The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church on Ecumenism

THE UKRAINIAN GREEK-CATHOLIC CHURCH ON ECUMENISM SOME COMMENTS ON A RECENT DOCUMENT NATALIA KOCHAN* At their last meeting in Baltimore in July 9-19, 2000, the members of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church failed to agree to a final document. The problem of Uniatism, which was at the centre of discussions at the previ- ous meetings in Freising (1990) and in Balamand (1993), still remains a stum- bling block in Catholic-Orthodox relations and hampers theological dialogue. The loss of dynamism in the Joint Commission’s work has also another cause. The Commission, whose competence by definition is limited to theological questions, has attempted to consider practical matters before discussing theological questions and obstacles. The Orthodox, however, insist on the prime importance of elaborating a common theological vision. They claim that only this vision can provide a key for understanding and settling practical matters. Formal theological dialogue with Rome has allowed the Orthodox to reassess their approach to the phenomenon of the Uniate (Eastern-Catholic) Churches. Initial radical demands by some Orthodox Churches to liquidate the Uniate Churches in principle, or at least to eliminate their participation in the Ortho- dox-Catholic dialogue, have given way to the acknowledgment of their right to exist and to serve to the needs of their believers. At the same time the Ortho- dox persistently stress the necessity of a common Orthodox-Catholic theological evaluation of particular unions, like that of the established Uniate (Eastern-Catholic) Churches and the phenomenon of Uniatism itself. Common theological vision in this field presupposes a comprehensive knowledge of the subject, which neither the Catholic nor the Orthodox side possesses. It is impossible to come to a Catholic-Orthodox agreement on such a complex and controversial phenomenon as the Uniate Churches * Natalia Kochan is a fellow of the Sociological Institute of the Ukrainian National Acad- emy of Sciences in Kiev. 270 NATALIA KOCHAN without taking also into consideration the standpoint of the Eastern-Catholic Churches: how do they understand themselves; how do they see their place and their part in Catholic-Orthodox relations; what characterizes them since their union with Rome and how is this different from their earlier Orthodox identity? The Uniate Churches’ rather long period of evolution as dogmati- cally Catholic Churches with an eastern rite confronts them with an uneasy question about their identity: are they Catholic or Orthodox, or different from both? This question becomes even more important if we consider that the position of the Uniate Churches in the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue differs markedly from the official position of the Catholic Church. Two documents that were accepted by the Synod of bishops of the Ukrain- ian Greek-Catholic Church (UGCC) at its meeting of June 16-22, 2000 are worth mentioning from this point of view. The first one is called The Con- ception of the Ecumenical Standpoint of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church; the second, Practical Measures for Carrying out the Ecumenical Standpoint of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church.1 Neither of these texts has been noticed at the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue in Baltimore. Yet the first of these documents, the Conception, could have served as the starting point for a joint dis- cussion of the theological questions which were on the agenda in Baltimore: the Eastern-Catholic Churches and Uniatism from an ecclesiological, canonical, and doctrinal perspective. The views expressed in these two documents are quite often different from or even opposed to the official position of Rome. For the Roman Catholic Church such differences pose problems, in theory and in practice, that are more serious than those pointed out by the Orthodox Church when it defines the particular unions and subsequently the Uniate Churches as ‘theological nonsense’. In the following I will concentrate above all on the first of these documents. SPECIFIC TERMINOLOGY In several instances the authors of the Conception introduce rather strange inter- pretations of certain theological and historical terms. This can be illustrated from the very first lines of the document. 1 For both documents see the UGCC official newspaper Meta (Lviv), 2000, No. 8-9, pp. 4-5, 9. THE UKRAINIAN GREEK-CATHOLIC CHURCH ON ECUMENISM 271 The collective term ‘Kievan Church’ (Church of Kiev) first occurs in the preamble and is then frequently used throughout the text. Strictly speaking, this term is a neologism without any historical or theological foundation. From its foundation the ‘Church of Kievan Rus’ possessed metropolitan status under the jurisdiction of Constantinople. The term ‘Kievan Church’ is used mainly to distinguish the Orthodox Church in Ukraine from the Russ- ian Orthodox Church. In recent years the UGCC has begun to call itself ‘Kievan Church’ or ‘Church of the Kievan tradition’. The Conception defines this term as the unity of ‘those who feel themselves the heirs of our spiritual mother – the Church of Kiev’. Clearly, to use such an expression in an official church document is incor- rect, and not only because it has been never used before by scholars or the- ologians. The term ‘Kievan Church’ belongs to the sphere of ideology and mythology for a nation which came to nationhood and state-building much later than other European nations, especially its closest neighbours Russia and Poland. It is one of the key terms for the newly founded ‘national’ Ortho- dox Churches with irregular status (the ‘Patriarchate of Kiev’ and the Ukrain- ian Autocephalous Churches) and of those political parties and organizations that promote the idea of an independent national Church in an independent Ukrainian state. Representatives of these religious and political currents declare the unification of all the Orthodox into one Ukrainian Church to be of prime importance for the nation’s political consolidation and a guarantee of its statehood. From the same milieu calls are frequently heard for unification between Orthodox and Greek-Catholics in the name of national unity and state-building. The Conception itself labels for Orthodox partners of the UGCC in ecumenical dialogue the Churches ‘which belong to the Kievan tradition’, that is, Churches with indisputably Ukrainian self-identification. Curiously, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church itself is not regarded to be a part of this Kievan tradition and even not allowed to call itself ‘Ukrainian’ because it stands under the jurisdiction of Moscow. Although the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians belong precisely to this Church, its canonical links with the Moscow Patriarchate are interpreted in political and national categories. It thus appears that the UGCC has only two possible Orthodox partners for ecumenical dialogue in Ukraine, the two ‘national’ Orthodox Churches mentioned above, which both still have an irregular status. 272 NATALIA KOCHAN The UGCC’s application of the term ‘Kievan Church’ to itself also indi- cates the problems it has with its own identity. The UGCC uses a term rem- iniscent of its origins perhaps in order to deny its present hybrid state, but it sees these origins in narrow terms: it calls its earlier tradition ‘Eastern’, but never ‘Orthodox’. In addition, the term ‘Church of Kievan tradition’ has clear ideological implications in UGCC politics. One of its recent bishops’ Synods declared that the UGCC is no longer a provincial, Galician Church in the Ukraine, but should have an all-Ukrainian status. Its see should be trans- ferred from Lviv to the capital of the Ukraine, Kiev. This idea has its influ- ential promoters among both hierarchy and laity. Its promoters ignore the question of whether the majority of UGCC faithful would benefit from such a move. The large majority of the Greek-Catholics in the Ukraine (about four million on a total population of forty-eight million) live in Galicia. For the rest of the Ukraine the bishops give figures ranging from six to twenty thou- sand Greek-Catholic faithful. Another term of importance that is used in the Conception to refer to the UGCC is ‘Particular Church’. In the Vatican’s Annuario Pontificio the formal status of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church is given as the Major Arch- bishopric of Lviv. Unlike Catholic canonists, the UGCC interprets ‘particularity’ in a rather broad way. One could even say that ‘particularity’ is interpreted according to the Orthodox tradition. This broad interpretation of ‘particularity’ results in using (quite illegitimately) the title of ‘patriarch’ for the head of the UGCC and the qualification ‘patriarchical’ for the administrative struc- tures of the Major Archbishopric of Lviv. In the document, the bishops note in brackets that they refer to the Major Archbishop only in the first instance where the title ‘patriarch’ is used for the head of the UGCC. Subsequently mention is made of other ‘Particular Catholic Churches’ (II, 6), and it is declared that the UGCC is in ‘full communion’ with them. As for the See of Rome, it qualifies as an ‘inter-ecclesiastical structure of international level’ (II, 11). Will- ful confusion of two ecclesiologies, which are complementary but not in agreement, produces a kind of theological hybrid which Uniate protagonists some- times define as synthesis. Thus is created a kind of ‘particular catholicity’, which is a contradiction in terms to say the least, and consequently the Apostolic See of Rome is transformed into a sister church of the UGCC. Greek-Catholic interpretation of the ecumenical category of ‘sister churches’ also has its specific traits and has no analogies either in Catholic or in Orthodox theology. Chapter III of the Conception which is entitled, THE UKRAINIAN GREEK-CATHOLIC CHURCH ON ECUMENISM 273 ‘Relations of the UGCC with particular sister churches’, opens with a para- graph on the ‘Relations of the UGCC with the Apostolic See and particular Catholic Churches’.

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