THE GREEK-CATHOLIC DISCOURSE OF IDENTITY IN THE INTER-WAR PERIOD: THE RELATION BETWEEN THE NATION AND PEOPLE’S RELIGIOUS CONFESSION
THE GREEK-CATHOLIC DISCOURSE OF IDENTITY IN THE INTER-WAR PERIOD: THE RELATION BETWEEN THE NATION AND PEOPLE’S RELIGIOUS CONFESSION

Summary/Abstract: The Greek-Catholic Discourse of Identity in the Inter-War Period: The Relation between the Nation and People’s Religious Confession. This paper aims to analyze the question of the confessional identity, focusing on one of its main constitutive elements: the relation between the nation and people’s religious confession. The national identity and the confessional one have numerous common characteristics, influencing each other more or less depending on the historical evolution of events. These aspects are more profound in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-confessional environment, as otherness is one of the strongest factors that defines and strengthens the confessional as well as the national identity. This was also the case of the Greek- Catholic Church in Romania, in the inter-war period, taking into consideration its new status after the Union of 1918: a minority church in a country with an Orthodox majority. Its relation of otherness with the Romanian Orthodox Church also influenced its relation with the state and therefore it determined also the structure and the intensity of its discourse of identity. Among the most important themes of this discourse we can mention: the Greek-Catholic Church is the church of the forefathers; this Church, its faith and its believers are Romanian; the Union with Rome brought the Romanian people a lot of benefices – to all the Romanians and not only to those from Transylvania; the Greek-Catholic Church is a victim and is persecuted by the Orthodox Church and by the state authorities; the preservation of the Catholic faith will ensure the deliverance, but will also protect the nation and its unity; the national unity will be strengthen by the realization of the religious union of the Catholic and Orthodox, but this must be done by the union of the Orthodox Church with the Church of Rome, having the Uniates as a model, and following the principles established by the Council in Florence.

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