INCOMPATIBILITATEA DE A EXERCITA COMERŢUL. REVIZUIREA UNUI CAZ
THE INCOMPATIBILITY OF TRADE ACTIVITIES. REVISING A CASE

Summary/Abstract: The Incompatibility of Trade Activities. Revising a case. Trading activities have been prohibited for the clergy members belonging to the Eastern Christian Church, including the Romanian ones. This prohibition was formulated during the first Christian centuries; in the particular case of the Romanian Orthodox Church, this fact has been renewed through various disciplinary regulations, such as those from the years 1884 or 1949. Recently, in 2008, a new statute of the Romanian Orthodox Church was adopted. Through its provisions, the normative framework related to the forbidding of the trade activities for the priests is being significantly modified. To be more exact, the regulations allow the subjects to carry on commercial activities, but only under some specific conditions. Although the restrictions do not depend on any preliminary agreement from the part of the ecclesiastic authority, they are nonetheless framed by the exercising of such trade acts that” do not infringe upon the Christian morality and the interests of the Church”. This provision indicates the presence of a different perspective in the area, which can have as a starting point the hypothesis of an ecclesiastic answer addressed to the problems of nowadays society (starting from people’s poor state of living, some clergy members included, and up to the need of a Christian meaning conveyed to some practices that have a neutral essence in themselves). Whatever the motivation, it is worth remembering that even the apostle Paul had exercised some activities with a commercial character, without raising through them the contempt of his community. The author analyses diachronically the prohibition regarding the exercising of trade activities by the Eastern Church clergy members, emphasizing the issues that are allowed and / or forbidden according to the present Christian Orthodox Church legislation.

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