The Roman Catholic Clergy, the Byzantine Slavonic Rite and Polish National Identity: The Case of Grabowiec, 1931-34

Abstract

In November 1918 Poland returned to the map of Europe as an independent state. After its borders were finalised in 1921-22 Poland was a distinctly multinational state, with approximately one-third of its population being ethnic Poles. Two of the largest minority groups were the Ukrainians and Belarusians, who resided in Poland's eastern and south-eastern kresy (borderlands).2 Until the First World War, however, the territory these groups lived on was part of the Russian and AustroHungarian Empires. Indeed, the Ukrainians lived divided between the two empires. At the chaotic conclusion of the First World War both the Ukrainians and Belarusians made unsuccessful bids for independence. For the former this included a bloody war with the Poles in 1918-19. Prior to the partitioning of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Russia, Prussia and Austria in the late eighteenth century, the majority of the Ukrainians and Belarusians of this state adhered to the Greek Catholic (Uniate) rite in the Roman Church. The Uniate Church was created through the Union of Brest of 1596, engineered to bring the Commonwealth's Christian Orthodox believers under Rome's jurisdiction. In Russia the Uniate Church did not survive the partition years; it was abolished in the Western Provinces in 1839 and in the Kingdom of Poland in 1875. The Uniates were forced to adopt Russian Orthodoxy, though some resisted. In Galicia (the territory acquired by Austria in the partitions), however, the Uniate Church continued to thrive. Indeed, it was in Galicia that the Ukrainian national movement matured during the nineteenth century, with Uniate clerics playing an important role in this process. By the time of the Polish-Ukrainian war in 1918-19 religious lines strongly reinforced, if not wholly defined for many people, their national identity: Poles were Catholic and Ukrainians were Uniate. On the other hand, because of Russia's religious-nationality policies of the last century, many Ukrainians (and most Belarusians) were also Orthodox. As the First World War created a new, exhilarating reality (i.e. independence) for the Polish nation, so it created new opportunities for one of its leading advocates, the Catholic Church. The church was in the forefront of the struggle for Polish independence in the nineteenth century. In 1918 it finally acquired the opportunity to shape Polish society according to a Catholic vision. It encountered, however, a Poland whose population included many non-Poles and non-Catholics. One of the greatest challenges the Catholic Church faced after 1918-21 was how to deal with the