www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Cardinal Sandri visiting Ukraine

I think you are right. Despite all the protest to the contrary, the Ukrainian Catholic Church is C-a-t-h-o-l-i-c
In the Catholic Church, the office of patriarch is nowhere near the same as in the Orthodox Churches. Patriarch is a largely honorary title in the Catholic Church, not a title of authority equal to that of the pope. Now that may wound the pride of some UGCC members, but I think you have just stated fact, Amado. Then there's the matter of relations with the ROC. The Russian Patriarch would go ballistic if Pope Benedict either granted or affirmed the title of patriarch for the UGCC, despite the fact that the current UGCC leader is certainly deserving of the title and more.

What�s the argument for erecting a patriarchate for the Greek Catholic church in Ukraine?
The argument is that when an Eastern church reaches a certain consistency, unity, size, consolidation and so forth, it�s a normal step. Furthermore, among the Orthodox it�s often been a normal step taken illegally. For example, the Bulgarians were under the Patriarchate of Constantinople, who according to Orthodox practice, imposed upon them a Greek hierarchy, until the Bulgarians had enough and declared their independence, erecting their own patriarchate. Constantinople refused to recognize it, until they finally realized that nothing�s going to change and so they recognized it. Frankly, my advice to the Ukrainians has always been to do the same thing. Just declare the patriarchate and get on with it. Do it, of course, only if you�ve got the bishops unanimously behind it �

Do they?
Yes, I think they do now. The danger is that if there are even two people who say no, then Rome�s going to say that the bishops are divided and we can�t recognize it. I told them, take two steps. First, publicly declare the patriarchate. Second, request Roman recognition, but even if it doesn�t come, refuse all mail that doesn�t come addressed to the patriarchate. Don�t just pretend, but really do it. The Secretary of State sends a letter addressed to the archbishop? We don�t have any archbishop, we�ve got a patriarch. Send it back unopened, �addressee unknown.�

Why erect it in Kiev rather than L�viv, where the Greek Catholics in the Ukraine are traditionally concentrated?
You have to understand, and this is something that anyone who knows any history has to sympathize with, that Kiev, �Kievan Rus� as they call it, is the heartland of all Orthodoxy among the East Slavs � Belorussians, Ukrainians, and the Russians. To ask one of them to renounce Kiev is like asking the Christians to give Jerusalem over to the Jews, to say we really don�t have any interest there anymore. It�s ridiculous. �

Furthermore, there was a time when all of Ukraine west of the Dnepr River was in union with Rome, and the presiding hierarch was in Kiev. It�s not like there�s never been a Ukrainian Catholic bishop of Kiev, a metropolitan of Kiev. But, you know, you don�t resolve this on the basis of history. History is instructive but not normative. �

Kiev in Ukraine is like Paris in France. L�viv, even though it�s a lovely town, is still a backwater. You�re dealing with a church that has spread beyond the old Galician boundaries, in other words the Western Ukrainian boundaries of its existence. In the modern world people spread all over the place. Even though this is still the heartland, there are Ukrainian Greek Catholics not only throughout Eastern Ukraine but also across Russia, Kazakhstan, you name it. These people have a right to be served. Furthermore, one of the ugly secrets that no one talks about is that it�s quite possible that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church is the largest group of practicing Christians in the country, East or West. I�m talking about those who go to church. You ask the Orthodox in the Ukraine, �How big are you?� and they say, �310 parishes.� But ask them �Who goes to church?� and they say, �We don�t know.� �Eastern� and �statistics� is an oxymoron. One thing that characterizes Ukrainian Catholics is that they go to church, and they practice. Why was the Russian Orthodox church so upset at losing that area back to the Catholic church? That�s where their vocations came from, and that�s where their money came from. Collect a statistic sometime of how many priests who were ordained in the Russian Orthodox church from the end of World War II until the day before yesterday came from Western Ukraine. Certainly it would be an overwhelmingly unbalanced proportion with respect to the size of the Orthodox population.

By the way, almost all the Ukrainian Orthodox today are Catholics who had been forced into the Orthodox Church and for one reason or another remained Orthodox.

Aside from Orthodox sensitivities, is there any argument against erecting a patriarchate in Ukraine?
Oh, good heavens, no. That is, unless you want to ask the question of what right Rome has to erect an Eastern patriarchate anyway. Basically, the scuttlebutt is that the pope said to the Ukrainians, if you can convince Kasper, it�s okay with me. Kasper of course is going to oppose it, and should. Kasper has been given the job of building bridges with the Orthodox, not to dynamite them. I perfectly sympathize. What Kasper�s doing is not following his own personal tastes and needs. He�s doing his job.

But there�s no intra-Catholic reason to object to the patriarchate?
Are you kidding? We�ve got a patriarchate for the Copts whose total membership would fit in this room, for God�s sake. Give me a break. Maybe there shouldn�t be, that�s another question, but there is.

What it is that bothers the Orthodox so much about the idea of a Ukrainian patriarchate?What bothers them is the very existence of these churches. They look upon all of these people as their property that has been won away, coaxed away, forced away from them. And they�re right. But what they don�t realize is that you just cannot collapse history the way they do. It�s like going on a visit to Greece to the beach because you want to get a suntan, and some jerk points his finger at you as if you fought in the Fourth Crusade. Most Westerners don�t even know what the hell the Fourth Crusade was, and don�t need to know. You�re dealing with people who collapse history as if it happened yesterday. Let me use my classic example of the Anglicans. Does anybody think that Henry VIII took a plebiscite to see if the Catholics in England wanted to separate from Rome? No, they got up one morning and found that they were no longer Catholics. But that�s 500 years ago. It certainly doesn�t mean that the Catholic church could enter England with an army today and force all those people back into the fold. The same thing is true in Ukraine. These people, the Greek Catholics, have been in the Catholic church since 1596, and want to remain there. The Orthodox propose, and it�s hard to even take this seriously, that Eastern Catholics should be given the �free choice� of joining the Orthodox church or joining the Latin church. That�s like telling African-Americans in Georgia that because you�re the descendants of somebody who got dragged there, you can have the �free choice� of living in Albania or Uganda. Maybe they want to stay where they were born, right in the good old USA. To call that a �free choice� is a mockery of language.

The Orthodox say that Union of 1596 was dissolved in 1946.
Everybody knows what a comedy that was. Even the secret police who organized the thing have spilled the beans in print. As everybody knows, all of the bishops of the Catholic church were arrested, so how can you have a synod without bishops? The two or three bishops who were there had been ordained as Orthodox bishops, therefore they were not Catholic bishops, therefore they could not in any canonical way preside over a Catholic synod. Everybody knows this.

So what is the real issue for the Orthodox?
They look upon the whole area of Kievan Rus, which includes what is now Ukraine as well as Muscovy and the area around Novgarod, those are the three historic centers, as their heartland. This would be like for the papacy having somebody come in and take over Italy.

So they�re afraid of a domino effect?
To attempt to apply rational analysis to this is to fail to understand what the East is. Once you get over on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, the further you go South or East from anywhere, the worse everything gets, except the food. Logic gets worse, rationality gets worse, and everything ultimately winds up in hysteria and emotionalism. It�s futile to try and reason about this.

So the Catholic church is never going to persuade the Orthodox to accept the patriarchate?
No, and I don�t think we should even try. To hell with Moscow.

Is it not so different as the decades it took for such patriarchates as Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia to be recognized by other Churches?

What is a KP Global Moderator?

Fr. Serge

I am somewhat surprised with Romania, since there has been contact between the KP and the Romanian Patriarch.

Romanian Orthodox Church Denies the Church's Knowledge of a Visit with Patriarch Filaret of UOC-KP
24.06.2008, [15:29] // Inter-Christian relations //

The Department of External Church Relations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church approached the external relations department of the Romanian Patriarchate with a request to clarify the visit of the Superior of one of the monasteries of the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC),
Protocyncel Modest, to the residence of Patriarch Filaret, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kyivan Patriarchate. During the visit, the protocyncel Modest assured UOC-KP representatives of the ROC's support for the aspiration of UOC-KP to establish the localUkrainian Orthodox Church. RISU's Ukrainian-language web page posted this story on 20 June.

According to the site of UOC-MP, a representative of the Department of the ROC, the patriarch's advisor Fr. Mykhail Titsa, commented on the situation stating that Protocyncel Modest was not authorized to make such statements or speak on behalf of the Romanian Patriarch and that if such statements were indeed made, they contradict the position of the ROC. The ROC recognizes only the Ukrainian Orthodox Church headed by Metropolitan Volodymyr (Sabodan). The patriarch's
advisor also said that an investigation began regarding the actions of the protocyncel and the UOC would be informed of the results.

http://www.risu.org.ua/eng/news/article;22882/

If you are talking about eh article that the Romanian Orthodox Church recognises the KP you are wrong. Unfortunately, RISU posted this article denying that The Romanians support to UOC-KP. the Romanians themselves post something similar on their Church web site. To visit a church and to support inter-communion are 2 different things. Let us not follow that route please.

What is a KP Global Moderator?

Fr. Serge

No, as I stated factually in my post, there has been contact between the KP and the Romanian hierarchy[/color]. I used no other word.

I do not think the KP clergy I know who have seen and spoken to the Romanian representatives would be fabricating the story. What was said seems to be what is subject to some interpretation, and indeed I will not go there.

I am somewhat surprised with Romania, since there has been contact between the KP and the Romanian Patriarch.

Ukrainian Orthodox Church � Moscow Patriarchate Head Meets Cardinal Leonardo Sandri
16.07.2008, [08:04] // UOC-MP //

Kyiv� On 14 July, Metropolitan Volodymyr of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church received in his residence in the Kyivan Monastery of the Caves the Prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches of the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, who is visiting Ukraine on an invitation of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
According to the site of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church � Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), Metropolitan Volodymyr explained to Cardinal Sandri about the condition of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine and about the preparation for the celebration of the 1020th anniversary of the baptism of Kyivan Rus.

In answer to Metropolitain Volodymyr�s questions, Cardinal Sandri thanked him for the opportunity to venerate the head of St. Pope Clement in one of the Monastery�s Churches. The guest shared his impressions of the visit to the caves and veneration of the local saints. The hierarchs discussed the issues of the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue, possible joint actions in the way towards renewal of the lost unity and questions of the Theological education in the Catholic Church. Cardinal Sandri shared the Vatican�s plans as to a possible reform of the papal Russicum college, where Orthodox students from Russia and Ukraine still study.

Is it not so different as the decades it took for such patriarchates as Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia to be recognized by other Churches?
Diak