education, the representatives of the faculties of theology have put for-
ward some initiatives related to: re-establishing the chaplaincy in the
faculties; opposing mystical fundamentalism, sectarianism and syncre-
tism; the formative and missionary orientation of the educational proc-
ess; introducing additional pedagogical training courses, as it has been
observed that the priest is more important as a consecrated figure in state
schools than the teacher of religion.
The four directions of development entail other specific trans-
formations. For instance, there is a need to introduce new subjects in
the social preparation of theologians, such as Theological anthropology,
Christian psychology and Christian sociology. Furthermore, the dioce-
san centres can play a role in the constant training of specialists by set-
ting up restoration and conservation centres, missionary centres, re-
search and ongoing missionary training.
7. The reform from the point of view of the

“lay” Education Ministry
By act no. 10114 of 10.03.2005, the Romanian Ministry of Education
and Research approved the cycle of studies for all specialisations in
theology according to the Bologna reform. The specialisations are now
designated as: Pastoral Theology, Didactic Theology, Social Theology,
and Sacred Art. At first, the faculties of theology did not agree to the
reduction of the students’ training period to 3 years, fearing it could
lead to an unacceptable decline in the quality of theological education,
given the potential ordainment of graduates with only 3 years of university
studies. However the specialisation achieved by attending the additional,
two-year long MA courses would facilitate an optimal distinction be-

tween those who wish to further their theological studies and those who
prefer to remain parish priests.
While the Church has agreed to this major amendment to the
theological education system in Romania, reflecting the fact that it
views positively the integration into the European structures, it contin-
ues to maintain that integration must not cause a dilution of individual
values or the replacement of Orthodox values with heterodox substi-
tutes. Patriarch Daniel has expressed the Church’s conviction that the
harmonisation of the Romanian theological education with EU higher
education and the subsequent recognition of the degrees awarded by the
Romanian Universities represent a great opportunity for the Romanian
Orthodoxy to bring a significant spiritual contribution to the European reli-
gious culture. On the other hand, this is an opportunity to develop a “scien-
tific theology” which presents a theological interpretation of reality.
The Bologna process must be viewed in terms of the contribution
to the interdisciplinary theological research, with greater emphasis on
promoting the role of the lay members of the Church. “The scope of
theological education is much broader and could be defined as the ef-
fort to train, according to all the academic criteria and requisites, lay-
men and women who are thoroughly aware of the theological sources
of their own faith. Theological education can be of various types rang-
ing from the additional study of other fields such as philosophy and history
to catechesis programmes at academic level, and from the continual
training of priests, religion teachers and of all those involved in Church-
related projects to the articulation of an apologetic perspective in the
relation with the world. In other words, theology must become the sci-
ence of the profound and ultimate meaning, open to the world in order
to mediate the world’s dialogue with Christ.” 17
Education reform, driven by EU models, besides the still debat-
able aspects it involves, may lead to a different approach to course
17
Radu Preda, Înnoirea patristică a teologiei [The patristic renewal of theology], in
“Renaşterea, XVI, no. 10/2005, p. 3.
subjects, which up until recently were taught according to classical rules

and old-fashioned methodology. Some conservative teaching profes-
sionals still believe that theology is meant to “defend Orthodoxy”, to
safeguard the national and cultural role of the Church, regarding Ortho-
dox theology and spirituality as means to serve nationalist beliefs. 18 As
stated by Rev. Ioan Sauca, a representative of the younger generation,
Orthodoxy does not need to be defended by genuinely witnessed, within
and without time.
8. The Bologna Process – a structural reform

The Bologna process has been received in Romania with optimism and
many positive developments are expected, although it is a lengthy proc-
ess, which does not involve all the European universities. One can iden-
tify certain positive effects of the process, in addition to some negative
ones.
To start with the last, an immediate effect of adapting theological
education to the 3-2-3 system (BA, MA, PhD) is seen in the removal of
certain disciplines in the Curricula of the first 3-year, undergraduate
cycle. The common branches with large groups of students who are
taught indiscriminately the same subject, regardless of their main spe-
cialisation, causes them to not acquire skills specific to that particular
specialisation. For instance, the students who were studying theology
and a foreign language could opt either for teaching religion or the for-
eign language they were specialising in. Under the new circumstances,
they will have to specialise in teaching religion only.
One immediate effect of the reduction of the number of years of
study in the first university cycle is that theological education risks be-
coming more superficial. Whereas in the past students who were train-
ing for priesthood were taught in more detail such subjects as Bible
Study, Dogmatics, Spirituality and Liturgics, now these disciplines are
taught in the same manner for all specialisations, being adapted to the
18
Ion Bria, Orthodox Theological Education: the Case of Romania, WCC, Geneva,
1993, p. 11.
level of theological seminaries graduates who do not possess extensive

theological notions. This will arguably lead to the establishment of con-
fessional theological schools, which will provide additional missionary
and pastoral training to those who will become priests as compared to
those who, on completing the first cycle, will seek another career.
The reduction in the number of training years also has a social
consequence in that some departments will disappear, while others will
be downsized. Thus, for instance, a subject which was previously taught
over two years is now being taught in a single year. Disciplines such as
Hebrew, Greek and Latin barely survive to make way for subjects which
are more relevant from a pastoral perspective.
One major risk lies in abandoning the content of the theology
course, fragmented as it is among different disciplines, in favour of
modern teaching methodologies, standards and stereotypes. Theology
must now adapt to a fixed number of teaching hours, the students must
comply with certain levels of “scientific” research, and scholars must
apply for competitive international grants to carry out research, which
can be time-consuming and detrimental to didactic activity.
We must also highlight the positive effects of the Bologna system,
as seen from the perspective of a country that is a candidate for acces-
sion into the EU. During the totalitarian regime there was certain empa-
thy of the Orthodox and heterodox schools from the Western countries
which offered scholarships to Romanian theology students with out-
standing academic records. An important role was played by the World
Council of Churches, the Conference of European Churches of Geneva
and Diakonisches Werk, of Germany. The fall of the Iron Curtain, the
freedom to travel, the subsequent exodus of the poor and often delin-
quent people to the West have led to a decline or almost vanishing of
the interest in specialising Romanian theologians in the West. The
effects have been felt particularly by the good promising students whose
positions were taken over by daring, often fraudulent scholarship hunt-
ers. We now notice that ever more seminary graduates who emigrated
to the West have received degrees in Catholic and Protestant theological
schools would now want to be integrated in the theological education

system of Romania. That is why, through the Bologna Process, the Facul-
ties of Theology become officially international.
Transferable credits encourage promising students to study abroad,
in different academic settings, under the guidance of the responsible
professors in their faculties. From our own perspective, there are three
positive aspects of this process: the familiarisation with the foreign lan-
guage of study; acquiring a methodology of theological research, by
comparison to the Western models; and the access to libraries and theo-
logical literature still hardly available in Romania following 50 years of
prohibition on publishing and importing of Christian literature.
Equally important is the ecumenical orientation, because the Soc-
rates/Erasmus mobility programme allows students to confess the faith
they study in our schools in foreign, heterodox settings. The particular
life-style, practice, tenure and commitment to the Orthodox faith have
often represented the best missionary means of familiarising the West-
ern students with the Orthodox ethos. The same phenomenon occurs
with foreign students who come to study in Romania.
The Bologna process promotes interdisciplinary dialogue which
can constitute a basis for European research programmes. It encourages
the attempts of teaching professionals and researchers to discover new
fields of non-theological study, with beneficial long-term effects. For
the Romanian higher education which has generally lacked proper funding,
each international programme is an encouragement and an opportunity
for all those involved.
9. Upholding tradition in a global culture

Orthodoxy nowadays has the opportunity to make known, through in-
ternational institutions, its liturgical and spiritual heritage, placing
Christ at the centre of dialogue, as He is the model for unity and soli-
darity. One does not call for doctrinal relativisation, but for missionary
activity, based on solid theology, visible in the social and missionary
work. Here emerges the crucial role played by the school, if one takes
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.
dissatisfied clergy and laypersons.22 The risks of such an exclusive fo-

cus are greater when students do not possess the ability to communicate
with counterparts and friends of other denominations.
Academic theological education finds itself at a point of strug-
gle between theological traditionalism and contemporary mutations,
which bring new challenges such as: the emerging economic totalitari-
anism of globalisation which generates conflicting attitudes on life,
global educational and cultural disarray, and a barbarisation of the fu-
ture society; the secularisation of the solitary, economic person for
whom consuming, sensing and satisfying one’s pleasures are more im-
portant activities than being, thinking and praying; shifts in the reli-
gious sphere, which lead to certain types of “collectivism, integrism
and fundamentalism or on the opposite side, diffuse, relativist, anony-
mous and syncretic religiosity, non-committed from an ecclesiastical and
political point of view. “23
In this psychological and social mosaic, the Orthodox Church
appears to be “detached from the social and cultural destiny of the modern
man, as it is haunted by the ghosts of the past, by meditative, Byzantine
and rural nostalgias and sentimental reveries and lacks genuine reflec-
tion and true inspirational social and intellectual enthusiasm”.24
Caught up in this inertial engulfing process, it seems that the
modern human person surrenders to certain systems which he has cre-
ated and which will eventually make him into their victim. A theology
that overcomes the nihilistic globalisation can lead to the liberation
from this inertial process, by transfiguring modernity from the inside,
promoting the global ecumenical unity and building a new spiritual
human life style.25
22
The phenomenon the Flock of St Elijah and the Secret Church, sectarian movements
within the church structure.
23
Ioan I. Ică Jr., Părintele Dumitru Stăniloae – “clasic” al teologiei secolului XX şi
misiunea teologiei in Biserică şi in societate [Fr. Dumitru Staniloae – a 'classic' of
20th century theology and the mission of theology in the Church and in the society],
in “ST”, III, I (2005), no. 1, pp. 174-178.
24
Ibidem, p. 180.
25
Ibidem, p. 180.
10. Theology and science – a mutually challenging and beneficial

dialogue
After the communist era, which lasted for four decades and banned the
diversity of opinions, the perspective of spirituality and the dialogue of
Christian theology with sciences, the Church seeks to capitalise on the
interest to develop dialogue, widely expressed nowadays.
The dialogue of Orthodoxy, science and philosophy does not
propose integration but rather a recognition of the boundaries and dis-
tinctions of each perspective and approach. Along these lines, the
emerging dialogue among science, theology and philosophy, provides a
solid basis for understanding the wonders of the universe coherently
and in a connected manner, drawing on the principles, methods, inter-
pretations and ultimate conclusions of each individual perspective. This
dialogue can produce three significant results: discerning the meaning
and the purpose of the universe; discovering the meaning of the com-
munion between the uncreated Intelligence and the created intelligence;
and cultivating the shared responsibility and love for the creation.26
Theology is aware that it is not limited to the exclusively ecclesiastical
boundaries some may impose; it seeks to engage society and be present
in all aspects of life wherever it can offer a meaning contribution.
This approach marks a clean break from the type of scholastic
theology taught by certain professors during communism, now aban-
doned in favour of spiritual and liturgical theology inspired by the
experience of the Church and open to the dialogue with the modern
sciences. This transformation was first signalled by Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae
who translated the Philokalia into Romanian and Patriarch Iustin, who
initiated the translation of Patristic literature, part of the collection Church
Fathers and Writers. Consequently, in Romania, the ecclesiastical envi-
ronment and the academic world maintain close relations, with frequent
cases of members of other faculties teaching in faculties of theology
and the other way round.
26
In the working paper The Necessity of the Dialogue Between Science and Faith To-
day, manuscript.
This closeness is evidence of a real interest on the part of univer-

sity professors in the values of faith and in Christian theology. Likewise,
in the patristic spirit expressed by saints such as St. Basil the Great, St.
Maximus the Confessor and by contemporary theologians, e.g. Fr.
Dumitru Stăniloae, theologians and teachers of religion manifest open-
ness towards the discoveries of science and multi-disciplinary dialogue.
The edifying potential and the originality of patristic thought – reflected
by the depths of its mystical theology, its edifying receptivity to the
data of natural sciences, its paradoxes and antinomies – can increase the
number of profound questions, can enrich the far-reaching and edifying
answers that emerge from the meeting between theology, philosophy
and sciences and can change the way of life and thought of those at dif-
ferent stages in their education.
The emerging Romanian perspective is illustrated by research
and publications of diverse scholars and authors affiliated with the Cen-
tre for Interdisciplinary Research on Religion, Philosophy and Science
the University of Iasi which publishes an internationally-indexed Jour-
nal of Interdisciplinary Research on Religion and Science27, the Centre
for Dialogue and Research on Theology, Science and Philosophy at the
University of Bucharest28, the Institute for Transdisciplinary Studies in
Science, Spirituality, Society29 a joint initiative of the Romanian Acad-
emy and several universities and research centres, and the European
Journal of Science and Theology edited by Gh. Asachi Technical Uni-
versity of Iasi30
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
potential of such initiatives in the educational and broader, social arena.

The project recognises that originality of patristic thought – reflected by
the depths of its mystical theology, its edifying receptivity to the data of
natural sciences, its paradoxes and antinomies – can increase the num-
ber of profound questions, can enrich the far-reaching and edifying an-
swers that emerge from the meeting between theology, philosophy and
sciences and can change the way of life and thought of those at differ-
ent stages in their education.
The project builds on the inspiring and illuminating force of the
spiritual meanings that Christianity in general and Orthodoxy in par-
ticular give to the advances of science and to philosophical reflection.
In this light, the project represents a visible testimony within the entire
Eastern world of the fact that the meeting between the Orthodox tradi-
tion and the scientific one is truly possible.
The ongoing project Courses on the Relation Among Science, Re-
ligion and Philosophy from an Orthodox Christian Perspective aims to
capitalise on the experience of previous projects and on the mutual
commitment of the Romanian Orthodox Church and the universities of
Iasi and Bucharest to support such programs. It has opened a new phase
in the development of interdisciplinary training in Religion-Philosophy-
Science in Romania by: a) Formalising the project at the level of Or-
thodox church institutions and state and county Education boards, and
securing the recognition of competency certificates awarded on com-
pletion of the programs; b) Diversifying the programs of study granting
competency certificates by: - Organising postgraduate courses (2 se-
mesters) for high school teachers; annual short courses for priests and
high school teachers; intensive training summer schools for priests,
teachers, university students; Expanding the target group (aiming for
1000 participants in the training programs in both teachers and priests
and students). c) Active promotion of the dialogue among theology,
philosophy and science in the Romanian educational, ecclesiastical and
cultural milieus (regular radio and television programs; religion and
VII. Bridges: Science, Theology and Religious Education in the Public Schools 129
science newspaper supplement, distributed nationally, in 15,000 cop-

ies/issue, published by the Romanian Patriarchate).1
The current project and those that preceded it reflect a genuine
interest on the part of secondary-school teachers, students of theology
and clergy to become familiarised with and pursue training in interdis-
ciplinary themes, which will enable them to upgrade their teaching ac-
tivity in areas of convergence between religion, philosophy and science.
Furthermore, there is a natural rapprochement between the Romanian
Patriarchate and state universities in Romania, facilitated by an agree-
ment on dual tutelage under which the faculties of theology are under
the joint authority of state universities and the Church.
1. A millennium that requires a new social system

For the Orthodox Church and the Romanian society the turn of the last
millennium was accompanied by the change in the social organisation
of the country. Whether or not it is wholly prepared, the Church enjoys
the highest approval ratings in our society. It is seen as the credible re-
deeming institution, to which people turn, yet they are also presented
with the alternatives of the consumerist, globalising society. Against
this background, we can conclude that the present developments within
the Church will influence the religious configuration of Romania in the
next decades and the manner in which the message of Christ’s Gospel
will be applied.
In Romania there is a highly permeable religious ground on which
the priests and the theology teachers educated in our faculties must sow
“the good seeds”. This religious ground is nevertheless equally pervi-
ous to the religious syncretism of any kind. This would explain the fact
that in the most profoundly religious area, the traditional village, where
the sacred feeling has been kept alive by the millenary monastic life,
without proper religious education to match the emotional, sacred and
1
http://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grants/courses-on-the-relation-among-science-
religion-and-philosophy-from-an-orthodox-c
liturgical education, the advent of freedom has created the conditions

for the emergence, more than anywhere else, of Pentecostal and Ad-
ventist missions which provide confessional religious education and
manifest social solidarity. Nowadays, in these villages, besides century-
old churches or monasteries, there is at least one new house of prayer of
the main Neo-Protestant denominations, which raises serious questions
about the effectiveness of Orthodox mission and religious education.
Another serious concern is represented by the commitment of
those who study theology. Given the large numbers of graduates of
higher theological education, it is hard to distinguish the limit between
those looking to secure a clerical career and those with a genuine voca-
tion for priesthood. Although theological education will follow the
course imposed by the global European transformations, we consider it
vital that greater attention be paid to the selection of candidates for
priesthood and to the particular type of spiritual and liturgical, social
and missionary education they receive in order to equip them with
openness to the values of the modern world and with fidelity to the mil-
lenary teachings of the Orthodox Church. There is a great risk inherent
in the misuse of freedom by the young theology students. Moral educa-
tion is one of the most demanding areas in the modern educational system.
The participation in the liturgical life, the moral restrictions, asceti-
cism, prayer, avoiding the harmful influence of the media on the per-
sonal life of the students are formative prerequisites which are however
difficult to realise.
On the other hand it is understandable that the candidates for
priesthood come with a certain “secular” background which they have
to discard for the rest of their lives. If in school some coercive methods
may apply, in their personal life, as priests and religion teachers, such
constraints must be applied of one’s own will in order to become a
credible model. This appears to be the greatest challenge of the modern
theological education.
Another challenge for the mission of the future steward of Christ
is the decline of family values. Under the influence of the media assault,
all Christian families face challenges, including priest’s family. The

lack of any moral restrictions poses spiritual risks for the young gen-
eration, which is a concern for each of us, as we are all members of the
Church. The education for mission is done in general with young peo-
ple who study theology; from the outside, young people, including the
future priests’ wives and religion teachers, do not understand the diffi-
culty of the mission of being a practicing Christian, which can make them
unable to adapt to a life of missionary sacrifice. The higher rate of
abandonment of the family home by a parents shows that this concern
should expand to educating all young families.
As regards mission in the rural areas, the priests who come from
the academic centres to villages find it difficult to handle the challenges
of Romanian rural life, since as much as 80% of villages do not have
paved roads and running water. It is therefore necessary to insist on the
need of Orthodox solidarity and on the students’ practical training by
concrete activities to cope with such demanding situations. The solution
to commute to the parish or to simply move from the village to the urban
areas is detrimental for the local community of believers, as it under-
mines their identification of the priest as a “paternal figure”, as the
loyal shepherd of their souls. An important role in this anticipatory
training can be played by the theological seminaries, where basic edu-
cation is provided in the spirit of communion. In the seminary, personal
prayer and communal prayer are specifically encouraged. Pupils learn
to pray, learn, work, and live in communion. Their time must be di-
vided among study, prayer and spiritual life, and work and community
service. This is the period when responsible freedom is cultivated,
while, on the contrary, in many other schools personal liberty is substi-
tuted by libertinage. We subscribe to the view of Fr. Thomas Hopko
who states that students must learn “to do theological studies” by ob-
serving “the organisation, management, governance and financing of
the schools of theology, as well as of the local parishes, dioceses and
churches, and by participating in the life of these institutions.” 2
2
Thomas Hopko, art. cit., p. 97.
The Church in the former communist bloc experiences nowadays

a dual trend in theology: a so-called academic or scholarly theology and
a popular, spiritual, charismatic theology, promoted by the spiritual fa-
thers living in secluded monasteries. As a result, on the theological lit-
erature market, one can find both theological books of academic stature,
usually characterised by austerity, scientific accuracy, and inaccessibil-
ity, and pseudo-theological literature, which popularises certain Chris-
tian teachings or the spiritual profile of certain great spiritual fathers,
which are characterised by simplicity, unprofessional practices, often
by errors of faith, although they claim to possess a kind of patristic and
philocalic erudition. This double standard causes a detachment of the
academic theology from the life of the Church and to confusion in the
mind of theology graduates as to the nature of the redeeming theology.
There is a concern for cooperation with other university centres,
with theology faculties from all over Europe, within the framework of
the European programmes for academic mobility of higher education
students and teachers. By its positive aims this activity presents a great
opportunity by allowing the theology students to confess their Orthodox
spirituality and heritage. The linguistic obstacle could be overcome by
closer cooperation among the Orthodox theological schools, by intro-
ducing courses for languages of international circulation namely Eng-
lish, German, French and Italian.
We are aware of the threefold mission of theological education:
to inform, to form and to transform. The modern and post-modern
world appears to be desperately in need of transformation, because in-
formation is everywhere, but must be approached with good judgment.
Therefore, it seems to be right that “the third millennium”, as a Roma-
nian theologian recently remarked, “is unfolding to Christianity, in gen-
eral, and to Orthodoxy, in particular, with dramatic challenges and an
overwhelming agenda.” 3
3
Ioan I. Ică Jr., Părintele Dumitru Stăniloae – “clasic” al teologiei secolului XX şi
misiunea teologiei in Biserică şi in societate [Fr. Dumitru Staniloae – a 'classic' of
20th century theology and the mission of theology in the Church and in the society], in
“ST”, III, I (2005), no. 1, p. 181 (whole text on pp 168-181).
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
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.
views depending on the information they hear on the radio or see on

TV or read in daily newspapers, which is produced either by people
unfamiliar with the subject, by journalism novices, or by some who
promote certain groups’ interests. Television, the icon of modern
man (which is also strangely positioned in many homes to the east),
has fateful effects especially on children and young persons. Whereas
in the past the traditional Romanian Christian came out as a person
following a set of moral rules, for whom prayer was a constant pre-
occupation, the Romanian of today falls asleep in front of the TV
taking to his subconscious, overnight, the turbulence and the terrify-
ing images of the crimes, the monsters and the debauchery of late-
night broadcasts.
The city also provides a wide array of decadent activities, the
most prevalent among them being pornography and drug trafficking,
targeting children in schools and young persons. There are few peo-
ple who see pornography as a form of exploitation of man, a subju-
gation of human nature, which treats the human person as an animal
being, deprived of dignity and freedom, who accepts any “service”
for money, promoting pathological exhibitionism as a form of natu-
ral sexuality. This “symbol of freedom” has caused that in Romania
films of this type have been made with and by minors, as actors and
directors. Instead of the image of God and temple of the Holy Spirit,
the modern person proposes that the body become an instrument of
pleasure and anomaly.
In their turn, drug trafficking and consumption are on the rise,
an alarming trend leading to the suspicion that sometimes even pub-
lic officials may be connected to the phenomenon. High schools and
student campuses are the preferred venues for consumption, and the
results are ever more apparent: family dramas, debilitated children,
failed young persons mentally damaged by overdoses. The urban areas
seem to want to make up for lost time and catch up with such coun-
tries as the Netherlands where cafes officially sell light ‘stuff’ for nor-
mal consumers.
On top of all these issues, in the cities social problems prevail:

unemployment, street children, poverty, disabled children, child
abandonment, and alcoholism. On the one hand, these problems are
caused by the lack of education and on the other by the declining
economy and also society, as the latter is not able to deal with these
dramatic realities. Some of these problems are closely related to the
sectarian proselytism, which seeks to exploit the difficult moments
in the lives of Orthodox Christians and to offer them support in ex-
change for “conversion” to other faiths, called Christian, yet known
all over the world as free Churches and sects. They seek to solve
some social problems, relying mostly on funds raised abroad, and
while their actions stem from sincere sympathy for those in suffering
(disabled, poor, abandoned children), they are being used and pre-
sented by the local representatives of such communities in order to
convert the beneficiaries to their faith. Afterwards they report these
activities to their foreign hierarchy as being the “fruits of their mis-
sionary work”.
This is in summary the social and cultural mosaic of the post-
communist urban society, which the Church must deal with.
Most children are nowadays born and raised in such circum-
stances. What all responsible parents want is to provide their off-
spring with education attuned to the times we live in, quite a difficult
task given the changes that the society is undergoing. To a certain
extent, we have become part of the European process of education
about which a specialist recently declared: “The field of education is
required to reflect and prepare the children for a life we cannot even
imagine, which is constantly transforming before our eyes, and this
process has been unfolding since the beginning of the century” 5, yet
Christian precepts cannot be the object of the modernisation of the
education system.
5
Francoise Dolto, Ce să spunem copiilor, translation by Delia Şepeţean Vasiliu, Edi-
tura Trei, Bucharest, 2005, p. 19.
3. The first seven years6

One cannot declare about any person that they are wholly atheistic or a-
religious, because a person is part of a social complex, if not a religious
one at least one based on myths and superstitions, manifested in various
ways in the people’s personal lives, even if they ignore them deliberately
or are not aware of them. If the foetus receives the potential information
even before birth, the elements that form the basis of education are in-
stilled in the first years of life, known in the Romanian traditional wis-
dom as one’s seven years of domestic education, in the family. Given
the life and work conditions of the modern man, these seven years are
no longer confined to the home but also include occasionally the nurs-
ery and almost without exception the kindergarten.
Taking into account the fact that approximately 40% of the intel-
lectual abilities of the human person develop in these first years of life,
kindergarten plays therefore an irreplaceable role in forming one’s be-
haviour. Being present in this period in the daily life, both public and
private, religion will be assimilated with the other teachings and skills,
as a constitutive element of human life. Neither Christian thinkers nor
the Church Fathers exclude this age from their writings, urging parents
to educate their children from the earliest age, because then their soul
can be easily shaped, taking on the first outlines of the virtues that will
emerge later. St John Chrysostomos says: “Therefore, if we place limits
from an early age we will not need to use such great force; to the con-
trary, habit will become law.”7 According to the interpretation of a con-
temporary theologian, St John proposes a few criteria for healthy edu-
cation: that education must be done at the right time, that is very early,
6
For further information refer to Dima, Silvia, Cei şapte ani de-acasă [The seven years
of home education], Ed. Didactică și Pedagogică, Bucharest, 1999 and Ani Răducu,
Nicu D. Octavian, Valentin Bădescu, Pr. Sorin Filip, ÎNDRUMĂTOR, elemente de
educaţie religioasă pentru învăţământul preşcolar [Guidelines for religious educa-
tion in the preschool system], vol. I and II, Grafika Print, Bucharest, 1999.
7
St John Chrysostomos, Omilii și cuvântări despre educaţia copiilor [Homilies and
words on children's education], translated by Rev. Marcel Haneheş, Marineasa,
Timişoara, 2005, pp. 93-94.
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.
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.
4. Linking education, catechism and social focus: the nationwide

projects Christ shared to the children and Choose school!
After 1990, one key concern of the Romanian Orthodoxy has been the
religious education of children outside the school intended to continue
the educational effort of teachers of religion by engaging priests and
catechists in the parishes. In partnership with World Vision Romania
and Editura Basilica in 2006, the Romanian Orthodox Church Synod
launched the project “Christ shared to the children”. The project was
called Christ to the children at the suggestion of His Eminence Daniel,
then the Metropolitan of Moldavia and Bucovina. It now involves local
Orthodox Churches in Eastern Europe and is a “reflection of deepening
cooperation between the European Churches and Churches across the
world, for the benefit of children, to aid in shaping their character, dur-
ing childhood and youth ...” 10
This project aims to equip priests and catechists with a catechet-
ical toolbox to enable them to share biblical teachings and faith with
children from the earliest ages to guide and help them as they grow.
The project is underway in countries as diverse as Albania, Armenia,
Belarus, Bosnia, Georgia, Egypt, Lebanon, Poland and the Russian
Federation.
The project objectives include editing and publishing biblical
catechesis textbooks for children aged six to seventeen years, accompa-
nied by textbook for catechist, to be distributed and implemented in
each parish of the Romanian Orthodox Church. This project included
three stages. First, the translation and context adjustment of curricula,
performed by a group of Orthodox specialists; second, training parish
priests or people who would teach lessons contained in the children’s
biblical catechesis book; third, formally launching and distributing
catechetical guides in the deaneries across the Romanian Orthodox
Church.
10
HE Daniel, Metropolitan of Moldavia and Bucovina, excerpt from address delivered
at the metropolitan cathedral in Iasi, 11 December 2005.
Lessons were designed to bring the Word of God down to a per-

sonal level, associating it with the day-to-day experiences of children
and their family. The catechism books for children are written in lan-
guage tailored to the level of understanding of each age, are not substi-
tutes for religion textbooks used in schools but are complementary tools
that promote interactive catechesis and direct involvement of children
in the learning process.
The project has been successful in all the dioceses the Romanian
Orthodox Church as noted by Anita Del Haas van Dijk, National Direc-
tor of World Vision Romania at the second national congress “Christ to
the children”: “As a nonprofit organisation, World Vision is honoured
to be working with the Romanian Patriarchy. We must be the hands and
legs of Jesus in this world to carry on His saving work. We planted a
seed and together have helped it to grow, so this year I wish for our
project to be even more fruitful, and for the evangelical ministry that
we started to be increasingly beneficial for our youth so that they may
know God.”11
Over the 2010 - 2013, World Vision Romania Foundation in
partnership with the Romanian Patriarchy are implementing the project
“Choose School!”. The project runs over a period of 36 months (started
in August 2010) in five development regions: South-East (counties of
Buzău, Vrancea, Tulcea, Constanţa, Galaţi and Braila); South-West/
Oltenia (Vâlcea, Dolj, Olt, Gorj and Mehedinţi); West (Timiş, Arad,
Caraş-Severin, Hunedoara); Centre (Sibiu, Covasna, Harghita, Braşov,
Mureş and Alba); Nord-West (Maramureş, Sălaj, Satu Mare and Bihor).
The general objective of “Choose School” is to prevent and com-
bat early school leaving and prevent juvenile delinquency by develop-
ing alternatives such as “Sunday school”. In Romania, the early school
leaving rate has reached 20%, and the “Select School” aims to convince
as many children and parents that education is an asset for a better life.
The project includes various activities engaging a large number
of participants: activities for trainers: 154 training sessions organised
11
http://www.ziarullumina.ro.
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.
viewpoints within the Church and in society. In this context, seeking to

emphasise another approach to publicising the experience and teachings
of the Church, the Roman Patriarchate has initiated new forms of mis-
sion and information through the media. Indeed, on such platforms as
Ziarul Lumina, Trinitas TV or Radio Trinitas the Church and intellectu-
als can now voice openly their balanced and critical views of matters
that adversely affect the morality, ethics and functioning of the free-
market, democratic society.
The media channels that the Church uses to promote its image
and express its views on various issues of public interest include: publi-
cations, newspapers and magazines, radio, television and official web-
sites the Romanian Orthodox Church.
Basilica, the media holding of the Patriarchate includes Radio
Trinitas, which was established in 1996 at the initiative and with the
blessing of His Beatitude Daniel, the Metropolitan of Moldavia and
Bucovina at that time. It first went on air on the evening of 17 April
1998, in Iasi. Until October 2007 it was part of the Trinitas Cultural and
Missionary Institute Church of the Metropolitanate Moldavia and Bu-
covina. In October 2007, Radio Trinitas was integrated in the larger
Basilica media holding and relocated to new studios in Bucharest. Ra-
dio Trinitas programmes target all categories of listeners. Its daily
broadcasts include: the Divine Liturgy and Vespers offices, debates on
religious, cultural and science topics, music, and general information.
Since 2001 it has been a member of the European Conference on Chris-
tian radio (CERC). Radio Trinitas was granted the 2003 Best local ra-
dio station award by the National Broadcasting Council.
After the encouraging experience of Radio Trinitas in July 2007,
the Romanian Patriarchy acquired the license to set up its own televi-
sion station. From a film production studio, Trinitas TV has evolved
into a full-scale television station carried by major cable and satellite
television providers, reaching around 95% of the total television sub-
scribers in Romania.Recognising the incomparable effectiveness of the
television medium in disseminating ideas and information in the mod-
ern world, Trinitas TV aims to make the views and voice of the Church
VIII. Romanian Orthodox Media: An Emerging Voice in the National Media Landscape 145
and the faithful heard in the dense media environment. Trinitas TV is

devoid of the commercial obsession for the sensational, instead aiming
to provide accurate reporting, create a platform for discussing topics of
interest for the church, scholars, educators and the general public and to
comfort the lonely and suffering.
In 2008, after several years of tentative and more or less impro-
vised efforts, the Romanian Patriarchate established a news agency,
“Basilica”. Other key information sources include the website of the
Patriarchate, www.patriarhia.ro.
Patriarch Daniel founded and reorganised several religious publi-
cations: Vestitorul Ortodoxiei [Proclaimer of Orthodoxy]- a periodical
providing information on church, theology and spirituality in the Ro-
manian Patriarchy, Candela Moldovei [The Candlelight of Moldavia] –
the official bulletin of the Metropolitanate of Moldavia and Bucovina
and Teologie şi Viaţă [Theology and Life], an intellectual and spiritual
magazine. The tradition of scholarly research is continued by two offi-
cial periodicals of the Romanian Patriarchy that have a particularly long
publication history. Biserica Ortodoxă Română [Romanian Orthodox
Church] is the Official Bulletin of the Romanian Patriarchate, published
without interruption since 1882. A quarterly publication, it was origi-
nally called Revista Sfântului Sinod (the Holy Synod Magazine). Orto-
doxia [Orthodoxy] has been published continuously since 1949, when it
was established by Patriarch Justinian Marina (+1977), the third Patri-
arch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, out of the desire to expand the
editorial activity of the Patriarchy. It is a biannual publication mainly
focused on theological interdenominational matters. Over its 55 years
of uninterrupted publication, Ortodoxia has played a key role in shap-
ing and exploring theological thought in Romania.2
After 1989, most dioceses resumed publication of periodical pre-
viously censored or banned under the communist – atheist rule. They reflect
the vibrant publishing activity in the church nowadays: “Vestitorul Orto-
doxiei” and the children’s magazine “Chemarea credinţei” [The Call to
Faith], published by the Patriarchal Centre in Bucharest; Candela Moldo-
2
http://www.editurapatriarhiei.ro
vei”, published by the Archdiocese of Iaşi; “Telegraful român” [Roma-

nian Telegraph], the oldest continuously-published journal, with 142
years of publication, published by the Archdiocese of Sibiu; “Renaşterea
ortodoxă” [Orthodox Rennaisance], published by the Archdiocese of
Craiova; “Învierea” [Resurrection], published by the Archdiocese of Ti-
misoara; “Tomisul ortodox” [Orthodox Tomis], published by the Arch-
diocese of Tomis; “Lumină pentru suflet” [Light for Soul], published by
the Archdiocese of Targoviste; “Candela” [The Candlelight], published by
the Archdiocese Rădăui; “Renaşterea” [A New Birth], published by the
Archdiocese of Vad, Feleac and Cluj; “Renaşterea”, published by the
Diocese Râmnic; “Glasul adevărului” [Voice of Truth], published by the
Diocese of Buzau; “Credinta străbună” [Acestors’ Faith], published by
the Archdiocese of Alba Iulia; “Lumină lină” [Gratious Light], published
by the Diocese of Arges; “Călăuza ortodoxă” [Orthodox Guide], pub-
lished by the Diocese of the Lower Danube; “Biserica şi şcoala” [Church
and School], published by the Diocese of Arad, and Halmagiu Ienopolei;
“Legea romanească” [Romanian Law], published by the Diocese of
Oradea; “Graiul Bisericii noastre” [The Voice of our Church], published
by the Diocese of Maramureş and Satmar; “Foaia diecezană” [Diocese
Paper], published by the Diocese of Caransebeş. 3
Efforts are under way to digitise and publish the massive body of
literature written by the early Church Fathers and authors, to be hosted
on the website of the Romanian Patriarchy.
Other web sites of the Patriarchate, especially for publications:
http://www.editurapatriarhiei.ro/ (publishing house, known as EIBM -
Mission and Bible Institute, with an online store); http://www.vestitorul.ro/
(“Herald of Orthodoxy”, the official monthly publication of the Roma-
nian Patriarchy - site is under construction); http://chemareacredintei.uv.ro/
(“The Call of Faith” is the magazine for children, parents and educators of
the Patriarchate); http://www.studiiteologice.ro/ (“Theological Studies” the
leading scholarly magazine published by the Romanian Patriarchate).
3
Augustin Rusu, Învăţământul teologic şi scrisul bisericesc [Theologian education
and Church literature], in Autocefalie, Patriarhie, Slujire sfântă [Autocephaly, Pa-
triarchy, Sacred Service], Editura Institutului Biblic şi de Misiune al Bisericii Orto-
doxe Române, Bucuresti, 1995, p. 358.
IX. A Church Is Called to Listen and Bring Relief.
The Philanthropic Vocation of the Romanian
Orthodox Church
1. Suffering and illness – issues in Christian social assistance
Social assistance has been one of the vocations of the Orthodox Church
since its foundation, being fulfilled constantly but in secret, in keeping
with the ecclesiastical principle stating that discretion should prevail so
that “when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what
your right hand is doing” (Matthew 6: 3). Since the dawn of Christian-
ity, the care for the human person has been reflected in Christ’s concern
for all those in need, as He accompanies and assists them not only in
their physical and social needs, but also particularly in solving their
spiritual problems. This shows Him to have an intimate knowledge of
the human psychology. 1 The Church, as the “the assembly of people
that pray and live in communion” (Acts 9: 31; 13: 1; Romans 16: 23 et
al.), connects in an indestructible manner the social and physical activ-
ity with spiritual life, viewing them as interdependent due to the preva-
lence that the spiritual has always had over the material aspect from the
theological perspective. In striving to find the meaning of his passing
through the world, man cannot ignore the ultimate realities, which the
Christian religion has approached with much serenity.
From the Church perspective, the ultimate reality is God, unique
in being and triune in the Persons, i.e. entities that are in perfect com-
munion. He is the model and the source of communion amongst people.
1
“All the philanthropic work of the Church as a divine-human institution and also of
each of the faithful is fulfilled by the cooperation with Christ, the greatest philanthro-
pist, Who has always been and shall be within the Church until the end of time. He
has made philanthropy the road to perfection.” Cf. Rev. Mihai Vizitiu, Filantropia
divină şi filantropia Bisericii după Noul Testament [Divine Philanthropy and Church
Philanthropy According to the New Testament], Iasi: Trinitas, 2002, p. 163.
Seemingly idyllic, life according to the Trinitarian community was a

reality in the early Christian communities: “Those who accepted his
message were baptised, and about three thousand were added to their
number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and
to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was
filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by
the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in
common. Selling their possessions and 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 enjoying the favour of all the people.
And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being
saved.” (Acts 2: 41 - 47)
One of the first visible effects of such life lived in communion
was the healing of psychosomatic disorders and the alleviation of ail-
ments which were otherwise incurable. The healing of disease was a
gift of the Church, often disputed and interpreted emotionally, yet for
many it was and still remains the only way to be released from the
domination of a traumatic state. To understand man’s need to be in
good health one must realise that ‘communion’ plays the primary role
in the person’s activity, and the presence or lack of communion can
help or destroy a person. Communion is a blessing that God bestowed
on the first persons, besides the triune Self, and they perceived and ex-
perienced it as an ontological necessity. The lack of communion leads
to suffering, which is part of the process by which a person seeks to
restore their relationship with God.
Suffering is not necessary and should not exist, but when it occurs
its role is pedagogical: it shows to the person who experiences it in
whom he should base his hope and also gives the people around him the
opportunity to exercise ‘philanthropy’. It is part of God’s secret plan for
each person. According to the Apostle Paul, it would be impossible to
penetrate the mystery of God’s work with each individual person with-
out understanding suffering: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom
IX. A Church Is Called to Listen and Bring Relief 149
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.
the Christian community, which is the message of the apostolic Church,

which has always preserved the gospel teaching and practice in the
spirit of tradition, has never been and could never be a comforting mes-
sage, not even to those that follow and observe its precepts. Man is
tempted to think that there is an answer and an explanation to every
question about suffering. In part, it is normal for man to think so. Yet
the answer does not lie in finding the cause of suffering, but in relieving
it and in finding avenues to understanding the opportunity that suffering
holds for the sufferer and for those around him. This is an occasion for
mutual help and peace-making, as pointed out by Mother Teresa of
Calcutta: “The fruit of silence is prayer; the fruit of prayer is faith; the
fruit of faith is love; the fruit of love is service; the fruit of service is
peace”3. There are no ultimate rules and infallible recipes that guarantee
physical or psychological healing because each human person is unique
and relates to God in a unique and unrepeated manner. From the theo-
logical perspective, the establishment of social services is motivated by
the love for one’s fellow human beings and the respect for the human
person created in the image of God and such principles guarantee a
universal inclusion, whereas hatred and sin block the road to Christ,
hinder communion and lead to solitude.
2. Wellbeing and health or human solidarity as the answer to pov-

erty and suffering
Christ’s coming marked the beginning of an unmediated relationship
between God and mankind, based on love and empathy. He came into
the world to bring the simplicity of existence, mutual recognition, spiri-
tual and physical wellbeing and the faith the Redeemer of all and the
return of all those saved to a life in communion with their Creator. The
healings performed by Christ were the result of forgiveness out of love,
which he first offered to the soul of those cured. “Forgiveness breaks
3
Lucinda Vardey (ed.), A Simple Path. Introduction to Mother Teresa, Ballentine,
New York, 1995, p. XXXVIII.
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.
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
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.
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
becomes a burden, the childbearing is pain, the ground produces thorns

and thistles, and suffering becomes universal through Cain’s fratricide,
which causes a social imbalance that engulfs the victim, the parents, the
Creator and nature (the brother’s “blood cries out from the ground”,
Genesis 4: 10 – 11). The effects of sin extend in the community, the
society, nature and the universe. It is the first unequivocal sign that ill-
ness is closely connected with sin and with abuse. Through sin man lost
the connection with God, the source of spiritual health and with the source
of physiological health, i.e. the welcoming nature, the home (oikos)
where God had put Adam. Jesus Christ confirms this fact when he for-
gives the sins of the paralytic man, thus eliminating the cause of the
physical illness. The healing of the body occurs as a natural phenome-
non and, to Him, it holds a symbolic and temporary value.
In the face of the generalised crisis of the present day, man has
become increasingly aware of and interested in thoroughly exploring
the sources of physical and psychological health. Some people discover
God, the infallible source, by genuinely returning to a life of faith. They
seek to regain harmony in nature by making particular choices in con-
sumption.7 In other words the nature that produces the food is increasingly
“ailing” (the term should be understood in its primary, not the metaphori-
cal sense). Man’s interventions bring this ailment on the environment,
through genetic modifications and pollution. Genetic modification aims
to increase productivity and sales, make products more attractive and
pleasant and provide ever greater comfort through waste. Nature is sac-
rificed to satisfy man’s craving through irreparable damage.
In contemporary Europe, the desire for material welfare leads to
neglecting the family, to postponing having children or even the refus-
ing to, so that France, for instance, has initiated a national programme
of ‘linking the generations’ by encouraging families to have at least three
children. The tragic events of recent years (floods, hurricanes, tsunami)
7
It is an increasingly common to spot consumers closely examining the labels on the
products they buy in supermarkets, to verify whether they are “bio” or “organic”.
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.
3. Philanthropy – the social theology of the Church
Theological discourse has retained the term “philanthropy” to refer to

the attitude of a Christian towards his neighbour in dealing with wel-
fare, poverty and illness. The extent of one’s commitment to one’s
neighbour is determined by the fraternity of all in God and not by social
standing, ethnicity or religion, which is why the term “social assis-
tance” has not been used in this context throughout the centuries. Social
assistance is a more recent formula, one might say a secular one, requir-
ing professionalism in dealing with social issues and target groups
rather than the inner motivation of social action.8 One could say that the
8
Theologians define secularism as the irreconcilable separation between the reli-
gious and the lay society. According to Alexander Schmemann, secularism is the
medieval reaction of society against the Christian clericalism, its most conspicuous
form in the life of man being the lack of public and private prayer. Other theologians
have described secularism as the individualistic behaviour of man, as from a belief
notion is less generous and so philanthropy prevails over it. Philanthropy

means care for the person seen as an eternal being of immeasurable
value and not simply the concern for man’s social needs or for making
the social system be more equitable for man as a physical entity. Phi-
lanthropy may be practised in all the political and social systems as it is
a question of vocation and of person-to-person communication.
Christianity seeks to harmonise man’s material and spiritual needs,
which it has always viewed as complementary realities. The early
Christian Church viewed philanthropy as a duty of the eternal life, rich
in moral meanings. The first types of organisations through which the
Church worked to protect the disadvantaged were the church communi-
ties with communal property, communities organised as colleges, corpo-
rations and associations, as allowed by law, and the communities with-
out communal property which had a network of religious societies and
social care establishments. The oldest such religious societies grouped
widows, virgins and deaconesses, whose goal was to help people in
need. From the earliest times, the social care institutions set up by the
Church have helped poor families, orphaned or abandoned children and
the sick elderly, providing care, schooling and religious education, aim-
ing for their moral and social integration.
During the first Christian centuries, under the patronage of Roman
emperors, from Constantine the Great to Justinian, several types of in-
stitutions providing social care were established, including nursing
homes for abandoned children up to seven years old, orphanages, shel-
ters for young women raised by poor families or in orphanages, asylums
for elderly and deprived widows and groups of Christian volunteers
who provided medical services to the sick. During the Middle Ages,
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.
monasteries preserved, further organised and promoted the spiritual

model that combines contemplation and practical action for the benefit
of the disadvantaged.
Church philanthropy as organised care for the disadvantaged is
motivated by the fact that the person was created in the image of God.
The theological base of social assistance resides in man’s dignity,
which is not highlighted by science: it is the work of a rational and per-
sonal reality, i.e. a partner in the universal rationality from which it de-
rives. Human dignity also derives from God’s personal care, as he was
willing to become flesh and restore man to the original communion.
Equally important is man’s Trinitarian makeup, namely his communal
dimension, as a person seeking and capable of relating. 9
Christian communion is based on love (I John 4: 8). The love for
one another has nothing to do with “eros”, as it encourages empathy
and sharing in the suffering of one’s neighbour. Love is the second
greatest biblical commandment. The neighbour is designated in the
Christian scripture as an unknown person who becomes the Samaritan
from whom no sympathy could have been expected for the one who
“fell into the hands of robbers” (Luke 10: 29 et seq.). The notion of
neighbour does not exclude one’s relatives or friends, but also includes
strangers, one’s enemies and those who have left this world: “And if
someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak
as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.
Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who
wants to borrow from you. “You have heard that it was said, 'Love your
neighbour and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: 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 unrighteous.” (Matthew 5: 40 – 45). Ac-
cording to the same text one’s obligations towards one’s neighbour in-
clude the respect for life and forbidding any murder, the protection of
9
Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, History and the Triune God, SCM Press, London, 1991, p. 111.
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.
4. Romanian society – a “poor child” of united Europe

Although owing to its social activities the Church has had great credi-
bility throughout its history, nowadays state non-religious power and
influence is greatly increasing while the Church’s influence or authority
is generally declining. This process has a negative impact on the social
activities of the Church.10 Under these circumstances, the Church must
expand its philanthropic care to those areas that are not properly at-
tended to by the lay State, particularly the people who do not have po-
litical influence and are not representative as an “electoral mass” in the
politics of a particular community.
During the past 20 years, poverty as a phenomenon has expanded
in Romania, against the background of unprecedented social discrepan-
cies, between the very rich and the very poor. However, the state wel-
fare and aid system has failed to deal with cases of extreme poverty
because the role in the community of the social worker has not been
properly understood. Any analysis of poverty involves nowadays statistical
10
Harakas, Let Mercy Abound: Social Concern in the Greek Orthodox Church, Brook-
line, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1983 and Health and Medicine in the Eastern Or-
thodox Tradition, NY, Crossroad, 1990.
data, an approach that is regrettably absent from scholarly sermons on

the need for generous acts. Such figures provide to all interested parties an
accurate assessment of distress in a particular area at a particular point
in time. The local church works with each person from the spiritual,
geographical and temporal world under its jurisdiction, but, at the same
time, the universal Church is responsible for the entire mankind, acting
in an all-encompassing manner with enduring love for each person.
Besides the effects on the dignity of the human person, poverty
has devastating effects on the social system. Sociologists and theologi-
ans have shown that it strikes primarily the foundations of family, so
that for many the idea of Christian family has become a religious the-
ory. Whereas in 1995, approximately 70% of Romanian families with
four children were affected by poverty, by 1998 the proportion had
risen to more than 80%. Following migration waves after 2000 and in
particular after 2007, with Romania’s accession to the EU, the state of
families is truly dramatic: abandonment and divorce rates have risen to
unimaginable levels, triggering psychological, educational and social
trauma in the children deprived of parental care. Often these children
engage antisocial behaviour, such as alcohol and drug abuse.
Poverty has unavoidable repercussions in education. In a poor
family, whose head never attended schooling, there will always be an
unfavourable (even dismissive) view of the children’s wish to go to
school. There is actually a measurement of poverty that takes into ac-
count the education level of the head of the family. Thus, around 43%
of the families whose head had not attended school were poor in the
year 2001, yet at the same time 6% of the families whose head was a
university graduate were affected by poverty.
In recent years, besides poverty, a large part of the population
has experienced extreme weather adversity caused by climate change,
from tornadoes to devastating floods. These have led to an alarming
increase in the number of people living below the poverty line, as they
have lost their possessions and cannot be compensated by the State. On
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
Church infrastructure was reorganised to meet the demands of speciali-

sation and enable diverse activities including after-school programmes,
care for the elderly or the disadvantaged, courses and youth camps
to raise environmental awareness, study the bible or discuss family
violence. 13
“The Statutes for the Organisation and Functioning of the Roma-
nian Orthodox Church” refers explicitly to the importance of social care
as an integral component of the religious assistance that is the remit of
the Church. Article 137 states: “The social assistance system of the
Romanian Orthodox Church is integrated and organised professionally
within the administrative departments or in social philanthropic organi-
sations governed by the Church. The Romanian Orthodox Church,
through its local and central units (the parish, the monastery, the dean-
ery, the vicarage, the diocese, the metropolitanate and the patriarchate)
and through the nongovernmental organisations operating with the
agreement of the competent Church authorities, provide social services
accredited according to the legislation in force”. One can note that the
act ensures access to the existing church facilities and enables the
Church to set up nongovernmental social assistance bodies and organi-
sations that must be accredited and operate in agreement with the State
and the European Union policies in this field.
The Statutes also underlines that the Church has its own system
of training specialised staff, through the Faculties of Theology that in-
clude Social Theology departments. The document indicates that the
work of the Church is aimed at “persons, groups and communities in
distress, without making any discrimination” (article 137, paragraph 4).
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.
Church-based bodies can organise partnerships with “specialised insti-

tutions of the state, local government and NGOs” (paragraph 5).
For the sake of a comprehensive overview, we would like to
point out that the Romanian Patriarchate consists of 14,100 church units
including: the patriarchal see, five metropolitanates, ten archdioceses,
14 dioceses, 161 deaneries, 11,007 parishes and 2,313 subsidiary par-
ishes, 386 monasteries (5.896 currently existing and 260 under con-
struction), and 12,052 church cemeteries.
Also within the Romanian Patriarchate 14,575 places of worship
are open for services, including: 63 cathedrals (24 diocesan cathedral
and 23 church cathedrals), 10,580 parish churches, 2,072 subsidiary
churches, 433 monastic churches, 208 cemetery churches, 12 charity
churches, 48 isolated churches, 298 parish chapels, 171 cemetery chap-
els, 74 parish chantries, 182 monastic chantries, 403 churches and
chapels in state institutions (89 – in the Army and Home Department,
37 in prisons, 166 in hospitals, 50 in schools and 61 in social assistance
facilities).14 Church units (Patriarchate, dioceses, deaneries, monasteries
and sketes) employ 841 persons in managerial positions and 12,855
priests and deacons.
These figures testify that the Romanian Orthodox Church has a
complex and developed system which, at least theoretically, has the
financial and human resources required to tackle social problems, from
poverty and disease to the immediate needs of disadvantaged persons or
groups. Each church is potentially a social centre, each priest or deacon
can be a philanthropist with access to strong and motivated human re-
sources. The 14,574 places of worship can become strategic centres for
the coordination of social work and starting points for philanthropic
action at national level by the 12,855 priests and deacons.
The Church also has considerable potential for volunteer action
through the lay organisations that operate under its spiritual patron-
age.15 The energy of volunteers must be matched by financial support
14
Information on www.patriarhia.ro.
15
Notable organisations at national level include the Association of Christian Orthodox
Students of Romania (ASCOR), the League of Romanian Christian Orthodox Youth
from civil central and local authorities. As regards specialised institu-

tions, the Romanian Orthodox Church has built, established or organ-
ised a system of social care facilities including 57 establishments for
children, 20 for the elderly, 74 social canteens and bakeries, 29 medical
centres and pharmacies, 21 centres for diagnosis, treatment and assis-
tance for disadvantaged families, and the number of these facilities is
constantly growing.
Many local small-scale initiatives have evolved into permanent
facilities providing support for increasing numbers of recipients. One
such project is Asociaţia Pro Vita, of Poiana Plopului, located in an im-
poverished area of Southern Romania, where 120 people reside perma-
nently, including children that were abandoned by their impoverished
mothers. The community is founded on the values of community, learn-
ing and human dignity. The Association works with an additional 400
people, both young and elderly, living in nearby villages. A constant
focus of its activity is to provide access to health care and education,
from kindergarten to university, building on the skills of each child.
The Association believes that the best solution for children is to re-
integrate their natural or extended family. Consequently, mothers or
families are encouraged to visit their children and hopefully to reunite
as a family.16
Church philanthropy is not only expressed by figures and statis-
tics but also through active presence in every corner and region of the
country; constant action focused on education and engaging each mem-
ber of the community in social work. The Church is able to establish,
fund and manage social assistance establishments and nongovernmental
organisations that comply with state accreditation rules and free market
conditions. Such institutions managed and utilised by the Church, con-
tinuing those church-based social care establishments of the past centuries,
(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/
can now make up a system of social services of Christian Orthodox es-

sence with the formal features required by European legislation.
The European Union, whose regulations apply to newer member
states, has decided that social assistance constitutes an independent
concept implemented through the activity of state and community insti-
tutions in the name of social justice and solidarity, such institutions be-
ing staffed by civil servants such as social workers and social assistants.
The risk of this approach is the emergence of a group of overpaid pro-
fessionals, who have the knowledge and skills to apply social assistance
theory and state laws or to prepare grant applications, but lack spiri-
tual motivation. The effectiveness of such people comes at the cost of
love for the neighbour, through the transformation of persons into sta-
tistical numbers. The goal of social action is no longer the salvation of
the soul, but reporting a higher number of food portions, supplies and
money delivered to the poor and the sick. The church-based system
can complete and enrich social service through its spiritual, affective
and empathic contribution.
Examining the current developments in the field of church-based
or church-run social services in Romania, three experts recently observed
that: “In Romania as well, the organisations created by, or affiliated to
traditional congregations (Orthodox and Catholic) show a tendency to-
wards professionalizing their social activities in order to reduce inequality
in terms of access and quality of services. This trend towards providing
professional social services that go beyond covering the clients' basic
needs (soup kitchen, temporary shelter, material assistance) is supported
by the trend in Romanian theological education towards developing its
own social assistance programmes. The fact that various organisations
of religious origin tend to take on public-interest social programmes
requiring access to public funding sources forces them to provide spe-
cialised services at nationwide quality standards, to professionalize their
staff or to recruit qualified personnel. To faith-permeated organisations
and to faith-centred organisations, this situation may pose difficulties
related to maintaining the degree of religiousness of the organisation and
implicitly that of programmes. These organisations must either hire secu-

lar qualified personnel or train their own human resources and equip-
ping them with a double background: theological as well social work.
Choosing the second option seems to be better accepted by religious
entities, since it guarantees a better control over the mission and the
religious content of programmes, giving them the opportunity to remain
faith-permeated organisations or faith-centred organisations. […] the
professionalisation of faith-based organisations is one of the require-
ments for the accreditation of the services they provide; the personnel
must be highly trained, it must use instruments, techniques and proce-
dures that exclude religious messages, and certain standards must be
upheld in the interventions on target groups; the fact that faith-based
organisations provide specialised socio-medical services result in a
secularisation of their discourse and practices.”17
One example of the professionalisation of social services deliv-
ered by the Church, is the activity of the Archdiocese of Iasi, part of the
Metropolitanate of Bucovina. It owns 47 facilities, including the Wel-
fare Office "Diaconia", Solidarity and Hope Foundation, the Centre for
the elderly "Vovidenia", "Providenţa" medical centre and social inclu-
sion centres, social canteens, day care centres for children, rehabilita-
tion centres for people with hearing and speech problems, individual
and group counselling groups, rehabilitation facilities for drug and al-
cohol addiction, etc.
From the perspective of the Church, philanthropy (which in-
cludes social assistance) is best applied in the parish, the community of
the helpers and the helped, where everyone has the opportunity to be
the channel of God’s giving love. Through ordination and assignment
to a parish, the priest and his family are a model of philanthropy. The
new context of freedom has enabled church organisations to help the
poor, no longer leaving this service to private charities or public persons
17
Daniela Cojocaru, Stefan Cojocaru, Antonio Sandu, The Role of Religion in the Sys-
tem of Social and Medical Services in Post-Communism Romania, Journal for the
Study of Religions and Ideologies, vol. 10, no. 28 (Spring 2011), pp. 70-74.
who use it to improve their own image. Philanthropy is in a way the

heart of the parish, expressed in liturgical worship and service among
people, and is not the remit of some charity which provides only occa-
sional and insufficient aid, limited to food banks twice a year or during
the election season. Of equal importance are those public social institu-
tions, such as army bases, prisons, hospitals and university campuses
served by chaplains. Chaplains are not assigned to a parish but can or-
ganise their given community as a parish, as a community of the faith-
ful who are united by the same principles of spiritual life. According to
a well-known Romanian theologian, “the Church’s social mission in
schools, in the army, in hospitals and prisons requires self-sacrifice,
love, compassion and fortitude. The mission of the priest is not an in-
vention of the Church or of society, it is a divine commandment”18.
The Church strives to meet the new social realities, to extend its
social assistance network based on the philanthropic work of national
NGOs and strong philanthropic centres. It is true that there may never
always be sufficient resources to deal with all the challenges of poverty
and to provide education through and for the faith and human solidarity
in keeping with the universal values of Christianity. The solution or
rather the foundation remains the parish, where the priest is called upon
to serve as a philanthropist and manifest the love for the neighbour, to
be the first servant of the poor and caretaker of the sick and to offer
guidance in addition to bread and healing, just as the Saviour Jesus
Christ did. It was He, the Son of God, who promised: “Not everyone
who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but
only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:
21 and 5: 19).
The Romanian Orthodox faithful and clergy, inspired by biblical
teachings, centuries of experience and leveraging the insights and
methods of Western partners have widened the scope of their actions in
the social arena, caring for communities both from a pastoral and a
18
Antonie Plămădeală, Preotul în Biserică, în lume, acasă [The Priest in the Church, in
the world and at home], Sibiu: 1996, p. 205.
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
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
relational subsistence, important in theology due to its psycho-somatic

structure of divine origin and its eschatological orientation. Imbalanced
economic development of various human communities is viewed in
sociology as a decline as it causes harm to the inner personal life. One
of the most challenging tasks today is to maintain equilibrium between
the rights of the person and the competition for development. In terms
of its effects on the world’s cultures, economic development appears to
have a negative impact on the traditional economic systems, on ancient
human communities, ecosystems and social structures.
Development, evaluated in purely financial and economic terms,
becomes a driver of decline when it neglects its effects on the man’s
eternal aspirations, education and triggers of spiritual communion.
2. Christ’s recommendations – a foundation for the

development of the concept of “human right”
The New Testament scriptures do not make any mention of “human
rights”, yet emphasise the duty of the person to treat “the neighbour”
with the same attention given to oneself. Christ advises his disciples:
“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you,
for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12) leading to
the conclusion that man’s primary “natural” obligation is to give and to
do what he has not yet been given: love and care. Christ’s injunction
does not promote the defensive respect of the person, as is the case for
politically correct rights,2 which assert the right to criticise and reject
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
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.
spiritual institution alone, but also a community of people with a clear

vocational social role, by virtue of its underlying concepts of unity, per-
son, rights, love, communion, and to the activity it carries out at all lev-
els. Ekklesia is, technically, the gathering of those who believe Christ
as one and are ready to serve not only Him but all those whom He re-
deemed, hence all people.3 The theological-social dimension of the
mission of the Church consists therefore in spreading the Gospel (The
Good News) “to all creation” (Mark 16:15), i.e. announcing through the
centuries God’s plan for man, whom he created out of love. The values
of this service are nowadays proclaimed by world Christian organisa-
tions, to which the Orthodox Church contributes its wealth of experi-
ence and its initiatives aimed at protecting life and promoting man’s
dignity and ontological restoration.
3. Rights versus precepts?

Contemporary language tends to designate by the noun “precept” eve-
rything that derives from a religious or lawful authority. One may thus
refer to biblical precepts, religious precepts or the precepts of the Church
in the sense of commandments, teachings or stern advice. Viewed in
terms of their intrinsic value and invested with authority everywhere,
“Human rights have become the major article of faith of a secular cul-
ture that fears it believes in nothing else. It has become the lingua
3
“We are not Christian individually. There is no such thing as a single Christian, an
isolated Christian. To be a Christian means to be a member, a limb - a real limb like a
hand - of the Body of Christ. [...] We must not become one of the many communities
of people who are like-minded, who share the same tastes, who believe in the same
God, who proclaim the same things and are a sort of religious association. That is not
enough! It is not enough to be Christ's own club! It is something else we must be-
come. A body is not a collection of individuals who have nothing to do in common
except objective things, and don't care for one another. And if we care, it should not
be simply social caring, a sort of courtesy and kindness and good behaviour. [...] we
are sent into the world to bring joy, hope, light, knowledge of God, newness of life”
states Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh in The Laos of God, in Living Orthodoxy in
the Modern World, by Andrew Walker and Costa Carras (eds.), St. Vladimir’s Semi-
nary Press, New York, 2000, pp. 236-237.
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.
above biblical quotations, we can indeed conclude that the Christian

religious precepts are expressed in lay form by Human Rights, whose
ideal is in equal measure the freedom of thought, conscience and relig-
ion, that is, precisely what makes man a person.
Starting from the biblical teaching urging man to give uncondi-
tionally and take utmost care of those in need, others than himself,
Christianity has had a reserved attitude towards the language and phi-
losophy of Human Rights, viewed as a secular initiative of “How to
get” and less “How to give”. Christian precepts state that there are only
duties towards one’s neighbours who, if fulfilled consistently, eliminate
the idea of right that someone might claim. The philosophy of Human
Rights was blamed for its being promoted by the French Enlightenment,
which imposed it on lay society as an anticlerical action with an atheis-
tic thrust. As they do not draw on a common authority, Human Rights
can be viewed as a militant-secularist and individualist undertaking,
whose vocation is to worship private property, placing personal interest
over that of the community in economic matters. Approached from this
perspective, Human Rights are in a position of conflict with Christian
precepts, as they assert individual autonomy to which rights apply for
structural reasons. The English side of the debate shows a concern for
the promotion of Christian values as an integral part of the philosophy
of Human Rights, an orientation which originated with the philosopher
and religious thinker John Locke5, who regarded Human Rights as a
means of defence of the state against arbitrary domination by the Church6.
5
John Locke (1632-1704), a proponent of religious tolerant in his First and Second
Tract on Government, written in 1660-62 (unpublished) and Essay concerning Tol-
eration (1668). He stated that toleration cannot be extended to atheists, who by deny-
ing the existence of God undermine the existence of the state which depends upon a
contract founded on the divine will. He also argued against suicide based on the di-
vine origin of man. Cf. Enciclopedie de filosofie şi ştiinţe umane [An Encyclopedia
of philosophy and human sciences], All Educational, Timişoara, 2004, p. 604.
6
Obviously this refers to the situation in the West, where the lay and the religious
powers vied for supremacy, as opposed to the concept of “symphony”, inherited by
the Orthodox Churches from the Byzantine Empire.
If viewed as lay social regulations, Human Rights cannot be fully ac-

cepted by a devout Christian society. It is true that they have sometimes
solved problems, but have also raised doubts about their application in
particular situations. When Mary Robinson took up the position of
United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights, in 2002, she
wrote: “Listening carefully I discerned two different strands to these
complaints. The first alleged that the agenda of human rights amounted
to finger pointing by Western countries, largely at developing countries,
for their failure to uphold civil liberties, and that this was done selec-
tively. The second strand concerned the narrow emphasis of this finger
pointing exercise. Human rights were seen to be largely confined to
civil liberties – such as, fair trial, freedom of expression, association,
and religion, and the absence of torture - and ignored economic and
social and cultural rights, such as the right to food, to education to basic
health care.”7
As long as Christianity lately supports Human Rights and as long
as they are applied not as mere “natural rights” of human beings, but as
metaphysical truths, they will have the desired effect. “Rights”, not
matter what kind, can only be founded, from the Christian perspective,
on God’s authority, love and benevolence, which calls for the practice
of virtues, and the obligations they involve do not refer to one’s neighbour
alone, but to God also. One might state therefore that Human Rights are
the practical application of Christian precepts.
4. Humanness – a matter of personal relationship

The dignity of the human person derives, firstly, from its being a work
of God. Man was “formed” (Genesis 2:7) directly by God, meaning that
he was created by personal work, with a body and soul “in the image of
God” (Genesis 1:27). His life is unique and irreproducible, being a gift
of God the Person. Humanness is sacred both in its origin and in terms
7
Mary Robinson, Ethics, Human Rights and Ethical Globalisation, lecture at Tübingen
University, Germany, 2002.
of its destiny as it is a personal reality, coming from God and naturally

oriented towards an infinite God.8 Being created, the human person is
not autonomous, but bonded in the relationship with God and with the
other people. God gave him the freedom to remain in communion with
Him from the very beginning, and true freedom, in absolute terms,
comes from God. We must conclude, at this point, that life, dignity and
property are not the prerogatives of exclusively human legislation be-
cause, essentially, they belong to God.9
Jürgen Moltmann, a Reformed theologian, particularly familiar
with the Orthodox theology, states that the goal of Christian theology is
to study the origin of human nature, created in the image of the Father,
to restore human nature, through the reincarnate Christ and to transfig-
ure human nature through the Holy Spirit. He founds his conception of
human rights on the biblical distinction between “image” and “like-
ness”. By achieving likeness with God, human nature acquires the dig-
nity of standing before God and being accountable for the accomplish-
ment of all works entrusted by God. Man acts on behalf of God and in
cooperation with Him, accepting responsibility for the consequences of
his own actions in the world. The image of God becomes visible in the
social relationships that are created among people and is ultimately re-
flected in family communion. In view of such dignity, the social, edu-
cational, economic, health policies and even genetic-related research
must respect the right to life of the present and future generations, al-
ways considering the origin of man and his divine destiny.
While remaining a divine creation, humanity also experienced
the fall into earthliness, mistake and suffering to be subsequently ele-
vated to its highest dignity by Christ, who became man and lifted hu-
manness to deification. Christ, in the parable of the Good Samaritan,
8
Alexandron Kalomiros, Sfinţii Părinţi despre originea cosmosului şi omului şi cos-
mosului [The Church Fathers on the origin of the cosmos and of man], Romanian
translation and afterword by Ioan Ică, Deisis, Sibiu, 1998, pp. 58-59.
9
Robert Traer, Faith in Human Rights: Support in Religious Traditions for a Global
Struggle, Washington, DC, Georgetown University Press, 1991, 214 passim.
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.
the Christian teaching and praxis on which the law of European states
was founded.
5. “Rights” prior to Church

The pursuit of certain inalienable rights of the human being cannot be
ascribed exclusively to the 18th and 19th-century French Enlightenment
or English authors. It emerged much earlier as a form of defence of
vulnerable persons and groups against all kinds of oppressions. The
Christian philosopher Christos Yannaras asked whether the ancient
Greek spirit, in spite of its key contribution to democracy, politics and
social organisation underpinning human societies to this day, failed to
address the issue of fundamental individual human rights, such as the
right to life, honesty and dignity. The answer lies in the social philoso-
phy of that era: the social organisation in ancient Greece did not rest on
utilitarian criteria, but rather on the relationship of each member of so-
ciety with Truth.11 One can argue, therefore, that the primary criterion
of social life was not utilitarian, but rather metaphysical. Consequently,
the citizen of the polis strove to do whatever was in agreement with
“truth”. Truth is what is presented in itself and relates to a supreme au-
thority. “Individual right” signified the exercise of power in arbitrary
manner, while in the Greek state system power (kratos) belonged to the
people (demos). This meant that public offices were held by those with
“reason and power”, the most worthy of citizens, with their agreement.
Yet all public office was “sacred” as it had to be in agreement with
“truth”. That is why, for instance, the body of the “citizen” of the polis
(city) was held in high regard as being sacred therefore no physical
punishment existed for “citizens”. For this reason there was no one who
would execute the “citizen” Socrates. Yannaras’ conclusion is that
11
Truth is understood as part of the divine being, a “a wandering that is divine” or
“divine whirlwind” and from the hermeneutic perspective, “disclosure”, “un-conceal-
ment”, leading to images of transparency, visibility, open acceptance of values to
which all citizens relate, without external enforcement. Further details in Gheorghe
Vlăduţescu, O enciclopedie a filosofiei greceşti [An encyclopedia of Greek phi-
losophy], Paideia, 2001, p. 20 passim.
“individual rights” were of no use in Greek society, where everyone

acted and behaved in keeping with the supreme truth.12
This paradigm was embraced by Christian thought which relied
on its Greek social structure and philosophy, the most advanced in
those times, and integrated them in the relationship with the divine
revelation. Christians are the “citizens” of a kingdom where everything
is organised in agreement with “the Truth”. “Ekklesia”, the Church
[gathering], or the community of the faithful13, God’s laos (people), do
not denote a meeting for debate and decisions, but active engagement in
the Eucharistic supper where everyone is equal and based on the criterion
of immutable truth, not on secular logic. Only in the church assembly
of the faithful can one see honourable people, robbers, philanderers and
other sinners gathered together, by their own will, not to claim certain
individual rights, but to receive the transforming divine love. Hence,
ekklesia is not simply religion but a communal event of personal meet-
ing, based on the equality dictated by the quality of being “citizens” of
the same polis. The Church is more than the organised form of a relig-
ion, because religion is an individual option that may not take shape as
a community, yet still meeting individual religious needs.14 If under-
stood only as “religion”, Christianity would suffer from “religionising”
losing increasingly more of the sense of communion of persons and
turning into an individual tool for attaining individual salvation, pre-
serving egocentric metaphysical needs, through occasional virtues and
philanthropic acts. Based on this theological foundation, the new Chris-
tian orientation towards education seeks to create a spirituality of com-
munion and concrete action, starting from living witness of members of
the Churches in various areas of the globe.
12
Christos Yannaras, “Human Rights and the Orthodox Church”, in the collective vol-
ume The Orthodox Churches in a Pluralistic World. An Ecumenical Conversation,
Editor Emmanuel Clapsis, WCC Publications, Geneva, 2004, p. 85.
13
Al. Schmemann, Euharistia, taina împărăţiei [EN: The Eucharist – Sacrament of the
Kingdom], Romanian translation by rev. Boris Răduleanu, Anastasia, Bucharest,
1991, pp. 17-18.
14
Christos Yannaras, art. cit., p. 86.
6. Humanity as an icon of God

If we are to give a theological foundation to human rights, they do not
originate in pre-Christian antiquity or the French Enlightenment phi-
losophy, but in the history of salvation itself. They are part of God’s
connection with man since the beginning of creation. One could say
that they appeared with the creation of man, who was granted a special
dignity: that of bearing the image of God. This means that they are
connected with the divine being that each human person bears within.
The temptation of scholastic theology to present God using deductive
reason inevitably led to an erroneous understanding of the image of
God in humanity.15 God is not a mere individuality different from man
in terms of purely spiritually properties; humanity carries in itself the
image of God’s triune nature, i.e. of a perfect communion, in which all
the three Persons are engaged in a constant process of giving and re-
ceiving. God was love before the creation of the world, a love shared
and received within the Holy Trinity for eternity. The act of creation
itself demonstrates that humanness was complete not when Adam was
alone (Genesis 2:18), but after he is united with Eve, mirroring the
Creator’s communion. Consequently, the dignity of being an image of
God is ultimately reflected in one’s relationship with one’s neighbours.
Theology has never accepted the designation of man as “individual”,
which is just a part of the vastly broader meaning of the notion of “per-
son”. Individualism and collectivism did not thrive in Christianity be-
cause it properly understood the role of the person as free and aware
intentionality focused on communion through love, which are lacking
both in the individualist orientation, typical of post-modern society, and
in the collectivist one, specific of totalitarian regimes. The theology of
the person is highly relevant for understanding and accepting Human
Rights in the Christian sphere, where norms cannot be developed in the
absence of free communion. The answer to the question posed by Cain,
who became an individualist by committing the sin of murder, “Am I
15
Thomas Aquinas, Despre Dumnezeu Treime [On the Triune God], vol. I, Romanian
translation by Cristian Şoimuşan, Galaxia Gutenberg, Tg. Lăpuş, pp. 213 passim.
my brother’s keeper?” must be an emphatic “Yes”, the answer of the

responsible communion that God expects of everyone.
Communion does not lead to uniformity but to the celebration of
diversity. “Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”(Genesis 2:23),
means for Adam, simultaneously the identity of sharing the same hu-
man nature and the difference stemming from the fact that Eve was
someone else and was not male. This differentiation engenders the dy-
namic of relations among people, through the reciprocal acknowledgment
of complementary equality and one’s respect for the other, a reflection
of oneself. Ultimately, there is no justice in the absence of the recogni-
tion and respect of the culture, gender, race, language or religion of the
other. The model for such respect is Christ, who addresses all catego-
ries of people, especially the oppressed and the suffering (lepers, para-
lysed, blind or disabled) or the ostracised (the woman of Canaan, the
Samaritan woman, the possessed, tax-collectors).
Christian humanism, the driver of the respect for the rights of
every person, is founded on the following tenets: we were created in the
Trinitarian image of God and are responsible to Him and to people; we
were created with an internal intentionality aimed at communion; we
are held accountable for our actions concerning others and the creation
in our relationship with God, not as autonomous individuals, but as in-
teractive humanity. The authority over the world, given to the first peo-
ple, was intended as communion with the creation not as domination. “I
am not accountable to my brothers, but to God for my brothers”.16 This
explains the requirement to apply the Human Rights as a community
life style which involves the accountability of those who are voted into
public offices. All too often, politicians use the human rights language
unjustifiably, regardless of the issues and values they refer to. Christi-
anity uses the language of love and justice, which politicians no longer
observe, but instead use it to advance their subjective agenda. The “sys-
tem” can establish justice but cannot create love. This was the motiva-
tion of the Early Church which raised funds and collected donations in
16
Chris Wright, Walking in the Ways of the Lord: the Ethical Authority of the Old Tes-
tament, Apollos, Leicester, 1995, p. 251.
kind which it distributed to the needy, out of love, in a spirit of com-

munion, so that everyone could receive what they needed.17 This ideal
serves as model for the Church in its development and implementation
of coherent programs aimed at raising the profile of man’s dignity and
providing education as a basic right, regardless of social status, by mean
of several fields of action outlined below.
7. Can the Orthodox Church promote the Human Rights?

The Christian emphasis on human dignity in applying Human Rights
calls for a deep transformation, and not reformation, of the nature of
man and community. This is because the change of unjust structures
and institutions to guarantee that the rights of the person go beyond the
conceptual level and are applied in reality requires sincerity and will-
ingness to change oneself. Respect for human dignity does not only
refer to giving to the oppressed but also helping them to overcome this
situation, thus effecting a change in both the giver and the receiver. The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights is lacking in that it does not
identify the transcendental source of rights. The adherence of Christianity
to the philosophy of human rights is dependent on the promise of human
rights philosophy to ensure the dignity of every person and to require that
everyone respects, or rather honours, the dignity of the others.
A Christian vision of Human Rights means primarily a personal
transformation, in terms of one’s relations with the others, expressed as
the practically applied understanding of the Gospel gifts and precepts.
The cultivation of sincere trust and change transforms the legal compo-
nent of rights into an opportunity to right many social issues for the
benefit of society at large. The problem does not lie in stating rights,
but in putting them into practice equitably. There is a major difference
between the statements “John has a home” and “John has the right to a
home” or “local authorities have the right to provide John with a home”.
17
It would be relevant to see how inapplicable human rights are in a developed country
such as the US, where its three wealthiest people own more than the 60 million poor,
where women are oppressed and young people are sent to war theatres never to return.
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.
The mystery of creation lies in God’s unfathomable will, mani-

fested outwards through the uncreated divine energies present in matter.
The Father is “the Maker of heaven and earth”, who works through the
Son (John 1: 3) and sustains and leads matter into the eternal life
through the Spirit, which the Holy Scripture calls “life-giving” (John
14: 16 or 15: 26). The world is the work of the Holy Trinity, a shared
work, brought about by the profusion of love of the one divine being, a
unity of divine origin in harmonious diversity. St. Basil the Great, who
is one of the leading lights and inspirations of Romanian Orthodox
thought, stated, in the 4th c. AD, that “The Father is the founding cause
from the beginning, the Son is the creating cause, and the Holy Spirit
the acting cause”.2 That explains why, after bringing the visible world
into existence, God saw that “everything was good” (Genesis 1: 31).
The Son, the Logos or the Reason, summons the creation and brings it
back to the Father through the Spirit who assists or incites the matter to
respond to the Creator in its own fashion and attain perfection. The
visible world is the result of the communion and the creative relation-
ship of the Trinitarian Persons. The communion of the three Persons
participates actively in the objectivisation of God’s plan to bring matter
into existence out of nothingness and into diversity worthy of the Crea-
tor’s perfection. According to the eastern mystical theology, found in
the sacrament of Baptism, the creation is the bringing to light of all that
is concealed in God’s precepts, through the gradual involvement of the
basic elements (water, earth and air) towards a complex diversification
up to the structure that is closest to God’s image, i.e. man.
Romanian Orthodoxy asserts that man, the wondrously complex
creature created in the Son’s image, is given the dignity and responsi-
bility to participate in organising matter by consciousness, wisdom,
love, intelligence, which are all exclusive features of the human person.
All that exists is proof of the fact that through creation God goes be-
yond impassibility emerges from supra-unity and creates the phenome-
2
St. Basil the Great, De Spiritu Sancto, P.G. 32, 136 B.
XI. “The Earth Is the Lord’s, and Everything in It!” (Psalm 24: 1) 187
nal world.3 According to Patriarch Daniel, “spiritual life enables man to

see that God the Creator, not the created world, is the ultimate reality.
Man is thus no longer held hostage by petty, limited things, but through
contemplation strives for communion with God, the unlimited and in-
surmountable.”4
In this light, nature is the expression of love, as God, being love,
goes out of Himself through the act of creation to pour out His love5
and gives man equal responsibility in guiding matter towards the sub-
lime transfiguration in the Lord: “For the same reason, all souls and all
the other entities owe their life and bliss to the One who pre-exists. In
Him they exist and are blissful; from Him they begin; in Him they are
preserved; in Him they die; […] He is the creative beginning and the
middle and the end of all that exists”.6
2. “Everything was very good” (Genesis 1: 31)

God’s creations can only be good. The value of creation is mainly at-
tributable to its author and also to the destination it was granted: to be
the life environment for living beings. Its value verges on the ineffable
in that it becomes the medium and the site of the incarnation of the Son
of God,7 the site and state through which human nature is deified, i.e.
the place where God’s Kingdom is established. The created universe is
a magnificent stage on which mankind passes from the state of fallen
creation to that of deification. The eschatological destiny was implanted
in its self, so that it should be transfigured, since man’s salvation is not
3
Dionysius the Areopagite, Ierarhia cerească şi ierarhia bisericească, translated into
Romanian by Cicerone Iordachescu, Institutul European, Iaşi, 1994, p. 25.
4
Patriarch Daniel, message to the participants in the pan-Orthodox Congres “The Dia-
logue between Science and Religion in the Orthodox World”“, Bucureşti, 25 – 27
September 2008, http://www.basilica.ro/ro/dialog_religios/cunoastere_prin_cercetare_
stiintifica_si_comuniune_spirituala.html
5
Andrew Louth, Dionisie Areopagitul: o introducere, translated into Romanian by
Sebastian Moldovan, Editura Deisis, Sibiu, 1997, p. 49.
6
Dionysius the Areopagite, Ierarhia cerească..., p. 106.
7
Gennadios Limouris (ed.), Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation. Insights from
Orthodoxy, WCC Publications, Geneva, 1990, p. 3.
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.
3. Man in sacred matter

God’s “image” in man is Jesus Christ, who in God’s timeless precepts,
represents the Person in the Trinity who would become man. Man was
made in the image of God as a part of the created world, with a life
spirit. Bearing God’s image did not represent an independent state of
the human nature since Christ alone is “the image of God” (II Corin-
thians 4: 4) by nature. The “likeness” to God which man is called to
perfect is the work of the grace of the Holy Spirit who adopts him and
makes him similar to and a brother of Jesus Christ. In the ensemble thus
created, only man consists of material and spiritual elements. Human
nature is hence clearly differentiated from all that is created but is not
human, by its content and quality. The Church Fathers called man a
“microcosm”. In so doing they intended to show that the human body
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.
4. “Strangers in a country not their own” (Acts 7: 6)

By his desire to become god without God (Genesis 3: 5), man lost the
meaning of his own life, in that his relationship with his living envi-
8
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley,
T&T Clark Ltd, Edinburgh, pp. 189 sq.
ronment was reorganised according to principles contrary to the origi-

nal vocation, as the Apostle of the Gentiles shows: “There is no one
who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they
have together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not
even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practise deceit;
the poison of vipers is on their lips; their mouths are full of cursing and
bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their
ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God
before their eyes.” (Romans 3: 11 – 18) While the man of Paradise ex-
perienced creation as a gift from God, amid perfectly harmonious or-
ganisation, after the fall he has shown disobedience of the Creator, en-
mity for his neighbour and estrangement from nature with tremendous
consequences. 9 In the Holy Scripture, “Paradise” was a “garden”
(Genesis 2: 8) that God gave to the first pair of people to tend with re-
sponsibility and love. The misuse of freedom led to the corruption of
matter, making it transient and perishable.
The account of creation provides the magnificent image of a fa-
miliar universe, where matter is subject to God’s will: the sky separates
from the earth, the seas calm down and everything enters a process of
logical organisation, alteration or conflict. Man was planted in a famil-
iar environment, being called upon to “rule over the fish of the sea and
the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all
the creatures that move along the ground” (Genesis 1: 26), or to “minis-
ter” and “preserve” it. The biblical account shows that the rational hu-
man being was the first creature that opposed divine reason. Using matter
9
The corresponding biblical texts are: Genesis 3: 11-12 “Have you eaten from the tree
from which I commanded you not to eat? The man said “The woman you put here
with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” – disobedience; Genesis
3, 15 “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring
and hers; he will crush your head and you will strike his heel,” in the form of Cain’s
fratricidal cruelty – enmity; Genesis 3: 17 – 18 “Because you listened to your wife
and ate from the tree about which I commanded you ‘You must not eat of it’, cursed
is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of
your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the
field.”- estrangement from nature.
for a purpose that he considered to be good, namely “knowing good and

evil” (Genesis 3: 5), he ended up also taking what he did not need, by an
arbitrary decision, irreparably causing the estrangement and the break
from the universe, a conflict that was to end through Christ, but which is
latently present as long as sin exists (Genesis 2: 16). The hidden side of
sin was the pride of the human in his relationship with the One who cre-
ated him; disobedience transformed use into abuse. One can therefore
argue that the ecological concern is not a recent issue; it has now become
very serious in its visible effects. It is not limited to water, earth and air
independently, but extends to mankind’s physical and spiritual health and
its awareness and desire for salvation. Adam’s sin was, among other facts,
a revolt against moderation threatening the gift of life,10 and it resulted in
suffering, misery and death (Genesis 3: 16). Paradise ceased to be a beau-
tiful and hospitable place for the sinful man who abandoned it, bearing
the burden of responsibility for all that was to be until the end of time. Man
was required to “minister”, that is to rule over the Paradise, in agreement
with the high principles that God had implanted in him. Sin caused him
to be convinced that he had a unilateral and autonomous right to reign and
exploit for the sake of ephemeral prosperity and the indulgence of desires
that offer the illusion of happiness, independently from the Creator.
According to the biblical account, the degradation of the envi-
ronment is not a question of physiological life and death, but one which
relates to the eternal life.11 The loss was infinite and its effects are visi-
ble down to the core of human nature: concern for property and con-
sumption, transformation of necessity into gluttony, of sentiments into
passions, and of need into desire.
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.
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.
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)
economic interests. Economic development creates victims mainly

among the poor and increases the gap between the richest and the poor-
est people. Approached according to the evangelic precepts, it would
have a wholly different role. Inwardly, man tends to become a slave to
the world, by becoming attached to sensuous things.16 Western theology
fell in this trap and for a long time promoted prosperity independent
from creation and religious life. In 1961, for example, in ecumenical
circles, it was stated that: “Christians must look at scientific discoveries
as new steps towards man’s domination over nature”17. No more than
40 years later, when the effects of man’s “domination” were perceived,
at the conference at Basel, Switzerland, in 2005, it was stated that:
“Man must be a servant of the earth. We are concerned that the eco-
logical and social situation is deteriorating” […] “Despite all scientific
and political declarations and warnings, too little is being done and of-
ten too late about many of the critical problems such as climate change,
loss of biodiversity, air, water and soil deterioration.”18
6. Water – natural and supernatural element

Starting with the 20th century, water has been a part of the agenda of
scientists and theologians as a critically important topic, given its
16
Dumitru Popescu, Ortodoxie şi contemporaneitate, Editura Diogene, Bucharest, 1996,
p. 194-195.
17
W.A. Visser’t Hooft (ed.), The New Delhi Report, London, SCM Press, 1962, p. 96,
Wesley Granberg – Michaelson, Creation in Ecumenical Theology, in the volume
Ecotheology. Voices from South and North, edited by David Hallman, WCC Publica-
tions, Geneva, 1994, p. 97.
18
The conference specifically called on the Churches to: institute a feast celebrating
Creation day, each year at the beginning of September; rediscover the Eucharist as
the place where God is already healing creation; promote education for sustainable liv-
ing in the churches and in the national curriculum; reduce energy consumption and
use green electricity; form relationships of eco-justice between rich and poor com-
munities; reconsider the use of car and air travel; implement sustainable agriculture,
use and recycle resources and finances in the church communities; value water as a
resource indispensable to life, called the “blue gold”; learn about, protect and enjoy
the diversity of nature. An extensive material can be consulted at www.ecen.org.
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.
entire process of purification and mineralisation or when the soil filter-

ing is polluted. The moving water (in springs or rivers) is connected to
the human consciousness to which it communicates certain messages
about the mysteries of the material world. The Japanese scientist Ma-
saru Emoto thinks that water even reacts to mental stimuli, positively to
feelings of love and gratefulness and negatively to anger and hate, like
a living organism.22 After all, man is 90% water at birth, while during
the whole lifespan water represents on average 70% of the human body.
Science currently confirms what theology stated intuitively a long
time before, when it formulated sanctifying prayers which reveal the
curative and cathartic powers of water in the action of the Holy Spirit.
“[…] Be present now through the visitation of your Holy Spirit, and
sanctify this water! Count us worthy to be filled with your sanctification
through the partaking and sprinkling of this water. And let it be for us,
Lord, for healing of soul and body”23 or “Make it (the water) a source of
purity, a gift of sanctification, a deliverance from sins, an averting of dis-
eases, unapproachable by hostile powers, filled with angelic strength.”24
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.
through sacrifice and resurrection (John 1: 3). He becomes a complete

man to enable the human nature to reclaim its actual vocation: deifica-
tion. At the end of his earthly activity, He sends the Holy Spirit to con-
firm the restoration of the whole creation: “They saw what seemed to
be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All
of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other
tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (Acts 2: 3 – 4 and 17, an exact rep-
lication of Joel’s text). The model of the restoration was the Mother of
God, who became Christo- and “Pneumato-phorous” (bearer of Christ
and of the Spirit), rendering humanity compatible with divinity. Through
humanisation, God communicates His will “to be put into effect when
the times will have reached their fulfilment – to bring all things in
heaven and on earth together under one head, Christ” (Ephesians 1: 10).
In other words, Christ made Himself man, restored and renewed the
creatures, uniting them with the Creator in and through Himself. The
Lord Jesus is the only one who acted as emperor, priest and servant of
creation. He showed mankind the way to understand the ruling of na-
ture by His ministry and care, moderation and gratitude, obedience and
holiness. Christ is not an authoritarian Lord of creation so long as He
accepts death and sacrifices Himself for its salvation. He does not for-
sake and exploit, but sanctifies and guides.25
The miracle known as the “multiplication of breads”, presented
in the Holy Scriptures, has dogmatic and ecological connotations: it is
not a creation out of nothing, but a multiplication of existing matter
(five loaves and two fish). The ecological message of the account is the
Saviour’s care for all those present, for the 5,000 men, plus the women
and children, and also the concern to “gather the pieces that are left
over” (John 6: 12). One can easily observe that nothing from God’s gift
should be wasted, neither personally nor as part of a community event.
25
As the Lord, he admonishes the waves, drives away demons, heals paralytics, crippled
and blind people; as servant, he does not own property for “the Son of Man has no-
where to lay his head” (Luke 9: 58); as high priest, he ministers, blesses, consecrates,
comforts and forgives.
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.
8. Matter – the object of God’s and man’s love

In Orthodoxy man is defined by the relation he maintains with God.
More precisely, as the prominent theologian Vladimir Lossky observed,
“the perfection of man does not consist in that which assimilates him to
the whole of creation, but in that which distinguishes him from the created
order and assimilates him to his Creator. Revelation teaches us that man
was made in the image and likeness of God”.26 This fundamental con-
cept has been crucial in articulating the Eastern Orthodox view of man.
Dumitru Stăniloae wrote extensively about the love that made
God bring everything into existence.27 Everlasting love is manifested in
the creation of the world and the redeeming work, which is effective in
each person that enters into communion with the Lord through the Sac-
raments28 There is nothing that does not bear the mark of God’s love.
When one truly loves, one experiences eternity in time; so long as one
26
Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, translated by a small
group of members of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, St. Vladimir’s Semi-
nary Press, New York, 1976, p. 114.
27
The teaching about the Trinity itself is developed starting from the concept of love.
The title of his last book is Sfânta Treime sau La început a fost Iubirea [The Holy
Trinity or In the Beginning There Was Love], EIBMBOR, Bucharest, 2005.
28
Especially Spiritualitate şi comuniune în Liturghia ortodoxă [Spirituality and com-
munion in the Orthodox Liturgy], EIMBOR, Bucharest, 2004.
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!”
The Eucharist is always celebrated after the service of Vespers, a

symbol of creation and God’s care for the living creatures: “When you
open your hand they are satisfied with good things. […] when you take
away their breath, they die and return to the dust. (Psalm 103: 28 - 29).29
Therefore, Orthodoxy has nothing to add to ecology but proposes a
changing of attitude towards the destiny of creation, by transformation,
sanctification and glorification of material elements.
Out of responsive love for God and his neighbours, man can con-
tribute to restoring the harmony between God, man and environment.
Contemporary theologians have formulated a series of theological crite-
ria that should form the basis of the re-construction of this relationship:
the equality of men, expressed in the teaching of the Church Fathers by
their common origin, their divine call to share equally human nature
and destiny that involves similar duties, rights and responsibilities for
everyone. Following the example of God’s justice, all people have a
right to life on earth, as one family of God, so that it is not permitted
that some of them should consume more than others. Man was com-
manded to subdue the universe but only in order to use it rationally and
enable its salvation. Land, air and water are elements that must not be
privatised as they are God’s gifts, vital for maintaining life and cannot
be multiplied or produced; exclusive ownership, concentration of assets
and property inevitably give rise to conflicts and inhuman acts such as
stealing, fraud, robbery and injustice. Christianity regards even be-
queathed property as having questionable origins. Private ownership
leads more or less obviously to passions such as avarice, violence, in-
justice, spoilage and theft. According to the Church Fathers, it creates
discord, conflicts and wars. Ownership of land was rejected in the early
theological writings as it leads to idolatry. Wealth is positive when one
avoids idolatrousness and the excessive attachment to it, and can be
redeeming if it is shared with members of the community in their needs.
The Bible establishes thus the validity of material goods and confirms
29
A paper on this topic: Kallistos Ware, Orthodox Vision of Creation, în TV, 5-8/2007,
to be published.
their evangelic value only when they lead to the practice of virtue (Acts
2 and 4) and the cultivation of the common good.
9. The ecological crisis or the suffering of the Earth

The involution of the climate and the bad shape of the environment in
general have caused theologians and specialists in ecology to speak of
“sin” when referring to the relationship between man and the environ-
ment.30 The ecological issue is not simply a fashionable topic in theol-
ogy and technology when the effects of the unconditioned exploitation
of the earth’s resources are conspicuous and dramatic. Water pollution,
the exhaustion of non-renewable resources, the destruction of the ozone
layer, the unprecedented increase of the level of nuclear radiation, the
desertification of large areas are no longer accidents but actual unnatu-
ral states that cause suffering to the earth and indirectly to man. The
land, which under God’s authority was meant to bring forth vegetation,
begins to dry up because of human activity. The land’s power of life is
constantly affected by poisoning and straining. Its barrenness is unnatu-
ral and in contrast to Paradise, which was described as a garden with
luxuriant vegetation.
Man’s irrationality is the step through which all covenant with
God the Maker is broken. The prophet Isaiah offers a description of this
state of things: “The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes
and withers, he exalted of the earth languish. The earth is defiled by its
people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken
the everlasting covenant.” (Isaiah 24: 4 – 6)
Science and technology are gifts from God that are applied on earth.
Misused by man, they lead him to a slow death, so that modern culture
has rightly been called a “culture of death”. Calls for controlled, pro-
grammed and just development, for a more equal distribution of assets
30
The Bishop John of Pergamum, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, Patriarch Bartholomew
I of Constantinople. In a speech to an audience of 1,800 people at St. Paul’s Cathe-
dral in London, David Attenborough declared that “waste is a sin” (Richard Chartres,
We have failed planet Earth, in “The Tablet”, September 2006, p. 6).
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.
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.
10. Forestry between Christian Tradition and modern greed

“The high forest is a brother to the Romanian” states a Romanian maxim.
The Romanians owe their attachment to the forest to the fact that,
throughout their history, the woods were the safest place to take refuge
from foreign invasions. As early as the first millennium, the local popu-
lations used retreat to the mountains in the face of Roman, Slav, Byzan-
tine, Tatar or Ottoman invaders and there they found shelter and provi-
sions. Due to the tremendous destruction brought on by such incur-
sions, in Romania there are few imposing buildings dating from before
the 18th century: homes and churches were burnt down, villages were
scattered, so that families lived to build several “huts” through their life.
The history of the Romanians is a combination of national eth-
nicity, Orthodox faith and the environment. The forest has always been
important not only because of its practical utility, but also because for
Romanian monks and hermits it has been the “wilderness” where they
find peace and meet God. In his book, Descriptio Moldaviae, the great
and erudite ruling prince of Moldavia, Dimitrie Cantemir (18th c.) wrote
that, in the area of Ceahlău Mountain, famed for its austerity, “the for-
ests were abuzz with hermits.” In these forests are now found the relics
of holy monks and nuns who struggled in caves and crevices, while their
souls are now in heaven, uniting it with the earth with their prayers.
These forests were sanctuaries of spiritual life, and to this day most
monasteries and sketes in Romania are located in forests.
11. The forest – the wilderness of hermitage

Monastic life, a constant of Orthodox tradition, encourages moderation
in relation to everything that man takes from nature. During the Holy
Liturgy the gifts of God from nature, altered and sanctified by man are
“returned” to the Creator as an act of thanksgiving and a token of re-
spect for the creation and for the Creator.
The hermit, the recluse or the monk is the one who “sees” in na-
ture the presence of a higher intelligence and deduces from its organisa-
tion the existence of God as Person, because He gives gifts to the earth
and to the people, and giving is a characteristic of persons. He under-
stands that in nature order is so complex that it can seem chaotic, yet in
this lies the peace that pleases the eye and lifts the spirit. A well-known
recent case is that of Fr. Cleopa, a great monk revered by many the
“Spiritual Father of Romanians”, who spent 10 years of his life in the
forest, living in a hut dug out in the earth, because of communist perse-
cution. There he organised his religious life according to the signs of
the time that he could read in the forest: he observed the seven Ortho-
dox canonical hours by noting the positioning of the moon or the sing-
ing of certain bird species in daytime or at night.
The life-giving water filtered and given to the living creatures by
the forests parallels the water of the eternal life, which is the prayer and
Liturgy celebrated by the secluded monks in century-old forests. Mo-
nastic communities established in the forests maintain architectural and
existential harmony with the forest, avoiding excess comfort, irrational
consumption and exploitation. And in north-western Romania, there is
a tradition demanding that every farmer must say a prayer for the abso-
lution of sin before cutting down a tree.
12. Romanian forests – victims of unbridled freedom

Nowadays, the total wooded area of Romania is 6 million hectares, enough
to ensure the balance between economic pollution and quality air and to
deliver profits to businesses. The Romanian state did not destroy forests
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.
Roşia Montană is now an example at the centre of a heated and

tense debate between those who think that in Romania everything (con-
science included) can be bought using money and those who fight reso-
lutely to defend a valuable historical, cultural and economic heritage and
the national dignity.
The Romanian Orthodox Church, together with the Romanian
Academy, the Roman Catholic, the Greek-Catholic and the Reformed
Churches in Transylvania have asserted their opposition to the project
“Roşia Montană Gold Corporation”. The late Bartolomeu Anania, the
Metropolitan of Cluj, remarked that Roşia Montană must choose be-
tween “being poor and ceasing to be”, but emphasised that whereas
there are solutions against poverty, “there are no solutions for an eco-
logical crime which involves huge sums of money, behind the doors
negotiations, the falsification of specialist assessments and the theft of
documents prepared by specialists are stolen.” H. E. Bartholomew
maintained that the denominations mentioned above account for 98 %
of Romania’s population, “a figure that cannot be ignored in the pre-
sent-day context of democratic Romania” and expressed his hope that
the central authorities would adopt an appropriate attitude that should
decide the “triumph of national interest over private mercantilism”.
The care for the forests in particular does not occupy a central
place in Romania, although it is said that nowadays the most important
professions are those related to the management of vital resources such
as water and forests, two factors that guarantee life and climate balance
at planetary level. The Church can make itself heard through its priests,
by highlighting sin not only as an offence against man’s relation with
God but also against man’s relation with nature, for whose wellbeing he
is accountable, as the Holy Scriptures emphasise. Last but not least,
concrete action could be encouraged, as the one referred to by H. E.
Kallistos Ware, the Metropolitan of Diokleia, who said that, as a pen-
ance, his spiritual father, Fr. Amphilohios, required his disciples to plant
trees on the barren Patmos island and tend them till they matured. To-
day, 30 years on, the once barren area has a rich forest vegetation. The
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.
13. Eco-Theology as Social Attitude

The biblical-dogmatic account must not be construed as the grounds for
restricting or oppressing human life in favour of nature, as if one abuse
should be repaid by another. It is clear that the terrestrial eco-system
cannot be complete without man. What specialists in the field recom-
mend is that “the human social system interact with the environment”,
the social system comprising individuals, groups, societies and societal
systems.33 As part of a unique system, eco-theology has the opportunity
to put into effect in social life certain voluntary moral, dogmatic, social
and economic actions. It can facilitate a more efficient fight against cer-
tain social phenomena such as poverty, urban concentration of popula-
tion, genetic modifications, population growth, deforestation in tropical
areas, water pollution, etc. Such an approach could be initiated focusing
on a few models.
14. The educational model

The year 2005 marked the beginning of the United Nations’ Decade of
Education for Sustainable Development (DESD).34 Man is the only cre-
ated being that can be educated, an aspect that must be considered seri-
ously, from the basic social element, the family, to the creation of global
educational consciousness. Several European political initiatives have
been launched, such as the Committee for Ecological Policy of the
United Nations’ Economic Commission in Europe (UNECE), which
adopted a strategic educational plan for sustainable development, not
33
Eduardo Gudynas, Social Ecology: The Latin American Route, Montevideo, CIPFE,
1990, p. 24.
34
More information at www.portal.unesco.org.
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.
the transfer of knowledge to action. Economic systems promote devel-

opment based on profit, disregarding the environment, while the politi-
cal systems have other priorities than the fate of the planet, for which
the whole of mankind is actually responsible. The change of attitude
begins with the change of mentality by realising that one must “discard
the faith in the autonomy of creation, typical of the secularised culture,
and the antinomical statement of God’s transcendence in relation to
Creation and His immanence in creation”.39 The failure to take concrete
steps is a warning on the relationship between science and theology and
between social culture and Christian faith. The views of the Gospel, not
only on the ecological crisis but on many other challenges of the mod-
ern world, as expressed by and through the Christ’s Church, are often
cast aside. Together with the reconsideration of the attitude towards
matter, one must re-evaluate the theology of the Holy Spirit on which
the teaching about life is founded.
The education for man’s dignity, unilaterally promoted in all the
political, social, economic and theological circles, must be comple-
mented by the education for life itself, as one cannot “talk of the history
of man while ignoring the life of the cosmos”.40 One chief reason for
concern should also be that the development of communication tech-
nologies has not produced an improved quality of human relations: there
is much talking but little communication. The motivation to communi-
cate is often economic and financial, which has an effect on the quality
of human relations.
14. The ascetic model

Ecology means not only care for one’s home, but is also the object of
practical theology. Orthodoxy has not made a radical distinction be-
tween academic theology and practical theology, the latter being ex-
perienced by the faithful in the parish and monastic communities. A
39
Dumitru Popescu, art. cit., p. 3.
40
Idem, art. cit., p. 4.
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.
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
can only be understood when he has the capacity to say ‘no’ to every-
thing that defines sin.
15. The Eucharistic model

The Eucharistic model is represented in the theology of Bishop John of
Pergamum and Metropolitan Kallistos Ware,42 and presupposes the as-
cetic model. Approached from an Eucharistic perspective, the world
was made to be received, given and shared. Through man, the world
enters the Eucharistic relationship: God – priest – world. Psalm 148 is
illuminating, as it reports the participation of creatures in the glorifica-
tion of the Creator as a permanent Eucharist: “Let them praise the name
of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created. He set them in
place for ever and ever; he gave a decree that will never pass away.
Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean
depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his
bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild
animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds, kings of the
earth and all nations, you princes and all rulers on earth, young men and
maidens, old men and children. Let them praise the name of the Lord,
for his name alone is exalted; his splendour is above the earth and the
heavens.” (Psalm 148: 5 – 13) This description is a demonstration of a
“natural contemplation”43 that is gradually being lost in the practice of
Christian life, as it refuses the idea of “communion” and commonness,
in favour of individualism.
The Liturgy itself is a sort of pilgrimage towards God’s kingdom.
Ever since Adam, humanity has understood that it is on a pilgrimage on
earth. The fallen world, through the communion with thanksgiving,
42
Bishop John Zizioulas, Creaţia ca Euharistie [Creation as Eucharist], Ed. Bizantină,
Bucharest, 1999 or Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, Tout ce que vit est saint, traduction
de l’anglais par Françoise Lhoest, Lucie et Maxime Egger, Thierry Verhelst, Marc
Guichard, Bernand et Dominique Goublomme, Les Editions Cerf et Le sel de la terre,
Paris/Pully, 2003.
43
Anestis G. Keselopoulos, Man and the Environment, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
2001, p. 103.
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.
16. The solidarity model

As already shown, theology translates divine principles into actions of
the Church, which is called to apply in society and preach liberation: to
the poor, liberation from concerns and destitution and to the rich, lib-
eration from greed. Salvation itself is liberation. According to the Holy
Apostle Paul Christ liberates the whole universe, 45 transforms matter
44
The Way of a Pilgrim, translated by R. M. French, London, SPCK, 1954, pp. 31-32.
45
“The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the
creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but the will of the one who
subjected it, in hope that the creation itself from its bondage to decay and brought
into the glorious freedom of the children of God. we know that the whole creation
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.
17. Beauty and care in iconography

The well-known exterior fresco at Voroneţ Monastery illustrates vari-
ous examples of nature’s apparent union with the human existence. The
most important one is the Saviour’s genealogy, also known as the Joshua
tree, in which every person in the history of mankind’s salvation is rep-
resented in a cup-shaped flower. In fact, the Church is an image of the
cosmic creation, an idea developed by St. Maxim the Confessor as early
as the 7th c.47 The images from Bucovina promote the interpretation of
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.
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-
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
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.
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
or slow music. When writing or performing sacred music, as with the

painting of holy icons, the author must observe some fundamental rules.
The spirituality of the text plays a key role in articulating the me-
lodic line. The content of the text in the case of sacred music should be
necessarily spiritual and doctrinal. A text should be selected first, and
then the melody is added. It should never happen the other way around,
according to Paul: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all
wisdom, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (Colossians
3:16). Singing in the church has a pedagogic role, as it must convey a
message. The wording must not simply be pleasing to the ears, but elicit
a constructive attitude and a peaceful atmosphere.
A sacred hymn is unique in the sense that sacred music should
not sound or imitate the secular music, along with the change of content
in biblical or spiritual wording. A hymn is something that trans-locates,
so to say, the human spirit to another dimension of experience. There-
fore, in the Orthodox Church a “gospel” kind of music, the instrumental
music was never adopted. Sacred music should be “invented” for God
alone, with heavenly inspiration.
The singer’s profile is equally important. The more spiritual the
composer or the performer is, the more profoundly his or her music
converts the hearts of the listeners. The Bible states that those who sang
in the temple had to be purified (2 Chronicles 23:36). Singing is a sacri-
fice which must be taken to God in purity of heart. Moses could not
approach God with his sandals on, as everyone approaching God the
Lord should convert himself or herself.
The effect of the music among the listeners must be life-changing.
Real music should move the hearts towards acknowledging the relation-
ship with God and the repentance that the human must feel on meeting
God. It does not inspire an emotional or artistic feeling, but a profound
sense of communion with one’s neighbour and a sense of veneration.
4. Development of Church Music

As stated above, church music in the Romanian Orthodox environment
developed through the centuries, starting within the Byzantine Empire,
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.
versification, until the 16th century. Music education was pursued in

monasteries and sketes, which possessed the means to transcribe, for-
ward or compose such songs.
In Romania, Byzantine music seems to have penetrated as early
as the first centuries of Christianity when the Romanian people emerged
from the mixture of local population and the Roman colonisers. By their
geographical setting, near the Byzantine Empire, in the East part of
Europe, the early Romanian provinces created economic, cultural and
religious bridges between the Byzantine East and the Latin West. One
of the earliest evidence the church music on this territory dates back to
the 4th century, when the local martyr Sava of Buzău (d. 372), was said to
have been a “psalm cantor”. From the same period sources a famous
hymn, written by Niceta of Remesiana (4-5 century), a local bishop,
entitled “Te Deum laudamus” (We praise Thee, o Lord), an example of
music transmitted orally. Another interesting hymn is the kondakion of
the Nativity, written by St. Roman the Melodist (6 century).
Church music was arguably the most important defence of Ro-
manian unity and the instrument against the dissolution of the ethnic
identity, the only Latin language in “an ocean of Slavic languages”
(Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serb, and Russian). It is true that from around
the 10th century on, Romanians adopted the old Slavonic language as
official for international communication, though the church music re-
mained the oriental Byzantine and the popular language was Romanian.
The first mention about the manuscripts of Byzantine music with Ro-
manian language come from the 17th century, and at the beginning of the
18th century one records the celebrations of the whole Liturgy in Ro-
manian language. It is worth mentioning, among other local schools of
Byzantine music, the one in Iasi, where in 1756, historical documents
state that “a new professor of Byzantine music was appointed”. Psalm
music underwent a reformation in the 19th century, initiated by three major
church music specialists: Metropolitan Hrysant, Gregory the Levite and
Hurmuz Hartofilax, from Constantinople. The reform of 1814 was adopted
in Romania in 1816 and promoted in monasteries, especially Putna
Monastery, where a flourishing school of music was founded.
5. From Byzantine to Choral Music

As stated earlier, the Romanian land is a place of cultural synthesis. This
applies to music education, too: Byzantine music continued to co-exist
with the Renaissance choral music that was brought in via the French
oriented intelligentsia in the 19th century and from the eastern part of the
Slav world. During that era, choral music penetrated massively the Ro-
manian church culture and Liturgy. It was a time of searching and at-
tempts to find the most appropriate style, since music could not simply
be imported, as it had to satisfy not only the mystical feeling, but also
reflect a sense of culture and continuity within the local tradition.
The new chants did not apply to the ordinary prayers, but rather
gave a more expansive and ceremonial sense to the Sunday service in
the cathedrals or larger churches, though in general Romanians have
only built small, cosy, intimate churches. The specialised chanters were
replaced on certain occasions by choirs, by the time the church archi-
tecture developed, a fact which encouraged the building of larger new-
classic or baroque cathedrals. This in turn led to a new trend: official
cathedral singing in parallel with the local, monodic chant. The role of
the cantor however had not changed: he (necessarily a “he”) continued
to be one of the few trained in deciphering the old Byzantine writing
and notation system. Yet hymns of the Holy Eucharist were not simple
renditions from the Byzantine of the Greek singing, but authentic Ro-
manian compositions by famous composers such as those mentioned
above, who gave the common Byzantine chant a traditional local influ-
ence. Indeed, original Orthodox Church has always been a platform for
promoting and preserving local culture, traditional music, both folk and
sacred.
6. Music in the Romanian Church Today

The second half of the 20th century marked a new chapter in church
music. It mostly involved the shortening of long and complicated for-
mulas and rewriting texts in accordance with changes in spoken language.
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.
7. Secular Music of Sacred Inspiration

As it was the case in many cultures, beside the official development of
the church teaching and music, there has been a need among the faithful
to express their feelings on the occasion of great religious feasts outside
the walls of the church building, in their community life. The Nativity
of the Lord, a common Feast in all Christianity, was one of the very
impressive events that generated a wide range of chants dedicated to the
saving event. The Son of God took human flesh, and the hostility the
humankind received Him which gave the simple people a sense of
empathy, wonderfully expressed in carols, a special genre which combines

Romanian folk music with the more elaborate Byzantine chant. The Infant
Jesus has become the inspiration for the popular culture, on one hand,
to rejoice in the event that brought humanity its salvation, and care for
the helpless Mother, at the other hand. The person’s centrality in these
songs (Jesus and Mary) is the feature of Orthodox carol singing.
Those pieces are still performed as a sign of communication and
sharing, visiting each other’s homes, making wishes and announcing
the miracles that happened in Bethlehem or in Jerusalem, when Jesus
was born or when He rose from the dead.
Often, people create simple poetry and music, a trend that has
spread in the last 20 years, when freedom to express one’s religious
identity has enabled the emergence of a wide range of church music,
from very elaborate male choirs singing authentic Byzantine hymns, to
simplistic compositions of poorly educated parish members.
As we have already mentioned, the Church strives to make a
careful selection and encourage her members to rediscover the richness
of ancient Byzantine singing, while avoiding the pious, popular produc-
tions of the free market, which pay little attention, if at all, to the sub-
stance of the text in favour of an artificial and emotional performance.
Singing sacred music is to Romanian Orthodox Christians one of the
most responsible acts: it is not to enjoy, it is to rejoice, to reveal and
to share love, beauty and a sense of eternity.
Conclusions
After the political upheavals of 1989 and the early 1990s, the Romanian
Orthodox Church has overcome the complex of being reduced to a
walled-in, “ghetto church” and its voice is heard strong and clear in all
areas of the social life: it has accomplished a formal separation from the
political authority (though this issue is still a source of contentious de-
bates); its leadership in consultation with the large body of lay repre-
sentatives at various levels in the Church have adopted bold new statues
and regulations that are in tune with the challenges and requirements of
Romania’s status as a free-market, democratic country, now a EU and
NATO member state; there is a renewed emphasis on reclaiming and
asserting the fundamental values of Orthodox Christianity reflected in
the Church’s decisive commitment to tackling discrimination, depriva-
tion and lack of access to health care and education, developing a sys-
tem of integrated and inclusive education, encouraging environmental
awareness and restoring and promoting the outstanding cultural, his-
torical heritage of the Church and of local communities.
The Orthodox Church has played and continues to play a pivotal,
reconciling role in the relations between lay government bodies with
regulatory and political coordination roles and the other public or-
ganisations that may serve major political interests, often at the expense
of certain sections of society. While in the early stages of the emer-
gence of the Romanian people, Christianity had a formative role, the
Church gradually distanced itself from political influence, rose above
party interests and sought to develop its own “policy”1, specifically the
a-political mission of evangelisation. Against the backdrop of radical
transformations after 1990, the evolving relations between State and
Church, which shared the goal of material prosperity and spiritual
1
According to the present Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, the “politics”
of the Church consists in proclaiming the Gospel of Christ to the whole world.
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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Rumänien in Europa

© 2012 Parthenon Verlag Alexander Rubel

Layout: Bogdan Piftor

Ashes and Flames:

I. Orthodoxy: A Living Tradition …………………………………………. 13

II. How the Romanian Church was Born: A Brief History of a

III. Romanian Orthodoxy and its Call for Ecumenicity …………………... 65

IV. The Silent Side of Orthodoxy: The Monastic Ideal …………………... 89

V. Lay Persons and their Role in the Church …………………………….. 101

VI. “Seek first the Kingdom of God”: Higher Theological Education in

VII. Bridges: Science, Theology and Religious Education in the Public

VIII. Romanian Orthodox Media: An Emerging Voice in the National

IX. A Church Is Called to Listen and Bring Relief. The Philanthropic

X. Orthodoxy and Human Rights or the Universal Concern for Human

Conclusions ……………………………………………………………….. 227

Bibliography ……………………………………………………………… 229

I would like to extend my gratitude, without mentioning their

including its organisational form, the Church. To general amazement,

A majority of Romanian citizens are members of the Romanian

one designed and propagated by the communist regime consistent

1. Icons, Windows to the Kingdom of Heaven

2. The Orthodox path

“received”, “true”, “well-established”. Orthodoxy would mean, on the

3. Ekklesia, the call to community

4. Encounters with modernity and science

is vast and encompasses topics as diverse as bioethics and medicine,

postgraduate programmes and short courses bring together scholars,

the local monotheism,4 therefore more easily assimilated by most of the

each being granted a preliminary form of autocephaly, Wallachia in 1359,

1. The Romanian Church in the Middle Ages:

Romanian Orthodox Church autocephaly, only recognised formally by

They describe in images the theology of the Old Testament as a prepa-

unequivocally: “The Romanian Orthodox Church is and remains al-

shall see, the following Ecumenical Patriarch recognised the autoceph-

2. The Romanian Church in Transylvania

Bisericii noastre” [Bishop Melchisedek Stefanescu’s Contribution to the granting of

a conciliar decision, Metropolitans Ilie Iorest and Sava Brancovici were

3. An Independent Romanian Church in an

communion with other Orthodox Churches – but had the charisma of

4. The Church, a beacon of light in a dark era.

impossible to imagine how difficult it was to be a convinced atheist in a

and was deeply rooted in the personal lives of millions of ordinary

run by a nationwide network of highly skilled personnel. This agency

5. Romanian Orthodoxy and the Burden of Freedom

the Church is concerned, there is a need for profound theological reflec-

and monasteries, orthodox historiography, literature, theology, and so-

ethnicity.43 On the other hand, there is a developing national discourse

6. Building a vigorous church to meet the challenges and

rural areas under the framework of EU Structural Funds and Regional

7. Strong governance and increased communion:

Under the Patriarch come the Metropolitans, the heads of several

The Romanian Orthodox Church is organised as Patriarchate,

8. Striking out on their own: the Romanian Orthodox Diaspora

Although communist authorities denied them any connection with

territory of a canonical, autocephalous Orthodox Church and wish to set

9. Romanian Orthodox dioceses abroad

(the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of Australia, the Romanian Ortho-

The Romanian Orthodox Metropolitanate of Western and Southern

diocese of the Romanian Orthodox Metropolitanate of Germany, Cen-

the blessing of His Beatitude Chrysostom II, Archbishop of New Justiniana

10. The Diaspora: Challenges of worship and

Yet the establishment of new dioceses or parishes has also posed

witness. Church governance principles do not apply to abstract situa-

politically initiated, sponsored and controlled during the communist years,