Greek Catholic Research Articles

Positive Influence: Negotiating a Church Historiographical Canon with the West

The present article discusses the way in which the historiographical canon on the history of the Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches in Transylvania during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was reconceptualized during and in the aftermath of the academic visit of Western specialists in Romania. Keith Hitchins’s visit to Romania in the early 1970s to undertake research in the church archives for his work on the history of the Romanian intelligentsia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire made an impact on how the history of the Greek Catholic Church was portrayed in the religious journals of the Romanian Orthodox Church. The subtle shifts in the canon included distinguishing the Greek Catholics from the Orthodox in Transylvania and reintroducing the Greek Catholic interwar historiography into the interpretation.

Approaches of the Greek Catholic Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky to the National and Confessional Issues at the Beginning of the 20th Century

The article examines the approaches of the Greek Catholic Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky to the national and confessional issues at the beginning of the 20th century. Sheptytsky’s views are placed in the context of the views of his contemporaries, both collaborators and figures who had a different national and/or confessional option. Identified through the analysis of the texts of Metropolitan Andrey set of his views on the Christian world and its constituent confessions (Catholics of various rites, Orthodox, especially Russian Orthodox and Old Believers, Protestants) is presented. Certain features of Christian universalism in Sheptytsky’s interpretation are revealed, including the concept of «Christian people» as one of the occurrences of the Christian world at the national level. A conclusion about the most important priority in the activities of Metropolitan Andrey is drawn. It is concluded that the most important priority in the activities of Metropolitan Andrey was the desire to unite all Christians. He had an idea of how this process might develop. The main role was assigned to the Russian Orthodox Church, which, in his opinion, should have realized its unity with the Catholic Church.

Between Transcendental and National: Wooden Churches of Slovakia

ABSTRACT The Eastern Carpathian Mountain region is home to Slavic peoples, who celebrate the bringing of Christianity by Saints Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century. The mountainous region retains small village churches, some dating from the eighteenth century, each established within agrarian communities by Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox denominations. Despite village subjugation under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Nazi occupation, Russian “liberation” and Socialist-era suppression of non-Orthodox denominations, these exquisite vernacular structures have remained and illustrate the continuing transcendental experience for worshipers but also now shared with those who celebrate them as symbols of national resistance, as well as tourists who come to experience them as UNESCO World Heritage sites. Sharing a common church object, traditional typological and formal aesthetic approaches that have been established by researchers for these structures are contrasted against a phenomenologically rooted set of embodied modes for meaning across examples from extant structures within Slovakia. Embodied approaches provide, via modes of lived experience, a deep offering into what each church shares with their ecological landscape, village, and history; a holistic visceral tapestry key to their appreciation complimenting the typological and differently affirming their continuing value.

Chortkiv Deanery of the Stanislaviv Greek Catholic Eparchy in 1939-1946

The purpose of the article is an objective study of the historical development of the Chortkiv Deanery of the Stanislaviv Diocese of the Galician Metropolis of the Greek Catholic Church during the Second World War of 1939-1945 and the establishment of Soviet power in Galicia in 1945-1946, which led to the forced liquidation of the UGCC and its transformation into a “catacomb” church. Research methodology: the basic methods are microhistorical, biographical and prosopographic. The scientific novelty is that for the first time the peculiarities of the historical development of the Chortkiv Deanery of the Stanislaviv Eparchy of the UGCC during the Second World War and the “second Sovietization” of Galicia (1939-1946) are analyzed. Conclusions: The authors show the specifics of church-state relations, the mutual influence of political and ecclesiastical administrative-territorial divisions in the process of liquidation of the UGCC, and the role of individual priests in the events of this time.

Biographical Dictionary of the Clergy of the Stanislaviv (Ivano-Frankivsk) Diocese - Metropolitanate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (1885–2020). Part 3: Biograms for the letter "A", issue 3

The purpose of the article is to publish fragments of a biographical dictionary - biographies of priests with the letter "A". Research methodology: biographical and prosopographical methods are outlined as the main ones in the process of implementing this project. The scientific novelty is that the publication of the second part of the series of biographies (biographical notes) of representatives of the clergy of the Stanislaviv Diocese under the letter "A" has been carried out. This publication includes the biographies of such persons as Andriishyn Mykhailo (1876–1938) and Andriishyn Yakiv (1845–1918). Conclusions: The reconstruction of the biographies of Greek Catholic priests (on the letter "A"), based on a significant source base, proves their active activity not only in the church and religious, but also in the political, public, economic and cultural spheres of the life of the Ukrainian people.

Russian Orthodoxy used by the Soviet, Moscow-Kremlin authorities to destroy Ukrainian religion and culture

The greatest tragedy for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church occurred under the totalitarian Stalinist regime. Using the nineteenth-century proven scenarios of the tsarist autocratic Orthodox authorities' massacres of Uniates and Roman Catholics, the Soviet authorities used this historical experience to abolish the Union of Brest, sever the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church's ties with the Vatican, and “reunite the Uniates” (Greek Catholics), as they said in Moscow at the time, “with their mother, the Russian Orthodox Church” (1946).

Historical Development of the Rozhnyativ Deanery of the Lviv Archdiocese of the Greek Catholic Church (1907-1946)

The article examines the historical development of the Rozhnyativ deanery of the Lviv Archdiocese of the Greek Catholic Church. The structure and activities of the parish network during 1907-1946 are highlighted. The key role of the Church in the development of parish communities is revealed.

The process of transition of the UGCC to the new calendar

Starting September 1, 2023, the Synod of Bishops of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church will eliminate the error of the old Julian calendar and church holidays will correspond to the astronomical calendar that our society lives by. For the past 123 years, we have been living according to a calendar that lagged behind the astronomical calendar by 13 days.

UGCC's Mission in Ecumenical Dialogue: Relations with Eastern Catholic Churches

The article, based on a generalization of historical facts, examines the active status of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) in the system of Eastern Catholic Churches (ECC) by clarifying the specifics of their emergence and development, reveals the special role of the UGCC in ecumenical communication between the Eastern Catholic Churches, and outlines the prospects of this movement in the process of establishing and strengthening relations between Catholics and Orthodox in Ukraine and around the world. The authors propose to use the results of the study to correct the Ecumenical Concept of the UGCC, complementing the strategy of the UGCC in matters of interfaith communication with concrete steps in cooperation with the ECC.

Fragments of the Ukrainian Book Collections in the Ossolineum’s Holdings of Early Printed Books in Wrocław

The article describes fragments of book collections from five Ukrainian institutions – the Shevchenko Scientific Society, the “Studion” in Lviv, “Ridna Shkola” Ukrainian Pedagogical Society, the National Museum in Lviv, and the Greek Catholic Chapter in Przemyśl – which are currently housed in the Early Printed Books Department at the Ossolineum in Wrocław. In addition to the list of books from these collections, the publication provides a brief overview of their history and fortunes after World War II and the circumstances under which these books found their way to the collection of the Ossoliński National Institute in Wrocław.

The Role of Prešov Bishop Pavol Gojdič in the Defence of the Religious Freedom of the Greek Catholics in Czechoslovakia

Pavel Gojdii, the bishop of Prešov, is now perceived by Slovak society as a symbol of the struggle against fascism and communism in the 20th century. The bishop’s actions and opinions strengthened his contemporaries in the struggle for religious freedom, and even today he is an inspiration in the defense of democracy. In the 20th century, he played a key role in the Greek Catholic Church with an outreach to the whole of society. He was able to actively speak out in favor of the persecuted Jews and during the communist period he resisted the oppression of the regime in order to save the maximum of the Greek Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia. The text of the article highlights his significant role in the defense of religious freedom under both political regimes. It cites specific events that highlighted his views. Particular attention is paid to the process of interrogation and his imprisonment, where he was subjected to torture and oppression by the communist regime. Ten years in prison enhanced the positive features of his personality and left a strong legacy in the memory of his fellow prisoners and society, who learned of his fate vicariously after his martyrdom and during the beatification process in the 1990s.

Condemned by Communists as the “Vatican’s spy”: the Biography of Catholic Priest Ștefan Tătaru

In Romania, the list of “enemies” of the Communist totalitarian regimes included church representatives, and those who had connections with the Vatican (thus belonging to the Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic Churches) held a special importance. Decree 358 of 1 December 1948 declared the official end of Greek Catholic “cult” activities, and many officials, clergy and simple believers drew the attention of the Communist authorities and the Securitate. Among them was the Greek Catholic priest Ștefan Tătaru. In 1950, he accepted the position of clandestine Greek Catholic vicar general in Bucharest for Oltenia, Muntenia, Moldova and Dobrudja. For this, on 30 January 1951, he was arrested and sentenced to hard labour for life for the “the crime of high treason”/ “high treason to the nation in favour of the Vatican”. He served his sentence in some of the toughest prisons in the Communist prison system and was released on 3 August 1964. After his release, he remained under the surveillance of the Securitate until the fall of the Communist regime.

Introduction

With the establishment of communism in Eastern Europe, the churches found themselves in a precarious situation after the traumatic experiences of the Second World War. The churches were challenged to coexist with autocratic regimes. Institutionally weakened by the attempts of political power to limit their autonomy, the churches were confronted with the overthrow of the socio-political order by the Soviet-backed installation of communist regimes. The Soviet model of the communisation of societies was also adopted by the regimes loyal to Moscow in terms of religious policy, which for most churches, it meant public and political marginalisation in exchange for limited autonomy. Thus, the regimes’ religious policies, which were not aimed at the total elimination of religious life and, implicitly, of the churches, included a range of practices and instruments that involved institutional control, informational surveillance and political repression. A special case was the Greek Catholic Church, which was abolished and its clergy and bishops repressed. These methodological premises served as the basis for organising the international conference “Churches and Political Power During Communism. Individual Biographies and Institutional Mechanisms”, which brought together leading scholars from Poland, Hungary, the Republic of Moldova and Romania in Alba Iulia from 21 to 23 September 2023. This academic meeting resulted in the publication of the present volume, which includes the most representative contributions. This volume is the result of a collaboration between the LIT publishing house and Annales Universitatis Apulensis (Alba Iulia), which publishes the volume as a special issue of this journal.

Enlightened and Counter-Revolutionary: Revisiting the Origins of Galician Ruthenian Nation-Building

Abstract This article offers an alternative focus for the study of the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) nation-building in early Austrian Galicia. It portrays elite Greek Catholic churchmen who made political claims about a self-standing Ruthenian nation already in the first decade of the nineteenth century. It argues that their political innovations were enabled by the ambitious state-building projects implemented in the second half of the eighteenth century by the Austrian government, most importantly new seminaries that cultivated an ethos of state service among Catholic clergymen. The early Ruthenian nationalism espoused by Greek Catholic prelates neither aspired to mobilize masses nor ascribed much importance to language rights, the kernel of nationalist struggles in later periods. It was rather a polemical device deployed to legitimize their rejection of the Polish national allegiance, associated with dynamically evolving republican traditions. By locating the Galician Ruthenian case in a regional comparative perspective, the article outlines the broader significance of this interpretation, interrogating some received wisdoms about the so-called non-historical nationalisms of Central and Eastern Europe.

The Interest of the Convert: Marius Theodorian-Carada and the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church in the First Decades of the 20th Century

The present study aims to present the situation of the Greek-Catholic community in Bucharest in the first decades of the 20th Century, starting from the reports that Marius Theodorian-Carada sent to the Holy See at that time. As a convert to Greek Catholicism in 1908, Theodorian-Carada showed an increased interest in the situation of the Greek Catholic believers in Bucharest during the interwar period, more precisely after the parish of Saint Basil the Great had been placed under the authority of the Greek- Catholic Archdiocese of Blaj. The present paper covers the intellectual profile of the convert, his continuous activism for the cause of the union of the Orthodox Church in Romania with the Catholic Church and, above all, the solutions that Theodorian- Carada proposed in response to the most urgent problems that the Romanian Greek Catholic Church was facing at that time. Last but not least, our study sheds light, based on archival documents, on the perspective that the Nunciature from Bucharest and the Greek- Catholic hierarchy had on the issues raised. Keywords: Greek-Catholic Parish of Saint Basil in Bucharest, union of Churches, liturgical language, religious press, Greek-Catholics in the Old Romanian Kingdom

The main areas of research of Bishop Sofron Mudryi in the history of the Church

The article analyzes the outstanding contribution of Bishop Sofron (Stepan) Mudryy of Ivano-Frankivsk to the development of theological thought of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in general and the study of the history of Ukrainian Christianity in particular. Through the analytical prism of biographical data about Bishop Sofron, the main milestones/stages of his formation as a full-fledged professional ecclesiological historian are outlined. Also taken into account and sufficiently considered are his key developments of historiographical nature and autobiographical memoirs of his own life, which allowed to synthesize a number of selected positions from the research heritage for a vivid presentation of the phenomenon of Bishop Sofon Mudryi as a follower of the classical Catholic concepts of theology of history.

Features of the educational process and formation of priests at the Ivano-Frankivsk Theological-Catechetical Theological Institute - Ivano-Frankivsk Theological Academy under the leadership of Bishop Sofron Mudryi

The article examines the peculiarities of the educational process and spiritual formation of seminarians - future priests of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church during the administration of Bishop Sofron Mudryi at the Ivano-Frankivsk Spiritual Seminary, the Ivano-Frankivsk Theological and Catechetical Institution, and later the Ivano-Frankivsk Theological Academy. This work highlights the important aspects of Bishop Sofron in ensuring the formation process, where he contributed to the comprehensive growth of future ministers. Also, the special efforts of the rector were analyzed, which were aimed at the high spiritual and intellectual education of seminarians following the example of European higher educational institutions. In addition, the article highlights a wide range of theological publishing activities of Sophron Mudryi, which were used by candidates for the priesthood to obtain quality theological education.

On the Contribution of Bishop Sofron Mudryi to the Development of Theological Education and Science of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

The purpose of the article is to highlight the personal contribution of Bishop Sofron the Wise to the formation and development of theological education and science institutions during the period of revival and active development of the structures of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in independent Ukraine. Research methodology: involves the use of the biographical method to reveal the main stages of the life of Bishop Sofron Mudryi, as well as the method of structural and functional analysis to describe the processes of formation of both individual institutions and the integral system of theological education and science of the UGCC in Ukraine. The scientific novelty is that, based on the analysis of the latest research by national historians, the significant role of Bishop Sofron Mudryi in the process of restoring and developing theological education institutions of the UGCC in Ivano-Frankivsk, in the process of establishing the synodal program of theological education of the UGCC, and in the formation of the human resources of the UGCC through the training of specialists in various fields of theological science in Ukraine and abroad is substantiated.

The building gift of Bishop Sofron Mudryi: Church-Education-Culture

Behind the scant encyclopedic information about Sofron Stefan Mudryi, whose 100th birthday we are celebrating, Bishop of Ivano-Frankivsk of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, there appears a majestic figure of a builder - a builder of the Church, education, and culture. Today we sincerely wonder how this man concentrated so much intelligence - not for nothing that he was called Mudryi (Sofron means prudent in Greek), so many talents, so much faith, so much love, so much efficiency, so much patriotism. Sofron Mudryi is one of the famous Ukrainians in the diaspora who made a fateful decision in 1991, immediately after Ukraine gained independence. They exchanged their measured, orderly life abroad for hard work - they began to revive/rebuild a free Ukraine. For many, this man is a symbol of the Christianity of a Ukrainian and the Christianity of a Ukrainian.

Freedom of Religion and the State-Canonical Status of the Orthodox Church during the Period of the Ukrainian State of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi

The article analyses the state of affairs with the implementation of freedom of religion in the Ukrainian State of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi in the context of the religious structure of the population. On the basis of the legal acts of the Ukrainian State, in particular, of a constitutional nature, and the directions of the Ministry of Confessions, it was established that the interests of religious minorities in the state were adequately provided for and met their basic needs for functioning, if their activities were not of a political nature. In particular, this is demonstrated by the example of large Christian non-Orthodox denominations (Catholicism, Greek Catholicism, evangelical denominations). It has been proven that Orthodoxy, professed by the majority of Ukrainians, was the state religion, which was reflected both in legislation and in the strategic cooperation of the Hetman government with the Church. It is emphasized that Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi played a decisive role in the position of interaction with the Orthodox Church and its development within the framework of the national cultural policy of the Ukrainian State, which was helped by the image of Hetman as a classical monarch from the point of view of the Orthodox clergy. It was noted that the priority issue for the authorities and Orthodox hierarchs was the canonical status of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, which, to the satisfaction of both, established itself in autonomy, but could not rise to autocephaly due to the geopolitical situation and the general mood of Ukrainian believers. Hence, the establishment of the autonomous status of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine became a logical consequence of the activity of the All-Ukrainian Church Council, which acted in accordance with the canons, and therefore such a status of the Church could not be questioned.