This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier’s archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright Author's personal copy Women's Studies International Forum 33 (2010) 38–46 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Women's Studies International Forum j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / w s i f Eastern orthodox views on sexuality and the body Lavinia Stan Department of Political Science, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, Canada B2G 2W5 a r t i c l e i n f o Available online 5 December 2009 s y n o p s i s In 2004 and 2007, the European Union failed to impose a unique set of criteria regarding the optimal interaction between religion and politics as accession criterion, mostly because the European Union older states embrace different models of church–state relations. Instead, the EU has insisted that post-communist countries uphold human rights, some of them relating to religion and others vociferously contested by the churches. This article reviews the position of Eastern Orthodox Churches vis-à-vis sexuality and the body, by reviewing the Patristics literature informing canon law, as well as relevant contemporary Orthodox pronouncements on these themes. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. After 1989, the Orthodox Churches in post-communist Eastern Europe have assumed increasingly prominent roles in shaping the new democracies, defining the boundaries of acceptable social norms, and influencing the electoral processes and party politics. Two factors seem to account for the prominence of the Orthodox Churches. First, the ideological void generated by the collapse of the communist regimes meant that the practical experience of the 1945– 1989 period (1918–1991, in the case of the former Soviet Union) discredited most leftist ideologies in the eyes of a population which, in general, had no direct experience with liberal democracy and loathed rightist platforms reminiscent of the Nazi or fascist occupations of the 1940s. Paradoxically, churches were well positioned to fill this ideological void, irrespective of their stance toward the repressive communist regime. Indeed, the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, known for its steadfast opposition to communism, has commanded as much loyalty from the population as the Romanian Orthodox Church, known for its unholy collaboration with the atheistic regime, or the Russian Orthodox Church, which was almost completely obliterated by Stalinist antireligious policies (Norris & Inglehart, 2004). Second, in countries where it represents the religious majority, the Orthodox Church has tended to align itself with the state in an attempt both to obtain the much-sought status of a national church and to placate the demands of older and newer religious minorities. Once state collaboration was secured, the Ortho0277-5395/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2009.11.011 dox Churches were able to use state resources to advance their views in the public realm. One area in which the Orthodox Churches have given pronouncements with regard to acceptable behavior for the larger society is sexuality. Of immediate concern has been the legalization of abortion and homosexual (both gay and lesbian) behavior, the ever increasing use of family planning, artificial insemination and other reproductive technologies, and the daring proposals envisioning the legalization of prostitution. After decades of isolation from the international community and strict state control, the Orthodox Churches were hard-pressed to formulate official positions with respect to a wide number of issues related to sexuality and sexual behavior. Not surprisingly, they were at a loss when called upon to speak on sensitive issues that in Eastern Europe were new not only to them, but also to the general public, the political elite, and the local academic community. As a result, it took some time for churches to draft official pronouncements, and the majority of them have yet to do so. Given the growing prominence of religious denominations in post-communist Europe and their impact on shaping public policy and societal norms, it is surprising that to date Women's Studies have neglected to consider the nature and role of the Orthodox Churches' pronouncements on body and sexuality. This article discusses the positions of Eastern Orthodox Churches in Russia, Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria with respect to sexuality, sexual behavior and sexual ethics by Author's personal copy L. Stan / Women's Studies International Forum 33 (2010) 38–46 examining official church documents, statements of church leaders, articles and opinion pieces signed by theologians. Homosexuality will not be discussed here, as the pronouncements of church luminaries tend to refer to gays, and almost never to lesbians, reflecting the weaker voice and inferior position of nuns in the Orthodox hierarchy. While lesbianism has been viewed more as a problem of the larger society, sexual relations between men have been considered a problem intrinsic to the life of the church, and thus in more urgent need for a solution. Suffice it to say that the official position of the Orthodox Churches toward homosexuality has remained conservative, similar to the stance adopted by the Roman Catholic Church, and more intolerant than the Orthodox pronouncements and practices toward abortion and contraception. Orthodox canon law condemns homosexuality in the harshest terms, a view consonant with the position of the Orthodox theologians and married clergy (Stan & Turcescu, 2000, 2005, 2007). In Russia, Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria more than 70% of citizens identify themselves as Orthodox Christians. In 2006 more than 80 million Russians, a little less than 19 million Romanians, around 6.2 million Serbs, and approximately 6.5 million Bulgarians identified themselves as Orthodox believers, making these communities some of the largest in the Orthodox world (International Religious Freedom Report, 2006). But the Orthodox Church does not constitute one dominant church in all of these countries. This is due to the fact that the Orthodox community in Bulgaria, as in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, is divided in terms of its institutional allegiance between several competing Orthodox Churches, each headed by a metropolitan or an archbishop. By contrast, most Orthodox Romanians, Russians and Serbs belong to the same national churches, which behave as state churches de facto, even though they are not recognized de jure in any of these countries. These countries have had different post-communist political experiences, and different combinations of domestic and international factors have shaped their religious policies. At one end of the spectrum stands Russia, a country that is not seeking accession into the European Union (EU). As such, the Union has been unable to exert influence on the Russian political elite and religious actors in view of legislating sexual practices. In many respects, Russia has behaved in opposition to the EU, often adopting positions and policies that contradicted European practices. The Russian Orthodox Church has been one of the most vocal critics of European tolerance, human rights and liberal democracy, closely collaborating with the Russian authorities in suppressing the rights of religious and ethnic minorities. Domestic factors have taken precedence over international influences in Serbia, a country affected by war for most of the 1990s. At the time, the Serbian Orthodox Church became a promoter of Serbian identity and inter-ethnic conflict, even by condoning violence and bloodshed. At the other end of the spectrum stand Romania and Bulgaria, which joined the EU in January 2007, after conforming to a range of accession pre-requirements, including the protection of religious minority rights. Even in the case of these two countries the European leverage was not equally applied in all areas of sexual behavior. The legalization of homosexuality was a clearly specified pre-accession condition (Stan & Turcescu, 2007), but the EU failed to take a stand 39 with respect to abortion and prostitution, mainly because its member states do not have a common policy regarding these latter domains. In 2004 and 2007, when the Baltic states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria were accepted as EU members, no pre-accession requirements relating to church–state relations were imposed, mostly because old EU member states embraced different models of church–state interaction and there was no unified EU policy in the area of religion and religious activity. Instead of asking candidate states to adhere to a unique set of church–state relations they themselves did not uphold, old EU member states adopted a human rights approach, asking candidates to uphold freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. However, these basic human rights had already been observed by post-communist states as early as 1990, immediately after the communist control of the state on religious activity was relaxed. Proof that this was the case is the fact that neither in 2004 nor in 2007 religious freedom was on the table as an accession requirement for the new EU member states, the EU being thus content with these countries' progress in upholding human rights. A word about the status of women in the Orthodox Church is needed to understand the following analysis. Orthodox theologians underscore the importance of women in the life of the congregation, reflective of Virgin Mary's privileged relationship with Jesus and the apostles. But besides the more active role the wives of the Orthodox priests play sometimes in the life of the parish by providing informal counseling to other women in times of joy, need, doubt and despair, women's role in the Orthodox Church structure remains confined to that of nuns and novices living their lives in cloistered monasteries. (Eastern European Orthodoxy has yet to experience the equivalent of Vatican II, as a result of which monks and nuns were allowed to live in the world and become more involved socially.) According to canon law, ordained priests must maintain their marital status all their life, a condition that prohibits unmarried priests to ever marry and married priests to divorce. The church cannot prohibit the wife of a priest to seek the divorce, although it can encourage her to reconsider her decision. The entire Orthodox Church leadership (including bishops, archbishops, metropolitans, and the patriarch) is formed of monks who can assume the office if they are unmarried or after the death of their wives (this explains why, for example, the Romanian Patriarch Justin Moisescu had children). Some Orthodox Churches allow women to become deaconesses (Armenian, Greek), but none permit them to be ordained as priests or bishops. The modern way of communicating by official pronouncements, widely used by the Roman Catholic Church, is a novelty for the Orthodox Churches, which in the past have relied on canons, that is, ecclesiastical legislation drafted over 1500 years ago to regulate a wide range of social and political issues, including sexual behavior. Since canons continue to be widely used even in Russia and Romania, where the Orthodox Churches approved official pronouncements on sexuality, this article is divided into three sections. It starts off by examining the early Orthodox theological positions on sexuality, which inspired canon laws adopted at various regional and ecumenical councils up to the 7th century. The article then proceeds to discuss two official documents issued by the Russian and Author's personal copy 40 L. Stan / Women's Studies International Forum 33 (2010) 38–46 Romanian Orthodox Churches as a response to pressures from the society to formulate positions on a range of old and new issues related to sexuality. Drafted centuries ago, canons reflected social practices no longer present in modern times and, for obvious reasons, they were silent on such important aspects as artificial insemination, surrogate motherhood and in vitro fertilization. Therefore, specific documents had to be drafted to supplement and surpass canons. The third section discusses recent positions toward sexuality voiced by Orthodox Church leaders and clergy, in an effort to both gauge the position of the Bulgarian and Serbian Orthodox Churches, whose leadership did not yet adopt an official stance on sexuality, and to see how the official Russian and Romanian pronouncements are embraced within those Orthodox Churches. Early Orthodox theological positions on sexuality Sexuality and sexual behavior have been of great concern for the early Church, from whose teachings both the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches draw their inspiration. Most of the pronouncements of the early Church relate to abortion, adultery and fornication, and most of them condemn strongly and punish harshly those sexual practices. The personal positions of different early Church apologists and church fathers were later officially embraced as canons at various regional and ecumenical councils, then codified as canon law by Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century, and then used by national Orthodox Churches as spiritual and disciplinary guides in the everyday life of their congregations for centuries. Until very recently the Orthodox Churches did not see the need to draft documents on social and moral issues comparable to the papal encyclicals, either because of their close collaboration with pre-communist state authorities or because of their persecution by the communist regimes. Therefore, some obscure canons that are still used by influential father confessors in the Eastern European countries are discussed here. Some American readings of early Church writings on sexuality, especially abortion, provide a conservative interpretation suggesting that the overwhelming majority of those writers condemned abortion performed at any time of gestation, even when it saved the mother's life (for such a viewpoint, see An Orthodox View of Abortion, 1988; Bole, 2000). However, the pro-life commentators seem to ignore the historical context in which those writings were produced, and to read more than even the writers wanted to convey. Sexual practices in the Roman Empire were quite liberal by today's standards (Brown, 1989). Prostitution, adultery, pederasty, homosexuality, and even incest were part of the everyday life and not necessarily punishable by law. In Roman law, abortion and infanticide were indistinguishable, since an infant could be destroyed at any time before being recognized by the pater familias as a legal person. Jewish law allowed abortion during the first forty days of pregnancy. Several centuries before, Aristotle (384–322 BCE) had distinguished between vegetable, animal and human life, and had argued that the human soul entered the body only when the fetus was fully formed, that is, at forty days for males and eighty days for females. The implication was that abortion before that time did not kill a living being (body and soul), and thus was not morally condemnable. Christians distanced them- selves from such views and practices, but not all of them did it right from the very beginning, and not all adopted the most extreme view of sexuality, as some contemporary commentators would have us believe. One of the earliest Christian writings to address the issue of abortion was the brief Didache, also known as the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, which most scholars date to the late first century or early second century. It read that “you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born” (Didache 2, 1–2),1 but the statement did not specify when the fetus could be considered a child in his mother's womb. The Epistle of Barnabas, a Greek writing preserved complete in the fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus (see Bibliorum Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus, 1969) but written sometime before, echoed the Didache without bringing a measure of precision: “Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion, nor again shalt thou kill it when it is born” (Epistle of Barnabas 19:5). A more definitive pronouncement was formulated by Tertullian of Carthage (160–225 CE). Defending the Christians against false accusations of secret crimes, he wrote that in our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb…. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in the seed (Tertullian, Apology 9). While seemingly accepting the formed/unformed distinction as a biological matter, Tertullian considered the fetus a person, and appealed to the mothers to provide him with the necessary proof that a fully formed fetus was a living person: “I call on you, mothers, whether you are now pregnant or have already borne children; let women who are barren and men keep silence!...Tell us: Do you feel any stirring of life within you in the fetus? Does your groin tremble, your sides shake, your whole stomach throb as the burden you carry changes its position? Are not these moments a source of joy and assurance that the child within you is alive and playful? Should his restlessness subside, would you not be immediately concerned for him?” (Tertullian, De anima 25.3). He concluded that “we allow that life begins with conception, because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does” (Tertullian, De anima 27). Decades earlier, towards the end of the second century, the first head of the catechetical school in Alexandria, the apologist Athenagoras the Athenian, wrote to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to defend Christians against false charges of murder that led to their persecution in Lyons and Vienne in 177 CE. His Plea on Behalf of Christians, alternatively known as the Legatio, questioned how Christians could be accused of murder “when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion?” (Athenagoras, 1954, Plea on Behalf of Christians 35). The text went further to defend Christians against false charges of incest and cannibalism. Author's personal copy L. Stan / Women's Studies International Forum 33 (2010) 38–46 Athenagoras took issue with pagan immorality organized through prostitution, and distanced Christian doctrine and practices from pagan myths containing stories about Zeus' incest with his mother, daughter and sister. In reply, he stressed the rigor of Christian morality, which called on Christians to refrain from promiscuity and lust. Pre-marital sex was prohibited, as sexual union was lawful only through marriage and only for the sake of procreation. Remarriage was considered the equivalent of adultery. In his Prophetic Eclogues (41, 48–49), Clement of Alexandria (150–215 CE) also engaged in the debate regarding the nature of the fetus, whether it is a human being or something less than that, and the exact moment when the unborn child becomes a person. In reply to Aristotle and those who linked abortion to human ensoulment in an effort to deem it morally defensible before ensoulment, Clement quoted an anonymous writer for whom the fetus had a soul immediately after conception and, therefore, was a living person (Jones, 2001, p. 8). The writer's proof that the embryo was alive, according to Clement, was the biblical reference to John the Baptist and Jesus in their mothers' wombs: “when Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb” (The Bible, 1998, Luke 1:41). Clement reads this to mean that, when John the Baptist was still in Elizabeth's (his mother's) womb, he was able to recognize the fact that Mary was meant to become Jesus' mother and was already pregnant with Jesus. Note, however, that the argument supports the view that a fully formed fetus was a living person, but not one at earlier stages of gestation, because Mary visited Elizabeth when the latter was six-months pregnant. The influential Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia (330–379 CE), was the first church father to view all abortions as morally reprehensible, when he wrote that a woman who deliberately destroys a fetus is answerable for murder. And any fine distinction between its being completely formed or unformed is not admissible among us. In this case it is not only the being about to be born who is vindicated, but the woman in her attack upon herself; because in most cases women who make such attempts die. The destruction of the embryo is an additional crime, a second murder, at all events if we regard it as done with intent. The punishment, however, of these women should not be for life, but for the term of ten years. And let their treatment depend not on mere lapse of time, but on the character of their repentance (Basil the Great, “Three Canonical Letters” 2). Basil further condemned suppliers of abortive drugs, regardless of the stage of pregnancy: “Those who give potions for the destruction of a child conceived in the womb are murderers, as are those who take potions which kill the child” (Basil the Great, “Three Canonical Letters” 8). Another church father, Patriarch of Constantinople John Chrysostom (347–407 CE), wondered “why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit? Where there are many efforts at abortion? Where there is murder before the birth?” and added that, in his opinion, “drunkenness leads to whoredom, whoredom to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather to a something even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take off the thing born, but prevent its being born. Why then 41 do you…make the chamber of procreation a chamber of murder” (John Chrysostom, Homilies 24). Not all church fathers considered the fetus to be a person, although none of these dissenters were bold enough as to condone abortion seen as murder. In a writing dated to 380 CE, Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335–394 CE) subscribed to the position of his brother, Basil the Great, and suggested that the fetus was a complete human being from the time of conception. In his words, “There is no question about that which is bred in the uterus, both growing, and moving from place to place. It remains, thus, that we must think that the point of commencement of existence is one and the same for body and soul.” After drawing on several comparisons with growth cycles found in nature, Gregory concluded that “in the compound which results from the joining of both (soul and body) there is a simultaneous passage of both into existence; the one does not come first, any more than the other comes later” (Gregory of Nyssa, 1994a,b, On the Soul and the Resurrection). But only two years later, after Basil's death, Gregory conceded that, in fact, “it would not be possible to style the unformed embryo a human being, but only a potential one, assuming that it is completed so as to come forth to human birth, while as long as it is in this unformed state, it is something other than a human being” (Gregory of Nyssa, 1994a,b, On the Holy Spirit, 101.11–13). Gregory's later position is never mentioned by contemporary pro-life defenders. It is difficult to ascertain whether Gregory had a change of heart after Basil's death or whether he formed a dissenting opinion even earlier, but felt unable to voice it as long as his influential brother was still alive. The much celebrated Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) also held a more nuanced position, which is usually dismissed quickly by contemporary anti-abortion advocates, although the terms of “quickening” and “awakening” had gained some currency in the fifth century. While other Church authors authoritatively proclaimed that the impregnated egg was a human being from conception, Augustine cautiously wrote that the following question may be very carefully inquired into and discussed by learned men, though I do not know whether it is in man's power to resolve it: At what time the infant begins to live in the womb: whether life exists in a latent form before it manifests itself in the motions of the living being. To deny that the young who are cut out limb by limb from the womb, lest if they were left there dead the mother should die too, have never been alive, seems too audacious (Augustine of Hippo, Enchiridion 86). This text, which suggests that a fully formed fetus possessing limbs is alive, is interpreted as supporting therapeutic abortion, although its general tone remains mostly matter-offact. Several centuries later, Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) was another author who was not ready to consider the impregnated egg a human being from the moment of conception, but his teachings have not been embraced by the Orthodox Church, which preferred to take the side of Aquinas' theological opponent, Gregory Palamas. The early Church writers, thus, exposed a diversity of positions. On one hand, Tertullian and Basil the Great leaned toward a strictly conservative position that rejected abortion Author's personal copy 42 L. Stan / Women's Studies International Forum 33 (2010) 38–46 at any time and in any circumstance. On the other hand, Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine seemingly made allowances for abortion that could save the life of the mother and/or rejected only abortion performed during late pregnancy. As shown above, most references to abortion fell somewhere inbetween, talking about the abortion of an unborn child as a murder, without clearly and explicitly specifying when the embryo was a child. Church politics allowed only the most conservative positions on abortion to be reflected in canon law. Canon 63 of the regional Council of Elvira (ca. 303 CE) (see Schaff & Wace, 1994), which met to regulate sexuality, marriage and clerical celibacy, prescribed life-long excommunication for abortion that resulted from adultery: “If a woman conceives in adultery and then has an abortion, she may not commune again, even as death approaches, because she has sinned twice.” (Schaff & Wace, 1994 p 404). The denial of communion, the most important Christian sacrament, is one of the harshest punishments handed down by the Orthodox Church, because it is the de facto equivalent to the exclusion of the person from the community of believers, a ban associated with the prohibition to being married in the church and entombed according to Christian ritual. A decade later, the regional Council of Ancyra (314 CE) adopted Canon 21, which read that “concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree excluded them [from receiving communion] until the hour of death, and to this some have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater lenity, we have ordained that they fulfill ten years [of penance], according to the prescribed degrees” (Schaff & Wace, 1994, p. 404). Following Canon 91 of the Council in Trullo (692 CE), “those who give drugs for procuring abortion and those who receive potions to kill the fetus are subject to the penalty for murder” (Schaff & Wace, 1994, p. 73). Two of Basil the Great's canons further spoke against abortion. Canon 2 reads that “let her that procures abortion undergo ten year's penance, whether the embryo was perfectly formed or not,” while Canon 7 provides that “the man, or woman, is a murderer that gives a philtrum, if the man that takes it, die upon it; so are they who take medicines to procure abortion” (Schaff & Wace, 1994, pp. 604–605). Canon law also deals with prostitution, fornication, incest, and adultery. Basil's Canon 26 read that “fornication is neither marriage, nor the beginning of marriage. If it may be, it is better that they who have committed fornication together be parted, but if they be passionate lovers, let them not separate, for fear of what is worse” (Schaff & Wace, 1994, p. 606). According to Canons 67, 68 and 75, “incest with a sister is punished as murder,” and “all incestuous conjunction, [is to be treated] as adultery.” Moreover, to be reconciled with the church, “he that commits incest with a half-sister” had to go through the following stages: he “ shall be a mourner three years, a hearer three years, a co-stander two years” (Schaff & Wace, 1994, pp. 608–609). In Canons 58 and 59, Basil further prescribed the punishment for adultery and fornication: “the adulterer shall be four years a mourner, five a hearer, four a prostrator, two a co-stander,” while “the fornicator shall be a mourner two years, two a hearer, two a prostrator, one a costander” (Schaff & Wace, 1994, p. 608). His brother, Gregory of Nyssa, was less lenient. According to his Canon 4, “fornicators be three years wholly ejected from prayer, three years hearers, three years prostrators, and then admitted to communion; but the time of hearing and prostrating may be lessened to them who of their own accord confess, and are earnest penitents. That this time be doubled in case of adultery, of unlawful lusts, but discretion to be used” (Schaff & Wace, 1994, p. 611). Finally, Canon 87 of the Council in Trullo provided for adulterers to be “‘weepers’ for a year, ‘hearers’ for two years, ‘prostrators’ for three years, and in the seventh year to stand with the faithful and thus be counted worthy of the Oblation [if with tears they do penance]” (Schaff & Wace, 1994, p. 402). For more than fifteen centuries the Orthodox Churches have upheld canon law as a moral guide in the everyday life of the congregation, but not all Orthodox priests have strictly adhered to all canons all the time, given the extremely large number of canons, the priests' low degree of literacy until the 19th century, and the irregular printing and dissemination of canons. By and large, sexual practices in Eastern Europe were more lax than in Western Europe, as attested by Western travelers to the East (Sparrman, 1785; Manning, 1988; DraceFrancis, 2000; Jezernik, 2004). Homosexuality was present in medieval Russia, while sexual intercourse outside the marriage and common-law marriages became widespread in Romania in the 19th century, at a time when many families were unable to provide their daughters with the necessary dowry (Cosma, 2002). Villagers in that part of the world developed sophisticated knowledge of abortive potions and techniques, which they continued to employ and refine constantly. Decades of communist rule and state antireligious policies managed to tone down the moral zeal of most Orthodox Churches in Eastern Europe, which had to recognize that a tough stance on sexual behavior and family issues could alienate a population that was already drawn away from the church by secularization, modernization, urbanization, and the policies of an atheistic state. In many Eastern European countries, married Orthodox priests have been more lenient when prescribing punishment for sexual trespasses than celibate monks acting as father confessors, presumably because of the married priests' knowledge of family issues. Recent official Orthodox positions on sexuality Abortion has been a constant concern for the Eastern European Orthodox Churches both because the number of such medical procedures skyrocketed during the 1990s and because canon law condemns the killing of fetuses in the harshest terms. Three predominantly Orthodox countries — Russia, Romania and Bulgaria — have registered the highest rates of abortions in Europe, once permissive legislation was introduced in the early 1990s. After decades of communist control over the body, citizens in those countries regarded abortion as their family planning method of choice. The number of recorded abortions was augmented by the fact that illegal abortions that went largely unregistered during communism could be safely conducted free of charge in hospitals during post-communism. In addition, the economic hardships of the transition, which resulted in sharply deteriorated living standards, convinced many families to choose not to have children. This combination of factors accounted for 3.5 million abortions in 1992 in Russia (Tichtchenko & Yudin, 1996, p. 2), 1.2 million in 1995 Author's personal copy L. Stan / Women's Studies International Forum 33 (2010) 38–46 in Romania (Luxmoore, 1996, p. 363), and a little fewer than 100,000 in 1996 in Bulgaria (Stoyanova & Richardus, 1999, p. 224). In all these countries, abortions outnumbered live births, leading to a constant decline in the total population. In this context, the largest Orthodox Churches in the region, the Russian and the Romanian Churches, recognized that a continued reliance on canon law was no longer sufficient both because canons had been drafted centuries earlier and thus were silent on such modern issues as artificial insemination and because canons themselves were never really codified, using different definitions and prescribing different penances for the same sexual behavior. The two churches drafted pioneering documents presenting their official positions on important social issues, including sexual behavior. Both documents were issued rather late after the collapse of the communist regime. The Basis of the Social Concept was adopted by the Jubilee Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000, while Abortion was approved by the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church in July 2005. By their conception and genre, these were novel projects addressing cutting-edge contemporary social issues. They were destined to provide a definitive guide for the Churches' fluid visions of society, and thus prevent the development of tensions and conflicts over these issues within the clergy. The reasons why other Eastern European Orthodox Churches did not draft similar documents might be related to the internal struggles affecting the Bulgarian Church, the aftermath of the wars in the former Yugoslavia still affecting the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the fight over jurisdiction between the Russian Orthodox Church and its Ukrainian, Moldovan, Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian Orthodox counterparts. The Basis of the Social Concept (2000), the product of collective work of some 25 clerical authors and lay experts brought together by the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, headed by Metropolitan Kiril of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, provided guidelines for social work to the episcopate, clergy and laity (Agadjanian, 2003). Chapter X of The Basis of the Social Concept (2000) on “Personal, Family and Public Morality” reaffirmed the Russian Orthodox Church's respect for common-law marriage, thus upholding the Holy Synod decision of 28 December 1998, which, surprisingly, scolded spiritual fathers who “declare common-law marriage invalid or demand that spouses, who have lived together for many years but were not married in church…should divorce” or “identify such marriage with fornication” (Chapter X.2). The new document reminded the clergy that marriage in church was rendered difficult by the adoption of the Decree of the Separation of the Church from the State in 1918, with the prohibition being lifted only seven decades later. While reaffirming that marriage is a union of a man and a woman, thus excluding same-sex marriages, the Church adopted a moderate view on divorce, again upholding its 1998 decision to denounce the actions of those spiritual fathers who “prohibit their spiritual children from contracting a second marriage…and prohibit married couples from divorce if their family life becomes impossible” (Chapter X.3). It stressed that fornication “ruins the harmony and integrity of one's life,” while pornography “contributes to the suppression of the spiritual and moral principles, thus reducing men to an animal motivated by instinct alone,” but the 43 Church does not call “to abhor the body or sexual intimacy as such” (Chapter X.6). Chapter XII on “Problems of Bioethics” equated abortion with murder, therefore “from the moment of conception any encroachment on the life of a future human being is criminal.” The widespread use of abortion by the modern society was seen as “a threat to the future of humanity and a clear sign of its moral degradation.” The Church can bless abortion under no circumstance, but “in case of a direct threat to the life of the mother if her pregnancy continues” leniency was recommended (Chapter XII.2). Contraceptives with abortive effect were condemned, but “other means, which do not involve interrupting an already conceived life, cannot be equated with abortion.” The document referred once again to the December 1998 decision, which instructed clergy serving as spiritual guides that “it is inadmissible to coerce or induce the flock to…refuse conjugal relations in marriage” as a contraception method (Chapter XII.3). In the case of sterile couples, the artificial insemination with the husband's sperm was admissible, “since it does not violate the integrity of the marital union,” while all other practices — such as the use of donated cells, surrogate motherhood, and the extra-corporal fertilization involving embryos — were strongly rejected (Chapter XII.4). Equally condemned was homosexuality (Chapter XII.9) and the cloning of human beings, deemed to represent “a definite challenge to the very nature of the human being and to the image of God inherent in him,” but not “the cloning of isolated organic cells and tissues” (Chapter XII.6). Abortion was drafted by the National Commission on Bioethics set up at the request of the Romanian Orthodox Church. To ground its work in theological dogma, the Romanian text included frequent references to the biblical texts and early Church pronouncements discussed above. The commission had chapters in the university center of Cluj, Bucharest, Timisoara, Iasi and Craiova, each including five theologians, five scientists, one sociologist and one law graduate, in an effort to bridge the gap between the view of the church and the positions of the scientists and legal experts. Commission members “seek to connect science and religion so that new [scientific] discoveries do not contradict life and spirituality” (Cotidianul, 14 November 2001, p.2). It took the commission close to four years to draft its final report which was then provided to the church's collective leadership body, the Holy Synod, for approval. According to the document (Abortion, 2005), “abortion and all abortive practices are grave sins because they a) lead to the murder of a human being, b) affect the dignity of the woman, c) raise the risk of mutilation of the woman's body, of the premature death of the young mother.” (Abortion, 2005, p. 2) The same document listed four cases considered worth detailing. First, it stipulated that “in case the life of the mother is really threatened by the pregnancy or birth, priority must be given to the woman's life, not because it has a greater intrinsic value, but because of her ties to and responsibilities toward other people who depend on her.” (Abortion, 2005 p. 2) Second, “in case a genetic investigation reveals an abnormal unborn child, we recommend that the child be born and his right to life respected, but the decision belongs to the family whom the doctor and father confessor must fully explain the moral and practical implications.” (Abortion, Author's personal copy 44 L. Stan / Women's Studies International Forum 33 (2010) 38–46 2005 p.3) Third, “the risk of abortion following rape or incest must be avoided by education, [but] if pregnancy resulted, the child must be born and, if needed, put up for adoption.” (Abortion, 2005 p.3) Lastly, “abortion can never be morally justified by the economic status of the family, the disagreements between spouses, its impact on the mother's career or the physical aspect [of the mother].” (Abortion, 2005 p.3) Thus, abortion was allowed for therapeutic purposes, when either the mother's life was threatened by the pregnancy or families were unable to assume the burden of raising a child with disabilities. In both cases, the decision rested with the family, not the church. Going a step further, the document recognized that the burden of preventing abortion must be shared by the parents and the Orthodox Church, whose pastoral and social activity “must be diversified” to better educate the public. To understand how nuanced and lenient Abortion is, one needs to compare it with the only other text on abortion tacitly endorsed by the Romanian Orthodox Church. In 1997 Ilie Moldovan, a moral theology professor at the Faculty of Theology in Sibiu, published a pamphlet which was widely distributed among the Romanian Orthodox clergy and father confessors. According to Moldovan (1997), a marriage whose main goal is eluded is “a legal form of prostitution,” and all family planning methods dissociating sexuality from procreation are to be highly condemned. The future child is a person immediately after the egg and the sperm come together, thus any attempt to destroy the impregnated egg imperils “a total human, body and soul,” and runs counter to the divine commandment not to kill. For Moldovan, the main goal of both marriage and sexual intercourse is procreation. Abortion remained morally sinful even when the pregnancy endangered the mother's life or health. Moldovan went as far as to reject even the Ogino calendar-based planning, the only contraception method accepted by the Roman Catholic Church, and that church's argument that “for just reasons, spouses may wish to space the births of their children” and that “the use of infertile periods is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality” (The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1999, entries 2368 and 2370). As abortion threatened the very survival of the nation, Orthodox priests were advised to refuse to give communion to the woman for seven years, and if the woman died as a result of abortion to refuse to bury her. Unofficial Orthodox positions The Serbian and Bulgarian Orthodox Churches are yet to draft similar documents, and therefore their position on sexuality must be inferred from other sources. In addition, even in Russia and Romania there is a diversity of opinions on the subject, which is not captured in the official pronouncements of these two Orthodox Churches. In Romania, Moldovan's views were echoed by Patriarch Teoctist, for whom the number of abortions represented a “real national tragedy” with disastrous consequences for the Romanian nation (Cotidianul, 26 September 2001). Not all Romanian Orthodox priests agreed with such radical views. Father Justin Marchis publicly came out in favor of the Ogino contraceptive methods. He attacked Moldovan's pamphlet on theological grounds, criticized Moldovan for arguing that abortion was the gravest sin, a contention not sustained by Orthodox doctrine, and deplored the widespread distribution that only Moldovan's text received (22, 3–9 March 1998). Other priests have maintained that the Orthodox Church's traditional non-interference in spouses' intimate relations means that the calendar is tacitly accepted as a contraceptive method, with all other methods being strongly rejected (Dilema, 5–11 March 1999). Metropolitan of Banat Nicolae Corneanu made clear his opposition to any criminalization of abortion, and publicly stated that women, not some institution like the state or the church, has the right to decide whether to stall a pregnancy. In 1998, Corneanu stated that he could not understand the “terrible anti-abortion campaign. Of course, I cannot accept murder, but this is such an intimate problem of the woman that to support condemnation or even punishment is not normal,” and he added that “it is the right of the prospective mother to decide, together with her husband, if she is married” (22, 3–9 March 1998, p4). The Serbian Orthodox Church's position on abortion can be gauged from statements delivered by its leaders over the years. Concerned with the sharp decline in birthrate and the dramatic increase in abortions among Serbs, in 1992 Serbian Orthodox Church leaders called for a State Council for Population Dynamics to devise pro-natal policies able to convince Serbian women to have more children and fewer abortions (Korac, 1996, p. 140). In contrast to the Russian or Romanian Orthodox Churches, the Serbian Church couched its anti-abortion calls in nationalist terms, no doubt under the influence of the political realignment that triggered the wars in Yugoslavia. The following year, the Church called for a total ban on abortions, while the outspoken Bishop of Tuzla and Zvornik (supervising some 300 churches in two-thirds of Republika Srpska) Vasilije Kacavenda bluntly said that protesting women “are not Serbian Orthodox women, they do not have anything in common with the natural essence of the Serbian people” (Politika, 27 March 1993, p11). In 2000, the Church took its anti-abortion crusade a step further by instructing its priests not to grant Holy Communion to doctors and midwives known to perform abortions because “abortion is a grievous sin before God, condemned by the Scriptures. As such, it threatens the entire Serbian nation with biologic extermination” (Life Issues Institute, 2000). The political elite did not satisfy these demands, and as a result abortions continued to be legally offered to women in Serbia and Montenegro. The Church continued its efforts to curb abortion, while remaining silent on artificial insemination and other newer medical procedures. In his Christmas 2006 message the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Pavle, reaffirmed that “the greatest error we commit is abortion, because we will not admit that it is the sin of murdering a child, motivated by the selfishness of unworthy parents. It is the most hideous murder, the refusal of God's blessing and the denial to a new person of the right to life. The unborn child is not a nameless embryo, a fetus; it is a person, a living soul. We implore you, dear parents, not to do this anymore…We know that some self-proclaimed defenders of people's rights will say that the Church is limiting freedom and the rights of people, but let it be known that we are counseling with love, without degrading…Many nations give heed to their historical existence and eternal salvation, and our Serbian people have killed, regretfully, more unborn children than all our Author's personal copy L. Stan / Women's Studies International Forum 33 (2010) 38–46 enemies in all wars put together” (Pavle, 2006). In his Easter 2007 message, the patriarch again called abortion “a great sin that occurs daily in the world. From the day they are conceived…innocent children fear for their lives” (Serbian Unity Congress, 10 April 2007). Church insiders say opinion among the clergy and the laity is far from united around the outspoken episcopate, but dissenting voices are seldom heard from the lower echelons of the strict church hierarchy. Recently the Bulgarian Orthodox Church launched an antiabortion campaign in response to the country's liberal legal framework, which has made abortion look almost like a routine medical procedure for thousands of Bulgarian girls and women. This was the first time since 1989 when the Church has openly spoken against abortions in a country which lacks a visible prolife movement. “The legal murders have to stop,” said Father Evgeni Yanakiev, the parish priest in the small town of Sliven, who deprived a gynecologist of the sacrament of communion and pronounced an anathema against her because she refused to stop performing abortions. In several television appearances and newspaper interviews, Yanakiev emphasized that the Orthodox Church regards abortion as a homicide. The public reaction was quick and harsh, journalists charging the priest with offenses varying from “a violation of the privacy of confession” to “violation of religious liberties” and “restrictive practices.” Representatives of the Medical Commission on Ethics asked for a meeting with Orthodox Church leaders to discuss the case. The case failed to generate a vigorous public debate on abortion, which continues to be freely available to Bulgarian women (OrthodoxLife.com, 2008). Conclusion While some contemporary readings of Orthodoxy would try to convince us that Orthodox Churches maintain an uncompromising tough stance on sexuality and sexual behavior, a closer look at early Orthodox positions, canon law, and the recent official and unofficial Orthodox Church pronouncements reveals more nuanced positions. Having allowed their priests to marry and to have children, and having elevated marriage to the level of a sacrament, the Orthodox Churches have been close to family life, with all its good and not so good facets. The Russian Orthodox Church allows common-law marriages, the Romanian Church permits abortion in certain cases, while the Serbian and Bulgarian Churches have yet to adopt official positions on such subjects. Of course, such toleration of sexual practices condemned by the Roman Catholic Church is not the result of a sudden realization, on the part of the Orthodox Churches, that they need to keep up with ever modernizing societal norms. Rather, it is a realistic and pragmatic response to issues affecting societies in that part of the world. Acknowledgement The author thanks Dr. Lucian Turcescu for his invaluable assistance in navigating the Patristics literature. Endnote 1 Ancient texts are cited by referring to the number of the paragraph or block of text, instead of page numbers. 45 References 22, 3–9 March 1998, (www.revista22.ro — article referred to is no longer available on website) Abortion (2005). Bucharest: National Commission on Bioethics. Agadjanian, Alexander (2003). The social vision of Russian Orthodoxy: Balancing between identity and relevance. In Jonathan Sutton & Wil van den Bercken (Eds.), Orthodox christianity and contemporary Europe (pp. 163−182). Leuven: Peeters. An Orthodox View of Abortion (1988, October). The Amicus Curiae submitted to the Supreme Court available at http://www.orthodoxinfo. com/praxis/abortion.aspx (accessed 5 May 2008. Athenagoras (1954). Plea on behalf of Christians. In Benjamin P. Pratten (Ed.), The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans. Augustine of Hippo. Enchiridion of Faith, Hope and Love. http://tertullian.org/ fathers/augustine_enchiridion_02_trans.htm Basil the Great. Three Canonical Letters, Loeb Classical Library, III, pp. 20–23. Bibliorum Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus, Petersburg: Hildesheim G. Olms, 1969, 4 volumes. Bole, Thomas J. (2000). The person in secular and in Orthodox-Catholic bioethics. Christian Bioethics, 6, 85−112. Brown, Peter (1989). The world of late antiquity. New York: W. W. Norton. Clement of Alexandria (1970). Prophetic eclogues. In Ludwig Fruchtel, Otto Stahlin, Ursula Treu, & Clemens Alexandrinus (Eds.), 2nd ed Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller 17, vol. 3 (pp. 137—155). Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Cosma, Gizela (2002). Prostitutia in Romania intre razboaie. In Eniko Magyari-Vincze (Ed.), Prezente feminine. Studii despre femei in Romania (pp. 415−437). Cluj: Desire. Cotidianul, 26 September 2001 (www.cotidianul.ro — article referred to is no longer available on website). Cotidianul, 14 November 2001. www.cotidianul.ro — article referred to is no longer available on website). Didache, available at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didacheroberts.html (accessed on 30 April 2008). Dilema, 5–11 March 1999 (www.dilemaveche.ro — article referred to no longer available on website). Drace-Francis, Alex (2000). Sex, lies and stereotypes: Romania in British literature since 1945. In George Cipaianu & Virgil Tarau (Eds.), Romanian and British historians on the contemporary history of Romania (pp. 88−109). Cluj: Cluj-Napoca University Press. Epistle of Barnabas, trans. by J. B. Lightfoot, available at http://www. earlychristianwritings.com/text/barnabas-lightfoot.html (accessed on 3 May 2008). Gregory of Nyssa (1994). On the Holy Spirit: Against the followers of Macedonius, trans. In Philip Schaff & Henry Wace (Eds.), A select library of Nicene and postNicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 5 (pp. 315—325). Grand Rapids: W.M.B. Eerdmans. Gregory of Nyssa (1994). On the soul and the resurrection, trans. In Philip Schaff & Henry Wace (Eds.), A select library of Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 5 (pp. 428—468). Grand Rapids: WM.B. Eerdmans. International Religious Freedom Report, Washington, DC: U. S. Department of State, 2006, available at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2006/ (accessed on 28 April 2008). Jezernik, Bozidar (2004). Wild Europe: The Balkans in the Gaze of Western Travelers. London: Saqi Books. John Chrysostom. Homilies on Paul's Epistle to the Romans, XXIV, available at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf111.vii.xxvi.html (accessed on 3 May 2008). Jones, David (2001). A theologian's brief: On the place of the human embryo within the Christian tradition and the theological principles for evaluating its moral status, Ethics & Medicine, Fall available at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/ mi_qa4004/is_200110/ai_n8992376 (accessed on 2 May 2008. Korac, Maja (1996). Understanding ethnic-national identity and its meaning: Questions from women's experience. Women's Studies International Forum, 19, 133−143. Life Issues Institute (2000, March/April). Serbian Church opposes abortion, vol. 11. available at http://www.lifeissues.org/international/v11no2. html (accessed on 30 April 2008. Luxmoore, John (1996). Eastern Europe 1995: A review of religious life in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland. Religion, State and Society, 24, 357−366. Manning, Olivia (1988). The Balkan Trilogy. London: Penguin. Moldovan, Ilie (1997). Darul sfant al vietii si combaterea pacatelor impotriva acestuia — Aspecte ale nasterii de prunci in lumina moralei crestine ortodoxe Bucharest: no press. Norris, Pippa, & Inglehart, Ronald (2004). Sacred and Secular. Religion and politics worldwide Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Author's personal copy 46 L. Stan / Women's Studies International Forum 33 (2010) 38–46 OrthodoxLife.com (2008). Bulgarian priest triggers a heated abortion debate available at http://orthodoxlife.info/content/view/1132/119/ (accessed on 28 April 2008. Pavle (2006). Peace from God — Christ is born! available at http://www. byzantinesacredart.com/christ-is-born.html (accessed on 30 April 2008. Politika, 27 March 1993 (www.politika.rs/ — article referred to is no longer available on website). Schaff, Philip, & Wace, Henry (Eds.). (1994). The seven ecumenical councils Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers. Serbian Unity Congress (2007). Head of Serb Church denounces Kosovo secession, abortion, poverty 10 April, available at http://news.serbianunity.net/2007/ 04/10/2122/ (accessed on 30 April 2008. Sparrman, Andrew [Anders] (1785). A Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, towards the Antartic Polar Circle, and round the world: But chiefly into that country of the Hottentots and Caffres, from the year 1772 to 1776 London: no. publisher. Stan, Lavinia, & Turcescu, Lucian (2000). The Romanian Orthodox Church and post-communist democratization. Europe-Asia Studies, 52, 1467−1488. Stan, Lavinia, & Turcescu, Lucian (2005). Religion, politics and sexuality in Romania. Europe-Asia Studies, 57, 291−310. Stan, Lavinia, & Turcescu, Lucian (2007). Religion and politics in postcommunist Romania. New York: Oxford University Press. Stoyanova, Violeta, & Richardus, Jan (1999). Induced abortions in Bulgaria. Trends during the period 1986–1996. European Journal of Public Health, 9, 223−228. Tertullian. Apology, trans. by Sidney Thelwall, available at http://www.ccel. org/ccel/schaff/anf03.iv.iii.i.html (accessed on 3 May 2008). Tertullian. De anima, trans. by Peter Holmes, available at http://www. newadvent.org/fathers/0310.htm (accessed on 3 May 2008). The Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, 2000, available at www.mospat.ru/index.php (accessed 2 May 2008). The Bible (1998). Authorized King James Version Oxford: Oxford Paperback. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, London: USCCB Publishers, 1999. Tichtchenko, Pavel, & Yudin, Boris (1996). On the moral status of fetuses in Russia. Moscow: Institute of Human Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences.