The Romanian Orthodox Church (BOR), the strongest religious institution in Romania, with 85.3% of the country’s population declaring their religious affiliation to the Christian-Orthodox majority (compare with the 2022 census), and with citizens’ unwavering commitment to trust (the BOR still ranks second only to the army in terms of public trust in institutions), is increasingly present in the Romanian public media sphere through actions that appear to be part of what is called the sphere of progressive Christianity, the post-liberal current of Christian thought. In a word, BOR is the embodiment of “spiritual and ethnic tradition and identity”as it was characterized in the subtext by Patriarch Daniil himself in his call for self-examination in 2022 – launches sensitive strategic building sites according to the method associated with “Protestant-Catholic”, taking the first steps to promote policies that seem to break with the tradition, central value and strong currency of Eastern and Romanian Orthodoxy. Symptoms of this trend are several events and public actions of BOR. Here we will focus only on the news related to the case of Archbishop Tomis Teodosius (Petrescu), a member of the Holy Synod of the BOR since 1994, one of the most divisive and media figures of the church, cited and accused at the time in cases of corruption, sexual violence against minors etc. In the communique dated February 9, 2024, sent by the Chancellery of the Holy Synod of the BOR regarding the request of Theodosius for the elevation of the Tomis archbishopric to the rank of metropolitan with, apparently, as a consequence, his elevation to the rank of metropolitan. the entry into the agenda is announced the next meeting of the Holy Synod his trial for “violating the church charter and disturbing the peace in the life of the Church and society by acts of rebellion, indiscipline and public pressure.” This action is an important step in the political and communication strategy of the BOR, a semi-closed institution, first taking into account the authority, socio-political and religious role of Archbishop Tomis, and then the fact that he joins the higher level, a small but noticeable bouquet of actions and efforts of the church, to adapt to modern society, with the tools of a method that the Catholic Church has been using for some time, but on a much larger scale. It is about the Protestant method, which the Catholic Church adopted and developed in light of the challenges of different periods of modernity. Today, it uses it to renew certain practices and debate certain doctrines, confronting new currents of public opinion, most of which inspire successful political ideologies, especially among young people who are averse to organizational “religious regulation.”

The development around Archbishop Tomis, which marks a public debate in a hyperpolitical year for Romania, seems to highlight the religious leadership of the BOR, which is beginning to resemble that of Pope Francis. The commitment of Pope Francis and, through him, the Catholic Church to place the Church in a more open, non-conservative, even progressive vision, taking into account the development of modern society, is proof. Pope Francis, a Jesuit, built his religious and political leadership on a concept specific to the order, but which marked modernity during the 19th and 20th centuries, namely the adaptation of the Church to society. This vision is also the center of Protestantism, which created a method of imposition, adapting the Church to the world. Let us mention here such reforms as the ordination of women, the blessing of same-sex marriages, etc. The various neo-Protestant denominations, especially because of their tendency towards public and social theology, on which they build their doctrine, are also engaged in the use of the Protestant method, even if they have not yet exhausted all the themes of adaptation to society.

Returning to the religious leadership of Patriarch Daniel, one can observe certain signs of kinship with the Protestant-Catholic method. Public discussion of “internal affairs”, such as the case of Theodosius, given that he is also known for his strong positions against the adaptation of the church to modern society, even against the adoption of modernity in the church, can have the effect of weakening the three main pillars of the BOR: traditions, practices and sanctity of the institute. Then the BOR begins to become less “resistant to civil society”, that is, to the pressure of the “world” on various topics. See, for example, the reaction to the appeal to the Holy Synod of several Orthodox public figures to celebrate the Orthodox Easter on the same day as the Catholic Easter. In addition, the BOR tried to “seduce” and “reconquer” Romanian society by rejecting some practices of the clergy – the so-called us et customs – for example, parishioners paying priests for conducting weddings, funerals or baptisms. Finally, BOR becomes less stable in relations with other minority religious cults. We could say that he has become even less “resistant to the state”, in the sense that he seems to have openly assumed the role of a catalyst and a coordinated actor of the state in the action plan of inter-religious cooperation in ecumenical issues, religious freedom, socio-political action, etc. . It is not a trivial fact that, according to the order of separation of church and state, the Secretary of State for Religious Affairs is a former director of the Trinitas Trust, a key actor in the implementation of the government’s strategy of supporting “social and medical programs”. and the activities of cults at the local level” or the post-liberal strategy of “institutional rehabilitation” through a public apology for the abuses committed by the communist-era Ministry/Department of Religious Affairs against the Greek Catholic Church.

Of course, it is possible to formulate a hypothesis about the non-triviality of such actions in the context of the 2024 election year, in which BOR, like other religious cults, will play its role. Archbishop Tomisa is also known for his extreme anti-progressive militant stances, as well as a vector for spreading the “Great Reset” type of conspiracy theories present in Romanian far-right political speeches. In the context of 2024, the Tomitanul case can also be considered a kind of forced march to the modernity of the BOR, with which all churches now agree and which reveals more a strategy of political power than religious.

It is certain that beyond hypotheses, remaining factual, unlike the Catholic Church or Protestant churches in the world, the BOR is at the beginning of this path to modernization. It will take some time, and especially the political year 2024, to confirm whether the Protestant-Catholic method will really lead to the acceptance, in other, more modern forms, of the profane world, or whether the political strategy of Patriarch Daniel will consist of an orientation towards conformity with modern values, which was b is equivalent to a deep revision of the BOR, but detrimental in the long run for several reasons. One of them is already visible in the Catholic environment, as well as in some neo-Protestant cults, such as Seventh-day Adventism, which is moving towards secularization, desacralization of the faith, no longer offering an institution that is an alternative to the secularist, political modernist and rationalist. Ultimately, it is about the difficulty of dividing between two strategic visions in relation to the contemporary challenges that churches have to face, and therefore between two mutually exclusive roles: the role of a religious leader or the role of a religious leader. a political person in the leader of religious. _Read the entire article and comment on Contributors.ro