Romanian Orthodox relations with Latin Rite Roman Catholics

[Tis_Bearself]

I grew up in an area with a few Orthodox Churches, and one of them is a Romanian Orthodox cathedral that is located a short distance from our family home.

This cathedral does very good (like, the best in our fairly large city) fish fries during Lent, and also has nice events durng the year with awesome food, as they run a catering/ event hall to make money for their church. The food and drink is out of this world and our family as well as many other families from our parish were always going over there for fish fry, Christmas fair, and more recently I have attended their Romanian Festival which was just wonderful.

Everyone I meet there who is serving food or working for the Church has always been super nice. Of course they are making money off people attending the events, but they also just seemed to be nice friendly people in general.

I know that Orthodox churches are not in communion with Rome, but I just wondered if the Romanian Orthodox Church has generally friendly relations with Latin Rite Catholics, or is this just a regional thing?

 

[twf]

Fish fry during Lent???

Fish, along with meat, oil, wine, dairy, and eggs, is forbidden during fast periods in the East. These must be super liberal mega progressive Orthodox .

 

[Tis_Bearself]

There are at least 2 RC churches within shouting distance of this Romanian Orthodox cathedral that do not have fries at their own parish, and one that only recently started doing them. People from all three of those churches plus a lot of non-religious people go there to eat fish every Friday in Lent (except Good Friday). It’s so huge that they need guys in their giant parking lot to get traffic in and out, and the line is way out the door. Been eating there for decades. In the citywide "best church fish fry’ votes, they always place in the top 3.

They also sell a lot of homemade desserts likely made with eggs, and have an open bar if you want Romanian beer. They also sell mac n’ cheese as a side, likely made with dairy.

I know nothing about Romanian Orthodox fasting rules since I’m not one.

 

[adgloriam]

I’ve had Romanian friends, co-workers, and even met sons of priests. Their church has a very particular history also shaped by what the country went through during the 20th century. Fascism, war, dictatorship, iron-curtain communist persecution of the church, secularism after that, it seems one top church official was accused of corruption recently…It’s a suffered country with a suffered people and a persecuted church.

But the Romanians I have met were really nice and friendly.

And being a “black sea” country they hold a reputation for appreciating good fish, I am not at all surprised you enjoy their cuisine enjoy

 

[dochawk]

I’m pretty sure that it was the Romanians whose (eastern) Catholic and Orthodox patriarchs jointly blessed the waters at Theophany three or four years ago.

I assume that RO get around with latins as well
hawk

 

[Londoner]

The UK, and London in particular, has acquired quite a large Romanian community over recent years. All the Romanians I have met have been really nice people and I know that they make a very valuable contribution to a number of areas of life, but especially our health service. It’s sad that there is so much prejudice against Romanians here and in some other parts of Europe (especially Hungary, of course).

The Romanian Orthodox community in London currently worships at an Anglican church. Since it’s in the City, the Anglicans only hold services on weekdays, and the Romanians use the premises for their liturgy on Sundays (there’s another City church that is also used by a different Eastern Orthodox congregation on Sundays). They have an Eastern Orthodox iconostasis set up permanently just to the left of the Anglican altar and also have icons set up permanently, so they clearly have a good relationship with the Anglicans. I’ve been to the church a few times. The first time I went with a Romanian friend who knew that I was a Catholic. The other times nobody would have known that I was specifically a Catholic, but they would have guessed that I was not Orthodox (and certainly not Romanian). They are really friendly and welcoming and seem really pleased that people who are not Romanian are interested in finding out about their church and their liturgy.

The thing I’ve really liked about the Romanians is that they don’t seem to have any expectation that people who are not Romanian are likely to want to become Romanian Orthodox. With some Christian churches (evangelical ones of various denominations) and some other religions (most obviously Islam) I’ve felt that however welcoming and friendly they may appear to be it’s clear that what they really want is to convert people to their denomination/religion. The Romanians didn’t seem to be like that. I’m sure that if somebody expresses an interest in joining them they would be very pleased, but it didn’t appear that they were primarily interested in getting converts. There certainly wasn’t any pressure. I’d be interested to know whether this is a characteristic of all Eastern Orthodox churches or whether they Romanian Orthodox are particularly good in this respect.