Bishop Losten responds to comments that malign Eastern Catholics (03/05/00)

Bishop Losten responds to comments that malign Eastern Catholics

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, within the Orthodox faith worldwide traditionally considered to be the "first among equals" of Orthodox patriarchs, addressed a session of the Polish Parliament on January 25, during his second trip to Poland in a little more than a year. Speaking on the topic of Catholic-Orthodox relations, the patriarch stated that, while he envisioned "close personal relations" among various Church leaders, he, nonetheless, noted his displeasure that the topic of Eastern-rite Catholic Churches dominates inter-Church discussions.

Catholic News Service (CNS) reports from Warsaw quoted the ecumenical patriarch as saying: "There are more important issues to discuss, including the status of the bishop of Rome, so Orthodox Churches are not happy to be stuck with the questions of Uniatism ... we have charges [complaints - ed.] to make about this Church's actions, especially in Ukraine and Slovakia. ... Uniatism is a phony phenomenon which was called into being in the name of proselytism. Its rebirth since the fall of communism has aggravated Catholic-Orthodox relations."

According to the CNS, Ukrainian Catholic Archbishop Ivan Martyniak of the Peremyshl-Warsaw Eparchy criticized the patriarch's comments, stating that his remarks would have "negative repercussions" for inter-Church relations and that "by calling it phony, the patriarch has committed a great error and indiscretion."

Also responding to the patriarch's remarks was Bishop Basil Losten of the Ukrainian Catholic Diocese of Stamford. Bishop Losten is chairman of the ecumenical commission of the Ukrainian Catholic Synod and chairman of the standing committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops on relations between Eastern and Latin Catholic Churches. Bishop Losten, who traveled with a delegation to Constantinople in 1996 at the invitation of the ecumenical patriarch, sent a letter on February 4 to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew responding to the comments made by the patriarch in Warsaw. Bishop Losten gave a short interview to Irene Jarosewich of The Ukrainian Weekly on this topic.

Q: Your Excellency, the first press reports to reach us in North America about Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew's remarks before the Polish Parliament translated his comments describing the Eastern Catholic Churches as a "phony phenomenon." What was your reaction to these press reports?

A: Though I read the report with consternation, I knew that we needed to confirm the original text. The original text was in Greek, then translated into Polish, then translated into English. Though the Polish word could be understood as "phony," information from the ecumenical patriarch's representative in Geneva noted that a more accurate translation into English would be "artificial." Though the word "artificial" is less vulgar, the connotation is not significantly less injurious to the Catholic Churches that maintain the Byzantine tradition, a point I made in my letter to the patriarch.

Q: What factors did you consider when you decided to send the ecumenical patriarch a letter?

A: First and foremost I wanted to respond to the charge that the Catholic Churches of the Byzantine tradition are somehow fake, artificial or phony. In fact, I noted in my letter that we considered the patriarch's statement an epithet and felt obligated to respond. When I say "we," I mean the Synod of Bishops of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, whose ecumenical commission I chair.

In the letter I briefly outlined not only the history of our Church, but of the other Catholic Churches of the Byzantine tradition as well. I reminded the patriarch that since the schism that split the one Church into what we now call Orthodox and Catholic, there has never been a time when there were no Churches that simultaneously maintained the Byzantine tradition and the tradition of full ecclesiastical and Eucharistic communion with Rome.

As for the Ukrainian Catholic Church in particular, I reminded him of the numerous martyrs for our Church: the Catholic Byzantine Churches that survived unimaginable persecution in the former Soviet Union; martyrs in Poland, Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. There is nothing phony about this. I reminded him of the situation of the Byzantine Catholics and their Church in Belarus - first brutally repressed by the tsarist government, then by the Soviet. No Church, let alone an artificial entity, could arise from the dead after a century and a half of severe repression without divine intervention and grace.

As Archbishop Martyniak noted in his response, there are more than 30 million Catholics of the Byzantine tradition worldwide. This, also, is not an artificial phenomenon.

Q: Can you offer some insight into what prompted these comments from the ecumenical patriarch at this time?

A: The ecumenical patriarch, unfortunately, has on several occasions made disparaging comments about Eastern Catholic Churches, including comments made directly to the holy father, Pope John Paul II during their meeting on July 25, 1995. In 1996, during a formal address to a Vatican delegation, headed by Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy, that had come to visit him, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew proposed that by the year 2000 there be a "final solution" to the problem of Eastern Catholicism. We are startled and dismayed, now as we were then, by his choice of words. The patriarch must have understood the impact that these words would have, and no correction or explanation or apology was offered.

I did not wish to speculate as to why the patriarch chose the forum of the Polish Parliament to make these types of statements in general about Catholic Churches of the Byzantine tradition, and about our Ukrainian Catholic Church in particular. But these types of statements are a setback and continue to strain ecumenical relations between Orthodox and Catholics.

For Eastern Catholics, this is a particularly bitter situation since our Byzantine liturgical tradition descends from St. John Chrysostom, whose successor is the ecumenical patriarch. In turn, it cannot be right to ask us to repudiate our ecclesiastical and Eucharistic communion with our universal hierarch, the bishop of Rome.

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