The Plight of the Ukrainian Catholic Church under Glasnost
by Andriy Chirovsky
With the advent of glasnost and perestroika under Mikhail Gorbachev, all people of good will are expected to be properly edified by the amazing progress which the Soviet Union is making in treating its citizens as human beings. It is therefore particularly agonizing for the five million or so Ukrainian Catholics in the U.S.S.R. and their one million brothers and sisters beyond the borders to watch as the world politely overlooks the difficult truth. The truth is that the state-controlled Russian Orthodox church (Moscow patriarchate), which has led a relatively privileged existence (among Soviet religious groups), has benefited tremendously under perestroika, while the severely persecuted Ukrainian Catholic church has in the same period seen no end to repressions, and in fact, has experienced a renewed onslaught from the government working together with the Moscow patriarchate.
The frightening thing is that the rest of the world does not want to hear about this, let alone do anything about it. People find it refreshing that the Moscow patriarchate is featured on Soviet television, that Gorbachev has met with Patriarch Pimen, that hundreds of Russian Orthodox Churches are being opened. Indeed, it is cause for rejoicing, since the many simple believers of the Russian Orthodox church deserve this. It is cause for rejoicing, but it is not cause for forgetfulness. The millions of Ukrainian Catholics who have not reaped the benefits of restructuring cannot be swept under the carpet, as if their mortal peril were a case of needless whining. There are many in the West who are rightly tired of years of cold war and vociferous animosity toward the Soviet Union. Wanting to “get on with things” and be friendly with the Russians has caused some to grow impatient with those who, in their view, hold on to old hurts, such as the Ukrainian Catholics. But the simple truth is that the Ukrainian Catholics are the victims of new hurts, a dangerous new situation conceivable only in the heady days of perestroika.
Who are the Ukrainian Catholics?
Eusebius of Caesarea, following Origen, who based himself on “ancient tradition” placed the apostolic ministry of St. Andrew in Scythia, on the northern shores of the Black Sea, which is modern Ukraine.1 While there was certainly some Christian presence in this part of the world through the centuries, it was not until 988 that the ruler of Kievan Rus’ (do not confuse Rus’ with the similar name Russia), Vladimir the Great, accepted Christianity himself and initiated the general Christianization of his people.2 Soon, the Ukrainian countryside would become Christian. Missionaries would go north as well, often risking their lives, but in the end bringing Christianity as well to the tribes who would someday form the nucleus of the Muscovite or Russian people. The Christianity which Vladimir accepted was Eastern. It was from the Byzantines that the Christian tradition flowed to Kiev.
While relations between Constantinople and Rome were somewhat strained at this point, it must be noted that Vladimir’s court, and that of his successors, was known for its simultaneous reception of Papal legates and its anti-Latin polemics. The situation was certainly ambiguous. In time, the alienation of East and West grew into schism and the heirs of St. Vladimir found themselves on the Orthodox side. Still, there were several efforts to heal the rift and the bishops of Rus’ always figured prominently in them.3 This is in stark contrast to the other, more oblique inheritors of the tradition of Kievan Christianity, the Muscovites.
Finally, at the end of the sixteenth century, the Ruthenian bishops (whom we would today call Byelorussians and Ukrainians) concluded a union with Rome, commonly called the Union of Berest, for the town in which the ceremony of union was officially conducted.4 Many Ukrainians resisted the union and by 1620 a new Orthodox hierarchy was ordained for Ukraine. Attempts at reconciliation between the Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox hierarchies were unsuccessful, due in large measure to the interference of Ukraine’s imperialist neighbors, the Latin Catholic Poles5 and the Orthodox and virulently anti-Catholic Muscovites. In the years to come both Ukrainian groups would suffer badly at the hands of these intruding powers.
After a long period of steady encroachment, the Russian czars finally succeeded in occupying a portion of Ukrainian territory. They immediately set about a course of action that would completely outlaw the Ukrainian Catholic church and forcibly subject the older Ukrainian Orthodox church to the newly established patriarchate of Moscow.6 With very few exceptions, both of these Ukrainian churches with their ancient traditions were destroyed wherever Moscow’s power reached and the state-controlled Russian Orthodox church was installed in their place. The Ukrainian Catholic church, further reinforced by the Union of Uzhorod in Transcarpathia in the mid-seventeenth century and the decision of the bishops of Galicia in western Ukraine to opt for the union, was to survive only in those areas which found themselves under the enlightened rule of the Hapsburgs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Ukrainian Orthodox church would have to wait until the chaos following World War I to reassert itself.
Eventually, Soviet Russian rule would bring upon both these churches the same fate which the czars had intended long before: complete obliteration on an official level, and the substitution of the Russian Orthodox church as a religious body more easily controlled and also quite useful for the Russification of the Ukrainian populace. But both of these churches live on. The Ukrainian Catholic church, after being officially absorbed by force into the Moscow patriarchate in 1946, continues to function with a dozen or so bishops and over a thousand priests, with clandestine convents and seminaries, secret catechetical instruction and illegal worship. The Ukrainian Orthodox church had all of its hierarchy destroyed and did not succeed in retaining an underground structure, but lives on in the hearts of many. There are now committees forming to reestablish this church and several priests have come forward in this regard.7
Efforts at Legalization
It was in the latter part of 1987 that the Ukrainian Catholic hierarchy in the Soviet Union decided to “come out of the underground.” This meant that several of the bishops, along with a number of priests and laypeople announced that they would no longer hide, but would practice their religion openly, asking the government for official recognition as a religious body, so that churches, clergy, and congregations could be registered in the name of the Ukrainian Catholics.8 The confusion of Gorbachev’s perestroika had set in and the Ukrainian Catholics would take advantage of it to claim for themselves the rights supposedly guaranteed them in the Soviet constitution. Petitions with thousands of signatures would flow to Moscow, but no response was forthcoming from the regime. Arrests, detentions, searches, fines, and general harassment continued for the clergy and lay leaders of the Ukrainian Catholic church.9
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