CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE CHURCHES OF UKRAINE

Abstract

The history of the Ukraine and Russia is that of two distinct peoples who share much in common, above all their religion. What we call the Orthodox faith was bequeathed to a portion of the earth by Byzantium. It is true that owing to reforms instituted in the seventeenth century by the Moscow Patriarch Nikon, the church of the eastern Slavs is today much closer to Greek Orthodox practice than it once was, in terms of belief, ritual and liturgy. Nevertheless this church, that is to say Russia, since the fifteenth century has been autocephalous, which implies not only administrative and fiscal autonomy, but also a separate language and ordering of society. At the present moment, the Ukraine wishes to split off from the Moscow-centred Russian Church, or rather such a division is advocated not by all Ukrainians, but by an important segment of them, the exact numbers of which are unknown. In approaching the subject, it would be well to recall that while the Ukraine greatly resembles Russia it is not Russia, nor are the Ukrainians Russian. A significant part of the population, residing in Galicia historically under Austrian and Polish rule , joined the Soviet Union prior to German occupation the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact ; which is to say that the Ukraine only became united during the Soviet era, with the proviso that within this union Galicia, thoroughly Catholic, has what is known as uniat or Greek-Catholic status. In other words, it is among those peoples who were once Greek Orthodox but have subsequently mingled with that sea called the Roman Church. Thus the Ukrainian Catholics, like the Syriac-, Coptic- and Armenian-Catholics before them, and the Bulgarian-Catholics after 1870, while following the creed and liturgy of Rome are administratively and fiscally autonomous, and employ their national language in the course of worship. Since the 1960s, of course, this latter practice has been true of all Catholics around the globe. From 1837-52 General Dimitri Bibikov, the chauvinist governor of the Ukraine the provinces of Kiev and Podolia-Volinia exerted considerable pressure in an effort to convert Catholics there to Orthodoxy, and was partially successful. So that Ukrainian Catholicism survived principally in Galicia, then under Austrian control.

References

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2. 2 Hitovich, I (1882-84), Ocherki istorii zapadno-russkoi iseerkvi, v.2 St. Petersburg .
3. 3 Histovich, I (1882-84), Ocharkii istopii zapadno-russkoi zevkvi, v.2, St. Petersburg.
4. 4 When one member of an eagle's brood becomes strong enough to take food from the others, only it will survive.