PATRIARHUL JUSTINIAN MARINA SI APOSTOLATUL SOCIAL ÎN CONTEXTUL SOCIETĂŢII SOCIALISTE
THE PATRIARCH JUSTINIAN MARINA AND „THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE” IN THE CONTEXT OF THE SOCIALIST SOCIETY

Summary/Abstract: The Patriarch Justinian Marina and „The Social Apostolate” in the context of the socialist society. Models of Christian confession for the contemporary world. The Orthodox Church during communism era has two histories: one traced by those in power, and one that has been recently revealed through documents discovered and examined by historians. This paper analyzes the situation of the Romanian Orthodox Church immediately after the atheistic communist regime had been installed in Romania, using references taken both from official documents dating during the period of The Patriarch Justinian (The Social Apostolate), and from the archives of the Securitate (The Romanian Secret Services), documents issued by the Department for religions, by the party or taken from the confessional archives. It discuses a series of attitudes and facts that have been interpreted either as acts of abdication from the prophetical mission of the Church or as attempts to survive. The paper’s objective is to show that the Patriarch Justinian used “a double discourse” to deal with the challenges of the world he was living in, but still, the Church had a missionary strategy that can generate, at least partially, a model of Christian confession in the context of a secularized society.

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