Suggestions Regarding the Orthodox Theological Education in the Universities from Romania

Romanian education is getting weaker, not only international comparative tests show it2, but especially the way in which the scandals and problems of higher education are managed, a reality that we also see every day. Universities chase after students and struggle to keep them in the system in order to not lose basic funding, which implies a poor quality of education: you have no students, you have no money, you have no money, you have no salaries. Every year the "mill" turns. Admission is more of a joke; attendance is ridiculously low, and graduation is a formality. Poorly paid until last year, teachers have become second-class citizens. It is no wonder that fewer and fewer people dedicated to values have entered the system and more and more for a comfortable job, maybe even for a second job. The truth is that it is precisely the more disciplined teachers with a more emphasized didactic seriousness who are ridiculed and put in embarrassing situations; those who would rather die on their feet than beg for a salary on their knees. The former minister of education, Mircea Miclea, signaled this reality in 2017, which is increasingly deteriorating before our eyes:

“... I draw attention to a risk: in order to keep their student numbers so low, universities will be inclined to cut corners on quality and promote everyone to avoid losing funding, which will further erode interest in learning.”3

We are not interested here and now in a detailed analysis of the causes of the deterioration of Romanian education4, but rather in the solutions that we propose after a rich experience accumulated in the field of quality of Romanian education, especially in the theological education, which suffers along with other areas of higher education in Romania.

In the past, theological education in Romania was considered an elite education, with a rigorous selection and a complex curriculum. Particularly after the emergence of the national movements (1848), when priests were the enlightened leaders of a rural society, but more strikingly after the Great Union, along with the contribution of the clerical elite from the Transylvanian region to the consolidation of national institutions, and until the fall of communism, Romanian society recognized theological studies at university level as among the most complex and difficult. In the perception of the public, a priest could have held any public office due to the erudition with which he was credited a priori. For centuries priests have been perceived as cultural, knowledgeable and scientific cognizants; humanists in the broadest sense of the notion. Their word was often the letter of the law, and their advice was followed by all parishioners. Unfortunately, the credibility of the clergy in the last 30 years has eroded catastrophically; if in the 1990s, at the fall of communism, the first sociological studies on the religiosity of Romanians and the credibility of the Orthodox Church indicated percentages of over 90%, today, Romanians' trust in the Church and the clergy has dropped to 50%5. Undoubtedly, secularization has its part to play in this degradation of public trust, but the causes are numerous and, unfortunately, many of them could have been prevented. Again, it is beyond the scope of this article to determine whether we can count among the causes the alleged simony in the Church, or the ultra-mediatized moral scandals, or the arrogance of the clergy, but we note a cruel reality: The BOR has reached a dangerously low level of trust. It seems that the sympathy for this venerable institution has been buried to some extent with the last great confessors: Cleopa Ilie, Teofil Părăian, Arsenie Papacioc, Mina Dobzeu or Iustin Pârvu. If this situation does not change in the coming years, Romanian Christianity will take on the face of Western Christianity: empty churches, aging clergy, closed seminaries and theological faculties.

These are the premises and the reason why we propose to put forward some of the directions that we consider necessary for the recovery and revitalization of Romanian theological education. Our long experience in the national academic structures and our involvement in the evaluation of the quality of Romanian university education give us, we believe, the necessary authority to issue possible solutions to this problem.

The small number of university-educated priests in the first half of the 20th century made the priests with higher education "demigods". For example, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the following one, the number of students at the Faculty of Theology in Bucharest did not exceed 3006. Certainly that situation was not favorable for the BOR, since there were many more parishes in need of a priest with higher training. The number of theological students increased encouragingly at the beginning of the 20th century, so that after 1930, the four theological faculties (Bucharest, Chernivtsi, Iasi, Chisinau) had just over 3,000 students7. Surely, if the statistical analysis provided had also taken into consideration the theological academies of the time, the real weight of the field of Theology in Romanian education would prove to be much higher. In addition, considering Romania's economic boom at that time, we cannot help but wonder if the priests had a decisive role in enlightening and educating, in the "growth" of Romanian society?

Communism meant the regression of theological schools, but not their disappearance. Two institutions of higher education (Bucharest and Sibiu: about 80-100 graduates per year) and five theological seminaries (Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Caransebeș, Buzău, Neamț, Craiova), where about 150 young people completed their studies, allowed the Romanian Orthodox Church to survive not only functionally but also culturally. At that time, six Orthodox periodicals appeared: a central scientific publication (Theological Studies), five metropolitan periodicals (MMS, MO, MA, MB, GB) and an official magazine of the Synod/Patriarchate (BOR). In reality, although the official purpose of these publications was to reflect pastoral activity, all of them also published scientific studies. However, theological education was closely monitored, external exchanges and public communications were censored (and self-censored) and, most probably, the whole system was infiltrated by people willing to betray either for a better parish or to renew the "insurance policy" issued by the liaison officer.

With all these shortcomings (by no means on the scale that the Church's hostile press, in our opinion, credits), the priests continued to be "the light of the world and the salt of the earth"; many of them had been educated in the pre-communist period and the replacements of the Greek-Catholic priests who had not returned to Orthodoxy, although they were mostly priests with less schooling (many of them graduates of the Seminary of Curtea de Argeș), had great zeal and great piety. At the same time, the huge competition in the theological schools contributed to a good selection8, which maintained not only the status of priests, but also their intellectual quality.

After the collapse of communism, theology resumed its place in the amphitheater of Romanian culture; theological faculties were established/re-established in 15 university centers and the number of students in theology programs had become far too high; admissions to each of the theological faculties included three-digit numbers and the national/annual average of the number of students enrolled in theology was between 4,000 and 5,000 students. The Church joined the momentum of the new cultural revolution in which we had to reach Germany, France and England in the number of students per thousand inhabitants... as we were always the last, theology contributed to raising the percentage. Now we find that, unfortunately, it was only a revolution of diplomas, since a significant proportion of graduates cannot find a parish. (Of course, in this discussion, the lack of real vocation, of sacrifice, can also be taken into account; how else can it be explained that dozens of parishes remain vacant, even though hundreds of graduates leave theological schools every year).

In order to try to alleviate these problems, it is first necessary to change the admission methodology. Currently, admission is based on the compilation/submission of a file with previous school documents, baptismal certificate and formal recommendation of the parish priest, and a minimum religious knowledge test, preceded by a musical aptitude test. As the funding system is based on student numbers, and rectors have financial pressure on their shoulders, most exams are formal, so a significant number of those admitted either have no real spiritual inclinations or no musical inclinations; or when they have both, they lack the necessary knowledge and culture to be able to start quickly on the path of learning the intellectual and spiritual tools necessary for future pastoral activity.

All these analyzes and reflections are based on our concrete experience of permanent evaluation of the theological higher education in Romania from the last ten years, both as an expert of the Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education in Romania (ARACIS), and as an expert of the Council National Attestation of University Titles, Diplomas and Certificates (CNATDCU). Of course, our proposals, which I have also made in another paper, 19 has a challenging role, rather one of reflection and analysis than of application and implementation which, in addition to the fact that it needs detailed planning and in-depth analysis, also needs an assumption of the Holy Synod (which most consider to be too conservative to make some bolder decisions).

However, whether now or in the distant future, the Church will decide to change something, this change must necessarily consider: