_WORLD WATCH______________________________
____________________
Romania ________________
Fruitless dialogue
Byzantine Catholics head to court
Eastern-rite Romanian Catholic bishops are pressing their campaign to recover church properties that were confiscated by the country’s Communist government, and are now held by Orthodox churches. But the Byzantine-rite Catholic Church is facing steady opposition from Romanian Orthodox leaders.
Since 1990, when the Romanian Catholic Church emerged from underground after a generation of persecution, the tension between Romanian Orthodox and Catholic parishes has been a constant source of difficulty for Christians in that country.
In 1948, when the country’s Stalinist government outlawed the Romanian Catholic Church, all Byzantine-rite Catholics were required to enroll in the local Romanian Orthodox parishes or face open persecution. Some 2,000 Catholic parishes were handed over to Orthodox pastors. In the past decade, since Romania emerged from Communist rule and the Byzantine-rite Romanian Catholic Church was revived, only 150 of the Catholic churches that were confiscated by the Communist regime have been restored to their Catholic heritage. Of these 150 buildings, 40 were peacefully restored to Catholic owners by the Orthodox Metropolitan Corneanu of Banat—the one Orthodox prelate who has consistently been sympathetic to Catholic claims. Another 100 churches were taken over after a legal battle (and, in some cases, a physical confrontation) with Orthodox pastors.
Despite the creation of a joint Orthodox-Catholic committee to adjudicate claims regarding church properties, Romanian Catholics have persistently complained that their churches have not been restored. To date only six churches have been restored to Catholic ownership as a result of that committee’s deliberations. Still worse, at least 10 Romanian Catholic churches have been demolished by their current Orthodox owners, to make it impossible to press any existing Catholic claims on the properties.
In response to Catholic protests, the Orthodox Archbishop Bartholomew Anania of Cluj recently argued: “Demolishing an old church to erect a new one—in its place or on its borders —has been a necessary, normal process throughout the Christian centuries.”
Archbishop Anania—who has consistently been among the most aggressive Orthodox opponents of Catholic claims on church properties—has argued that Christians throughout the centuries have routinely demolished churches in order to set up new buildings on the same foundations. Byzantine Catholics respond that in several cases there was plenty of free land available for the construction of a new church on another site. And in at least one case—in Baisoara—the old church was demolished immediately after Catholics entered a claim for its restoration.
In one extreme case, in Ungheni, an Orthodox church was built to surround an existing Romanian Catholic structure; the Catholic building was then demolished—having now been defined as a part of the Orthodox church structure. In another case, in Vadu Izei, Orthodox builders began construction of a new church immediately behind an existing building, then “discovered” that they would have to destroy the old building in order to have room for the front of the new one.
The Romanian government has argued against such unilateral demolition of church properties. In December, culture minister Laurentiu Tanase —who was part of the Romanian delegation that traveled to Rome for the lighting of the Vatican’s Christmas tree, which was donated by Romania—reported that he had discussed the government’s policies with Vatican officials, and agreed that demolitions should be stopped.
However, the Orthodox Church has been successful in delaying the implementation of government policies, and even delaying the legal cases that have arisen regarding the disposition of church properties. The most recent legal case involves the monastery at Nicula, a popular Marian shrine. At the beginning of January, Romanian Catholic officials sued for the restoration of that monastery. Orthodox officials have answered with a plea for more time in which to prepare their legal response.
The center of the current controversy is in the province of Transylvania, around the city of Cluj—where the Orthodox archdiocese of Vad, Feleac, and Cluj overlaps the Romanian Catholic archdiocese of Cluj-Gherla.
In a message he released in December, the Romanian Catholic Archbishop Gheorghe Gutiu of Cluj-Gherla reminded the Catholic faithful that they should be sure to register as Catholics in the national census that will be taken in March. By registering their numbers on an official government census, Romanian Catholics could establish another argument in favor of the restoration of their heritage.