Discursul presei greco-catolice din România despre natura nazismului (1933-1939)
On the Nature of Nazism in the Discourse of the Greek-Catholic Church’s Press (1933-1939)

Summary/Abstract: In our approach we tried to analyze the official discourse of the Eastern-rite Romanian Catholic Church, discourse presented particularly in the religious press from Transylvania and Banat. It is easy to observe that the balanced and even the most involved or dramatic commentaries regarding the totalitarianisms of interwar period are determined by the general attitude of Catholicism towards them, by the way Bolshevik and fascist policies affected the status of the Church and the Romanian identity. The existence of the atheistic Soviet Union and the Spanish experience on one hand and the preserving of atholic values in Fascist Italy on the other have made the Greek Catholic discourse, at least in the first years of the forth decade, to promote Mussolini’s fascism, Antonescu’s nationalistic regime, the anathematization of Bolshevism, the idea of the anticommunist crusade” and the anti-Soviet war. However, after the Nazi policies troubled the life of German Catholics, the Christian identity and the world peace, the Greek Catholic discourse regarding Nazism shifted from moderate to radical, expressed in terms of Christian morality and Catholic dogma. But the alliance between Antonescu’s Romania and Hitler’s Germany (September 1940), the anti-Soviet war (1941-1944) and the favorable opinion towards Romania’s foreign policy as well as censorship made major manifestation of public speech impossible. The United Church of Romania, in its official discourse, followed the policy of the Holy See in reference to the condemnation of communism, nazism and racism. Categorical attitudes belonged to the 1930s, becoming less explicit, even absent during the government of the National Legionary State and that of the Antonescu regime. On the other hand, Romania’s participation in anti-Soviet war and other decisions and political and geopolitical realities satisfied the expectations of Romanians, particularly the issue of Romanian territories ceded in the summer of 1940 and the defending the Soviet oppressed Eastern churches; this context only partially justify the absence of criticism towards Antonescu’s anti-democratic and anti-Semitic dictatorship. The major political phenomena of the interwar period, in this case the extremisms of the era, have been addressed in the public discourse of the Romanian Greek Catholics in neutral and balanced manner, the literary language of Revelation, and in analysis concerned with finding the root of evil. The standing is consistent with the Catholic 246 Mihaela GRANCEA, Cornel MOŞNEAG Church’s status and Christian dogma. Christianity practiced within the Catholic Church, by its „international” nature, did not serve ethnocentric and etnocratic nationalistic/ ultra-nationalistic ideologies. Pacifism and tolerance arising from „the doctrine of love for the other” were in disagreement with racism, with „the cult of physical super-force, of violence and heroic death”.

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