Appeal against the sentence of defrocking No. 9 of 6 October 1984
I, the undersigned priest, Professor Gheorghe Calciu Dumitreasa, who was catechised by decree No. 9 of 6 October 1984 of the Eparchial Consistory of the Holy Archdiocese of Bucharest, appeal against the above-mentioned decree and contest it for the following reasons:
1. I did not demolish churches, sacred places of worship, monuments of the Romanian creative genius. I defended them and paid for this courage with suffering.
2. I did not consider the church as a “puppet theatre”, but as a sacred place, the only place and the only possibility of human salvation.
3. I have not beaten and threatened priests in parish courts for the crime of wanting to build, together with their faithful, churches which are absolutely necessary.
4. I have not asked priests to send their faithful away from Holy Mass to voluntary work. There is a time for everything, and work, if it is obligatory, can be done before or after Mass.
5. I have not defrocked priests, leaving them to starve with four or more children.
6. I have not slandered hierarchs; on the contrary, I have been slandered by some archbishops on foreign radio stations.
7. I have not sent defamatory information to the Securitate organs and military tribunals against arrested priests or institutions where their family members work, in order to be dismissed from service, as was done to me and my wife. […]
8. I have not refused spiritual assistance to priests in prison, as happened to me. I have asked for this help for years and have been denied it. Jesus forgave the thief on the cross and took him up to heaven (Luke 23:43). But suffering priests are denied even the consolation of a kind word.
9. I have not slandered kings or rulers. I have only asked that churches not be destroyed. Emperors or rulers have all the material power of the state to stop them. There is no need for the Church to rise up through its hierarchy, to strike again at least, and barely to survive.
10. I have in no way departed from the teaching of Christ. I preached the Christian faith and love with a special address to young people, as we all had the right and the duty to do. That the Spirit of God was at work in me and in them is proved by the spiritual fruits in the souls of these young people.
11. Concerning the “ghostly decade”, which actually lasted 16 years, it is not appropriate for the Church to have a different attitude to the abuses, crimes and terror of that time from that of all citizens of the country, including state officials. Wagon-loads of literature have been and are being published on this subject in order to make the Church’s attitude less hesitant.
12. The case of the priest Calciu is world famous. The term is not an exaggeration, without having deserved it. As for my imprisonment, how could and why should I have concealed the fact that I was imprisoned? Who did not know? The statement on page 2 of the document issued by the Diocesan Consistory proves both the bad faith and the ignorance of the accused. I was not arrested and imprisoned – as the prosecution claims – but I was in detention, i.e. politically detained on the basis of a court sentence, regardless of the fact that it was unjust. That is what I wrote in my application and that is what it is. In this respect, I am surprised at the haste with which the Consistory has accepted the military tribunal’s verdict against me. What state secrets could I have revealed? The catalogue of pupils’ grades? It is time to defend our dignity as Christians and servants of the Church of Christ! From the moment of my arrest I was a person in seclusion. I have not acknowledged or signed any of the documents issued against me by the military tribunal. They do not exist for me and I cannot invoke them or reproduce them in court.
13. In the petition I sent to the Archdiocese of Bucharest, I repeated my request to be reinstated as a priest and teacher at the Theological Seminary of Bucharest, where I had worked until 17 May 1978, and from which I had been “abusively removed, in violation of all Christian laws”. If I am refused this post, I ask to be appointed sweeper on the hill of the Patriarchate, as I wrote in 1978. So why is my application being falsified? As for my priesthood, it is not even in question. It was given to me by a great hierarch, at the time of my ordination, in Radu Vodă, and this hierarch has died. Therefore, my priesthood cannot be taken away by anyone. I will go to the Holy Judgement with it. What is the violence and injustice of forbidding me to serve in public churches, when the dignity of the priesthood, with the mercy of Him who is a Priest forever according to the order of Melchisedec (Hebrews 6:20), remains with me forever? Therefore, I repeat the same request: priest, professor in the theological seminary or sweeper on the Patriarchal Hill! I add here: or any other sacred work. And yet, to my astonishment, I find that the Consistory considers manual labour so degrading that it says that I have excluded myself from the priesthood by asking for the post of sweeper. Probably the Holy Apostles will also be called out by the Consistory that condemned and condemned me, because according to the mentality of the judges, they excluded themselves from the dignity of the Apostleship because they practised fishing even after the Resurrection of the Lord. (John 21:1-11). If I am to be deprived of the possibility of physical work, as I was deprived of the possibility of being a priest and a teacher, I am to be deliberately exterminated. My priesthood, however, will remain in eternity, beyond all worldly discussion. [And yet two bright points emerge from the whole act of judgement:
(a) That the ecclesiastical authority was obliged to summon me to trial. I accept this statement as such, and it comforts me.
b) That there were “differences of opinion” within the “court” which led to the annulment of the judgement of 4 October on 6 October. So there was at least one priest who thought and acted like a priest. Well done, brother!
I should mention that I did not attend the trial because it was spiritually impossible for me to do so. After going through atheistic tribunals and prisons, my soul can no longer bear to be judged by my brothers in Christ. My statement of 17.01.1979, also mentioned on pages 5 and 6, remains valid: “I want to serve the Romanian Orthodox Church and I will serve it until death! I have sealed this statement with my martyrdom, even if Jesus did not ask me for this martyrdom until its final consequences.
I await a final judgment in the spirit of Christ, an act of love and holy solidarity.
Bucharest, 16 October 1984
(Pr. Gheorghe Calciu Dumitreasa – Document published in the volume Prigoana cea din interior. The Trials of the Just in Their Church)