by L. Dennis
The recent activities of the Society for the Patriarchate in the Ukrainian Church have found a wide resonance in the international press as well as in radio and television. More important, however, then the newspaper and other media coverage is the documentation of the Society’s efforts in two journals — the Russian Continent and the Polish Kultura.
In its most recent issue (No. 3, 1975), the journal Continent, which incidentally, has the photograph of Valentyn Moroz on its cover, has reprinted in Russian a lengthy article of the Ukrainian dissident entitled “The Chronicle of Resistance” (pp. 161-186). The very same issue also contains a Russian language translation of the famous speech made by His Beatitude Patriarch Slipyj to Pope Paul VI and the World Synod of Bishops in 1971 (pp. 193-196). Preceding His Beatitude’s speech is a comprehensive foreword (pp. 187-192), written by Dominik Morawski and based exclusively on the data and memoranda supplied by the Society for the Patriarchal System in the Ukrainian Catholic Church. Acknowledging the Society as the source (p. 191), the author quotes extensively from the memorandum issued by the Society to the World Synod of Bishops 1974 (See: Za Patriarchat, October-November, p.30), and provides a penetrating analysis of the current situation of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
Of equal importance are the articles about the Ukrainians in general and the Ukrainian Catholic Church in particular, printed in the latest two issues of the Polish journal Kultura. The No.4 issue of 1975, offers an interesting survey article entitled “Ukraine is not yet lost” (pp.84-92), which analyses the work of the Ukrainian Catholic University, reviews the achievements of His Beatitude, and explores the possibility of a dialogue between Polish and Ukrainian scholars. Of importance here is also the section entitled “The Ukrainian Chronicle” pp. 92-93), which reports on the protest actions of the Society for the Patriarchate against the visit of the Soviet churchmen in the U.S. earlier this year. The No.5 issue of the review quotes the Society’s letter to the National Council of Churches in the U.S. concerning the visiting Soviet churchmen.
To conclude, it is ironic but true, that one can learn more about the Ukrainian Catholic Church and her faithful from Russian and Polish journals than from the Ukrainian Catholic press in U.S.A
