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Avoiding the Sword. The Rumanian state has exacted a price for every measure of religious freedom it provides. The highest-ranking clergyman to the lowliest parish priest must all satisfy the authorities in order to remain in place. This means that prelates are frequently required to promote policies considered to be in the Rumanian national interest. In grimmer days, pulpits were often used as platforms for political exhortation. Patriarch Justinian dutifully denounced the 1956 Hungarian revolt, and Chief Rabbi Rosen likewise excoriated NATO for arming West Germany. Nowadays, the clergy tends to have more innocuous, often worthy, obligations, such as raising money abroad for the victims of last spring's disastrous Rumanian floods.
Still, the necessity to serve both God and Caesar weighs heavily on many churchmen. Others philosophically shrug it off, with the ancient and oft-repeated Rumanian proverb: "He who lowers his head avoids the sword."