UKRAINIAN CHURCH IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY: GREEK-CATHOLIC STUDIES IN THE INTERWAR LVIV

Abstract

During the interwar years, the problem of self-affirmation for the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), the search for its identity was necessary. Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky called for church-historical research, especially church-ritual history, Byzantine (Greek) liturgy comparing the situation of the UGCC with the time of the Union of Brest.This article shows the contribution of Ukrainian historians who lived and worked in the interwar period in Lviv. They studied the history of the Ukrainian Church, its rites, and the role of the Ukrainian people. Proceeding from the mentioned purpose, they also studied the conditions of development, organizational and institutional peculiarities and concepts of the religious ceremonial practices of the Greek Catholic studies.In the opinion of Metropolitan Andrey, the success of the implementation of «union plans» depends on a careful study of the history of the Church and the Byzantine rite and liturgy. The significant efforts of the Metropolitan were to organize the study of the history of the Ukrainian Church in the Ukrainian territory. Lviv was the place of the greatest concentration of interwar Ukrainian scholarly Greek Catholic centers where church-historical experiments were put on professional level. Here the Ukrainian church-historical science was represented by: the centers of the UGCC (Theological Scientific Society and its printed organs (the magazine «Theology», the multi-volume «Proceedings of the BNT», the series «Publishing BNT», etc.)), the National Museum of Lviv, the Archive of Union History, the Basilian Scientific Center (Central Basilian Archives and Library and the Magazine «Notes of the Order of St. Basil the Great»).The great interest of scholars raised the issue of the origins of Christianity and the beginnings of religious ritual practice in Ukraine. According to their studies, from the very beginning of its existence, the Ukrainian Church used the Greek rite Byzantine liturgy, which in general did not prevent it from creating an original Christian culture and not endangering the loss of individuality.In order to reconstruct the ancient ritual forms, traditions and customs, Lviv scholars paid special attention to the study of the church ritual of the time of the adoption of the Union of Brest in 1596 and then afterwards. The scholars expressed the view that the independence of the Ukrainian Church was guaranteed only with the inviolability of the Eastern rituals tradition. However, this was hampered by the pressure of latinization, which began to be acutely manifested after the conclusion of the Union of Brest.