Since 1946, when the “Uniate Church” was forcibly incorporated into the Russian Orthodox, the Ukrainian Catholic Church has been denied all modes of outward expression, although attacks in the Soviet press against the “now defunct Uniate Church” seem to indicate some vital signs. As an effective structure, however, it exists now primarily in the communities comprising the Ukrainian Diaspora.
The estimated number of Church members living in the West varies widely from 800,000 to a million and a half, depending on the source consulted. The former figure is of interest to this article since it seems to have official acceptance. It is the one given by Monsignor V. Pospishil in his pamphlet on the question of a Patriarchate for the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
Working from various statistical tables, Pospishil observes that among these 800,000, only 8,603 baptisms were recorded in 1970. Assuming a normal birth rate of 2% percent, this yields a figure of 344,000 as the estimate of active Church members in the West. Obviously then, most Ukrainian Catholics are not having their children baptised into their own rite, but into that of others, the most likely possibility being the Latin rite. The reason for this lies primarily in the inaccessibility of Ukrainian Catholic priests to perform baptisms due to distance and scarcity.
Regular religious instruction and church attendance would tend to be in the rite of baptism. From this, Pospishil concludes that requests of Ukrainian Catholics for a Patriarch ought to be toned down since there seem to be so few of them. A different conclusion, however, may be drawn from the data. Observing that about 57 percent (or more, taking other estimates) of all Ukrainian Catholics in the West lack access to priests of their own rite, one might well raise the question as to the reason behind this. One hypothesis forwarded here is that the Ukrainian Catholic Church is unable to provide such necessary services because it is prevented from doing so. It has not been permitted to control its own church affairs, and therefore cannot meet the needs of its own people.
Evidence of interference in the functioning of the Ukrainian Catholic Church is unfortunately great. The most obvious instance occurred in 1934, when the right of Ukrainian Catholic clergy to marry was overturned, a right guaranteed since 1596 by the Treaty of Berestia. This action has had serious effects on Ukrainian Catholic community life, the number of applicants to the priesthood declining as a result of it. More recent events testify to further indignities suffered by the Ukrainian Catholic Church; the appointment of Church leaders without the prior consultation with Church bishops, the deprivation of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy in Brazil, the declaration of Synods of Ukrainian Catholic bishops as null and void, entirely without legality. Most of all, the promises of a Patriarchate for the Ukrainian Catholic Church have remained unfulfilled. A fuller glimpse at the responsible agent must be taken.
The mere necessity of an administrative body of the Roman Catholic Church having ‘control over the Ukrainian Catholic Church smacks of that same overbearing paternalism exhibited in former times by a colonial power to its charges, who presumably were unable to guide properly their own destinies. If one were to search for a contemporary counterpart to the Sacred Congragation of Estern Rite Catholic Churches, it could be found in the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. The paradigm that may be drawn is that of an agency assigned by some great entity the duty of maintaining and protecting the rights of smaller entities, aboriginal tribes or churches respectively, to which the large one has somehow become affiliated. This then is its overt official role. Its covert role, perhaps also official, is to control these small entities for the benefit of the large entity to which the agency is actually responsible.
Once control is firmly established, treaties may be broken and rights abrogated, as is found necessary to further the higher interests of those in actual power. A veneer of liberality and token gestures may be necessary for a respectable facade, but actual conditions are always maintained at such a level that eventually, it is hoped, the burden which the large entity has taken upon itself will disappear. Depending on the circumstances, one may then speak of either assimilation or extermination.
In a situation such as exists today, when detente between the Vatican and the Soviet government is being advanced, the existence of an autonomous Ukrainian Catholic Church is an embarassment to the two parties. It is then to their advantage to eliminate such an obstruction. Perhaps it is thus that Ukrainian Catholics and officials in both the Roman Curia and the Soviet government can all be said, ironically, to view the Ukrainian Catholic Church as a social problem. To the former, however, the Church poses a problem to the extent that it must be maintained and preserved for the benefit of the Ukrainian community. Among the latter, the Ukrainian Catholic Church seems to be something to be eliminated or effectively silenced, since it impedes the realization of their ultimate ends.
In the summary then, the Ukrainian Catholic Church is threatened with ultimate extinction given the present state of gradual attrition. This process is abetted by the preculiarly dependent position in which the Church finds itself, with most of its own internal affairs decided not by Ukrainians who are immediately concerned with the problems of their Church, but by others, who are responsible largely to the Roman Catholic Church. These affairs are then handled to the foremost advantage of those in power, and only secondarily to that of the Ukrainian Catholic Church itself.
Solutions couched in glib words are possible, but not very useful from the standpoint of practicality. Perhaps the best answer, if only as a first step, is to be found in the movement for a Patriarchate. The continued petition toward this, if strongly supported, will not fail to have effect on the hitherto deaf ears of those in power.
Peter Homel
Mr. Peter Homel is a third year phychology major at La Salle College in Philadelphia.