Friday, March 14, 2014
Council (Omni Shoreham)
This paper will focus on the survival and the post-Communist resurrection of fascist rhetoric and rituals for the dead in the monastic milieus of the Romanian Orthodox Church. I will argue that after their release from Communist prisons, former members of the Romanian fascist movement, joined monasteries and re-framed the churchly memory about the character of the Iron Guard. By preaching a reloaded version of fascist theology with all its “dogmas” (including the resurrection of the Nation in the beyond), these monks reached a new phase in the process of a nationalist hybridization of Romanian Orthodox theology from the 19th century until the post-Communist period. Their main goal was to search for public absolution for the Iron Guard’s crimes and clear the movement’s name before the Church and in the public eye. By emphasizing the Iron Guard’s Christian rather than political character, these monks presented the movement as a traditionalist, re-Christianizing reaction to the dangers of secularization and the spread of atheism. Moreover, on various issues (the ecumenical character of the post-Communist Orthodox bishops, the fascist past of some of the Romanian clergy, the intrusion of the state into church affairs, etc.) the monks and their disciples acted as a splinter group in the Church, a faction against the decisions of the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church.
