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    STUDIA HISTORIA - Issue no. 2 / 2006  
         
  Article:   ASPECTS CONCERNING THE IMAGE OF THE ORTHODOX WITHIN THE GREEK-CATHOLIC BELIEVERS IN THE SECOND HALF OF 19TH CENTURY.

Authors:  ION CÂRJA.
 
       
         
  Abstract:  There are several important levels that may be found when dealing with the image of Romanian Orthodox communities and structures with the Greek-Catholic in the second half of the 19th century Transylvania. Thus, one can identify a first level represented by Eastern Christianity’s general image with the Holy See, which was being constructed in the respective period due to the papacy’s relaunch of its unionist projects. This may be seen in Rome’s documents concerning the East, in the debates of the several Romanian dicasteries on this issue, in the documents of the Ecumenical Council in 1869-1870, in Vatican’s correspondence with the Apostolic Nunciatures and missions and, last but not least, in the historical, canonical and liturgical literature on Eastern Churches. We are dealing with a complex picture, combining the necessity of recognizing the traditions and particularities of Eastern Christianity with plans of restoring the unity of Christian world and the imperatives of organizing it round its “centre” – the Roman Apostolic See. This pontifical construct will later be taken over by the Greek-Catholic in Transylvania, who were constructing their own image of Romanian Orthodoxy and Eastern Christianity, respectively. It is at this point that a second distinct level of representation – that of the Orthodox image with the Greek-Catholic Church – becomes clear. It contains, along with the Roman component, elements generated by local cohabitation and interdenominational relations. This image is not unitary in itself since it is determined by different ecclesiastical options or pragmatic calculation of the Greek-Catholic elite, as well as by an ambivalent attitude towards Orthodoxy stemming from the cohabitation necessities of the two Romanian denominations at the level of communitarian life. The image of Eastern Orthodoxy in this period of time with both Holy See and Romanian Church United with Rome is made up of veracious elements, historically verifiable to which are added, in a variable alchemy, generalizations, clichés, stereotypes and common places with no factual basis, part of the representation games of “the other” generated by social life mechanisms.  
         
     
         
         
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