In the middle of the distant 1990s, there was a religious fervor among students that is hard to imagine today. Interesting, open, ecumenical (a scary and uncommon word for Orthodox today), by no means fundamentalist.

Finally, perhaps I am too soft on the past, but the passage of time forces you to round off the shortcomings of memory, and not only. Many of my colleagues decided to accept monasticism; a difficult choice, difficult to understand from the outside, but this is a completely different story. Especially they formed groups of four or five people and went to the “monastery” on weekends, even in the middle of winter, without having a personal car and today’s transport.

Ash monastery – severity and austerity, attraction of prohibition, charm of Mount Athos

It was the general name of the spiritual excursions carried out in the country, a simple and direct rediscovery of a form of existence, monastic, forbidden or restricted until then. The best destinations were the Sikhastria monastery (the power of the spiritual attraction of Father Cleopas was at its maximum), the Rohia monastery (associated with Fr. Nikolai Steinhardt, a “subtle”, intellectual, accepted Orthodoxy) and, finally, the Fresinei monastery (severity and severity, the attraction of prohibition , the charm of Mount Athos, but more affordable “Athos”, accessible to a student budget).

Time flew by quickly, I never reached either the big Mount Athos or the “small” one from Mănăstirea Frăsinei, but the other day I met it under loud headlines in the Romanian press, curses, bans, appeals and the inevitable “scandal” associated with it.

A small etymological parenthesis: the word “scandal” is of Latin origin (scandalum) and in the native language means something that pushes to bad deeds, to deviations, the point from which you start to go the wrong way.

Let us return: the facts are too well known to return here again. In summary, it would be like this: the monastery of Fresina has a separate regulation (“order”, in church language) that does NOT allow access to women, “the strongest human temptation”, as the theologically correct explanation given to the Patriarchate, the access of women to this institution.

Why women do not have access to some monasteries, not only in Romania

Theologically correct, I repeat, but difficult for the laity to accept in a society where the right to individual autonomy, absolute freedom of movement and access is the letter of the law. Look at another level, with a magnifying glass effect, the European debate, this time on women’s access to Mount Athos. Why are women not allowed in some monasteries and not in Romania?

Because a monk should not be bothered, should not be “tempted” (again those cursed archaic words, hardly used in modern times!) in his existence by the presence of a woman at all. The elder Freud would also have something to say about the repression of sexuality, but I do not insist. And don’t be in a hurry to be indignant, Fresina’s case is easy.

You should watch Philipp Groening’s 2005 film The Great Silence, set in an austere Cistercian monastery in France, to better understand, I hope, the idea of ​​isolation and complete detachment from the world that characterizes monasticism in general and certain Catholic orders in particular.

Saint Kalinikus of Chernika also issued an “avaton”, the strongest form of prohibition

Around 1860, Metropolitan Kalinik (now St. Kalinik from Chernika) almost completely restores this monastery, which has passed the difficult tests of history, and introduces an operating procedure similar to that of Athos: no meat is used, a special regime of services, prolonged and prohibited access of women.

And to maintain the order of the seal, he also issues an “avaton”, the strongest form of prohibition, the curse of divine forces on those who exceed the symbolic limit of access, drawn two kilometers from the actual hearth of the monastery.

Perhaps it should be noted that the “testament” in its original form contained both threats and gratitude (blessings) to those who honor it.

Later, a hospitable courtyard and a small church were built on the edge of the forbidden zone, where women flocked en masse, attracted by the glory of this monastery and its famous priests. Anyone who has never been to the famous monastery (obviously, I mean not only Fresnais) cannot understand the microcosm there, inhabited by pilgrims and pilgrims (must be written here!) emotions, miracles, family dramas and health , various psychological problems and, if you will, the last on the list, a desperate search for faith.

Lots of joy and extreme pain mixed together. For reasons that are not too clear to me and which she also did not explain, a few days ago the Metropolia of Oltenia restored all the bans related to the Yasenya monastery due to the “deal with the curse”. You know the rest: the statement of the Patriarchate, which tries to defuse the situation, appealing to the deepest logic of monasticism (fuga mundi – detachment, detachment from the world), condemning the “excessively archaic language” of the document. But, I wonder what language to be, because the strongest marker of Orthodoxy is precisely this preservation of archaism?

What happened in Fresina has a simple and understandable explanation from the point of view of the anthropology of religious space.

St. Callinicus introduced, with the help of the means at his disposal, a formal ban on access to the closed, circular space around the monastery.

In other words, it created a liminal space that separates two different worlds, united by faith but separated by gender identity. These “border spaces” have always been ambiguous spaces, which led, on the one hand, to the homogenization of status (“pilgrims”, “believers”, “monks” or, conversely, “non-believers”), but also to a constant desire to cross the boundaries, to violate rules.

The simplest and most common example to understand is the waiting line, the queue: there will always be someone who does not wait, who does not respect the prohibition rule imposed by his very existence. Such spaces can be transgressed (overcome, crossed) only if certain rituals (rites) of transition are imposed, a key concept that I think everyone has heard about. But here, precisely in this case, they are not there, because there can be no question of passage, of penetration into the forbidden territory.

In situations like Frăsinei, we have to look for the problems, but also the solutions that the BOR has to manage (sorry, I didn’t have another more appropriate word!) the situations of instability that any liminal and forbidding space creates in itself its nature. This logic applies, in particular, to major pilgrimages, such as the Yass pilgrimage.

If everything is simple and clear from the theological point of view, this cannot be said from the social point of view. The Church seems to be overcome by all these great challenges of modernity, which it must analyze and accept on the fly. Where applicable. But in Frăsinei, this is a turning point, because there is no middle ground, no gray area or “handkerchief on the tsambal” – I agree with the popular saying, but so plastic. To pass or not to pass – that’s the question! And the concession found (the church from the valley, the so-called “women’s”) is also canceled at this moment.

Social networks and virtual media are like engine oil for mass religiosity

On another level, society feels a great attraction to this debauchery, to these recurring “scandals” that the Church creates and suffers at the same time. The priest Vissarion Alex, about whom I had the opportunity to write here before, the charismatic father Kalistratus, the Ashenia monastery – but the list is much longer – actually shows a real flood, a shock from the depths of social life and popular religiosity, which does not disappear, but only adapts.

Social networks and virtual media for mass religiosity are like engine oil (sorry, like a battery for an eco-car).

These successive waves of enchantment and disenchantment of the world (in the sociological, Weberian sense of Marcel Gaucher, désenchantement) cannot be theologically normalized and institutionally “domesticated”, with the help of which the connection of our world with religion is expressed, multifaceted, except at the cost of changes that Orthodoxy I will never understand. As the currently unquoted Professor Naye Ionescu said in the 1930s, “the strength and weakness of Orthodoxy lies precisely in the fact that it cannot change.”

Finally, the crisis caused by the communiqué of the Oltenia Metropolis is relevant to the relationship that our society still has with Tradition. No, we are not talking about the “tradition” on yogurt jars or salami labels, exhausted to the last comma by an intrusive advertising machine that no longer knows how to sell chemistry like dew on a flower-strewn meadow.

A religious tradition that originates from the past, lives in the present and is transmitted to the future. In short, we can no longer believe, like our ancestors, that something important has changed and continues to change. Perhaps the parable of the barren fig tree (the curse of the fig tree by Jesus), present in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, cannot be fully understood, given its amazing complexity – an allegory related to barrenness and laziness of the soul. But its spirit of prohibition, practical and immediate effect, yes.

All these “scandals” repeatedly boomerang back on the Orthodox Church

In modern times, we live in a constant need to inventory the immediate event and manipulate the means that create meaning and religious coherence. After all, it can be said that it is about secularization. All these “scandals” repeatedly boomerang on the Orthodox Church, having a devastating effect. I invite you to patiently and calmly read the comments on some of the sites that reported this news. You will be amazed by the wars that go on there, the hatred and the virtual blood that is spilled in the service.

But there is something else: secularization, in turn, gives rise to new forms of expression of religiosity, from the tenacity with which those who feel threatened by the “enemies of Orthodoxy and the nation” defend their religious choice, leaning towards fundamentalism, to those who happy. precisely because they do NOT belong to a religion anymore and are looking for other forms of spiritual life. Personal development, coaching and mindfulness, ecology. Obviously, I’m oversimplifying. Full stop. We look forward to the next episode, the next “scandal”. And until then, don’t forget to consume “bioeco” yogurts and dairy products. More expensive, but worth consuming is the “tradition” – with quotation marks. What you have just done and are patiently going through is, I hope, this text. Forgiveness and thanks, dear reader and dear reader!

Mirel Banica, researcher at the Institute of History of Religions of the Romanian Academy, Bucharest. Doctor of Political Sciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland. The last published book: “Through Romania. Travel cards”. “Polirom” Publishing House, 2020. A volume is being prepared: “Romanian Monasticism after 1990: Persistence, Adaptation, Change”, Fall 2023, “Polirom” Publishing House.