Romanian Church United with Rome, Greek-Catholic

Romanian Church United with Rome, Greek-Catholic Biserica Română Unită cu Roma, Greco-Catolică
Holy Trinity Cathedral, Blaj
Basic information
Location	Blaj, Romania
Territory	Romania
Population	737,900
Established	1698, formalized 1700 outlawed in 1948 March 14, 1990
Bishop	Lucian Mureşan
Website	http://www.bru.ro/
Current leadership

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), and one, directly subject to the Holy See, in the United States of America (Eparchy of Saint George in Canton, Ohio).

According to the information, valid for the end of 2003, given in the 2005 Annuario Pontificio, it then had 737,900 followers, many bishops, some 716 diocesan priests and 347 seminarians of its own rite. However, according to the 2002 Romanian state census, the number of followers in Romania is as low as 191,556. The dispute over the figure is included in the United States Department of State report on religious freedom in Romania.

Romania also has another five dioceses for Latin Rite Catholics, who are more numerous.

History

Part of a series on Particular churches sui iuris of the Catholic Church

Roman cross and Byzantine Patriarchal cross

Particular churches are grouped by rite.

Latin Rite

Latin

Byzantine Rite

Albanian · Belarusian · Bulgarian Croatia and Serbia · Greek · Hungarian Italo-Albanian · Macedonian · Melkite Romanian · Russian · Ruthenian Slovak · Ukraine

Alexandrian Rite

Coptic · Ethiopian · Eritrean

Armenian Rite

Armenian

West Syriac Rite

Maronite · Syro-Malankara · Syriac

East Syriac Rite

Chaldean · Syro-Malabar

The Greek-Catolic Church in Mediaş, build by bishop Ioan Bob

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.

By the Union, Atanasie and the other bishops and their diocese (indeed, most of the Romanians of Transylvia) 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 Habsburg Empire) the same rights as those of the other Transylvanian nations, which were part of the Unio Trium Nationum (Hungarian nobility, Germanic Transylvanian Saxons and 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.

This was in part because, 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.

Persecution under Communism

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.

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.

Greek-Catholic presence, according to 2002 census

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.

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.

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.

Conflict with the Latin Rite

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."

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.

Problems in diaspora territories

Starting in the late 19th century, the ministry of married Greek-Catholic clergy in the United States and Canada became another point 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. 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.

Property issues since the fall of Communism

Since the fall of Communism, Church leaders have claimed that the Romanian Greek-Catholic Community is facing with a cultural and religious wipe-out: the Greek-Catholic churches are allegedly destroyed by the Orthodox Church representatives, whose actions are supported and accepted by the Romanian authorities.

Hierarchy

• Romanian Catholic Archeparchy of Fagaras and Alba Iulia
  • Romanian Catholic Eparchy of Cluj-Gherla
  • Romanian Catholic Eparchy of Oradea Mare
  • Romanian Catholic Eparchy of Lugos
  • Romanian Catholic Eparchy of Maramureş
  • Romanian Catholic Eparchy of St George's in Canton

See also

• History of Catholicism in Romania

External links

• "Biserica Română Unită cu Roma, Greco-Catolică" (in Romanian)
• Another informative site (in Romanian)
• Another informative site (in Romanian)
• "Chiesa Romena Unita con Roma, Greco-Cattolica" (in Italian)
• St. George Romanian Byzantine Catholic Diocese (in English)
• Article on the Romanian Greek Catholic Church by Ronald Roberson on the CNEWA website.
• Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: The Romanian Orthodox Church and Post-Communist Democratization

References

• George Enache, Adrian Nicolae Petcu – Biserica Ortodoxă Română şi Securitatea (in Romanian)

frp:Égllése grèca-catolica roumèna ca:Església Romanesa Unida a Roma hu:Román Görög Katolikus Egyház pt:Igreja Greco-Católica Romena unida com Roma ro:Biserica Română Unită cu Roma, Greco-Catolică ru:Румынская католическая церковь