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Abstract
In December 2006, after years of debate, the Romanian parliament passed the country's first postcommunist law on religious freedom and the status of religious denominations. This article offers a detailed examination of the law's provisions, describes the context in which the norm was adopted, discusses the legal framework before the law's passage, and provides a short analysis of the law's reception in Romania.
Notes
1 I wish to thank Dorina Năstase, executive president of the NGO the Romanian Centre for Global Studies, who provided me with material for this paper and clarified a number of issues.
2 All this, of course, was the case at the formal level of legislation. In practice, conditions for religion were much worse in communist times.
3 An English translation of the Bulgarian law is available at http://www.religionandpolicy.org/show.php?p=1.1.292 (last accessed 27 January 2008).
4 The Greek Catholic (Uniate) Church, the country's other ‘national’ church until the communist takeover, was more outspoken in the period. For example, a group of Uniate bishops dispatched a memorandum to the Presidium of the Republic in which they criticised in harsh terms several provisions in the draft of the 1948 constitution, and in particular the disestablishment of confessional schools (Oprea, Citation2003, p. 10).
5 Cleansing among the clergy started with individuals who had refused to take the oath, which contained, among others, a statement to the effect that the oath-taker would ‘defend the Popular Republic of Romania against enemies outside and within the country’ (Oprea, Citation2003, p. 7).
6 For instance, in the commemorations usually carried out during religious service the wording had to be approved by the Ministry of Religious Denominations whenever the state authorities were mentioned. Moreover, in their rituals the denominations were barred from using words and expressions ‘contrary to the laws and against good morals', a provision which served the communist state as an instrument of intervention.
7 Two denominations split and the splitting factions were recognised as culte; the Greek Catholic Church was recognised in 1990 after it had been disestablished by the communists in 1948; the Jehovah's Witnesses were acknowledged in 2003.
8 The CNCD acted in response to a complaint filed by professor and renowned religious freedom activist Emil Moise.
9 To provide a single but telling example: under a 1997 protocol concluded between the Orthodox Patriarchate and the Ministry of Justice, the Orthodox Church supervises religious assistance in the state penitentiary system. The general chaplain of the penitentiaries is always a member of the Orthodox clergy, and minority religious groups have to secure an approval from the prison's Orthodox chaplain in order to service their faithful. The protocol contains many other discriminatory stipulations.
10 The first part of the cathedral's story, including a temporary setback, is told in a recent article by Stan and Turcescu (Citation2006).
11 The census forms were evidently biased, as they provided two possible answer options: ‘Orthodox’ and ‘Other (specify)’. Numerous anecdotes suggest that census interviewers accepted answers such as ‘Write down [in the field regarding one's religion] whatever my neighbours have said.’ In the case of this author, the census interviewer was unable to explain whether the census question referred to formal membership in a church (the Orthodox baptise children at birth, at which point one nominally enters the ranks of the faithful and is recorded as such in the church's books), or whether it concerned actual allegiance to a religious group.
12 Quite similar results were obtained in Russia by Marsh (Citation2005, p. 532), although religiosity in that country is lower than in Romania.
13 During a debate with culte representatives concerning an early draft, held in Bucharest on 7 March 2005, Lemeni stated that ‘Theodorescu's project complicated substantially and unexpectedly the [drafting] process … . We found out about the project when we came up [with our own], in early February, that is to say some two or three days later when we found out about it having been submitted.’ (Transcripts from the debates were provided to the author by Dorina Năstase.)
14 The Education, Science, Youth and Sports Commission had also provided a considerable number.
15 All quotations are from the official English translation of the document, available online at http://www.culte.ro/DocumenteDownload.aspx?id=730 (last accessed 28 January 2008).
16 Borrowing the wording of the ECHR was a felicitous idea. The Bulgarian law on denominations, for instance, fails to do so, while mentioning restrictions on the use of religious communities and beliefs ‘for political purposes' (Article 7.2). Consequently, in its Recommendation 1390 on the ‘New Bulgarian Law on Religion, known as the Confessions Act 2002’ (PACE, Citation2004), the Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe recommends that the wording be changed ‘to incorporate that of Article 9, paragraph 2, of the ECHR, or to ensure that it is interpreted narrowly and applied in accordance with the standards of the Convention, in particular as regards the legitimate participation of religious communities in public policy debates'.
17 The ambiguities of this status (elective or optional) are discussed by Moise (Citation2004) and, in English, by Stan and Turcescu (Citation2005a).
18 The corresponding provision in the Bulgarian law on religious denominations states in Article 10.1 that ‘The traditional denomination in the Republic of Bulgaria is Eastern Orthodoxy. It has a historical role for the Bulgarian State and is of actual importance for the state life.’ The article singles out the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as the country's ‘traditional’ church (rehearsing a provision in the Bulgarian constitution) and, furthermore, accords it ex lege recognition, while other denominations must register with the court to be recognised. It is widely agreed (Kalkandjieva, Citation2006, pp. 103 – 4) that the article in question was designed specifically in order to settle the conflict occasioned by the schism within the BOC.
19 A similar adversity towards ‘separatist movements' can be found in the 2002 Bulgarian law (Petkoff, Citation2005). The Bulgarian context is different, however, given the split inside the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.
20 In this respect the provisions of the Bulgarian law on denominations, in particular Articles 14 – 20, seem to suffer from exceeding vagueness. In its Resolution 1390 (2004), the Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe recommended further clarifications (PACE, Citation2004).
21 Article 27.2 of the original draft law read as follows: ‘Any individual's option for the status of a clergyman or similar shall be deemed to imply a partial waiver of that individual's right of free access to justice; in cases of internal discipline, the provisions in the denominations' statutes and canonical codes shall apply exclusively.’