Translation from Romanian

http://danielnica.wordpress.com/2014/11/11/scrisoare-deschisa-catre-patriarhul-romaniei/

Your Holiness Patriarch Daniel,

Looking at the events that have been happening lately in the House of the Lord (the Church) I do not know if I should be ashamed that I have the same name as you or you should be ashamed that you have the same name as I do.

I should say that I was raised in the country side, and every 17 or 18 of the first summers of my life I spent with my grandparents in a village in the south of the country.

Do you know which were the most important people in my grandparent’s village?

The mayor, the doctor and the “pope”!

You will ask me why i disrespectfully dare call him “pope” and not priest (or better, spiritual Father) as I was taught during my early years in school? Let me answer to you: we are a secular village but at least I still have respect for the “pope”! Why?

Unlike you, the “pope” in my village, although advised by your church to, does not charge the poor to bury their parents and marry their children. He does not ask them for money in exchange to helping them stand right before God. Also, he does not try to tell my grandparents how to vote in the presidential election! There is no obligation to buy church newspapers or calendars church (printed by your Holiness without understanding, at least, the idea of GST!). Your newspapers in our church are paid out of pocket by elder ‘Nelu (as we know him in the village) and the calendars are also often offered for free, because not everyone in the village has a Mercedes at the front door (if you understand what i am saying …).

When I was little I used to buy, out of my own conviction, at least a small icon from every Church or Monastery that I was visiting with my parents on holidays. And believe me, I visited many. So many I visited that i was startled beyond belief when while visiting the Arges Monastery just a few years ago (and which I had often visited in the past, even just to light a candle) asked me and my parents an entry fee! We were given tickets! Can you believe that? Monastery entry tickets, tickets so we are allowed to pray. That was the last time I visited that place, although it is always full of the faithful, forgotten by God.

Your Highness Patriarch Daniel, together with the whole Romanian Orthodox Church, are trying to manipulate my grand and great-grand parents! You are ordering them to get politically involved and vote only according to your own interests, taking advantage of their good faith and using their trust shamelessly … due, perhaps, to the few books they ever read.

I do not think it is necessary to prove any of the facts written above, I am sure you are very much aware of them and I am also sure that you have access to the internet on your personal MAC which I won’t be able to afford any time soon … which may be a blessing after all for the right-believing people.

Before getting directly to the subject of this letter, I wish to point out and dispel any doubt, that i am an Orthodox Christian, who thanks God after each meal and I say my prayers every night before I go to sleep.

In my capacity as a son of God, let me ask you, dear Eminence, just as I once heard my father asking:

Are you not ashamed? Are you not ashamed that you have sold out God, piece by piece? I would like to ask you, please do not pray for me, i have no money and will not be able to pay!

The God I was taught to believe in, does not require payment to hear my prayers and does not get involved in politics.

With reverence,

A Daniel; A man.