Originally posted by Halychanyn:
I asked her what attracted her to the Mormons and away from Orthodoxy.
Dear Halychanyn,
About 10 years ago, I remember a group of my father's Ukrainian friends from Galicia / Halychyna discussing the Mormon Church. They were all WW2 refugee from Germany, who after the war eventually made their way from the Displaced Persons (DP) camps to Montreal.
What they liked about the Mormons was their social economic self-reliance philosophy. In many cases the Mormons have their own businesses and they provide social assistance to their members as they see fit. They take care of their own.
As you know the UGCC greatly influenced the cooperatives in Galicia in the interwar period. The cooperatives were often the only source of employement, welfare, and educational funds for the people during the dire economic times. My father's friends said that they would like to have seen a more structured type of socio-economic 'Mormon model' for the UGCC durig the interwar period in Galicia, Ukraine. They were not familiar with the Mormons until many years after immigrating to North America, so the socio-economic philosophy of the church was unknown to them at the time.
You could argue that this is the positive self-reliance model that the Ukrainian branch of the ROC and the communists have developed, but then again, you are intelligent and there would be no point in debating that charade.
Perhaps the Mormons with their vast wealth may be the solution for helping the people of the Donbas area who are completely in the grip of both the ROC and their partner the communists. This is THE area where they still rule. I do agree that the Mormons are a sect, but given the alternative, perhaps this is not so bad for the Donbas area.
Hritzko
