Dear Administrator:
Perhaps you and StuartK are right: this was simply a bone-headed blunder on the part of the Vatican. I see this more like Alex, however, as part of a thought-out political move, and arguably the best move under bad circumstances.
When this issue was new and under discussion here in February, I was amazed, while lurking, to see the complete absence of any consideration of the broader political context - specifically, the political current that was moving toward categorizing the Catholic church in Russia as a "foreign" religion. This connection may indeed be conicidental, I have no way of knowing. But I find it odd that this broader context seems to be so invincibly ignored.
If Rome had be astute politically they would have simply re-established the dioceses that were destroyed by the communists.
Border changes and the tendency to keep diocesan borders within national borders militated against this possibility from the start, in the early 1990's when the ban against certain religious was eased.
Rome's treatment of Eastern Catholics for the sake of its Ostpolitik policy has finally come home to roost with every Latin priest given the proverbial boot out of Russia
Well, Alex there is a lot to gripe about in this area, but let's be clear about one very important thing. The re-emergence of Eastern Catholics, particularly in western Ukraine, and the charge that the Vatican was not inhibiting this alleged neo-uniatism marked the beginning of the deterioration of relations between the the Vatican and the MP. It continues to be a major factor, and arguably the major factor, that keeps this relationship sour. The annihilation of Russian Orthodox diocese in Western Ukraine remains as the major charge of prosyletism levied by the MP. The Pope stood with us; he did not abandon us in the name of Ostpolitik, at a tremendous cost - for whatever it might have been worth - in the Vatican/MP relations. To blame the the terrible state of these relations on a calculated move by the Vatican is IMO correct. But that calculated move was the support of our churches, in the post-communist era.
djs
PS the difficulties encountered by RC priests with obtaining visa's even in the mid-1990's - before the erection of the diocese - are well-documented on press reports on the net.
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