www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Poland and Greek-Catholics

It has been truly said that anyone who spends an hour talking about religion in Eastern Europe has just spent sixty minutes discussing religion. This is by no means unique to Poland, but since the matter of Greek-Catholics in Poland has been raised elsewhere on the Forum, I decided to try a thread here, where the artifical distinction between "politics" and "religion" is not enforced [the assertion that politics and religion have nothing to do with each other closely resembles the assertion that one's world-view is unrelated to one's most important beliefs].


to be continued - pastoral considerations just telephoned and demand my attention!

Fr. Serge

Dear Father Serge. This reminds me of those who claim that they are pro-life, but wouldn't want a woman not to have the right to choose abortion for herself. is this what you mean? This is a very important topic for discussion.
Eddie

That is certainly NOT what I mean. What I mean is that surely one's most deeply held beliefs strongly affect one's political opinions and one's conduct, public and private. To offer a horrible example: when Senator John Kennedy ran for President, he stood up in front of an assembly of Protestant ministers and assured them that his Catholic beliefs would never affect his conduct as President. That is outrageous; if his "beliefs" meant that little to him, why did he even claim to have such beliefs?

Nevertheless, it is a "twentieth-century American" shibboleth that "politics and religion have nothing to do with each other", which is manifestly absurd on the face of it. The Faith teaches me that abortion is murder, period. When someone tries to tell me that "Oh, you're talking about religion - but you can't enforce your religion on someone else" I'm tempted to wonder about the sanity of the speaker. Either law rests on a moral foundation (and a moral foundation is directly and closely related to "religion"), or law rests on no foundation at all.

One of the most important problems with false religion is that false religion teaches various forms of immoral misconduct.

Fr. Serge

You're absolutely right on this. The Constitution said only that the government should not establish religion. Britain and so many of the other European countries had done this, leading many to emigrate to the American colonies - where they in turn established their own religions. It's only since Madeleine Murray O'Hare and her drive to ban prayer in schools that the Supreme Court has widened this to construe that government should be totally silent on Deity. Now, in order to protect the rights of the minority who espouse atheism - which may in fact be defined as a religion since it is a belief system that posits that there is no God - the First Amendment rights of the majority are curtailed.

That said, I would not want this thread to veer off into a discussion of American politics, since I am very much interested in what Fr. Serge has to say about Poland and Greek Catholics.

Father Serge. Maybe I wasn't clear. Your example of President John Kennedy is really no different than those Catholics who profess to be pro-life in their private lives and then would not want to vote in a way to prevent those who want an abortion. They live lives of contradiction. its good enough for them but not good for me. The privatization of religion has had a great affect on the relationship between church and state. There are three forces working in tandem here - one is the privatization of religion (our own doing), the second is the ACLU groups who are trying despearately to rid of everything of Judeo-Christian morality, and the third is the movement away from objective (foundations) to subjective morals as the basis for decisions.

With this in mind one can see how Christianity doesn't stand a chance.

But doesn't the churches allow this to happen from within? call it the Trojan Horse problem. We invited it into religion. I once attended a Roman Catholic wedding where the bride and grooom basically custom designed their wedding mass. in a Byzantine Catholic church another couple wanted to do their own thing like their cousins but discovered that their church weds its people in a certain way. The priest would not give an inch, the bride and groom married only to leave soon after. This particular wedding was an incident, but how could such youths who grew up in their church for so long never learn or know how weddings happen? The groom was an altar boy for years and witnessed weddings. The bride was even a maid of honor in a Byzantine wedding and witnessed it for herself. But when it came for THEIR wedding, they wanted it THEIR way. Privatization of religion. what is behind this?

This is no small matter. many youths have left their churches (not only Catholic ones) over not having it their way. This is only one issue; the same privatization of religion is also found in their way of living a moral life. Why doesn't the church permit couples to shack up before marriage? Why can't they have sex if they really love each other?

Politics? Belivers are also voters. as a voter, they exercise their right to cast their vote and piece of mind. This notion of right is carried back to religion where objective or foundational ethics plays no part in decisions of moral conduct. What right I have in politics should also be permitted in my religion.

I never heard about situational ethics or fundamental options until I took a class at a Catholic college. shifting sands.

One of the biggest moral dilemmas facing the church is the issue of homosexuality. Many permission slips have been given and green lights turned on to allow this lifestyle to fester. Your Catholic seminaries have emptied where this was permitted to brew. Those seminaries that reject this are filled. A Church cannot teach that homosexuality is wrong and then permit it to brew and protect it. Here again, one is saying that the government should not grant permission for gay and lesbian marriages, but protect this same lifestyle in the own clergy. I am not pointing fingers; just mentioning another horrible example.


Eddie Hashinsky

Dear EdHash
I am NEITHER HISTORICAL NOR TEOLOGICAL Scientist ,on world webnet seeker you will find a lot information about Poland and Greek -catholic and treirs relatioshinship during this and century before, try to find information from neutral source , although truth is only one My grandparents and parents and family of my wife have been touched so hardly by authorities,
because only one reason that they were ukrainian nationality and second reason they have been greek-catholics
here is some ling where you can read more about us
God bless !


/text below is taken from this site
http://www.faswebdesign.com/ECPA/Byzantine/Ukranian.html
Ukrainian Catholics also have a significant presence in Poland. When the Soviet Union annexed most of Galicia during World War II, about 1,300,000 Ukrainians remained in Poland. In 1946 the new Polish communist authorities deported most of these Ukrainians to the Soviet Union and suppressed the Ukrainian Catholic Church. Approximately 145,000 Ukrainian Catholics dispersed around the country were able to worship openly only in the Latin rite. Only in 1957 were pastoral centers opened to serve them. In 1989 Pope John Paul II appointed a Ukrainian bishop as auxiliary to the Polish Primate. Bishop Ivan Martyniak was appointed bishop of Przemysl of the Byzantine-Ukrainian rite on January 16, 1991, thus providing Byzantine Catholics in Poland with their first diocesan bishop since the war. In the general reshaping of Polish ecclesiastical structures that took place in 1992, Przemysl was made a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Warsaw and removed from the metropolitan province of Lviv to which it had belonged since 1818. It was later made immediately subject to the Holy See. In 1996 Pope John Paul II elevated the Przemysl diocese to the rank of metropolitan see, and changed its name to Przemysl-Warsaw. At the same time, he created a new Ukrainian Catholic diocese of Wroclaw-Gdansk, making it a suffragan of the new metropolitan see of Przemysl-Warsaw. There are now about 85,000 Ukrainian Catholics in Poland.

Thanks "Bojko" for getting this back on track!

Little did the American public know at the time just how little Catholic beliefs affected JFK in politics or anywhere else! How much of what he said was "ghost-written" I don't know, but he also said "I am not the Catholic candidate for the Presidency, but a candidate for the Presidency who also happens to be a Catholic."

Amen, as far as I am concerned.

However, the legal establishment in America today, I think, is using your analysis, but turning it around: "Law rests, in fact, on no moral foundation; it rests on the exercise of power. Morality is in the eye of the beholder. Therefore, let us legally shackle all those actors in the public forum with strong moral "feelings", and a priori, all those religions which espouse them, so as to reduce the level of hostility."

Thus, the focus on "diversity" everywhere; thus, the ideal of the "inclusive" society; thus, the celebration (religion?) of the "multicultural society".

This way, there be spiders!

But this is mostly the elites in this country: academia, the law, the mass media and entertainment, etc. There is still a pretty large majority of Americans that is not happy with this approach, although many of them still do not yet agree about what a better approach (natural law principles) should be. They are beginning to see it more clearly. They probably still don't have the kind of "power" that the elites possess, since they are not particularly welcome on the usual opinion-making forums, so they are effectively not part of the day-to-day debate on TV.

Dear EdHash a few wondefuull pictures from southern -western part of modern Poland, one galery called Memory in stone http://www.pbase.com/jolka/memory_in_stone
I tri to find some galleries in english but it is difficult , just see wonderfull pictures , most of this sites in Polish language

Slava Isusu Khrystu !!
Glory To Jesus Christ!!
http://www.adamlawnik.pl/podroze/bieszczady2005/01.php
http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Europe/Poland/East/Podkarpackie/Krolik_Woloski/photo315220.htm
http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Europe/Poland/East/Podkarpackie/Krolik_Woloski/photo316456.htm
Pay attention!!!! here is very nice photogallery :
http://www.trekearth.com/themes.php?thid=2549

I only heard about situation ethics in grad school at a Catholic University in the USA!

I don't own any seminaries, nor do I so much as teach at one, so while it is likely that some seminaries have one or more of my books and articles, I cannot be responsible for what else goes on in such institutions!

Will try to return to Poland and the Greek-Catholics tomorrow. Sunday is a busy day for me!

Fr. Serge

CIX!
Bojko, thanks again for posting those, duzhe djakuju. One of our dearest friends was a lady from Mochary who was deported during Aksia Wisla and her lovely wooden Ukrainian Greek Catholic church turned into a barn. Vichnaja pamjat, Stefania.

I am confused now. My original post was regarding the distinction between personal ethics and political ethics, not the Greek Catholics in Poland topic. i think these were two originally separate threads on different topics.
Eddie

"Privatization of religion" good definition , it seems to me become very popular among young christians , may be not too young in age aroun 40, they try to change , may be not to change but to bring something new from themself into religian tradition and servise
for egzample in Poland rome catholics has Ressurection Mass now in Saturday , for now it could not happen for greek catholics/ , may be in future it is also be normal for us
aLSO MANY people /greek catholics in Poland /try to change church calendar from julian style into gregorian
members of church now can openly talk about it and our priest , hierarchy listen to it and some day take some decision

it was not possible in times of our grandparents