Talk:Church of Romania

From OrthodoxWiki
Revision as of 01:59, October 20, 2005 by ASDamick (talk | contribs) (Article based on Wikipedia article)
Jump to: navigation, search

I'm a convert in the Church of Romania and am pretty fluent in Romanian, having worked there for some considerable time. I have never heard the Orthodox faith referred to as 'Dreapta credinta' and the only time I've ever seen 'Dreptcredincios' used is as a title for a saint - i.e. 'Dreptcredinciosul Voievod Stefan cel Mare si Sfant' (The Right-Beleiving Voievod - sort of like Prince, but no real translation - Stephen the Great and Holy). Usually, contrary to what is stated in this article, the faith is known as 'Ortodoxie' or 'Crestinism Ortodox' and the Orthodox faithful are known as Ortodox(a) pl. Ortodocsi. I'd cheerfully correct this (I've corrected the odd word of Romanian already where there were problems) but I don't want to step on anyone's toes. If whoever originally wrote the article thinks my comments are incorrect, I'd appreciate it if you'd give me some justification for what I see as problems - perhaps this is normal language in some regions of Romania, but it certainly isn't in Moldova and Bucovina, in my experience.

Well, the Romanian Orthodox Church is a bit strange in that it uses several words for the same thing. So sometimes it keeps the greek/slavonic word, sometimes it translates it (see the use of both 'slava' and 'marire' for glory). Referring to Orthodoxy as "dreapta credinta" is not very common, unless it's in some context - thus, in a sermon the priest may urge the faithful to uphold "dreapta credinta." The only other context where I know of the translation is in the service itself: at the Great Entrance, when the priest says "May the Lord remember you, orthodox Christians..." he says "dreptmaritorilor crestini." It's similar at the end of Vespers. Otherwise, you're right - the faith itself is known as 'ortodoxie.' I hope this helps. Virgil
This article as it now stands is largely taken from Wikipedia:Romanian Orthodox Church. I'm the one who imported it the way that it is, and I don't know either way regarding the issue you raise. You'd know better than I and are free to edit the article according to your knowledge. Please feel free to register for an account and help us out! --Rdr. Andrew 10:06, 10 Mar 2005 (CST)
Thanks Virgil and Rdr Andrew. I've now signed up for an account. What I'd most like to contribute to the site are articles on Romanian saints, monasteries etc. Ethnically, I'm German/Czech by way of Britain but I feel more like an adopted Romanian nowadays, having married into a Romanian family and as I find that there appears to be very little on the web about Romanian saints, traditions etc. when compared to Greek or Russian, I think this would be a worthwhile thing to do. I agree with you, Virgil, regarding the use of dreapta credinta etc. - it simply didn't register with me that way because you could just as easily write 'True Faith' or 'True Christians' in English without it referring to Orthodoxy. Romanian is a second language for me after all. I think maybe the wording of the article should be changed to something along the lines of 'also sometimes called...' rather than 'usually called...'. What do you think? --James
Your suggestions for contribution sound excellent—the Church of Romania is, after all, the 2nd largest Orthodox Church in the world, and I fear many English-speakers know very little about it. (I honestly wish that there were more of a Romanian ecclesiastical presence in the West.) --Rdr. Andrew 08:43, 11 Mar 2005 (CST)
Unfortunately, I think my brother would be in a much better position than I am to contribute the lives of Romanian saints. However, I'll do the little that I can. For starters, I ran into this and I guess I'll start with a translation of one of the brief synopses found there. --virgil
It seems to me that "May the Lord remember you, orthodox Christians..." is not referring to the Orthodox faith as such. I mean this: that at the time it was written, I don't imagine that Orthodox was the primary designation for the Church (that was more an adjective, no? and something like "The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church" would have been more of a formal descriptor?). Sure, it does refer to Orthodox Christians, and, sure, it is a statement against heresy, but it seems to me like the best way of translating this would simply be "right-believing Christians" rather than 'Orthodox' with a big 'O'. All of this is to say that I'm not sure it's a great guide to the self-designations of the Romanian Orthodox Church, or at least there are some issues to work out there. What do you think? Fr. John

Tertullian

I removed the link to the Tertullian treatise, mainly because it doesn't seem to have any reference to Dacia in it. Am I missing something? --Rdr. Andrew 12:45, 17 Mar 2005 (CST)

  • I don't think you missed anything. I didn't read the article so I'd missed it but I turned up nothing at all searching for Dacia, Geat or Get or any other Romanian tribal name variant I can think of that was used in antiquity. Even the references to Scythians (Scythia Minor was modern Dobrugea and there were Scythian tribes in North Eastern Moldova) seem to be irrelevant - merely using them as examples of heathen barbarians. I think you were right to remove the link. James 02:58, 18 Mar 2005 (CST)

Romanian saints, monasteries etc.

This is really just a question on style, but these sections are growing larger and, if I can do so, I will expand the contents a lot in the future. Should the titles, then, be made into links to the appropriate categories, or should I leave them as they are? If they're left as they are, should I add a link to, for example, every saint I add (which, hopefully, will be an awful lot) or just leave a few as examples? I will follow any advice given. I know enough about at least 6 or 7 monasteries (and a few churches and cathedrals) to write at least a short article on them and have access to the lives of at least a couple of hundred Romanian saints, so if I carry on the way I have been the lists are likely to get umanageable. On the issue of saints, monasteries and the like, I'm in the process of trying to get permission to use images from web sites to illustrate them, particularly icons. Assuming I'm given permission, I will add them as soon as possible. James 07:17, 21 Mar 2005 (CST)

I think if there are just a couple dozen or so links in a list, then keeping it in this article would probably work fine. If, however, you put in all 200 saints' lives(!) you have, it would probably be better to create a separate article with that list, and include only a "greatest hits" section in this article with a link to that big list (perhaps List of Romanian saints). --Rdr. Andrew 08:52, 21 Mar 2005 (CST)
OK, that seems reasonable. Obviously it will take me some time (probably years!) to get anywhere near the 200 saint mark, but I thought I'd best find out what to do ahead of time. I'll be very happy if I do manage to get even half of the saints I know about into OrthodoxWiki.James

Re: The Church in Moldova

I'm not sure how to describe this confusing issue in the Wiki-article but currently it does not reflect the situation correctly (as I, Moldovan Orthodox, think).

Republic of Moldova is an independent state where majority of population speaks Romanian language but only 2.1% of them considered themselves to be Romanians and 76.1% identify themselves as Moldovans (out of total 3,388 thousands, census of 2004). The ecclesiastical situation is following.

Self-ruled Metropolis of Chisinau and Moldova. Self-rule granted in October of 1992. Metropolitan Vladimir, permanent member of Holy Synod of Russian Orthodox Church. Four eparchies: Chisinau, Tiraspol and Dubasari, Edinets and Briceani, and Cahul and Comrat. Church languages - Romanian and Slavonic. Church music - Byzanthine and Russian. 1080 parishes, 30 monasteries, 1 academy, 2 seminaries.

Autonomous Metropolitan See of Basarabia. 30 parishes in Moldova, Odesa region of Ukraine and Chuvash region of Russia (Ural mountains). Founded by bishop of Balti, Petru (Paduraru) in 1992. Supported by political parties opposing independence of Republic of Moldova. It considers itself to be the heir of Metropolitan of Basarabia that existed in 1918-1940 (to make long story short, independent Moldovan Republic existed only for several days after which it was occupied by Kingdom of Romania and annexed) despite protests of non-canonical activity by St. Patriarch Tikhon.

In 1812-1918 the territory of modern Republic of Moldova was Chisinau Eparchy of Russian Church (first Metropolitan - Gavriil (Banulescu-Bodoni), last - Anastasios, future first-hyerarch of Russian Church Abroad), 1401-1812 - part of different eparchies of Ecumenical Patriarchate, since 1791 Moldovlachian Exarchate, 1373-1401 - self-ruled church.

I'm not sure how this information can be used (may be as a separate article, as you wish).

Thank you!

Wow, thanks for speaking up. This is just the kind of exchange that OrthodoxWiki is great for -- where else could this happen? Fr. John

Article based on Wikipedia article

This article is based on the corresponding Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Orthodox_Church), but it does not respect the terms of the license terms.

Wikipedia is licensed under GNU GFDL terms, so any derivation, including this article must:

  1. be under licensed under the same terms as the original article, i.e. GFDL; Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike is not compatible with GFDL
  2. link to the original article in Wikipedia or to a list of the contributors.

Non-compliance to these terms makes it a copyright violation.

Best wishes, Bogdan

A note has been added regarding the source. The versions now extant at both sites have diverged to the point that both are derivative of but not identical to the snapshot taken on Jan. 22, 2005. The version at OrthodoxWiki is significantly changed and thus not a violation of copyright law. In any event, the derivation was noted in the history, though it is now explicit in the article body. —[[User:ASDamick|—Fr. Andrew talk contribs (THINK!)]] 21:59, 19 Oct 2005 (EDT)