Ecumenical Commission
ECUMENICAL COMISSION
The Ecumenical Association of Churches in Romania-AIDRom decided to establish a special Commission on inter-church relation in Romania dedicated to open high-level theological and organizational discussion. This commission was established in November 2004 and started from that time on to have regular meetings on various issues which continued in 2008. The Commission is regarded as an ecumenical tool which will help AIDRom as ecumenical platform of the Churches in Romania to design and form a future National Council of Churches in the country.
The establishing of the Ecumenical Commission is done according to the general objectives of the department for ecumenical training and platform, being an important tool in promoting the ecumenical cooperation and the multicultural and multiconfessional exposure of churches at a local level, fostering the ecumenical dialogue and the cooperation between Romanian Churches, as mentioned in the specific objectives.
This Commission held its two biannual meetings in Bucharest (15-16th of April 2008), and Sambata (24-26th of September 2008), focusing on the 60th anniversary of the WCC. The main objective of the Ecumenical Commission is to nurture ecumenical dialogue by enhancing the inter-theological local dialogue in Romania. Beside the two regular meetings of the Commission, inter-theological conferences took place in the above mentioned places, AIDRom published in 2008 in relation to the EAA3, Sibiu, 2007 and the Lima Document, a booklet edited by the Ecumenical Commission, both as preparatory material and evaluation. The booklet has an introduction of His Eminence metropolitan Nifon, AIDRom president, in the Ecumenical Commission Series, no. 8, Bucharest, 2008 (ISBN-978-973-8314-90-0).
AIDRom’s ecumenical platform is a virtual Ecumenical Council and treated as such. In ten years time AIDRom has been regarded as an equal partner and organized and hosted twice the Annual Meeting of the National Councils in Europe: Bucharest, 1996 and Sambata, 2006. AIDRom is therefore invited to all activities of the National Councils of Churches in Europe and especially to the annual meeting of the NCC in Europe.
The presented 2008 projects were processed and implemented according to AIDRom Constitution and Strategy. These projects were implemented by AIDRom directly or in cooperation with the Ecumenical Commission and other ecumenical organizations.
Beside the conferences and consultations organized by the Ecumenical Commission, AIDRom was invited to all actions organized by the Commission for Church Comparative History (Neamt monastery, September 2007) and preparatory work for Constanta (March and May 2007) and ensured ecumenical participation and presented Charta Oecumenica as a basis for inter-religious dialogue in an interfaith international conference. AIDRom had also contributions in the activities of the Romanian Interconfessional Bible Society and in the Romanian Parlamentary group for prayer, where the up-to-date issue teaching religion in the high schools was twice debated in 2007.
