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Ineed yes. I remember how it used to irk me when I was a young monk in Serbia and many places, if they had large numbers of communicants would hold off giving communion until after the completion of the Liturgy. So you would have two queues -one for Communion and one for nafora-antidoron.

The Baron of Buccow tried to solve a political problem falsilly considered religious:the agents of Empress Elisabeth of Russia tried to organise "religious rebellions" in Transsylvania in order to create problems to the Habsburg Empire.The groups of warrior monks guided by Sofronie de la Ciora (who tried to force romanians to declare themselves orthodox)were not wanted in the Principality.

The relationships betwwen the greek-catholics and orthodox in Transsylvania were often influenced by political situation.

In the last century the Romanian orthodox Church did its best to destroy the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church and collaborated with the communists on this purpose.

Probably the policy of demolishyng chuches and keeping stolen churches could be considered acceptable for some but not for a christian.

Are you saying that Buccow and the Hapsburgs weren't Christian?

The problem is that we are not even dealing with the proposition that two wrongs don't make a right, as you make it quite clear that you firmly believe the Vatican et alia did absolutely nothing wrong.

I don't know why you are complaining: so they didn't have bishops (being forced into union, exile or death) and their clergy were banned from entering the country, their existence with no legal standing, their churches confiscated or destroyed. After all, such was the situation in Transylvania for the Orthodox 1701-1769, and you seem to imply that thinks were so great for the Romanian Orthodox that Transylvanians like St. Sofronie had to be seduced by Russian agents to conduct "false" rebellions. Btw, how did St. Sofronie "force" people into Orthodoxy, because unlike Marie Therese, Buccow and the Vatican, he didn't have any divisions to command.

I'm quite sure Marie Therese and her brood didn't want Sofronie in the Principality. The Romanians, who constituted the majority and original population of the Principality, had other ideas.

Of course "The relationships betwwen the greek-catholics and orthodox in Transsylvania were often influenced by political situation." One side owes its entire existence to "the political situation."

The orthodox have no bishop in the Principality of Transylvania between 1697-1765 because almost all the romanian population returned to the communion to Rome.After 1765 even the bishops for the Romanians in Transylvania were until the beginning of the XIX century Serbians.

During the revolt of the agents of Serbians and Russians leaded by Sofronie de la Cioara these not very spiritual "monks" used to "visit" the different villages saying lies about the catholic faith and even beatin the greek-catholic priests.Their methods succeeded in dividing the Romanians.

In Transylvania the spiritual, cultural and national revival of the Romanian was leaded by the greek-catholic bishops Inocentiu Micu and Petru Pavel Aron and that was put in danger by Visarion Sarai and Sofronie's "rebellions".

The political influence is obvious in 1948:the orthodox didn't hesitate to be allies to the athiestic communists in order to destroy the greek-catholics.

Even if (and historically you are wrong) there were errors 300 years ago on the Byzantine-Catholic side, this does not justify the present behavior of today Orthodox.

The sins of the others (ancestors) don't justify our sins.

We are all Christians, and as Christians we are asked not to proceed with a everlasting vengeance against the guilts of the grand-grand-grand-fathers of your neighbor.

Today there was an official statement of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church in which the Romanian Orthodox Church was accused the Romanian Orthodox Church of promoting the interconfessional hatred and presents the real situation.

I don't disagree a bit with your sentiments. They are, however, off point: the Vatican and its supporters insist that they never did anything wrong, that the Romanians (just the example here) spontaneously ran to the chalices sent by the Vatican in 1701 and the edict of the emperor banning the Orthodox Church had nothing to do with it, no one was forced to submit to the Vatican, only foreign agents seduced the Romanians to Orthdoxy, blah,blah,blah.

It has been my experience that when someone says "I did nothing wrong," what they mean is "If given the chance, I will do it again."

The political influence is obvious in 1699, 1701,...or 1366 the year that Louis of Hungary (and France, both loyal domains of the Vatican) made communion with the Vatican a condition of having, obtaining or maintaining nobility, which led to the destruction of the Universitas Valachorum, i.e. the Romanians as a polity in their own principality. On them it says (in Latin, of course): propter presumptuosam astuciam diversorum malefactorum, specialiter Olachorum in ipsa terra nostra existencium (…) ad exterminandum seu delendum in ipsa terra malefactores quarumlibet nacionum, signanter Olachorum ("because of the evil arts of many malefactors, especially Romanians, who exist in that our country (…) to expel or to exterminate in this country malefactors belonging to any nation, especially Romanians." So said the "Apostolic Catholic" King.

The Romanians in submission to the Vatican were rewarded for their "spiritual, cultural and national revival of the Romanian" by the Austro-Hungarians by the Transylvanian Memorandum which tried them in Alba Iulia for "homeland betrayal" and sentenced them to long terms of hard labor. When Transylvania returned to Romania in the Union of Alba Iulia, Romania rewarded the same church by the Constitution that made their church the second Romanian church, second only to the Orthodox, and had a King who was a loyal son of the Vatican (would such a thing happened among the Austro-Hungarians? FAT CHANCE). And the response to that was said son of the Vatican concluding an unconstitutional and secret deal with "Mother Church" in which the ill gotten gains of the "Apostolic Crown" were turned over to those in submission to the Vatican. In contrast, the Phanar, Sinai, Jerusalem and the other Orthodox were forced to disgorge Romania's revenues.

The Vatican's own census of 1332 showed over 90% of the population was Orthodox, er, "schismatic." Of the over 3,000 towns in Transylvania, only 900 even had a parish under the Vatican. Seems someone got there before St. Sofronie, and no, your slander against the saint won't withstand scrutiny. What exactly were these "lies" against the union's faith? That despite appearances, it wasn't the Faith of their Fathers?

So the majority converted to the Vatican because Leopold said so? Ceaucescu would be proud of such a feat, saying and it being so. As for allies, who were the allies of the Nazis giving Transylvania to Horthy?

The romanian were born as a people as christian in full communion with Rome and lost this communion because of the political situation.During the XIIth-XVII century the romanians of Transylvania did not return to the communion with Rome because the hungarians were catholic.

All the most important leaders of the fight of the romanians of Transylvania in the modern period were greek-catholic.

King Ferdinand I was roman-catholic but has nothing to do with the Concordat or with the influence of orthodox or catholics during his reign.

In 1948 almost 2 million romanians were greek-catholic and nobody can deny the glorious history of the this Church.

It can be pretty confusing, given the situation on the Transylvanian Marches. In the fifteenth century, it would appear that Vlad Dracul and his son Vlad Drakulya both accepted and rejected the Union of Florence depending upon which position provided the most political leverage at the moment. For the typical Transylvanian peasant, it probably made little or no difference. The same situation pertained after the Union of Alba Julia. The Liturgy remained unchanged, the priest remained the same, but a different bishop was commemorated. I doubt many grasped the ecclesiastical implications.

Also, as I stated, the Union of Alba Julia, like the Union of Brest and the Union of Uzherod, were all indigenous movements of groups of Orthodox priests and bishops. Nothing was coerced, and the perfidious Jesuits in fact were steadfastly opposed to uniatism, because they believed it would be better to convert the Orthodox to the Latin rite.

For the Romanians was just a RETURN to the communion with Rome in the second part of the XVIIth century..

The command to exterminate the "schismatic Vlachs" sounds rather coercive to me. But then I have a problem of calling a spade a spade.

All the "unions" were born out of a long history of depriving the Orthodox of any rights (in Transylvania, Romanians were forbidden to spend the night in the cities), all were opposed, all were not a movement of a part but the forcing by the state of the whole of the faithful into submission to the Vatican, in all the "union" was accompanied by exile of the non-submitting clergy and martyrdoms and confiscation of properties and Churches.

The only ones whose history does not fit this model is the Melkites.

So,the Catholics were guilty of being people of their time, in not believing in freedom of religion. Um, so were the Orthodox, in the few places where they still ruled by the sixteenth century. When the borders changed, people were forced to move or to change their faith. It was a factor of the times.

Because of that, certain groups of Orthodox bishops sought protection from the economic and civil disabilities of not belonging to the Catholic Church in a Catholic kingdom. Catholics in Russia (to say nothing of Protestants, Jews and Muslims) suffered similar disabilities. In the Subcarpathian regions, the Orthodox were actually being pressured by the Hungary Calvinist Rakocy (of the famous "March"), and sought communion with Rome as a way of gaining the protection of the Hapsburg monarchy against them.

Father Boris Gudziak's book, Crisis and Reform, goes into the background, origins and repercussions of the Union of Brest, and it is quite clear that there was no attempt on the part of the Catholic Church to strongarm the Orthodox into Union--in fact, the Holy See was largely ignorant of what was happening in Eastern Europe, and the critical initiatives were taken by people on the spot, often in ways in opposition to established policies. The main impetus to the various unions was social and political, not religious. The bishops and priests who entered into them did not consider that they were betraying the Orthodox faith, or severing communion with the Orthodox world. That his was the result of their actions does not impugn their motives, nor does it in any way excuse actions taken on both sides thereafter.

It is certainly a shame that both Catholics and Orthodox of those times did not act in the enlightened manner that we pluralistic Westerners take for granted. But then, it is a shame that the Orthodox of this day and age, far too often behave as though nothing has happened or been learned in the subsequent 300-400 years.

yes, a return.

Of course, communion was broken when Rome inserted the filioque, and then insisted the Orthodox insert it as well in 1054.

It was restored briefly in 1202: the Romanian ruler of Bulgaria, Kaloyan, in his efforts to raise the Second Bulgarian empire responded to a letter from Innocent III saying that he would submit if he received the imperial crown and title, and the restoration of the Bulgarian Patriarchate. Kaloyan submitted, but received nothing of what he requested, and in fact, the Latin Crusaders, having sacked the imperial capital, expressed the intention of conquering all her former domains, including Bulgaria. Kaloyan, however, crushed the Crusaders, who, however resurged during Kaloyan's successor Boril, who tried to marry into the Crusader, Hungarian and other Houses attached to the Vatican. Boril was overthrown, however by Ivan Asen II, who had fled to the Orthodox Rus, and, after he crushed the Latin Crusaders and Hungarians, the Orthodox Patriarch of Bulgaria was welcomed back by all the Orthodox Patriarchs, and the communion with the Vatican came again to an end in 1235. This 33 year communion is what those who obeyed Leopold returned to.

let me take the opportunity to disabuse people who might wonder something I see often: when did the Romanians abandon the Latin Mass? Answer, never, they never had it: when Dacia was conquered in 106, the language of the Church at Rome was Greek, Latin not being introduced at all until Pope Victor came from North Africa in 189. When the Romans evacuated Dacia c. 270, the Latin mass had a century yet before becoming the standard at Rome, let alone in the provinces. We also have the testimony of the Scythian monks that the Romanians used the DL of St. Basil.

No it didn't. What actually occured was that the Patriarch of Constantinople started closing Latin Churches in Constantinople because of their use of unleavened bread. Filioque was not an issue initially. When Humbert was commissioned by the Pope to discuss the matter with the Easterns, he was only authorized to discuss the issue of unleavened bread, the closing of the Churches, and the return of territories that originally belonged to the Roman Patriarchate. On his own authority, not Rome's, Humbert made filioque an issue in his excommunication, by pretending that the Greeks had removed it from the Creed. Patriarch Cerularius responded (quite understandably) by condemning filioque.

What do you mean by "Latin Mass?" You mean a Divine Liturgy said in Latin, or a particular form of the Divine Liturgy that was standardized later in the Western Church? The troops of the Roman empire were Latin, and many were Christians. We should fully expect that these troops celebrated their Liturgy in Latin, though the common folk may not have done so. It's irresponsible to claim that Mass was never said in Latin in those territories. Archaelogical evidence proves that the liturgical (if not the common) language used Latin. You can look it up in any standard history of Romania. So I'll trust Father Coryolan's assessment that the earliest Liturgies wre probably said in Latin (or at least that Latin was used in the liturgical life of the people).

What does it prove that the Latin Mass was standardized at a later date? That doesn't prove that the Mass was never said in Latin in these territories.

What occurred in the latter fourth century is irrelevant while considering an earlier period when the Liturgy was not yet standardized.

Blessings