S.O.S. Romanian church in Malainita, Serbia

We appeal to you in order to draw your attention regarding the situation of a church built in Malainitsa (northeastern Serbia) by the local Romanian community.

On January 21, the mayor of the locality submitted an official letter to the curate of the church, ordering him to destroy the belfry until January 28 and to proceed with the demolition of the church within 15 days.

This order of the mayoralty is based on the pretense that the church's construction was not approved by the local authorities. The fact is that no building in the village Malainitsa was ever constructed following such a procedure. The Romanian church is the first case when the authorities demand the completion of an approval procedure. Given the situation, this is clearly an unreasonable requirement directed in fact at preventing the Romanian minority to develop its own religious life. The church is built on a private property and no property issues are involved in the matter.

The general framework regarding Romanians in Serbia is confusing. They live compactly in two areas of Serbia. The group in northwest (Vojvodina) is officially recognized as a national minority and is therefore granted all the specific rights of a national minority. The group in northeastern Serbia (the Tymok Region), is officially ignored and, in consequence, no language, education or cultural rights are available for them.

The intention of the local authorities to proceed with the demolition of the church is wrong, immoral and ultimately illegal. Although the Romanians in Malainitsa might have broken some formal legal provisions concerning the need for an approval, such a requirement for them is unreasonable because nobody in the village was ever demanded to obtain such an approval for a private building, as it is usually the case in the countryside. Setting up unreasonable requirements for a minority group in comparison with the usual requested for the majority is a violation of the spirit of the international legislation regarding the protection of national minorities.

In the particular case of the church in Malainitsa, the Serb authorities are clearly in breach of the following provisions of the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for National Minorities:

- article 4, regarding the promotion in all areas of social and cultural life of a "full and effective equality between persons belonging to a national minority and those belonging to the majority"

- article 5, regarding the obligation of the state "to promote the conditions necessary for persons belonging to national minorities to maintain and develop their culture, and to preserve the essential elements of their identity, namely their religion, language, traditions and cultural heritage"

- article 8, regarding the obligation of the state "to recognize that every person belonging to a national minority has the right to manifest his or her religion or belief and to establish religious institutions, organizations and associations".

Hoping that everyone of you can help us to publicize this matter and determine the serbian government to undertake the appropriate measures, we thank you for your consideration.

The S.O.S. Romanian church in Malainita, Serbia Petition to International romanian community and friends was created by Fundatia Nationala pentru Romanii de Pretutindeni, Bucuresti and written by Daniela Soros, vicepresedinte FNRP (fundatia@romanii.ro).

"But would you seriously want to depend on the average bishop in the US to guide the American church? Would you seriously want to depend on the American church to be able consistently to produce and promote to the episcopacy bishops of the caliber of Bp. Basil and Bp. Tikhon?"

I guess I must agree with you, Agrarian. But it isn't so much the current crop of bishops I worry about, at least not about most of them. Really I worry about, at least for the present generation, the laity turning the Church into a form of congregationalism with incense. I watched the GOA come quite close to that then pull back within the last 10 years. The influence of the greater American culture around the Church here and money could have an adverse effect on the Faith, especially since the Church still has a large population of immigrants or immigrant minded people who want to become what they think an American is. Years back the GOA tried to take on an Anglican type of outward appearance. It didn't really work and the vestiges of that are fast disappearing, but imagine what might have happened had the GOA been autonomous or autocephallous. The time for autocephally will come, in a 100 years or so. In the meantime, ties to the Mother Churches keep us secure in an otherwise quite dangerous society, the uncanonical situation to the contrary notwithstanding. One quick last point. +Melitius really didn't do anything that untoward in bringing the GOA into the orbit of Constantinople. The Greek Churches here had been under Athens and through the twenties had been ripped in two by domestic Greek politics involving Venizelos and the King. He actually did us a big favor.

In the meantime, ties to the Mother Churches keep us secure in an otherwise quite dangerous society, the uncanonical situation to the contrary notwithstanding

In case any of you have a chance to stay in Tokyo, make a point of visiting "Nikolai-do" -- a magnificent Orthodox Cathedral established by Archbishop Nikolai, who came with the first diplomatic mission to Japan in the 1860's. The Japanese Orthodox Church is autonomous and under Moscow's Patriarchate.

The entrance into the courtyard still reads "Slava vo vishnyih Bogu" (Glory or Praise in the Highest to God) in Slavonic. The original atmosphere has been preserved immaculately, and the Japanese flavor is only subtle and in good taste (it is really unbelievable to see a Japanese woman in a tight kimono drop to her knees and bow to the ground before an icon!).

There is at least one Russian clergyman (could be from the Embassy), but the rest are Japanese. One can even see monks, which means there must be at least one Orthodox monastery in Japan!

"Nikolai-do" (Nikolai's Temple),
Holy Resurrection eastern Orthodox Cathedral, Tokyo, Japan

For inside shots try this link Nikolai-do. You may notice some folding chairs. In addition to the chairs along the walls, these folding chairs are used only at the very end of the Liturgy when the people are kissing the cross and taking the remaining bread, and the lines are long.

But I was so impressed last year during Lent anfd again this year in the Fall to see Japanese Orthodox, many of whom were well into their 80's, standing through the entire service (and my feet were hurting)!

Except for a few verses in Church Slavonic, the entire service is in Japanese, and the choir is of mixed ethnic and racial background but absolutely angelic.

All I am saying is that in a culture that is so opposite of traditional Orthodoxy, ties to the Mother Church are not unreasonable and should not be seen as something subordinate but spiritually necessary. Otherwise cultural pressures will change the nature of Orthodoxy out of simple human desire to "fit in" as Kolo aptly points out.

Oh, I definitely mean to visit Nikolai-do if I ever make it to Tokyo!

St. Nicholas of Japan is one of my favorite saints. Those of us who want the Liturgy in English to be as beautiful as it is in Greek and Slavonic, and thus favor the use of Early Modern English (as in Bishop BASIL's translation of The Liturgicon and the various translations from Holy Transfiguration Monastery) should all have a particular devotion to him.

The Japanese Liturgy you heard is his translation, not into 'street Japanese', but into the high, slightly archaic, literary form of Japanese which was found in Buddhist and Shintoist liturgics. He took great care to be sure words were chosen so that Christian concepts would not be confused with non-Christian ones, but took the style of the indigenous religions' language.

I'd certainly settle for unity and autonomy under either Moscow (which has the historical right) or Constantinople (since the GOA is the biggest jurisdiction). The problem is, Moscow, rightly or wrongly, gave the OCA autocephaly, so unity and our own Patriarch may be the only feasible way to accomplish unity without overlapping dioceses. (I'm personally annoyed that we Antiochians put the seat of one of our new diocese at Pittsburgh where the GOA already has a bishop. Does anyone else have a bishop whose seat is at Miami?)

"But it isn't so much the current crop of bishops I worry about, at least not about most of them. Really I worry about, at least for the present generation, the laity turning the Church into a form of congregationalism with incense."

I agree wholeheartedly with this assessment -- this is why I wrote:

"Would you seriously want to depend on the American church to be able consistently to produce and promote to the episcopacy bishops of the caliber of Bp. Basil and Bp. Tikhon?"

Keep in mind that bishops don't reproduce (unless you are medieval Roman Catholic bishops, who seem to have done so in spades), and thus bishops are produced by the laity. What kind of bishops a country will produce will depend on the kind of laity a country has -- will we raise children devout enough that there will be some who will seek after a monastic life, and will that monastic life be healthy enough to produce someone who is a wise, psychologically balanced, and spiritually insightful bishop? I just can't see that process working very well at all without significant involvement of the old countries. Ask Bp. Basil where he turns for guidance in the monastic life. If what rumors I've been told are true, the good Metropolitan Philip doesn't even believe that bishops should even go through the motions of being tonsured a monk before becoming a bishop!

And the process of who becomes a bishop can be very tainted very quickly by money, political influence, etc... -- and if those who want Orthodoxy in America to become a sort of Eastern rite Episcopalianism have their way, the sort of man chosen to be bishop will not be what I think any of us would want. I know that there is a faction in the OCA who believes that only widowed priests should become bishops, and that the tradition of choosing bishops from amongst the ranks of holy monks should be jettisoned. I think this is a big mistake. If a widowed priest seeks out the monastic life and lives that life for a time -- that's one thing, but what is becoming an American habit of having bishops who have never lived for any period of time as a monastic in a monastic community is not, I think, a healthy one. And since there are few if any healthy monastic institutions in the US, this means that to have the best bishops we can have, they would by definition have spent at least some time abroad living in monasteries in the old countries.

Well, that's my humble opinion, anyway.

Yes, St. Nikolai gave a great example of how to translate liturgical material into another language. He used an elevated literary/liturgical form of Japanese, but specifically avoided the use of certain words that were too loaded with meaning with regard to native religions -- i.e. if they were just going to be too prone to misinterpretation. I of course cannot read or speak Japanese, but those who do say that the work is marvelous. St. Nikolai's example greatly influenced Abp. Dimitri of the OCA as he developed his translational approach, both for his translations into English, and his translations into Spanish (which he does in more traditional Spanish that matches the type of Spanish used in the old Spanish biblical translations.)

Regarding the OCA's autocephaly, this is a very strange thing, and it always has been. The only useful way to look at the autocephaly is that it was the only solution that some saw to a specific problem -- namely that the old "Metropolia" was out in no-man's land, neither with recognized independence nor with formal ties to an old country church.

The Russian Church doubtless saw an opportunity to make a "client church" out of the OCA -- and this pretty much worked, too, since the OCA very studiously avoided any public criticism of the Communist regimes and acted like all was well in the Orthodox churches under communist domination during the Soviet era. I'm not saying that there was a better approach the OCA could have taken -- just that the communists got what they wanted out of the OCA, and that the autocephaly gave added incentive to the OCA to take the line that they did. Times were tough, but thank God they're now over.

The only church that recognizes the OCA's autocephaly is the Moscow Patriarchate. As far as I know, no other church does -- so the autocephaly hangs by a thread. No one knows how the impending reunion of ROCOR with the MP affects this, and certainly no one has ever been able to explain how, if the MP truly recognizes the OCA's autocephaly, the MP can canonically maintain their own string of parishes in the US and Canada -- which they do!

What the OCA needs is "official status." With the fall of the Soviet Union, they no longer need to be worried about being viewed as an open client church of the MP. I think the best solution would be for the OCA to renounce its autocephaly, acknowledging that an autocephaly that no-one recognizes isn't really autocephaly, but rather that it was a temporary solution to a temporary problem.

Then, it could take on autonomous status under the MP. With time, perhaps they and the MP parishes and the ROCOR parishes would grow into union under the MP, and perhaps others would join this as well. The Antiochians would make a great addition to the mix (and hopefully bring their translational approach with them to counteract the philistines in the dominant east coast OCA establishment) -- but it would probably require major financial bribes sent to Damascus, since sources of income for the Patriarchate of Antioch would disappear.

The idea of an American Patriarch is very premature. Just because a church is autonomous or even autocephalous does NOT mean that by definition the head of the church is called a Patriarch, as I understand it. The honor of being a Patriarch goes to the head of an autocephalous church that is long-standing, mature, and respected. There is simply no way that that is going to be the case with the church in America for centuries to come... At a minimum, it would require that every single Orthodox Christian and parish in the country was under one jurisdictional structure, and that every single old country church renounced any and all claims to any and all jurisdiction, of so much as a tiny monastery or store-front mission, here in this country. That alone is centuries away...

Today we might know more on the fate of the Malainitsa church, but it might be helpful to know more on the Orthodox world so we can understand better.
I have read all kinds of comments and some of you are so quick to criticize other nationalities or religions. Hang tight because there is news. Sorry for the links provided because truth hurts.

Do you know that in Russia a woman dies every 40 minutes from domestic violence ?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3601884.stm
_________________quote_____________________________________

Svetlana endured her husband's persistent violence in silence, too ashamed to tell friends what she was going through. She says the police saw her suffering as a private, family affair.

"I called the police once when I thought I couldn't cope alone any more. I really needed help," she recalls. "But when they came - I was there in tears, and all my clothes were ripped - they just told me it was all my fault."

Svetlana is not alone. Police statistics show that one woman is killed by her husband or partner in Russia every 40 minutes. Women's groups believe the true figures are far higher.
Svetlana endured her husband's persistent violence in silence, too ashamed to tell friends what she was going through. She says the police saw her suffering as a private, family affair.

"I called the police once when I thought I couldn't cope alone any more. I really needed help," she recalls. "But when they came - I was there in tears, and all my clothes were ripped - they just told me it was all my fault."

Svetlana is not alone. Police statistics show that one woman is killed by her husband or partner in Russia every 40 minutes. Women's groups believe the true figures are far higher.

In one of Moscow's poorer suburbs, policeman Vladimir Vysotsky sets out on his daily beat. Vladimir says the vast majority of his work is dealing with "saucepan brawls" - police slang for domestic violence.

"It happens here almost every day," Vladimir says. "And why do most scandals start? Because the husband drinks. Why does he drink? Because he has problems with his job - and with money."

There are no refuges in Russia; nowhere safe for women like Irina to run to.

Over on the far smarter side of town, there are signs that some things are improving.
___________________________________________________________

And what about the craddle of Orthodoxism?

Greece - champion of abortion !

http://www.unborn.gr/unborn1/unborn/index.php

http://www.mpa.gr/article.html?doc_id=311399

____________________quote__________________________________

Greece has the highest abortion rate, both when compared to other European countries and to the United States. The high number of abortions being carried out, both before and after marriage, and which can cause serious complications in women's health, is the main reason for the very low birth rate in Greece. According to abortion surgeons, 40% of the decrease in women's fertility is due to abortions. It is estimated that approximately 150,000 couples in Greece are unable to have children, because they have at least one abortion in their history. There are more than 250,000 abortions a year, 40,000 of which are carried out on young girls under the age of 16. Also, one third of the women are married, who would have not had abortions if they had the financial means to support a larger family.

This sadly impressive data was announced by Professor of Obstetrics-Gynecology at AUTh, Ioannis Bonnis, speaking at the 2nd Panhellenic Conference of the Greek Fertility and Impotency Association, which is being held in Thessaloniki.

During the 1980-1999 period, fertility in Greece has dropped by 41%, twice the percentage decrease of the rest of Europe, while the US had an increase of 14% of their fertility rate.
___________________________________________________________

That's why is not good to point fingers at others when your house is not that shiny inside.

" That's why is not good to point fingers at others when your house is not that shiny inside"

I haven't pointed any fingers...yet. I don't know about Russia and am not a Russian apologist. I do suspect that what you have written, as far as I know, is accurate about Greek fertility and abortion rates. This is the result of many years of PASOK socialism and entry into the secular European Union which, while it may have improved the Greek economy and infrastructure, has caused incalculable damage to Greek society and culture. These are abominations which the Church of Greece has fought at every turn, with, alas, little success. While the countryside of Greece is still old Orthodox Greece, the two big cities, where much, perhaps most, of Greece now lives, are cesspools of immorality.

That's why is not good to point fingers at others when your house is not that shiny inside

Well, there is enough dirt in Romania to keep the "rag" busy for a lifetime. Maybe he should follow his own advice and try to clean his house first.

source

vast majority of Romanians for an AUTHORITARIAN, iron-fisted leader

widespread poverty and corruption in Romania

Gallup also found that about one third of the population would like to see a single political party and thought a military regime would best fit Romania. Bucking a trend in the European Union, 86 percent said Romania should make religious classes compulsory in schools and that the government should sponsor the Orthodox Church.

According to the media, following the results of this poll, pertinent questions on the readiness of Romania to join EU in 2007 have been raised.

On June 12, 2003, at the end of its weekly meeting, the Romanian Government published an official denial of the Holocaust in Romania in its weekly press release.

Romanian students still do not learn that in 1938 in Romania there were 780,000 Jews. They do not learn that Romanian Jews were granted Romanian citizenship only in 1919. Young students are taught that, due to Romanian tolerance, Romania had the highest number of Jewish survivors in all of post-WWII Europe.The students are not told that 400,000 Jews were killed in territories where they were deported under the supervision of the Romanian army.

No details on the deportations, the 1938 racial legislation, the confiscation of Jewish properties, the 1940-1941 pogroms, are found in any of the materials brought to our attention by the Romanian Ministry of Education. source

He who has no sin should cast the first stone. Any takers? I think this thread is exhausted. Signing off.

Imagine what would happen if the OCA actually went forward and built their church in Reston w/o a building permit ?

The city-county-state would send in a SWAT team so fast it would one's head spin.

In the early 90's I sat on the Governing Board of a Building Department of a city of 450,000.........it was called The Board of Standards, Violations, and Condemnation

The easiest cases to decide were those in which no building permit was issued - no excuses accpeted & always a unanimous vote - tear it down and bill the owner - if owner doesn't pay - take the land.

The Romanians who built their church w/o a permit are dang lucky they didn't try their shenaigans in America - their church would'a been yanked down long time ago.

Kolokotronis is being more objective and I respect his thoughts at a time when Kostas continues to sign off and come back.

Greece doesn't have much to brag about.

Antisemitism in Greece
http://www.wiesenthal.com/atf/cf/%7BDFD2AAC1-2ADE-428A-9263-35234229D8D8%7D/25Months.pdf

Artist glorifies suicide bomber
http://www.usefulwork.com/shark/archives/001121.html

A phobic syndrome, By Stavros Lygeros
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_273131_19/11/2004_49690

I bet not many know about this
http://www.eskimo.com/%7Enickz/axios.html

Vooch, don't be so confident because my sources in this topic have been serious and I CHALLENGE you to disprove them.
You apply the American mentality to situations in the Balkans. Do you think Serbs with Milosevic would have done those wars had they had your American-Orthodox mentality? NO!

Read the petition carefully and notice that other buildings have been build ILLEGALLY in that town and it don't need to be a church to be singled out for demolition, especially for being a Christian object and belonging to a minority group. (double standarts)

If you want to know more you can read the original petition of the Malainitsa Christians send to the Romania President to intervene so they can have a place to pray.

http://members3.boardhost.com/homolje/msg/8109.html

Try to discredit and you will learn more.
In the coming days we might learn more on the fate of the church.

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