Public Governance and Religion. Key Historical Turns in Modern Romania

To determine how intellectual debates on Church government, churchmanship, and Church engagement with nationhood, the secular state, and democracy may have a bearing on public governance and public policies is no easy task. Such an effect has largely gone unnoticed, as scholars were – and still are – accustomed to considering rather the different, and sometimes dramatic ways modern and contemporary statecraft influenced the position of the Church(es) in modern societies, as well as the various ecclesiological arguments brought forth by Church officials and theologians in order to explain, accept or reject this situation. It takes not only a firm command of both the social sciences and theology but also the courage to go beyond the prevalent methodological assumptions to argue that discussions among theologians and clergymen about internal Church affairs have changed modern politics and have helped reshape many a perspective on public administration or democratic government. Cătălin Raiu has both the required expertise and the audacity to venture out into this (as of yet) scientifically uncharted territory. Vast and barely traveled as it is, the territory mapped by Cătălin Raiu has however well-defined borders. It covers by and large the intertwined histories of the Romanian nation-state (from its formal inception in 1862 to the demise of the communist regime in 1989-1990) and of the Romanian Orthodox Church (from its establishment by the Romanian state in 1864 to its final disentanglement from any state control in 1990-1992). All along this chronological span, the Church acted in turn as a constituent part of civil society whose weight had to be taken into serious account by the successive political regimes (including the communist one) and as an interest group able to exert an effective influence on the public agenda (not only on issues related to its religious mission or the question of collective identity but also in administrative, financial and political matters). The Church acted sequentially and contingently as a pervasive part of civil society or as an organized and hierarchical interest group but was constantly and essentially both. It was at once an organic link between society and the state and an agency for promoting the specific interests of the clergy. It was always the state that decided which of these two indivisible figures of the Church had to take precedence at a given time. Contents State, Church and Governance. A Foreword to a Conundrum ..................................................................... VII Abbreviations .............................................................................. XI I. Rationale: Why a book on religion and public governance ..... 1 1. The Theoretical Framework and Methods ................... 1 2. Preview of the book ..................................................... 4 II. Religion and Politics. An intertwined conceptual pair ......... 7 §1. Religion as Politics: the theo-political unfolding of the principle of subsidiarity ........................................... 7 1. The nature of political powers .................................... 10 2. The Catholic Social Thinking .................................... 15 3. The construction of the European Union under the principle of subsidiarity ........................................ 17 4. Subsidiarity unfolded ................................................. 19 5. Subsidiarity within the Eastern Orthodox setting ....... 23 §2. Politics as Religion: the communist regime as a political religion ............................................................ 29 III. Subsidiarity, democracy and authority in modern Romania (1860s-1990) .............................................................. 48 §1. Andrei Șaguna and early modern liberalism .................... 57 §2. The dawns of nation-building .......................................... 67 §3. The Conservative Clause: the State Reforming the Church ........................................................................ 76 §4. The Great post-1918 Church Unification ......................... 90 §5. Neo-corporatism and Church affairs in the interwar period ............................................................................. 101 §6. The slippery part: the synonymy between nation and faith ......................................................................... 113 IV. The Church under the political religion of Communism ........................................................................ 118 V. Post-communism: from past tense to past perfect ............ 129 VI. The Reflection Group for the Church Renewal (1990-1991/2) ........................................................................... 133 §1. The establishment and functioning ................................ 138 §2. On the nature of political regimes .................................. 152 VII. Conclusion ......................................................................... 169 Bibliography .............................................................................. 175