In a post on the Facebook page, the spokesperson of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Vasile Bănescu, sends a message to the archbishop of Tomis.
Vasile Bănescu PHOTO: Basilica
The rally for the recognition of the Metropolitanate of Tomis, which was scheduled for Saturday afternoon in Constanţa, was canceled by the Archbishop of Tomis, IPS Teodosie.
The renunciation comes in the context in which the Holy Synod of the BOR announced that it will judge Teodosie on February 29 for “disturbance of the peace in the life of the Church”“rebellion” and “indiscipline“, because he repeatedly insisted on the elevation of the Archbishopric of Tomis to the rank of metropolitan, although it does not meet the criteria.
In a post on his Facebook page, the spokesperson of the BOR, Vasile Bănescu, sends a message to Teodosie, with whom he has been in conflict for a long time.
“The Church is not a sect made up of extremists and ultra-rigorists. It never was. Virtue lies in balance, noble moderation, discretion. Not in excess. The Church is the Christ-centered community of faith, hope and love present in each of its members in varying degrees. Which makes all of us in this extended spiritual family move forward on the Path differently, not identically, not at the same cadenced pace. We are not the storm troop, but the symbolic “flock” of the Great Shepherd. (…) Christ does not rush us, does not force us, does not bother us with the prohibitions of formalism and barren ritualism. (…) The Church is not a disciplinary battalion, it is not a barracks through which we are run away, reprimanded, summoned or punished to blindly fulfill someone's whims and madness to reality. In Christian logic, we are all servants of others, so faithful to the words: “Whoever wants to be first among you, let him be your servant.” The real primacy in Christianity is of a moral nature. The form always calls the content, just as the step calls the ascension into it through humility, not through authoritarianism without authority. (…)
In the Church community, true spiritual advice is given personally in the Sacrament of Confession, not in public, not in a crowd and a microphone. (…) Clerics are not the guards of a maximum security prison, ruled by grim generals of a celestial Satrap who obsessively spy on our every move and sadistically punish our every mistake. It is precisely this lying, absurd vision inspired by the devil that has led Christendom to the brink in a large part of the world. Not Christianity itself, of course. The church is the concrete and mystical, physical and metaphysical space of the vital order for man. In the first place of the sacred and moral order in which we silently strive, according to each one's powers enhanced by grace, to integrate. Guide mystagogically through the Holy Mysteries. Not to piously work on Sundays or holidays, but to be deeply well, to bind and heal our wounds, to breathe and function spiritually normally, not to fail morally and destroy ourselves existentially through the proliferation of chaos in our life. (…) Not their public impersonation, not pharisaism, egotism and the airing of formulas to which you cannot personally lend any content. “Ringing Brass…”“, Bănescu wrote in a message on Facebook.
