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Dr. A. Cula
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Hmmm... This story was news to me, so I did a little research. A couple of inaccuracies made me abandon my lurking.
First, that report is not entirely accurate on the reaction of church officials. From what I read, it seems that, the day after the nun died, local bishop Corneliu Barladeanu arrived in the village with a commando of priests, determined to revoke father Daniel's priesthood and shut down the monastery. The villagers sided with the priest and proceeded to beat up the bishop and his escort until the police arrived. I read a news piece saying that the peasants are still very agitated and determined to protect "their" priest.
Currently, church leaders wait for the peasants to calm down before taking any action. In the mean time, they have officially classified the matter as an abomination and said that if the villagers continue to oppose secular and religious justice, they'll have no choice but to erase the monastery and the whole community from their records (practically, an excommunication). This has never happened before in the entire history of the Romanian Orthodox Church.
Second, from what I know of orthodox exorcism rituals (I'm a roman catholic, btw), the practice involves reciting something called Saint Basil's prayer in front of the possesed person, eiher in the church or at their home, on january, the 1st. That's it. No molesting, no dark rituals, no strange artefacts. While the orthodox church recognises and documents cases of possesion, only a handful of monks have been recorded during the 20th century as being able to succesfully perform exorcisms.
Well, so much for barbaric practices. There are a number of obsolete practices in the orthodox church, however, and I think there are still a lot of things to recover and improve upon.
That still leaves open the question of how an obviously disturbed individual got to be a priest. Before the resident commies jump at the obvious answer, let tell you that usually the orthodox church is very serious about who they let in. This case has it's roots in the times before 1989, when there was a serious shortage of qualified personnel in all religions in Romania. Screenings for things such as mental disorders, atheism or communism were superficial at best and a number of people belonging to these categories found their way in all churches in Romania. This is how father Daniel managed to become a priest, but even so, he apparently barely passed the tests and failed miserably when he tried to become a monk. It seems that a very large number of orthodox romanians want to become priests or monks, but only few of them actually meet the requirements.
Meanwhile, despite being barred from performing services, father Daniel continues to do so.
Oh, and I just read an announcement from the church leadership saying that from now on they will include psychiatric evaluations for all candidates for priesthood and they also apologised for not doing so sooner.
Well, enough for now.
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22-06-2005 16:37
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