Church Reckoning with Communism in Post-1989 Romania

This collection examines how Romania's religious majority and its most significant religious minority fared under Communism. The contributors also analyze the post-Communist period and argue that little elite renewal has taken place.

The present volume focuses on the relationship with Communism of Romania's most important religious denominations and their attempt to cope with that difficult past which continues to cast an important shadow over their present. For the first time ever, this volume considers both the majority Romanian Orthodox Church and significant minority denominations such as the Roman and Greek Catholic Churches, the Reformed Church, the Hungarian Unitarian Church, and the Pentecostal Christian Denomination. It argues that no religious group escaped collaboration with the Communists. After 1989, however, most denominations had little desire to tackle their tainted past and make a clean start. In part, this situation was facilitated by the country's deficient legislation that did not encourage the pursuit of lustration, which in turn did not lead to a serious movement of elite renewal in the religious realm. Instead, a strong process of reproduction of the old elites and their adaptation to democracy has been the dominant characteristic of the post-Communist period.

Contents

Introduction

Part One: The Romanian Orthodox Church

Chapter 1

Prison Saints: Memorialization, Sacralization, and Collective Catharsis

Monica Ciobanu

Chapter 2

Go-Betweens and Intersections: The Communist Inspectors for Religious Denominations, a Case Study

Anca Șincan

Chapter 3

Collaboration with the Communists in the Orthodox Theological Institutes

Lucian Turcescu

Chapter 4

Orthodox Churches and Political Strategies in Romania and Yugoslavia

Lucian N. Leustean

Part Two: Catholic Churches

Chapter 5

The Roman Catholic Church during and after the Communist Regime

Zoltán Mihály Nagy and Csaba Zoltán Novák

Chapter 6

The Greek Catholic Church: A Troubled Recent Past and a Painful Transitional Justice

Cristian Vasile

Part Three: Protestant Churches

Chapter 7

The Reformed Elite Facing the Communist Regime

Csongor Jánosi

Chapter 8

Resistance, Conformation and Service: The Unitarian Church during 1945-1965

János Pál

Chapter 9

The Pentecostals and the Legacy of Communism

Vasilică Croitor

Conclusion

About the Contributors