| Romanian Church United with Rome, Greek-Catholic Biserica Română Unită cu Roma, Greco-Catolică |
|
|---|---|
Holy Trinity Cathedral, Blaj |
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| Location | |
| Country | Romania |
| Territory | Romania |
| Metropolitan | Blaj |
| Statistics | |
| Population - Total |
737,900 |
| Information | |
| Established | 1698, formalized 1700 outlawed in 1948 March 14, 1990 |
| Current leadership | |
| Bishop | Lucian Mureşan |
| Website | |
| bru.ro | |
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 is ranked as a Major Archiepiscopal Church and uses the Byzantine liturgical rite in the Romanian language.
Since 1994, the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church has been led by the Most Reverend Lucian Mureşan, Archbishop of Făgăraş and Alba Iulia, who on December 16, 2005 became its first Major Archbishop when it was raised to the rank of a Major Archiepiscopal Church by Benedict XVI.
The Church has four other dioceses in Romania: (Oradea Mare, Eparchy of Cluj-Gherla, Eparchy of Lugoj and Eparchy of Maramureş), [1] and one, directly subject to the Holy See, in the United States of America, Romanian Catholic Eparchy of St George's in Canton.[2]
According to the information, valid for the end of 2005, given in the 2007 Annuario Pontificio, it then had 763,000 followers, 8 bishops, 1239 parishes, some 747 diocesan priests and 274 seminarians of its own rite.[3] However, according to the 2002 Romanian state census, the number of followers in Romania was as low as 191,556.[4] The dispute over the figure is included in the United States Department of State report on religious freedom in Romania. [5]
Romania also has another five dioceses for Latin Rite Catholics, who are more numerous.
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Following the Habsburg conquest of Transylvania in 1687, Metropolitan Atanasie Anghel entered into full communion with the See of Rome by the Act of Union of 1698 which was formalized by a synod of bishops on September 4, 1700.[6]
By the Union, Atanasie and the other bishops and their diocese accepted papal supremacy while keeping their own Greek Byzantine liturgical rite. This was a result of Diploma issued by the Emperor Leopold I, which decreed Transylvania's Romanian Orthodox Church to be one with the Roman Catholic Church. Transylvanians were therefore encouraged to become Catholics and adhere to the newly created Greek-Catholic Church by retaining their Orthodox ritual, but accepting the four doctrinal points established by the Council of Florence between 1431 and 1445: the Pope as the supreme head of the church; the existence of Purgatory; the Filioque clause; and the use of unleavened bread in Holy Communion.
Metropolitan Atanasie Anghel and his Holy Synod took this course to obtain for the Romanians of Transylvania (then a Principauté vasal to the Hapsburg Empire) the same rights as those of the other Transylvanian nations, which were part of the Unio Trium Nationum (the Hungarian nobility, the Transylvanian Saxons and the Székely). The event coincided with the arrival of the Jesuits, who attempted to align Transylvania more closely with Western Europe. However, not all Romanians agreed with this conversion, leading to the movement of the Romanian Orthodox population that advocated for freedom of worship for all the Transylvanian population, most notably being the movements led by Visarion Sarai, Nicolae Oprea Miclăuş and Sofronie of Cioara, under the dominant Serbian Church influence.
The Bishop's Residence was moved from Alba Iulia to Făgăraş in 1721, and then in 1737 to Blaj, which became a centre of learning and national awakening for all Romania.[7]
In 1761, the Bishop of Făgăraş and Primate of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church, Petru Pavel Aron (1709–1764) translated the Biblia Vulgata into Romanian. Unlike the Romanian Orthodox who until 1863 officially used Church Slavonic in their Byzantine liturgy, the Romanian Church United with Rome used the Romanian vernacular since its beginnings. When, in the 19th century, Hungary followed a Magyarization policy, the Greek-Catholic Church played a prominent part in resisting ethnic assimilation, with the Transylvanian School (Şcoala Ardeleană) and the Transylvanian Memorandum. Leading Romanian personalities as Simion Bărnuţiu or Iuliu Maniu were initially civil servants of Greek-Catholic Church.
Other Eparchies were set up at Oradea (1777), at Gherla and Lugoj (1853); Blaj, under the title of Alba Iulia and Făgăraş, became their Metropolitan (in the sense of archiepiscopal) See. On December 16, 2005, the Church was raised to the dignity of a Major Archiepiscopal Church.
In 1948, the Communist regime that had taken power, at Stalin's request, deposed all 12 bishops of the Greek-Catholic Church and, on October 21, 1948, the 250th anniversary of the Romanian Greek Catholic Union with the Roman Catholic Church, arranged the "spontaneous" passage of all its members (decree 358/1948), who were then some 1,500,000 in numbers, to the Romanian Orthodox Church, to which some of its property, including four cathedrals, were given, while the rest was confiscated by the State.[8]
The Catholic bishops, and many Greek-Catholic priests, were arrested for "antidemocratic activity", mainly for refusal to give up ties with the "reactionary" Holy See. In the meantime, the Orthodox Church was "purged" of priests unfriendly to the Communist regime and, for the next 40 years, it had good relations with the Communist authorities.
Iuliu Hossu, Bishop of Cluj, refused the proposal of the Romanian Orthodox Patriarch, Iustinian Marina, to become the Orthodox Archbishop of Iaşi and metropolitan of Moldavia, and thereby even the official successor to the Romanian Orthodox Patriarch himself. He remained under house arrest, and each year sent a Memorandum to the President of the Republic, asking that the country's laws and Romania's international agreements be observed with regard to the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church. In 1969, Pope Paul VI asked him to accept appointment to the cardinalate. As he preferred to stay with his people, the Pope ordained him Cardinal only "in pectore", i.e. without publishing the fact, which he revealed only on March 5, 1973, three years after Bishop Hossu's death.[10]
Another remarkable Romanian ecclesiastic of the time was Alexandru Todea (1912–2002). Secretly (in pectore) ordained as a titular bishop on 19 November 1950, he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment in the following year. He was given amnesty in 1964 and on March 14, 1990, after the fall of the Communist regime, was appointed Archbishop of Făgăraş and Alba Iulia, becoming a Cardinal in the following year.[11]
After more than 40 years of surviving only in secrecy, the Romanian Church United with Rome, Greek-Catholic was able to appear again in public only after the 1989 Romanian Revolution. Normative act 9/31, passed on 31 December 1989, repealed Decree 358/1948 as repugnant and bringing grave prejudice upon the Romanian State.
With delay, some of the Church's property, in particular the cathedrals of Cluj, Blaj, Lugoj and Oradea, which the Communist Government had transferred to the Orthodox Church, were restored to it. Nevertheless, much property remains in Romanian Orthodox or government hands, and the reduction in the number of Romanian Greek Catholic faithful since 1948 has been evident. After 40 years of Communist rule and forced integration into the regime-approved Orthodox Church, numerous Greek Catholic-born Romanians have remained inside the Romanian Orthodox Church or secularized. The Romanian Church United with Rome is still recovering from the Communist era and the forced merger.
Unlike other sources of pressure, Latin Rite pressure against this Church came from within Catholicism, one segment of the same Universal Church attempting to modify, suppress or even outright ban another part.
Historically, Eastern Catholic Churches in general came under pressure to modify their practices, to Romanize. In the case of the Byzantine-Rite Romanian Catholic Church, the pressure grew with the creation, 17 years after Romania's Greek-Catholics recreated a full communion with Rome, of the "Commission, created in 1717 and operational in the heart of the Congregation for the Propagation of Faith ('Propaganda Fide') until 1862, for the correction of the liturgical books of the Church of the East.
These interventions felt the effects of the mentality and convictions of the times, according to which a certain subordination of the non-Latin liturgies was perceived toward the Latin rite liturgy which was considered 'ritus praestantior.' This attitude may have led to interventions in the Eastern liturgical texts which today, in light of theological studies and progress, have need of revision, in the sense of a return to ancestral traditions."[12]
Given that the Commission came into being so close to the date of reunification, Romanian Byzantine Catholicism is naturally the most profoundly affected of all the eastern churches as it never had a chance to gain its legs and get a sense of self within Catholicism prior to the creation of this innovating Commission. Another reason Romanizing pressure was more intense was the fact that the Romanian language itself is derived from Latin, not Old Church Slavonic or Greek, and Romanization was therefore more attractive to Romanian Byzantine Catholics than it was to, say, Ukrainian Catholics.
Starting in the late 19th century, two issues, trsuteeship (lay ownership of parish property) and the ministry of married Greek-Catholic clergy in the United States and Canada became points of conflict between Latin-rite church authorities and the Greek-Catholic clergy and faithful. At the time, ecclesiastical structures for the Eastern Churches had not been erected in those countries, and Greek-Catholic parishes and their priests' ministry were under the jurisdiction of local Latin-rite diocesan bishops.
At the request of these bishops, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith decreed that Byzantine-rite Churches would have to follow the custom of the predominant Latin Church: married priests would not be allowed to serve in such diaspora mission settings.[13] This restriction on the Eastern churches' exercise of their established customs remained a contentious issue for years, and even provoked schism, as in the 1889 case of Archbishop John Ireland and Ruthenian priest Alexis Toth.[14] Most Romanian emigration came after this period, so it was less an issue but still a problem. Today, most priests of the Romanian Greek Catholic diocese of the United State are married and there is no bar to ordination of married men.
Since the fall of Communism, Church leaders have claimed that the Romanian Greek-Catholic Community is faced with a cultural and religious wipe-out: the Greek-Catholic churches are allegedly destroyed by the Romanian Orthodox Church representatives, whose actions are supported and accepted by the Romanian authorities. [15]
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