CANADA COURIER: The Church's challenge (05/17/98)

CANADA COURIER

by Christopher Guly

The Church's challenge

Late last November, Canada's Ukrainian Catholic metropolitan told the 250 bishops gathered in Rome for a Synod of Bishops' Special Assembly for America about his Church's situation at home. "As more Catholics are leaving their immigrant homes, many are losing their religious roots and are unable to keep much personal faith alive," said Archbishop Michael Bzdel.

What's needed, he said, is a faith "that is based more on a personal encounter with the living Jesus Christ than upon any ethnic or social factors."

When he made those remarks, the archbishop could well have been referring to the Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at St. Paul University in Ottawa. About a quarter of the students who enroll for the seven undergraduate courses offered there have not a drop of Ukrainian blood in their veins. This is even more true for the institute's most popular course, iconography, where the classroom is typically split evenly between Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians. The latter group "take our programs because they want to be enriched by what the Kyivan Church has to offer humanity," says the institute's director, the Rev. Andriy Chirovsky. "They say, 'I like what I see,' and the challenge for us is to do the same for our own people."

"We can create a Church that can still minister to the needs of people who want to pray in Ukrainian and who have a very Ukrainian consciousness. At the same time, we can demonstrate the universal appeal of Kyivan Christianity, which is not just ethnically bound," he continued.

That's become the Rev. Chirovsky's mission. A devout admirer of the late Patriarch and Cardinal Josyf Slipyj (with whom he shared a residence in Rome for two years) and Metropolitan Sheptytsky (on whom he based his master's and doctoral theology theses), the Rev. Dr. Chirovsky is committed to preserving the Church's Eastern tradition. Thanks to his leadership - and some visionary thinking by the late Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk who lured the Rev. Chirovsky and the institute from Chicago eight years ago - the Sheptytsky Institute is thriving in Ottawa.

By the fall of 1999, it will begin offering graduate programs leading to theology degrees at the master's, licentiate and doctoral levels. Currently, students can obtain either an undergraduate honors degree in theology or a bachelor of arts degree majoring in Eastern Christian studies through a joint program with the University of Ottawa.

In addition, the Sheptytsky Institute offers courses at the Studite Monastery in Univ, located one hour's drive east of Lviv, as well as in northern California, at Mount Tabor Monastery in Redwood Valley. The 41-year-old Rev. Chirovsky is married with two children and regularly ministers to the congregation at St. John the Baptist Church (also the Canadian Ukrainian Catholic national shrine) in Ottawa. All this, despite a chronic medical condition, which has left him in constant pain since 1980 and now requires him to occasionally use a cane.

The Rev. Chirovsky wasn't born in Canada, but in Orange, N.J., and grew up in Newark. "When you say Ukrainian Catholic in Canada, people are much more likely to understand what that is," says the Rev. Chirovsky. "When January 7 comes around in the States, you hear about Russian Christmas on the news."

There's good reason for this, he explains. "There are roughly the same number of Ukrainians in the States as in Canada, but the States has 10 times the population, so the Ukrainian Canadian population has 10 times the visibility in Canada and 10 times the clout. For several reasons, the Church in Canada has better chances of long-term survival than the Church in the United States." So, the Ukrainian Catholic ship in Canada isn't quite as doomed as the Titanic. Still, if you subscribe to the notion that there are 1 million Canadians of Ukrainian descent, the Ukrainian Catholic Church here has only a bit more than one-tenth of them as members.

But give the Church in Canada a few more Andriy Chirovskys and the possibilities for growth exist.

While he breathes with Eastern lungs, the priest also thinks with a Western brain.

On April 19, Easter Sunday according to the Julian calendar, the Rev. Chirovsky scored a coup by getting St. Paul University to award the first honorary doctorates to a married couple: Peter and Doris Kule. The Kules, both born in 1921, also happen to have donated $2 million ($1.4 million U.S.) to the Sheptytsky Institute to establish two chairs: one in Eastern Christian Theology and Spirituality in Canada, which the Rev. Chirovsky holds, and one in Eastern Christian Liturgy, which the Rev. Peter Galadza holds.

Only one other Ukrainian Catholic has ever received an honorary doctorate from St. Paul in its 150-year history: Cardinal Slipyj in 1968. Recognizing benefactors through honorary doctorates or by naming academic chairs after them is a trend at universities across North America. But the Rev. Chirovsky is quick to point out that the Kules' monetary support isn't the only reason they were awarded them each diplomas. Both have been active in the Ukrainian Catholic community in Edmonton. "They are real Christian witnesses," he underlines.