Once some blind men chanced to come near an animal that someone told them was an elephant. They were asked what the elephant was like. The blind men began to feel its body. One of them said the elephant was like a pillar: he had touched only its leg. Another said it was like a winnowing-fan: he had touched only its ear. In this way the others, having touched its tail or belly, gave their different versions of the elephant. Just so, a man who has seen only one aspect of God limits God to that alone. (Ramakrishna, (1))

 

The fundamental modality by which the human being sets up the majority of its mental and emotional constructs calls for a structure with borders; the delimitation, definition and denomination of the limits, frontiers and frameworks are basic instruments by which humans analyse and make judgements on what they do or do not understand. Fragmentation is a natural law and the fragmentariness is an intrinsic quality of the external and internal world of man, as he sees and lives it.

Knowledge "in part" is given to man precisely by his quality of human. He needs to develop a substantial effort to surpass this fragmentarity. By his nature too, man is given the tools by means of which to overcome the obstacles of the blindness about which Ramakrishna was speaking. This device is called the "image of God in Man" and it is used and developed either by theologians of different religions, or by highly spiritual minds, by the moral common sense. All of these are means to see the unity under the differentiation.

In despite of this, humankind with its various more or less local civilizations developed in the most purely analytical way focused, mainly upon the most visible and sensible—the external mind. From here come a vigorous multiplication of languages, habits, opinions, conceptions, morals, systems of thinking, explanations and prescriptions. Following the supreme example of the one Creative Logos, man restraints and alters all this into a named concept or word. The name, put into operation by the Divine energy, creates in its turn energies. Yet, in the name of the Ultimate truth, man manipulates the name-word under the pretext of creation. But in this context, his creation is a negative one which is a source of distinction and limitation. In a land of spiritual disintegration it is difficult to perceive the essential realities as they are, for example, the truth of the universal criteria that Ps. Denis the Areopagite set as the base of unification of differentiations:

About the divine minds it is said that they move in a circular form, when they are unified with the brilliances without beginning and end, the ones of beauty and good; in a straight line when they advance to take care of the inferior things, leading everything in the proper way. But they move also in a spiral form: because, when guiding in a providential way the inferior ones, they remain unmodified in their identity, rotating themselves ceaselessly around the beauty and good, out of each their identity rising (2, p.78).

If preserving self-identity and the unity with One is the sign of an enlightened spirituality, what would be the sign of the common spirit of the ordinary mind? This is the search for differentiation at any price, for singularisation and for a negative uniqueness. Thus operation is accomplished by a transformation of the spiritual nature of the idea into a mundane component and by the singularization of the non-essential, the perennial or even the ephemeral: partition, division, delimitation. The whole exoteric motivation of the historical progress and of the predominance of one or another civilization relies on the pretension of the part to be the whole. One or another branch of mankind develops speeches for a global justification of its own actions and its interventions in history. To those, Constantin Noica, a modern Romanian philosopher, opposes a pure autochthonous solution, which seems however to be borrowed from the furthest Orient:

The dogs of history bark but do not bite. Or if they bite you, you make some objections and mind your own business. I remember the woodsman who met a bear in the mountains and pasted himself with mud. The bear stood on his back legs, looked at him, spat on him and left. This is what I would like to do with political history (3, p. 271).

In fact, the prescription was tested by the Romanian philosopher. Bitten in a proper sense by the prisons of history, his words proved their truth. Histories are passing while philosophies have survived.

Modern authors, coming from different cultural areas, emphasize the existence in our days of a broken world. They bring to the fore a process of contrary tendencies:

... people from everywhere feel a deep need for a unity of the human race and they are anxious for the disintegration of the human community according to religious, cultural, economic and political divisions.... Mankind, divided into different linguistic, ethnic, religious, cultural, geographical groups... never renounced the attempt to unify the human communities into a harmonious whole (4, p. 9).

The earliest efforts at global unification were determined by economic and political interests; usually they were accompanied by justifications of a cultural, civilizing or religious type. Then there emerged the concepts of North-South, East-West, the first, the second and third world, promoted to the rank of specific features of countries, lands or waste areas on the globe. Interested imitators of the interested promoters joined forces, and in this way, a whole culture was born—as independent cultural entity approaching ‘zonal’ issues in terms of Occident and Orient, and determining—openly or not— the sedimentation of the ideas of differences and separations in the conscience of the ordinary man. All this was done under cover of the good intention to unify and globalize.

The notions of Occident and Orient vary in their content according to the goals of the argumentation. They refer either to geographical zones of Europe (with movable borders), or to the parts of the Globe, or finally they refer to political, economic, cultural or religious realities. This political-economic-cultural construction distinguishes some genuine elements, belonging to the specific traits of the inhabitants from one region or another. These features are visible,—they cannot be denied and at the beginning of this century they were already clearly asserted by different personalities.

In 1927, a Romanian philosopher, Mihai Ralea concluded:

Under different variations of detail, man who inhabits today our continent is presented under two well defined types: the Occidental and the Oriental. In the West and centre of Europe reigns one mentality; and toward the East, toward the most advanced posts of Asia, another one. The English, the French, the German, the Italian, the Scandinavian, despite all the differences between them, constitute the same civilization. Their technology, the way they approach life, their modality for adapting themselves to the environment, are common. Beyond, at the windows of Asia, where their peninsula entered into the life of Europe, the Turkish, Russians, part of the Balkan peoples, constitute another world, with other laws, with another soul, another philosophy (5, p. 73).

The differentiation becomes more emphatic in modern authors who remark the increasing distance between what are called East and West, between the Occidental and the Oriental worlds, a distance that is continuously created by the events of the history: colonialism, religious ‘missionarism’, racism, domination by Occidental science, technology, economy. This unchallenged domination created a psychology of the master, not only at the institutional level but also at the level of every individual living in the Occidental zone, subordinated to a certain type of ideology:

...during the last centuries, a mental habit was created, deeply rooted in Occidentals; the habit to consider the world as a vast territory that has to be exploited and to see the non-Occidentals as people that have to be enlightened by the real civilization. Also, there is a broadly spread feeling that the Occident can happily live without the non-Occidental world, peoples, cultures and religions. The biggest part of the Occidental instruction is firstly concerned with the Occidental tradition; the people finish their studies without learning anything about the non-Occidental histories, geographies, religions or cultures (4, p. 261).

The distance between West and East is deepened by the Orientals’ attitude, which equates the Occident with modernity and modernity with the essence of evil:

Frequently the Orthodox people are afraid of modernity. They have the feeling that this modernity is imposed on them from outside, that it constitutes a brutal, sadistic intrusion of an Occident deformed by heresy. They desperately see how civilizations inspired more or less by their faith now are collapsing in front of them, because of the havoc of a technology without finality. The Orthodox people see individualism destroying traditional solidarities, the hedonism often violent and coarse that seems to make man forget his eternal destiny. It is true that modernity is addicted to nihilism and to the internal emptiness which is alive with all sorts of idolatries: simulacrum, trade, eroticism and drugs. It is true that, although it unifies the planet materially, modernity seems unable to share rightfully the resources and to assume the cultural diversity;

 

... However it would be false and dangerous to see only these aspects of the modernity. For it is surprisingly complex and heterogenous: modernity discusses its own realities and does not cease to look for solutions (6, p.23).

These words belong to the Patriarch of Antioc and express clearly a certain psychological subjectivity; it is rooted in a real situation but the reality of a situation cannot be a good argument for building a whole psychological conception of opposition.

The opposition of the different conceptions is merely an artificial construct built upon a false exaggeration of the differences, upon a continuous creation of conflicts, especially, of value-conflicts; upon the declaration, based on power, that certain cultural products are superior to others; upon imposing spiritual edifices, acclaimed as unique and absolute; upon the continuing attempt to take possession of what remained still unpossessed, whether the project belongs to the physical world or to the realm of ideas.

This undertaking of a negative moulding of the human subjectivity, of an insemination of conflict and separation, belongs both to the Occident and the Orient. What is different are the instruments. However, despite the adverse facts, the attentive ear of some optimistic herald discerns another tonality:

Now, when the end of the twentieth century is close upon us, implying that we have heard more than two thirds of its melody, it is perhaps advisable for us to meditate upon the contrast and continuity between the tune of the nineteenth century and the one we have heard in our own times. Each melody has inside itself several themes that interpenetrate each other, forcing us to be selective and sensitive. The theme I have perceived from the melody developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a more accelerated crescendo, is the quest of mankind’s unity (4, p. 8).

At this moment, one of the strongest themes that can be heard is that of the ecumenism. According to the dictionary, the term of ecumenism (oikoumene) is a derivation of the verb "oikos" (to build, to establish) and means "inhabited land". In Xenophon’s work, the meaning is more extended, referring to the whole earth, to the universe. Further, we find the word "oiko": house, habitation, temple (7, pp. 1355-1357). The ordinary present meaning of ecumenism is the interaction of Christians, the restoration of the unity of traditional Churches (8, p. 256). However, the word is used more and more in broader contexts that accept also other religions than the Christian; it appears, often as a synonym for tolerance, mutual acceptance, a general understanding of the basis of common viewpoints.

When a word points in a right direction, it invites its usage. It itself dictates its own meanings, and in this case, the world "ecumenism" indicates a return to the original etymon: to live in the same house, to be together under the same roof. The bluntness and lack of impact of such other words as silence, understanding or tolerance, and their lack of contact with daily life, have generated not an abandonment of hope, but a new approach from another direction and under another name. The ecumenical power of philosophy has failed, on the one hand by its own fragmentation, and on the other hand by a lowering of people’s cultural level. The new ecumenical authority, viz., religion, requires not so much reason as feelings. Even if ignored, religion cannot be openly despised, at least not at this time. One can act against it if the economic or political interests so require, as for example, either supporting the Muslims in a war against Christians, or attacking the same Muslims under more or less Christian pretexts. In this way both religions are discredited. However, the assailants, caught in a bureaucratic trap of democracy, cannot undisguisedly eliminate the voice of religions, nor cancel the high significations from the Church’s discourse. Therefore, for a certain phase, religious ecumenism can assume the task of universality and unity.

There are two opposite situations in which a discussion about ecumenism is useless: at the highest level, that of integral unity, the differences are equated in a common formula. This level does not belong to the mundane and therefore, cannot be reached by human reason. The second situation, at the lowest end, refers to the excess of differentiation—either collective or individual—which is synonymous with opposition. This is the hypostasis of non-ecumenism negative ecumenism, as against the unity principle. The harmony and conflicts are just signs of the temporary winners, sometimes from up to down, sometimes from down to up.

Considering ecumenism in its broadest conception, there are many fields to be consider: national psychology, cultural personalities, philosophy, religion, theology. In everyone of these areas there is a possibility of engendering ecumenical ideas that are, intelligible and genuine in any geographical zone. Economy, technology and politics are not ecumenical; their power to create a humanist product is negligible, even if they fill man’s life in every sphere of his existence.

Mircea Eliade noted:

To reach a spiritual signification means to arrive at an ecumenical value, to turn it into an object of universal circulation or to transform it into an instrument of civilization and human dignity (9, p. 26).

Therefore, we consider ecumenism as the assembly (ecclesia) of all spiritual values, regardless of their source: people, community or individual; whatever the time and space that gave them birth. We shall approach the fields with a potential for ecumenism, with examples taken from Romanian experience. The basis for discussion is Christian in nature, in the sense of observing not the Orthodox theological dogma, but its spirit as expressed by Jesus; norms asserting the binding powers of truth, understanding and non-violence as essential rules. For rational expression, the point of reference would be Kantian moral law.

The national psychology. One who really wants to know the psychology of a people has to approach first of all its tradition and mainly its folklore. There are people and communities which are active, expansionist and there are others of which the dominant feature is contemplation and transcendency. Beside these, every nation must more or less value ecumenism. The cultures which have an advantage are those which preserved in the villages, which have prolonged their rural life as the most sure guardian of the spiritual legacy and the direct path to self-knowledge, even the relation of the concrete to the ideal village can create harmony:

Each of us who departs from the village keeps the village not as a memory or as relics, but as a presence that crosses each of our body molecules.

 

Whether we want or not, the people live in each of us. As for us, who by culture have raised ourselves with our reason ‘above’ it, we still live this people in two ways at the time: we live it as it is, in its bitter reality and also as it should be, in its spiritualized and perfect image (10, p. 36).

From this point of view, Romanians among the most favored as the rural civilization, ignored or blamed by moderns, continues to function for them. Its spiritual matrix, created by the peasant house, the rural community and tradition, still has the power to generate spiritual life. Individuals, as isolated units, may be far from the ideal image; but the collective soul, its direct access to zones inaccessible to the individual, constitutes the essential element that defines the psychic continuity of a nation. The village stores the unknown richness of a community.

The basic feature of the spirituality of the Romanian village is definitely Christianity. One of the most direct proofs is that contained in the Romanian folklore. Beyond the descent of the saints and God on the earth in different poems, legends and fairy-tales; beyond the biblical explanations of cosmogony interpreted in a very specific manner; beyond the observance of Church rituals, Romanian Christianity has not only an integral character, but also an intuitive-transcendent one. For example, Venus, the Roman goddess, who gave actually the name to ‘Friday’ (11) in Romanian, is a very important character in fairy-tales; here she became an wise and old woman, a great help in all positive endeavours. She keeps the attributes of the beneficient divinity, being called "Saint Vineri" (Saint Friday). But more interesting is the finding of Simion Mehedinti (geographer, ethnographer, philosopher and Christian pedagogue) which notes the modality in which the Romanian people’s intuition surpasses the dogmatic doubts and debates, presenting as natural, a result that was reached by the learned theologians only with long delay:

It is not without importance to recall how deeply the veneration of the mother of the Lord penetrates the Romanian people’s affectivity. It is known that, in the first centuries of Christianity, the Virgin Mary did not have any place in Liturgy. Her veneration started later, and only in the eighth century did the Church calendar contain four celebrations in Her honour. Still the opinions about this worship were divided for a long time. ... Let’s judge now if after so much pain of the scholars, it is not worthy also to consider the way the Romanian people embrace in their soul together with Jesus, the Mother of the Lord, too, without lingering on theological finenesses. One should say that nobody from heaven is so often asked for help as is the Mother of the Lord (12, pp. 75-76).

There are countless folk poems which have the Mother of the Lord as the main character, or that the folk books (the life of the Mother of the Lord, the Letter of the Mother of the Lord) are fundamental for the religious folk culture, is indisputable. Also a peculiar fact is that the Mother of Lord is seen not so much as Virgin Mary, but as a mother whose pain, suffering and sacrifice are a model of life on earth and of the light from Heaven. Perhaps here is the moment to point out that the Romanian word itself for "world" comes directly from the Latin word for "light" (13). Pope John Paul II himself recalls this fact saying:

... according to a popular tradition, Romania is called the Garden of the Virgin Mary...I ask Mary that the beloved Romanian people grow in the spiritual and moral values underlying all society made after man’s measure, and attentive to the common good (27, p.5).

Obviously, the same norms, the same principles and the same faith, are developed in a different modality in different communities:

The Christian doctrine is one and the same thing from eternity to eternity. But people who approach it, develop themselves in different ways, according to the dominant ethnic temperament of each of them. In the light of the sun, the wheat grows as wheat, and the grapes as grapes. There are peoples with a mystical temperament, that is developed in the contemplations of great solitaries. There are peoples with critical spirit, realized in a philosophical thinking. There are peoples with artistic genius that is glorified in the brilliant lights of beauty. Christianity is universal in Revelation, but becomes national according to the dominant mode of the ethnic temperament which realized this Christianity. This truth, certified by the historical reality, is concordant, on one side, with the natural law of the varieties of beings, and on the other side with the revealed doctrine of Grace, that works in endless ways, according to the natural modes, from being to being. The constant law of the Christian perfection requires a self-realization in Christ according to the maximum possibilities, rooted in a people’s unique nature (10, p. 199).

From the beginning, therefore, ecumenism is based on differentiations which it upholds and brings near. The awareness of being something else is a first step, but from here, the ways for actions are multiple: either alienation with withdrawal, or alienation with aggressiveness; either stimulus for a compelled equalization or accentuation of differentiation and individualization (usually in manipulative interests); or finally the path of ecumenical acceptance.

It seems that or this psychological plain too Romanians have an open door for self-development. At a triple crossroad: geographical, political, linguistic, they attempt to assemble Occidental and Oriental features less as individuals and more as a community collecting the singularities within the same river bed. This fact urges the Romanian seek to understand and to make himself understood in all directions. On the one hand, Romanians live their Orthodoxy in the most contemplative spirit:

Generally, Orthodoxy is not a school for the practical life. Suitable to other periods, it did not have in itself that ferment that somewhere else has prepared in the believers’ soul the aspirations to a better fate on the Earth, urging for political or social reforms. About Orthodoxy one cannot say, as is said about Protestantism, for example—that it has put in the peoples’ consciences the intransigencies towards certain political opinions. … The Orthodoxy has maintained itself in the sublime sphere of the Saviours’s words: My Kingdom is not of this world. ... Render ... unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are Gods’.

Living therefore its Orthodoxy, Romanian people

... preferred a clergy keeping itself far from political structure of the country; ... preferred also an interpretation of the Gospel closer to the first fathers of the Christian Church’s interpretation. Orthodoxy wanted that the concerns for the practical morality be well differentiated from the religious ones, thus, the first is not allowed to be promoted from the height of the pulpit and thus increase discord in society... (14, pp. 107-108).

On the other hand, Romanians were permanently attentive to what was happening in the West; they knew the geography and history of Europe (and not only of it) and not a few Occidentals came to the courts of the Romanian rulers as physicians, counsellors, constructors. Gradually, Romanian institutions became Occidental and the 1848 Revolutions brought out the Romanians’ appetite for modernity.

So another psychological feature showing up at this time is integration and adaptation, as is noted by Mihai Ralea:

If we carefully pay attention to the customs, the institutions, to the way our people reacts, we shall easily reach the conclusion that its psychology is certain expressed through an equidistant behavior, one between the militant voluntarism of the West and fatalistic passivity of the Orient. Laid geographically and spiritually between the influences that came from both sides, our soul has formed an equilibrium made of traits taken from both sides. These double influences did not remain in conflict, or dualism. They have melted-down, in our soul, creating a new synthesis, an equilibrium. Our psychological equilibrium is called adaptability.

 

By this we are distinct from the Oriental world but also from the Western one (5, p.76).

No need to say that this adaptability is an essential component of ecumenism. Obviously, the aptitude for ecumenism does not belong to one single people. It can be found as a psychological feature of any nation, but it is expressed in different forms. It may be attached to one or another reality—a good neighbourhood or communication on a cultural, political or economic plane. At the level of national psychologies there is also possible an ecumenism attached to religion. In this respect, the study of every nation’s psychology and of the creativity realized by its members is fundamental. Among the multitude of the features, the selection of those that promote understanding and union and their emphasis in a people’s conscience, leads to recalling and re-learning by the respective people the ecumenical behavior and attitudes. In contract from an ecumenical perspective nationalism can be a considerable obstacle to sectarian communitarian interests.

In the folk psychology and creation, culture as a global phenomenon develops ecumenical characteristics and the interests of many cultural personalities are stimulated and guided in this direction. Cultural ecumenism is one of the easiest ecumenisms to recognize and outline; its universal ideas are easily assimilated and recognized as such. It is more difficult is to recognize universal personalities, unless they are supported by non-cultural interests. However, these personalities, whether recognized or not exercise their ecumenical activity of influencing attitudes in the direction of unity or unification.

At any epoch, human communities have generated two types of ecumenical personalities:

- the migratory type—persons who move from one country to another, from one community to another one.

- the autochthonous type—persons who deepen firstly their own tradition and culture, using universal instruments.

The migratory ecumenical personality is usually an individual with a solid culture who for one or another reason lives in an ethnic community other than his own. He processes the new experiences firstly through the structures of thinking, principles, traditions specific to his nation of origin, to which he adds new ideas and thinking patterns. In a way, he is the representative of the specific in the universal.

The autochthonous personality becomes deeply involved in his own culture, the culture of his people, adding and integrating values, categories, instruments belonging to other cultures, unifying in this way principles separated by the time and interests of the temporary leaders. His ideas remain usually autochthonous firstly due to the fact the translations of his writings is very difficult, if not impossible. The language is too specific, too related to the unconsciousness of the respective people, too deeply involved in his community’s spiritual life.

The role of individuals who have assumed, consciously or not, a cultural ecumenical task is fundamental. To the peoples’ need to think within palpable limits there are answers from a tangible person who embodies an idea, a principle, a community or a nation; what was not understood, is now understood through a concrete, intelligible example. On the other side, the ecumenical qualities of a personality cannot express themselves and have their impact if the respective community has no capacities to receive these qualities, if the "ecumenical eye" is missing.Around 1936 Nichifor Crainic, a Romanian scholar, highlighted the unifying role of the culture for building an undivided Europe, psychologically and spiritually:

... the foundation of the European conscience is not only a geographical, continental or an economic space; first and foremost, the basis of the European conscience is the European culture. We adhere to Europe for the values contained in its culture, values that are unique in this world. Which are indeed, the powers that form the European culture, this crown of the humankind? ... these powers are: Christianity, the Ancient Classicism, and the creative genius of every European nation.

 

... We understand the European culture as a triumph of the European spirituality materialized in two words: national land for every people and Christian heaven for all together (10, pp. 109-110).

Thus, one can see that, at the beginning of this century, mostly after the first World War and around the second one, the idea of an European cultural ecumenism was old already.

Whatever would be the capitalist assertions about democracy or the socialist ones promoting the collective leadership, however strong would be the indoctrination of either side, one fact remains, no matter what the doctrine. The simple and obvious truth as that it is the individual who determines the change and not the masses. To become believable this needs a theoretical construction fitted to the limitation of the mental structures of the mass. If these theoretical structures are missing, the truth (or the non-truth) is certified by a person. Such a person, invested with cultural authority has the power to develop opposition to the normal tendency of a collectivity to lower the general cultural level. The existence of such a cultural personality, ecumenical by his own structure, is the affirmation of the essential importance of a high spiritual individual for preserving the human quality. Jung’s words argue this point:

The tempo of the development of consciousness through science and technology was too rapid and left the unconscious, which could no longer keep up with it, far behind, thereby forcing it into a defensive position which expresses itself in a universal will to destruction. The political and social -isms of our day preach every conceivable ideal but, under this mask, they pursue the goal of lowering the level of our culture by restricting or altogether inhibiting the possibilities of individual development. They do this partly by creating a chaos controlled by terrorism, a primitive state of affairs that affords only the barest necessities of life and surpasses in horror the worst times of the so-called "Dark" Ages. It remains to be seen whether this experience of degradation and slavery will once more raise a cry for greater spiritual freedom.

 

The problem cannot be solved collectively, because the masses are not changed unless the individual changes. At the same time, even the best looking solution cannot be forced upon him, since it is a good solution only when it is combined with a natural process of development. It is therefore a hopeless undertaking to stake everything on collective recipes and procedures. The bettering of a general ill begins with the individual, and then only when he makes himself and not others responsible. This is naturally only possible in freedom, but not under a rule of force, whether this be exercised by a self-elected tyrant or by one thrown up by the mob (15, p. 349).

The ecumenical personality has the task to awake the conscience of the "stylistic unity," which in this context has the double quality: cultural and spiritual.

This original concept, created by Lucian Blaga, poet, playwright and philosopher and a great ecumenical Romanian personality, unifies the most dissimilar things: the classic French tragedy, Leibniz’s metaphysics, infinitesimal mathematics and the absolutist state. However, the style does not belong exclusively to spiritual engineering:

The style, it is true, in relationship to the man’s conscious preoccupations, but the forms it takes, are holding too little to the order of the conscious determinations. A border tree, with its roots in another country, the style collects its juice from there, uncontrolled and free from customs formalities. Without us to know, without us to want, the style establishes itself; it enter partly in the light cone of the conscience, like a message from the empire of the supra-light, or like a magic creature from the great and dark fairy-tale of the telluric life. … Usually, only those people that geographicaly or chronologically live and breath within another stylistical unit are in the position to become aware of the "stylistic unity" of the works belonging to a certain zone or time (16, pp. 6-7).

With the progression of the civilization and the appearance and multiplication of the institutions for ordering and controlling society and the collective conscience, the stylistical unity began to crumble more and more, and retreated from the spiritual aristocracy. It began to separate from the active conscience but waited in the unconscious for the moment to return. This collective magma is waiting for a new spiritual individualization.

Returning to the cultural personality, it has to be said that Romanians possess fully the two types of ecumenical personalities. The first type, the "migrator", can be found for example in history, at the learned boyar Udriste Nasturel who translated in 1647, the book Imitatio Christi into Slavonic, the language of the Orthodox Church at that time. This was the first translation into Slavonic and was diffused in Eastern Europe. The same boyar translated from Slavonic into Romanian a popular Christian novel, very widespread thereafter among Romanians. Also, he built a house and modernized a castle in the Renaissance Style. Petru Movila is another ecumenical personality. Belonging to an important Romanian family with several Voivodes (kings), he became the Metropolitan of Kiev. He supported the introduction of the printing press in Moldavia. In 1642 the Orthodox Synod of Iasi (former Romanian capital) adopted the Orthodox Avowal of Petru Movila; the decision of the Synod, published in Iasi, is the first printed work in Moldavia (17, pp. 121; 119). The Latin version—Petru Movilã’s Confessio Orthodoxa—is still often quoted in Western theological literature, analyzing its relationship with Occidental Theology (18).

Another Romanian personality who joined in his work the Orient with the Occident, is Dimitrie Cantemir (the XVIIIth century). Son of a Voivode of Moldavia and twice Voivode himself, Cantemir passed the first part of his life in Constantinople (Istambul). He wrote the first Romanian philosophical work: "The Council of the Wise-Man’s Quarrel with the World or the Trial Between Soul and Body". The Romanian text is accompanied by a Greek version; subsequently an Arab version was made of it and preserved in several manuscripts. In 1714, for his particular merits, Dimitrie Cantemir, former voivode of Moldavia, was elected member of the Academy in Berlin, being the first Romanian member of a European Academy of science. Banished in 1711 to Russia, Dimitrie Cantemir wrote between 1714-1716, "Historia Incrementarum atqne decrementarum Aulae Othomanicae", printed for the first time in Tyndal’s English version in London, in 1734-1735. The second English edition of 1756 also mentioned by Byron, was printed on the basis of a subscription-list headed by the Queen of England and the Prince of Wales. The French version (Paris, 1743), used and mentioned by Voltaire, as well as the German one (1745), were made after the English version. During the same period, Cantemir draws up, at the request of the Academy of Berlin, "Descriptio antiqui et hodierni status Moldaviae:", a historical, geographical and ethnographical work, accompanied by a map, drawn according to the standard of European cartography of the time, the first Romanian map of Moldavia. It was printed first in German at Hamburg, and subsequently in Russian. Cantemir begins also "The Chronicle of the Ancient History of the Roman-Moldo-Walachians", a synthesis of the history of all Romanians; it focused upon the idea of the unity of origins, Romanity and upon the idea of the Romanians’ continuity in Dacia. It asserts also, the part played by the Romanians in the world history by standing up against the Turkish invasion of Europe (17, p.135).

Cantemir took the initiative of the establishment of a Russian Academy; he is a private counsellor of Peter the Great, on whose behalf he undertakes scientific studies and writes about Moslem religion. An expert in Oriental problems for the West, Dimitrie Cantemir was the first ‘Eastern European’. For Russia, one can say that the literary history of Russia begins with Antioh, the son-poet of Cantemir (3, pp. 30-31).

Closer to our time, one of the important unifying personalities is Mircea Eliade. About whom the great Romanian philosopher, Constantin Noica, said:

By his creation, Mircea Eliade succeeded at the same time to stir up the souls and to help them to arrive at an order, separating himself from his country but taking his country with him, and imposing himself in the universal culture, as no one other Romanian scholar has. Whence this interest for Eliade’s work, both in our country as in the wide world? If he would have been only a historian of religions, even the most outstanding of his time, as it was said, he would have shared the destiny of the great specialists. But everybody who has read his work, here (in Romania) and in West, in the two American continents as in Japan, in Indonesia as in Australia, everybody felt that there is something special and new, something unexpectedly actual in his research of an unequalled extent; they felt that it is about the spiritual life of a man from ‘everywhere’.

 

This spiritiual life, with its myths and beliefs, stays face to face with nothingness. If 30-40 years ago, the symbolisms, archetypes, myths and beliefs seemed exterior to the spiritual life, now we realize that they rule the spirit and that in one way or another, are laid into the core of history... (M. Eliade) has mediated between West and the Far Orient, between the material civilization and spirit, between the scientific culture and myth, between modern and primitive, between religions and tribal beliefs, between the important cultures and the folk cultures; he always has mediated between us, Romanians (with our protohistory and folklore, full of universal symbolisms) and the wide world of history; ...he even dreamt during half of a century, that our country be the mediator, the "pivot", he said, around which can take place the meeting between the two extreme worlds, the Eastern and the Western ones, which will decide the sense or non-sense of the blue planet (3, pp. 243; 19).

The other "interior" side of ecumenism, deepening the particular national spirit through certain Universal categories, is also well represented in Romania. The absence of the expansionist impulse, territorial or economic, is manifested in the subjective, cultural, spiritual plane. There was an ignorance of the Romanian culture and spirituality beyond its borders, due firstly to the lack of translations from Romanian into other languages. Many Romanian poets and philosophers could not find equivalents in other languages for different subtleties of their language and thinking. This the problem of untranslatability is a common problem for every national culture. However, it is precisely these untranslatable cultural personalities who bring universal ideas into Romanian culture, an appreciation of the spirit whatever be its cultural origins, and the enrichment of affectivity by the incorporation of the others’ feelings. Almost unknown by the universal culture, these personalities are in fact, the genuine creators, keepers and guardians of that universal culture. Among these characters of the Romanian culture one should be mentioned one who can be considered as a model of cultural ecumenism. He offers a most striking example through his novel Mahmud’s slippers. The writer, Gala Galaction, is an Orthodox priest (20) who pleads for an ecumenism based on the community of the human features, against all the other criteria.

Here, in a few words, is the plot. During the Independence War against the Ottoman Empire (1877), a shoemaker, otherwise a kind and merciful man, kills, in a moment of drunkenness, the Turkish prisoner, Mahmud.

After he knocked him down, Savu the shoe-maker noticed that the Turk’s footwear was broken, and his toes stiffened by frost. Suddenly it is revealed to him that his enemy was just a very tired, sick and poor man. Torn with remorse he buried the Turk in the Orthodox cemetery, in his own place from his family’s grave. Since this moment he could not live any more a normal life; he confessed himself to a hermit who reprimanded him severely: "Your crime is Cain’s crime. You killed your brother; you killed a human being" and gave him as a punishment to leave his house and wealth and to work without receiving any money in exchange. This confession and penance of the sinner is similar to the one found in the Romanian fairy-tales; it is an amalgam of traditional folk-justice and Christian mercy. For the guilt of killing a Turk without being in a right battle, the monk’s judgement is firm: "For the life you have extinguished, I take as a pledge, your life... Go on foot, wandering throughout the world, on all the paths, through all the dangers and in any kind of weather; until you will break down one thousand pairs of footwear and then God will forgive you! But your life, however long it may be, would not be enough for such an ordeal. Then, here is what the Holy Spirit commands: you have to fabricate with your own hands a thousand pairs of footwear—of all kind and for all ages—to scour the world and to give them as alms to all the poor people and to all the desperate ones. And when you will expiate these one thousand pairs given as alms, God will have mercy and will forgive you."

In his wandering, Savu, the Orthodox Christian, became a very good friend with Ibraim the Turk to whom he told his whole story; the Turk read to him from the Koran and the Romanian read from the Bible to the Moslem. The two people then became friends, with a Jew. The commentary of the author (an Orthodox priest) is put in the mouth of Marcu, the Jew: "He is alone, up there and we are all, his children... and we make so much noise, fight each other, we oppress and hate each other... some of us are Jewish, others—Christians and others Moslems, but we are all the sons of the same heavenly father. How did we separate each other and go in all directions ?... But, whatever each person’s belief is, it is right to show that we are brothers and we hope to meet each other again in the same heavenly and paternal house" (21, pp. 92-93; 120).

When he finished the last pairs of slippers, the shoemaker died and was buried in the Turkish cemetery, in the grave belonging to Ibraim the Turk. This interpretation of the destinies, the exchanges of life and death between people who, according to social and religious institutionalized rules should be separated, if not even in conflict, restores ecumenism in its own right; it re-reveals its genuine source which is the unique and ultimate light.

Another source for the promotion of ecumenism, actually, the source of putting this concept back into circulation for the modern world is the action of the Churches. They link ecumenism to the schism, considering it as a return to the primary Church. This ecumenism is related only to the restoration of the Christian ecclesia.

In this respect, the most important obstacle is, after an expression of Kitagawa, the missionary imperialism. This kind of imperialism contains two aspects: the first is visible and refers to the fact that (almost) every religion tries to dominate the spirit of another nation by heroic wars, crusades, aggressive missionary activities. This aspect could be called an active religious imperialism. The second aspect, less visible, could be called a passive religious imperialism; this refers to the subjectivity of every religion, that interprets in its own way both the socio-cultural and the divine reality. Every religion holds strongly to its conception, implicitly attacking the other religions’ postulates. Kitakawa remarks that:

... even the most tolerant religious conception is usually anchored in the specific perspective of that religion and in the way it defines the nature of the reality, world and of the man’s destiny (4, p. 278).

The same observation was made a long time before by Ramakrishna, using a picturesque image:

People worship God according to their tastes and temperaments. The mother cooks the same fish differently for her children, that each one may have what suits his stomach (1, p. 189)

Another voice found a "modern" feature of religions that had a negative impact greater perhaps than imperialism. Olivier Clement talked thus about the temptation of the fundamentalism exhibited by Christians and mostly by the Orthodoxies:

The communism fell down, but in the freed historic field, the fundamentalism appeared within the great religions. It comes on one side, from the Occidental ‘modernity’ in its most vulgar forms: money as the unique criterion of appreciation, violence, drugs, sexual liberty which demolishes the symbol of man-women relationship.

 

More profoundly, the shock comes from the traditional civilizations—within which man is part of a collectivity and knows through it, without reflecting, a relation of quasi-fusion with the divinity, with the universe—to the modern civilization, characterized by individual liberty, the urge for choosing, the fascination for technology, all of these determining a huge up-rooting of man. In the Occident, this passage was realized step by step, taking centuries and allowing at the same time, the development of the critical spirit, tolerance, dialogue.

 

While in the Occidental Europe and North America modernity was born from a sociologic, psychologic, and spiritual local field, in the rest of the world, it was brutally imposed by outside. It destroyed the mental and social structures, pushed itself onto the huge millions of peasants perplexed by the market economy (21, pp. 122-123).

Leaving aside the affirmations concerning the identity between capitalism and modernism, as well as the lack of accuracy concerning the former socialist countries (we lived in the modern epoch too, though in a controlled way), O. Clement’s words are essentially true. The abolition of socialism has created the illusion that people will have an interval for meditation, recovery and the expression of their own identity. Instead, they have fully received the black wave of the market economy. The main refuge—the Orthodox religion (because the majority of the former socialist countries are Orthodox)—was forced to take up a position against the unexpected invasion and naturally, the declarations of Churches were severe or even very severe. Some of the Eastern Churches understand and recognize that:

If Western people, says Ignatie the Fourth, Patriarch of Antioch—opened themselves too much towards the world, the Christians from the Orient have the tendency to marginalize themselves in relation to the world, to treat themselves as in a beautiful decorated grave (6, p. 27).

Christian "fundamentalism" is fed by a previous source of error, which also had determined, the schism. It is a specific characteristic of human beings as individuals or as a community that on the basis of their own subjective and limited experience they are the exclusive keeper of the truth. The desire to possess that has generated the property rights was extended from the material to spiritual, attaining finally the dangerous assertion of the possession of the true knowledge of God, of the possession therefore, of the Divinity itself.

At these, Ramakhrisna replies:

Do you know what the truth is? God has made different religions to suit different aspirants, times and countries. All doctrines are only so many paths; but a path is by no means God Himself. Indeed, one can reach God if one follows any of the paths with whole-hearted devotion (1, p. 559).

Obviously, his words, as well as other voices of the modern times, remained unheard. There is a logical and metaphysical impossibility, after an expression of Frithjof Schuon, of possessing the truth. The exoteric power claim for an exclusive hold upon a unique truth or of The Truth is an error. Any truth that is expressed has to be wrapped in a form for its expression. From the metaphysical point of view, it is impossible for a form to have a unique value, excluding other forms. By definition a form cannot be exclusive, it cannot be the only possible expression of a thing (22, pp. 44; 46).

To be convincing, the right argumentation has to meet receivers, at least equal in their affective or rational development to the transmitter. The proof that this is not happening is that the question of the possession of the absolute truth remains open with every religion claiming it without concession.

Orthodox "fundamentalism" is stimulated by a certain Occidental feature, seen as opposed to the Oriental characteristics, that is, the psychology of the master. Kitagawa describes it exactly: the Occidental domination of the whole world in the last four hundred and fifty years, and the strong expansion of the Christian mission activity all over the globe, have determined an intense wish of the non-Occidental people, nations, cultures and religious to separate themselves from everything Occidental. Even the attempts at agreement and tolerance are touched by the virus of subjective and self-sufficient blindness. Interreligious and intercultural dialogues take place under the illusion that the only reliable modality is the Occidental way to see the reality; this is the most adequate common framework for any future dialogue. Even the Occidental specialists in non-Occidental thinking, literature and religions consider their methods as impartial and objective, while non-Occidentals see them as anchored in a self-legitimated circularity (4, pp.25;221).

Despite the multiplication of the conflict-motives, or perhaps precisely due to that, a movement of unification appeared—the ecumenical movement. The ecumenical movement was born from the anxiety and dissatisfaction of the contemporary Christian conscience which has had to confront two phenomena of contemporary Christianity: its unsatisfactory answer to the aspirations and challenges of modern humanity as well as to its disintegration from within. At the same time, this movement was born from the will to cure these negative phenomena (23, p. 544). That is why ecumenism is a historic emergency (24, p. 215).

In this respect, the ecumenical movement has created two terms the significance of which has received general agreement: that of "Christian service" and "pro-existence." Service comes from a sentiment of the equality and natural unity of people, aiming at their restoration. By this, the service contributes permanently to maintaining and enriching the community. To serve people means to serve simultaneously the superior values; in a Christian sense it means to serve God. The term "pro-existence" means the existence for another. This highlights that coexistence signifies the existence of many together. Pro-existence signifies existing together with another and for everyone from the existing people. Therefore, as said Father Stãniloaie, to serve means to work for others but to pro-exist means more, namely, to exist for the others. The pro-existence excludes ontologically the selfishness that, in fact, is a perversity or alienation of human nature (25, p. 1027).

Despite the new concepts, despite the repeated attempts of the Christian Churches to reach together the primary divine unicity, every Church remains locked in its own larder. The Orthodox Church promotes firmly the conception according to which the redemption is only for those who belong to Orthodoxy. In spite of its declarations for ecumenism, the Catholic Church does the same:

The promotion of the restoration of the Unity between all Christians is one of the main goals of the Holy Ecumenical Council Vatican II. Christ the Lord has established one single Church and however many Christian Communities appear to people as being the true heritage of Christ; all of them claims that they are the Lord’s disciples, but they are not alike and walk on different paths, as if Christ Himself were divided. This separation contradicts openly, Christ’s will...

 

... the brothers separated from us both as individuals and as community and their Churches, do not enjoy the unity that Jesus Christ wanted to give to everybody...

 

It is true, only through the Catholic Church of Christ, that is the general instrument for redemption, can be gained the whole plenitude of the means of redemption (26, pp. 119, 121).

It is also true, however, that every epoch, every generation remembers not only the occasion of disagreement, but also those of harmony. In this context, the visit of the Pope John Paul II to Romania in May 1999, has a distinctive significance and importance on the path to Christian ecclesial unity. It was the first visit a Pope paid to a prevailingly Orthodox country after the great Schism of 1054. Therefore it was a truly historic visit of great ecumenical impact for both Churches, for the Roman-Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church in general, and for the Romanian Orthodox Church in particular. On this occasion, the Pope highlighted the role of every national Church in building the true ecumenism:

The monasteries, the churches covered with frescos, the icons, the liturgical vestments, the manuscripts are not just gems of your culture, but also impressive pieces of evidence attesting Christian faith, a live Christian faith. This artistic heritage born from the brasier of monks and nuns, of craftsmen and villagers inspired by the beauty of the Byzantine liturgy constitutes a very significant contribution to the dialogue between East and West and to the revival of that brotherliness the Holy spirit kindles in us on the eve of the new millennium. Your Romanian land can become a meeting and communion point. It is crossed by the great Danube, which flows through the East and the West alike. May Romania, just like this river, be able to foster relations of understanding and communion between various peoples themselves helping to assert the civilization of love in the world too (27, p. 12).

In spite of different endeavours for the rapprochement, the religious doctrines and institutions did not get closer and a favorable anticipation seems venturesome. The temporary solution, offered by different sources is less sensitive to conflicts. This solution refers to the valorization of the cultural ecumenical attitude. The present period is not a final ending stage, that is, one of union. Its task is related to information and knowledge, to appreciation and perhaps incorporation of some of the values belonging to other religious cultures. Seventy years ago, the Romanian thinkers already opened this path. Here is what Nichifor Crainic, a famous professor of theology said at that time:

Concerning the religious problem in Europe of tomorrow... this question is thorny and has many sides needing to be discussed. One of the main aspects would be the union of all confessions in one single universal church organism. The common Christian ideal and the common dangers would logically lead to this conclusion. All Christian confessions pray for union but they do not agree upon the modality to realize this. It seems that this event, that would be the greatest in the world history since Jesus Christ’s birth, is not in the man’s power but only in God’s will. But, the religious question in Europe of tomorrow has also a cultural aspect that cannot be ignored. The religion is the great inspirer of the Romanian culture, ... but especially a great inspirer of the European culture. ... Thus, if each of us protects his own country, he protects at the same time the European culture that involves the participation of every nation (10, p. 109).

Teodor M. Popescu, another important professor of theology stated at about the same period:

Religion does not produce only emotional dispositions and acts of internal devotion, but it is also an attitude toward nature and life and by this, religion produces cultural acts: morale, art, literature, juridical, social, political even, conceptions, acts being pre-eminently historic. All religions are carriers of moral conceptions and aims, therefore there are educators and constitute efforts for the keeping and preserving the values. Thus, by its function, religion becomes what it does not seem to be by its nature: a cultural value, one of a special power that helps the soul to rise above the nature.

 

What I said about the cultural value of religion, can be said twofold about Christianity. Christianity constitutes pre-eminently the religion and it is also eminently the cultural religion...

 

The cooperation of Christianity in human culture was mostly of a moral nature. The cultural principle of Christianity is one of moral order. But precisely this kind of principle characterized the real culture" (28, pp. 17; 220).

The same accent on the cultural aspects is placed by the Pope John-Paul II in his Orientale Lumen; he highlights the cultural specificity of the Orthodox religion, related to every particular community and shows that, in an epoch when the right of every people to express according to its own cultural national patrimony is recognized as fundamental, the experience of each Oriental Church appears as a success of inculturation worthy of interest; the announcement of Gospel has also to be rooted in the specificity of the cultures and open to universality, to everybody’s mutual enrichment (29, p. 100).

There is here a tendency to enlarge the cultural aspect of religion until one makes it the defining trait. Then religion no longer intersects with culture, but becomes a part of it, together with music, literature and art it loses its ecumenical specificity. This tendency has caused, to use Father Ion Bria’s expression, the ‘religious illiteracy’ of the present time; the results of which are the advancement in secularization and the departure from religion. The same author sees the cultural contribution of Christian spirituality in the search for a common social ethics and in the establishment of the rules for a right life, for what is called orthopraxis, the right action. The orthopraxis has to be the base for future ecumenism (24, p. 43; 109).

Our epoch is characterized by a strong cultural exchange between Far East and West. It is based not on conventions, agreements or institutional willingness, but first of all on the emigration phenomenon, to which one could add powerful cultural initiatives. At about the end of the second World War, Henri de Lubac, a Catholic priest and an erudite researcher, noted that Europe was prepared to be spiritually colonized by the Orient, that there is no shelf in the European bookshops more solicited than the one containing books about Indian spirituality. Hendrik Kraemer, a Protestant Dutch specialist in missiology, also confirmed that art, literature, and psychoanalysis manifest a spontaneous opening, an availability for letting be themselves spiritually invaded by the Orient.

The phenomenon is fully confirmed by J.M. Kitagawa, a specialist in history of religion. He asserts that today anyone can see how much the Oriental influence has penetrated into Europe and North America. The Orient became a part of the immediate experience of many ordinary people from the Occident through art, literature, food, movies, karate, judo, radio, TV, computer technologies, automobiles. But more significant is the popularity in the Occident of the different kinds of Oriental spirituality and different religious traditions (4, pp. 226-263). Therefore, a phenomenon of "orientalization" of the Occident takes place, which is a natural reaction, to the colonization and missionary activity by the West in the East. The distinctive feature of the Eastern influence towards the West is that the "Orientalization" takes place in a much less violent way.

These facts confirm that we are still in a pre-ecumenical period; the events are not yet settled, but they are developing. Reflection upon their significance belongs to some individuals and not to everyone; the ecumenical attitude characterizes individuals and some communities more or less large, but in no way the institutional social structures or the official ideologies. In this respect the excessive institutionalization of the religious systems is a very difficult obstacle. The prevalence of the political values, the assumption by the political rulers of "religious or priestly functions", the teaching of the "Gospel preaching liberty, equality, fraternity, science and democracy," the promise of a "secularized salvation" (4, pp. 248-250), all of these are walls built up continuously by the interests of the mundane kingdom.

What can be, therefore, the picture of the future religious ecumenism ? One thing is sure, says Father Constantin Galeriu, namely that the Church’s wish for unity has appeared in the moment even of its split. The unity is original and for that, it remains forever a fundamental aspiration. This endeavour was sometimes stronger and sometimes weaker, but was found permanently in history showing that the spirit of ecumenism, of the affiliation of all the Christians to the same Body of Christ was never extinguished (30, p. 611).

Father Ion Bria completes his look backwards with the forward progress of history, reminding us that the sense of the Lord’s work in the World, the sense of salvation, is precisely the sense of the unity of everyone. Concerning the Church, the goal of God is inseparable from the plan of the world’s unity and salvation (24, p. 163).

At the same time, all these authors consider that the idea of a unique religion and Church is inconceivable. It is impossible, writes Kitagawa:

... that one single religion or a supreme ideology contain all the others or that different traditions abandon their particularities in order to give birth to unity. … The different religious will continue to evolve according to their own dynamics, crossing each other over the globe surface (4, p. 276).

Indeed, it is hard to believe that the Church institutions will find a common path; it is difficult to imagine also that they will recognize the fact that each of them possesses one part of the truth and not the whole truth. As long as the Western Churches and Eastern Churches will point to each other as "they" instead of feeling themselves all as "we", the argument will remain only as a wish and not as an honest aspiration.

A new chance is given through so called Orientalization of the Occident. Seen by Western people with only the eye of the intelligence and by the people of the Eastern churches only with a negative affectivity, Oriental philosophy and religion, dishonoured and vulgarized by all kinds of "Oriental" communities and sects, still remain to be discovered in their wisdom and generous ecumenism. Again Ramakrishna offers a model of thinking:

With sincerity and earnestness one can realize God through all religious. The Vaishnavas will realize God, and so will the Saktas, the Vedantists and the Brahmins. The Moslems and Christians will realize Him, too. All will certainly realize God if they are earnest and sincere... God can be reached by different paths. Suppose there are errors in the religion that one has accepted; if one is sincere and earnest, then God Himself will correct those errors... If there are errors in other religions, that is none of our business. God, to whom the world belongs, shall take care of that (1, p. 191)

As was said, delimitations of any kind are only the fruits of the limitations of the human mind. This major infirmity usually is strategically hidden under the need for discussions, conceptions and philosophies, or under what is called, in our times, dialogue. But this dialogue too is restricted at certain planes, is held by more or less isolated groups, on more or less specific topics, and the results do not have impact beyond the initial level of the dialogue.

For this a first cause is the increasing bureaucratisation of society, which does not allow a rapid circulation of communication, but introduces instead many times involuntarily but sometimes deliberately, obstacles of every kind.

Another cause consists of the crumbling, the growing particularisation of the professions, specializations, interests. Even if the communication would be realized in good conditions, it would not interest anyone outside the specific circle, due to the unintelligible language employed. Here a complementary cause appears, related to the ever more narrow capacity of individuals and groups to receive messages, either due to the too encoded language inaccessible to the receivers, or to the growing specificity of the interests of the different groups, leading to attention being drawn away to other domains.

Coming back to delimitations, divisions of the type North-South, East-West, and so on are concepts uncovered by genuine reality. They were initially conventions for offering to the human mind milestones for a global perception of reality. Through their transfer to other interest zones and their excessive utilization, these conventions have gained their own life, and have become basic criteria for naming and reasoning upon phenomena and events. Instead of remaining forms, that is, names given to certain categories of realities, they became essences to which the categories of reality are attached.

This reverse rapport between form and essence will obviously finish in a dead end. Until then, however, it is a useful tool of ideologies and political indoctrination. The divisions and the division of divisions constitute a natural phenomenon. They cannot and must not be stopped. The error and what is bad will appear when these divisions are presented as implacable realities or absolute truths with compulsory consequences.

In spite of this, people are born united, among themselves, but also with the others. The subseqment social development of their lives brings to them differentiation and often alienation. The prescription for healing is very simple and holds to the unique gift of man called conscience and more deeply to his spirituality. It holds to that which the religious people from everywhere call the God-image in man, whatever the name they give to God. However, as simple as is the prescription for awakening conscience, it is difficult to follow. Opening of the eyes of mind and heart is the only way by which one can surpass an apparent reality for a genuine one. The Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica escaped from the apparent reality of political prison to advises:

You must see therefore, around you, the wonders—the miracle of nature, of word, of man, of love...The miracles swarm around us. We have just to stretch out our hand, as in Heaven and to pick them up, as in the Heaven Garden. All we need is to pay attention and find the plane within which everybody can come into resonance with the miracle (3, p. 260)

The language of union, self-union and inter-union, is therefore, a language of poetry, intuition and of faith; it is the opposite of the scientific language that is considered the nucleus of modernity. But paradoxically, at the scientific level it is easier to find the equalization of differentiations of any kind, including those between East and West. One could even speak about an ecumenism of the language of Science though certainly this would be a false discovery since ecumenism is given not by science but by the unicity of a measurable reality, to which the scientific instruments refer.

The partial ecumenisms either refer to art, science or religion (as a sum of concepts reasoned by man) and cannot, anyone of them, lead to the authentic unity. They are separate paths, seldom parallel which sooner or later prove their limits. In this respect the ecumenism cannot develop; besides, at a certain point in time it annuls its own meaning and reality.

The ecumenical path is universal, not particular. It transcends both tradition and modernity, the cardinal points of the globe, the local psychologies. It transcends the human being itself and includes not only people, but also the animals, birds, fish, plants, waters, stones and clouds.

Authentic ecumenism, the one which gathers all creation under the same roof, contains both what can be seen and what cannot be seen. For what man cannot understand, God will take care of, as Ramakrishna said. For the rest, we can join Constantin Noica in prayer:

To the One who contains us, let’s ask at every beginning of the day: Our daily being, give it us, today. May our acts and love have a meaning and our day last (3, p. 267).

1. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Originally recorded in Bengali by M., a disciple of the Master. Translated into English by Swami Nikhilananda, New York, Ramakrishna—Vivekananda Center, 1987.

2. Dionisie pseudo-Areopagitul, Despre Numele Divine: Teologia mistica, Institutul European: Iasi, 1993 (Ps-Denis the Areopagite, On the Divine Names: Mystical Theology).

3. Noica, C., Istoricitate si eternitate (Historicity and eternity), Bucuresti; Capricorn,1989.

4. Kitagawa, J.,M., In cautarea unitatii. Istoria religioasa a omenirii (The quest for Human Unity. A Religious History), Bucuresti: Humanitas, 1994.

5.Ralea, M., Fenomenul românesc (The Romanian phenomenon), Bucuresti; Albatros, 1997.

6. Ignatie al-IV-lea, Patriarhul Antiohiei, "Reflectii antiohiene," in Ratiunea Misticã. Revista de Spiritualitate Ortodoxa", An I, Nr1/1994 (Ignatie IV, the Patriarch of Antohia, "Antiochian Reflections," in Mystical Reasoning. Review of Orthodox Spirituality)

7.Bailly, A., Dictionnare Grec-Francaise, edition revue par L. Sechan et P. Chantraine, Librairie Machette, 1957.

8. Bria, I., Dictionar de teologie ortodoxa, Editura Institutului Biblic si de misiune a Bisericilor Ortodoxe, Bucuresti, 1994 (Dictionnary of Orthodox Theology).

9. Eliade, M., Despre Eminescu si Hasdeu (About Eminescu and Hasdeu), Iasi: Junimea, 1987.

10. Crainic, N., Puncte cardinale in haos (Cardinal points in chaos), Iasi: Ed. Timpul, 1996.

11. The Romanian word for Friday is "Vineri" and comes from the Latin: Venus, Veneris.

12. Mehedinti, S., Crestinismul Romanesc (Romanian Christianity), Bucuresti: Fundatia Anastasia, 1995.

13. The Romanian word for "world" is "lume" and comes from the Latin "lumen" (light), unlike the other Romanic peoples who use the Latin world "mundus" (world). It is fair however to notice here that Russians too have the word "svet" which means both "world" and "light."

14. Radulescu-Motrue, C., Cultura româna si politicianismul (The Romanian Culture and Politics), Craiova: Scrisul Romanesc, 1995.

15. Jung, C. G., The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, London: Routledge, 1980.

16. Blaga, L., Trilogia culturii, (The trilogy of the Culture), Bucuresti, Editura pentru Literatura Universala, 1969.

17.Giurescu, C.C. (ed.) Chronological History of Romania, Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedica Romana, 1972 (English edition).

18. For example: A. Malvy-M. Viller (ed.) La Confession Orthodoxe de Pierre Moghila, Orientalia Christiana, Rome-Paris 1927, or Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, Open Court, Chicago and La Salle Illinois, 1995.

19. A very significant step has been already made by the visit of Pope John Paul II to Romania, in May, 1999.

20. Gala Galaction (1879-1961): Orthodox priest; professor at the Faculty of Theology (for New Testament exegesis and Hebrew Language) and a very prolific writer.

21. Clement O. Puterea credintei, (The Power of Faith), Tirgoviste: Editura Pandora, 1999.

22. Schuon F., Despre unitatea transcedentala a religiilor (On the Transcendent Unity of Religions), Bucuresti: Humanitas, 1994.

23. Staniloae D., Miscarea ecumenica si unitatea crestina in stadiul actual, (The Ecumenical Movement and Christian Unity at Present Times), Rev. Ortodoxia XV, nr.3-4, 1963.

24. Father Bria, I., Ortodoxia in Europa. Locul spiritualiitaþii române (Orthodoxy in Europe. The Place of Romanian Spirituality), Iasi: Trinitas, 1995.

25. Staniloae, D., Servire si proexistenta (To Serve and to pro-exist), Rev. Glasul Bisericii XXII.

26. Decret despre ecumenism (Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis redintegratio), 21 Nov.1964.

27. His Holiness Pope John Paul II in Romania, Bucharest: Press Group, 1999.

28. Popescu, M. T., Biserica si cultura (Church and Culture), Bucuresti: Editura Institutului Biblic si de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Romane, 1996.

29. Popescu, D. Hristos, Biserica, Societate (Christ, Church and Society), Bucuresti:Editura Institutului Biublic si de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Romane, 1998.

30. Father Galeriu, C., Ortodoxia si miscarea ecumenica (Orthodoxy and the Ecumenical Movement) in Studii teologice, seria II, Pn XXX, Nr. 9-10, Nov-Dec,1978, Bucuresti.