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This study aims to display a less known part of Spiru Haret's activity: his vision and efforts for reforming the activity of the Romanian Orthodox Church. Alongside its traditional, Liturgical activity, Haret proposed a larger involvement of the clergy in the social problems of their communities. Therefore, alongside school teachers, the priests had the duties of establishing and/or supporting local associations, clubs and committees active in domains like education, morals, culture, hygiene and even economics. The aim of Haret's initiative was to modernise Romanian society by raising its culture, morality and financial independence, especially for the peasants, who constituted the huge majority of the Romanian pre-war society. According to his perspective, the mission of the Church couldn't be limited just to its theological and liturgical spectrums, as it should also target the extra-liturgical environment in which the parishioners lived their earthly lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Annunciation" Orthodox Church in Guşteriţa is the only church founded by Metropolitan Andrei Şaguna in the surroundings of Sibiu. But it was not the first Orthodox church built in this little community. Despite the unfortunate historical context, the beginnings of the Orthodox parish in Guşteriţa were not as modest as one would think. This paper reconstructs the historical context and follows the traces of the first Orthodox church in Guşteriţa, pointing out that at the end of the eighteenth century, the Romanian community had managed to build a worship place made of stone. While the structure has long since been demolished and knowledge of its exact location has been lost, the site of this important structure can now be approximated based on available topographical evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to display a less known part of Spiru Haret's activity: his vision and efforts for reforming the activity of the Romanian Orthodox Church. Alongside its traditional, Liturgical activity, Haret proposed a larger involvement of the clergy in the social problems of their communities. Therefore, alongside school teachers, the priests had the duties of establishing and/or supporting local associations, clubs and committees active in domains like education, morals, culture, hygiene and even economics. The aim of Haret's initiative was to modernise Romanian society by raising its culture, morality and financial independence, especially for the peasants, who constituted the huge majority of the Romanian pre-war society. According to his perspective, the mission of the Church couldn't be limited just to its theological and liturgical spectrums, as it should also target the extra-liturgical environment in which the parishioners lived their earthly lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Romanian Orthodox Patriarchate's liturgical renewal movement has a spontaneous character, but without a well-defined agenda. This paper examines some of the reflections from renowned Romanian theologians about the liturgical renewal in the Orthodox Church and explores how they define the notion of liturgical reform, how they perceive the idea of change in worship, and what a liturgical renewal might look like. Moreover, it examines some concrete reforms that have already been put into practice, but without specific authorization from the Romanian Church hierarchy. The purpose of this approach is to find a starting point for an official synodal and academic debate on the possibility to implement a systematic liturgical reform at an institutional level.** [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The secret police archives present the life of the religious underground as seen by the secret officers who were seeking to facilitate those communities’ destruction. The state’s official narrative about these clandestine groups is mirrored in alternative documents and narratives. This article focuses on the Old Calendarist Orthodox monastic community of the Dormition of the Mother of God Monastery in the Strada Televiziunii in Bucharest at the end of the communist regime. It showcases the life of the monastery as described in the diary of a monastic novice whose written account of becoming a monk described the last days of the monastery before its destruction by the secret police in 1983. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Father Dimitri Dudko’s fame as a popular 1970s Soviet Orthodox priest and his public ‘recantating’ and subsequent disgrace in 1980 shed light on several aspects of religion in the late Cold War. Diasporas like the ROCOR fostered practices and beliefs-especially conservative ones-forced to go underground in the homeland. Soviet atheism responded to revived religious practice worldwide, with Dudko’s persecution being a part of that response. The formal and informal relationships between ROCOR clerics and Dudko, and between Dudko and the KGB, suggest that Dudko’s apparent about-face may have had deeper roots and longer-lasting effects than previously suspected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the forging of a carceral legionary theophany based on oneiric experience and the apparitions of saints to imprisoned members of the Iron Guard in contemporary Romania. It also approaches the post-Communist instrumentalization of the legionaries’ prison experience (dreams, visions of the Virgin and saints, “dreams of terror”) in supporting their claim of canonizing fascists martyrs as saints of the Romanian Orthodox Church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modern problem of political correctness appeared recently in the Romanian Orthodox Church too and produced different reactions. In this paper I want to discuss the anti-Judaic language that can be encountered in the cult, particularly during the Holy Week, and the solutions to treat these expressions. In the Catholic and Protestant world, the anti-Judaic speech was abandoned,1 so it seems that only the Orthodox churches have kept the texts that might be deemed as offensive for the Jewish people. As we shall observe, the Romanian Orthodox Church offers an interesting case on this issue. Beside the liturgical texts, I will also approach the problem of the accommodation of the biblical texts in the Orthodox Church, since some modern translations have pushed the modification so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remembering the events which happened 50 years ago, this paper will attempt to point out the specific way in which the Romanian Orthodox Church reported on the 450th anniversary of the Reformation. By going through the pages of Orthodox ecclesiastical periodicals that reported on this particular moment, a growing focus on the Ecumenical Movement and the dialogue partners of other denominations can be noted, marking a beneficial openness to knowledge and understanding of other Churches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is dealing with the important theme of ecumenical education and has three main parts. The first part is a short introduction to the Romanian Orthodox Church, past and present realities; the second part offers a perspective on the ecumenical education and formation in Romania; finally, the last part gives information about the Sibiu context, with special reference to the late Fr. Professor Ion Bria, whose theological and ecumenical work is widely recognized by the Romanian Orthodox Church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]