Catechism will help Ukrainian Catholics recover identity, bishop says
20.07, [02:11] // News // UGCC Info
By Peter Rosengren Catholic News Service, 19 July 2005 PERTH, Australia (CNS) --
The writers of the first comprehensive catechism for Ukrainian-rite Catholics hope it helps diminish the effects of the "Latinization" of the Byzantine church, said the bishop in charge of the project.
Australian Bishop Peter Stasiuk of the Ukrainian Catholic Diocese of Sts. Peter and Paul of Melbourne said Ukrainian Catholics worldwide "have become instilled" with teachings of the Latin rite.
"We attend Roman Catholic schools, we read their religious literature and we have become more or less immersed in Roman Catholic theology and tradition. No wonder our church is deeply Latinized -- to the extent that we have become so comfortable that we do not even see a need to change or to rediscover our own roots and traditions," said the bishop, who also chairs the Synodal Catechetical Commission of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
At a July 9 dinner in Perth to raise funds for Ukrainian Catholic publishing efforts, Bishop Stasiuk outlined the basic structure of the draft catechism and said it was developed at the recommendation of Pope John Paul II so Ukrainian Catholics could move closer to their original identity.
"It is time for all of us to realize the serenity of our own Ukrainian soul. It is time to take the bold steps necessary to place into the hands of (Ukrainian Catholics) a depository of faith, on what it means to be a Ukrainian Catholic," he said.
The new catechism, expected to be published in 2007, is titled "Christ our Paskha," Bishop Stasiuk said. "Paskha" is the Ukrainian term for Easter.
The catechism, a draft of which is 600 pages long, will be divided into three sections: "Our Faith," "Our Prayer" and "Our Life," he said.
The first section will explore the Nicene Creed, the Ukrainian Catholic liturgy and how God has revealed himself, Bishop Stasiuk said. The second section will focus on prayer and the liturgy and will follow the cycles of the day and the year in the prayer life of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, he said. The last section will be dedicated to morality.
The "thread that will keep the catechism" together will be the prayers of St. Basil the Great recited during the act of consecration during the liturgy, he said.
The first Ukrainian-rite catechism was produced by a Ukrainian Catholic saint and martyr, St. Josaphat, in 1618. Subsequent catechisms were strongly influenced by Latin-rite theology, which marginalized Eastern theology and traditions and ways of understanding faith, Bishop Stasiuk said.
Like the "Catechism of the Catholic Church" produced in 1992, the catechism for Ukrainian Catholics will abandon the question-and-answer format popular in past catechisms, he said.
� Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, 2005
