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The Patriarchate of Romania
The Romanian Patriarch issued an appeal on February 11, 2010 “…to all Romanian Orthodox clerics and faithful abroad, who are, without blessing, in other sister Orthodox Churches or in non-canonical church structures, to restore their direct communion with their Mother Church, under the canonical jurisdiction of the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church.”
Taking what appears to be a page from the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s book, the Romanian Patriarchate asserts the universality of the Church (the “Catholic — or katholikos in the Nicene Creed’s “…only Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church) is derived not from the trans-cultural, trans-tribal, and trans-national character of the Gospel, but from ethnic identity and affiliation albeit without the accouterments such as the universality of Hellenism to buttress the argument.
Not everyone agrees. I’ve posted the response to the appeal first, and the original appeal second. Postings on this page are truncated (signers names have been removed for space) but you can read the response to the appeal and original appeal on separate pages.
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Appeal for Unity and Dignity of the Orthodox Church
Translated from the original French
We, the descendants of various migrations of the 20th century or people of Western origin, have inherited from our forefathers an Orthodoxy that is “the Church of Christ on Earth”, a reality that is greater than any form of social, cultural or national rootedness. The Orthodox Church, in all situations in which she exists, is called to be incarnated in local cultures, because, as “the new life in Christ”, the Church is universal. But this universality is never abstract: it is tangible in each place, in each Eucharistic community where the faithful, gathered in a diversified unity, share the same Orthodox faith received from the Apostles and transmitted by the Fathers.
In Western Europe, Orthodox Christians of different origins have lived together for four generations, and we have understood that it is our responsibility to witness together to Orthodoxy, in a fraternal dialogue with other Christians, in a world that hungers for God. For fifty years, the Orthodox Fellowship in Western Europe, among other aims, has sought to enable a gathering of all the Orthodox in a Eucharistic unity and a canonical structure that is in conformity with our ecclesiology. This ecclesiology is territorial, in which there is no form of “nationalism” or competition among dioceses, but which does not renounce the place of cultures, languages or peoples. In his sense, the establishment of the Assembly of Orthodox Bishops of France in 1997 was a significant step forward.
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