TORONTO, Canada (NC) — Bishop Isidore Borecky of the Ukrainian-rite diocese of Toronto has filed an appeal to Rome on behalf of his three suspended married priests in which he defended not only them, but his right to ordain other married men to the priesthood.
A working draft of the document, obtained by NC News, carries a clear message: Ukrainian-rite Catholics in Canada wish to follow their historical Eastern customs in spite of opposition from Latin-rite Catholics, and they will resist outside «encroachments.»
Sources said the working paper was followed closely in the message that Bishop Borecky sent to the Vatican.
The draft document says: «It is our sworn, duty to resist the encroachments from the tradition of other Churches, especially from Latin-rite canon law.»
It charges that the Vatican’s refusal to allow married priests to serve Ukrainian-rite Catholics has resulted in mass defections to the Orthodox churches, and it suggests that many view the papal stance as an example of «Roman trickery and deceit.»
The document is the result of a statement issued April 2 by the Vatican’s Congregation for Eastern-rite Churches, which said the three married priests — Fathers Terrance Lozynski, John Girhinny, and Andrew Kromanik — were suspended because they were ordained without specific papal permission.
Eastern-rite Churches are governed by a different code of canon law than that which governs the Western or Latin-rite Church, and most Eastern rites allow the ordination of married men to the priesthood.
However, since 1929 married Eastern-rite clergy have been forbidden to exercise their ministry in the Americas or Australia’s without special dispensation from the Vatican. A number of dispensations were granted to married priests among World War II refugees, but the Vatican has generally held a firm stance against ministry by married priests in the West and has refused Jo allow married men already in the West to be ordained.
According to the draft of Bishop Borecky’s appeal to the Vatican, the regulation has inflicted a serious blow upon Ukrainian-rite Catholics. «Having escaped political tyranny (in Europe) and found a haven of liberty and freedom in Canada, they discovered that ecclesiastical totalitarianism wished to assert itself in the new country,» it says.
«The deplorable result of this stricture imposed by the Holy See was a mass apostasy, the like of which the Catholic Church has rarely seen.»
The statement continued: «The Orthodox Church was at once ready to satisfy the spiritual needs of our poor faithful, deprived of their shepherds, by promoting to the priesthood indiscriminately any man who presented himself for ordination.
«The Ukrainian Orthodox and the Russian Orthodox Churches in Canada and the United States count today 1.5 million faithful, of which 90 per cent, according to their estimation, are former Catholics and their offspring, while the Catholics have shrunk to 700,000 in both countries.»
In order to curb the flow of Ukrainian-rite Catholics to Orthodox bodies, some bishops have been quietly ordaining married men without papal permission.
