CTP and Patriarch Daniel, Photo: Collage HotNews.ro / Inquam Photos / Virgil Simonescu
In a Facebook post titled “What's the Cathedral good for”, journalist Cristian Tudor Popescu talks about the National Cathedral, whose painting was consecrated on Saturday, as well as about the faithful who came to witness the ceremony.
“I don't believe it, but I try to understand. A church for the majority of citizens of a country can be a strong basis of national unity. Stronger than Romania's culture, language, history, geography. Romanians are increasingly distant from Romanian culture”, writes CT Popescu, recalling that fewer and fewer Romanians read or go to museums.
“Instead, tens of thousands of Romanians, from all over the country, lost nights on the way to come to the consecration of the painting of the Cathedral of the Salvation of the Nation. It was built with a lot of money, but also with more competence and responsibility than the gas installations that blow up the country's blocks of flats,” the journalist continued, referring to the recent explosion in Rahova, caused by an unremedied malfunction at the gas plant of a block.
VIDEO Patriarch Daniel and Patriarch Bartholomew consecrated the National Cathedral. When can the faithful enter the church / Politicians booed after the service
CT Popescu claims that Orthodoxy is an “easy to practice” religion, since most believers do not need to read the books of the Bible or the works of theologians, being content with a simple religiosity. But this can be a powerful enough motive to inculcate a minimum of morality among Romanians.
“They go to the church, to the relics, pay for weddings, baptisms, funerals of the holy parents and hope to receive in return health, fulfillment, money and Heaven after death. It seems advantageous to me. However, even this alone can be enough to stop people from murders, robberies, rapes, frauds, criminal carelessness, corruption. Which are many and big in Romania, but it would probably be and more, and greater, without a church. The fear of God can beat the fear of the police. Social morals can be learned through religion rather than through secular education, which is learned by itself,” Popescu believes.
“A building useful to the Romanian people”
In addition, faith alleviates the fear of loneliness in the face of death that many people have.
“For them, faith in God and the afterlife frees them from this fear. I understand them. Faith is useful to people, not everyone. That's why I'm in favor of the state supporting the church. And the theaters are state-funded, although not all citizens go to the theater. Some people like the service in the church, others, a play – worship can be placed alongside culture,” the journalist claims.
Then he enumerates what “the church does wrong”: “It expands its grip on medicine. It replaces vaccines with prayers and touching relics. It claims that the communion spoon can be shared, that viruses do not stay on it. Not only priests – there are also doctors who prescribe God as a cure. It meddles in politics. Various hierarchs bless Putin and urge the vote of God, the paranoid with God in his mouth, well liked by the Kremlin. I support racist and xenophobic nationalism, committing the sin called philetism by the Orthodox Church itself – putting the nation above humanity as a whole.”
The Cathedral of the Salvation of the Nation seen by the architects: “A project desired since the time of Eminescu and the kings of Romania. No one complained why the National Arena is being built. We must live together”
Other criticisms relate to the intrinsic nature of orthodoxy, such as unconditional belief in dogma or the absence of freedom of speech, which makes it antithetical to freedom or democracy, which would explain the closeness to authoritarian state governments.
“But, if I have to draw a line, the Cathedral of the Salvation of the Nation is a useful building for the Romanian people. More useful for the American people than the colossal Ballroom that God Trump raised by tearing down the White House”, concluded Cristian Tudor Popescu.
