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For the Churches and religious confessions in the Eastern Europe, the fall of communism meant the retrieving not only of the freedom restricted by the atheist totalitarianism, but also of the possibility of social involvement. As regarding the Orthodox Churches, their return in the public space was observed in the great number of new buildings for cult and worship, as in an important number of social projects. After two decades, the new created philanthropic system is now confronted with a series of problems similar, in a way, to those of the public system of health. First of all, it is about training and sustaining a qualified personnel, capable of handling the most different and complex situations. We should not forget that the beneficiaries of the Church social assistance are, normally, persons with chronic diseases, with a precarious material situation, with behaviour disorders, having a series of addictions. Then, the second problem the Orthodox Churches are faced with is, of course, the financial resources. Against the background of a legislation, as the one in Romania, less interested in encouraging, in a subsidiary spirit, a healthy and constructive relation between the public initiative and the private one, the majority of the ecclesial social projects are based on voluntariate and donations. The lack of a predictable framework, both juridical and financial, increases the risk of creating dependences of assistance which cannot be fulfilled by these institutions and initiatives on a long term. This instability is increased in the periods of economical crisis, such as the present one. That's why a specific evaluation of the types of social assistance proposed by the Church is required.
Keywords: Post-communism, Orthodoxy, ethics, philanthropy, evaluation
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