Lviv Theological Academy seeks licensing and accreditation from Ukrainian government (06/10/01)

Lviv Theological Academy seeks licensing and accreditation from Ukrainian government

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Seven years after it reopened it doors, the Lviv Theological Academy (LTA) has received recognition throughout Europe and in the United States as a respected institution of higher learning. At home in Ukraine, however, it is still battling the state for licensing and accreditation.

The academy has lobbied government officials extensively, to no avail, to acknowledge it as a legitimate educational institution and recognize the degree the academy confers on those students who complete its rigorous curriculum.

Without such recognition, students who graduate are not considered to have a higher education; while in school they do not have the rights that other university students have, including free access to public transportation and medical treatment.

"Our degree is recognized in the United States, but not in Ukraine, even while not all Ukrainian academic degrees are recognized in the U.S," explained the Rev. Borys Gudziak, the LTA's rector, who has led the fight to put the academy on a par with other Ukrainian institutions of higher learning.

With the upcoming visit by Pope John Paul II to Ukraine later this month, the issue could prove embarrassing to the government. However, the Rev. Gudziak said he hopes that something will break before the pontiff's arrival. He explained that during a visit to the academy earlier this year Vice Prime Minister Mykola Zhulynskyi had promised he would push the matter of the LTA's recognition.

The Rev. Gudziak said that during his visit the pope might just comment on Ukraine's failure to acknowledge theology as an officially recognized field of study - the core reason that the LTA has not been licensed or accredited.

The head of the Catholic Church is scheduled to pay particular attention to the theological needs of the UGCC while in Ukraine. He will bless the cornerstone of the future Lviv Archepiscopal Seminary and the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv during his five-day stay in the country, which will give him ample opportunity to comment on the problem.

The Vatican is one of the several European states that recognize the LTA's degrees. Furthermore, representatives of the Vatican's Pontifical Oriental Institute recently visited the LTA for an official review of the school's operations and are apprised of the situation. In addition, Pope John Paul II built his unsurpassed international reputation defending religious and human rights. Many of those attacks were directed specifically at the policies of what was then the Soviet Union.

"The question is why can't theology have a civil status, a place in society in Ukraine as it does in most other societies?" queried the Rev. Gudziak.

The central problem for the LTA and all other theological academies in Ukraine - none of which have been either licensed or accredited - is that the country does not officially recognize theology as an academic discipline. The Rev. Gudziak said that omission is not merely an unfortunate oversight, but a remnant of Ukraine's Soviet past. It remains thanks to the apparatchiks still entrenched in the corridors of government power.

Before anything can move forward, theology must be put on the Cabinet of Ministers' list of recognized areas of study, explained the Rev. Gudziak, who hails from the United States. The problem is that former Soviet specialists in the various government institutes of scientific atheism, who today have renamed themselves religious studies experts, are particularly vociferously opposed to recognizing theology as a discipline of academic study. The specialists have gone so far as to petition the Ministry of Education to bar theology from being recognized, stated the Rev. Gudziak.

Perhaps the biggest irony in this battle is that Ukraine's northern neighbors, Belarus and Russia, recognized the discipline several years ago.

"Here we are not only behind the West, but also behind the 'vanguard' Belarusian leader [Alyaksandr] Lukashenka," the Rev. Gudziak noted wryly.

The battle the LTA is waging is to obtain recognition from the state that its educational curriculum is on the university level. It is a three-step process, which first requires the government to acknowledge theology as an academic field of study.

The LTA has joined forces with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate to overcome this most difficult initial obstacle. Cooperation began after a conference in the winter of 1997 attended by all the major Christian confessions in Ukraine. Today the UGCC and the UOC-KP have organizations working to put theology on the list of state-recognized academic disciplines. A by-product of this cooperation may be expanded inter-confessional cooperation.

The LTA has prepared a 2,000-page document outlining state standards and criteria for the study of theology, right down to course outlines. Once recognition is achieved, the LTA will move to the second step, licensing by the government to acknowledge the academy's coursework as being on the university level, to be followed by the final step, accreditation, which officially would recognize the degrees the school extends to those of its students who complete requirements for graduation.

Today, even without either formal licensing or accreditation, the LTA is graduating highly educated students who are pursuing advanced degrees abroad at the great Western universities in countries like the United States, Canada, Italy, Poland and Australia.

The academy also has a well-established and highly regarded English-language program, which includes a very popular summer course taught in a relaxed atmosphere at various tourist resorts in the Carpathian Mountains. All students of the LTA must gain proficiency in English.

Already recognized by the Vatican as a school of theology, today the academy is very close to achieving university status. The recent visit by the vice-rector of the Pontifical Oriental Institute should result in a recommendation to do just that.

European standards require that an institution of higher learning with university status have at least three faculties. Currently the LTA has a single philosophy-theology faculty, but a school of history-philology will open in September, to be followed in a year by a school of social sciences, which will include courses in sociology, psychology and political science. The academy hopes eventually to develop a pedagogical/catechetical faculty, and a school of social work as well.

One of the more unique aspects of the LTA is the high percentage of women students. Although theology has historically been a male domain, about 45 percent of LTA's student population of 1,200 is female. As the Rev. Gudziak explained, the women who belonged to the LTA's first graduating class in 1998 were the first females to receive degrees in theology in the more than 1,000-year history of Ukrainian Christianity.

In the last two years about 35-40 of the academy's 90 graduates have been women. They have gone on to become teachers, social workers, school administrators and, of course, nuns.

Today the LTA's student composition also contains a good mix of non-Catholic faithful. While the school does not ask for confessional background, it believes that approximately 10 percent to 15 percent of the student body is Orthodox.

The faculty also is diverse, including Greek-Catholic, Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Orthodox Jewish instructors and professors.

One of the LTA's central responsibilities is to educate future priests. Because the program for clerics takes six and a half years, members of the first class, which consisted of 38 students, only recently received their degrees. The Rev. Gudziak noted that the first graduate to become a priest, one of three thus far, celebrated his first liturgy since being ordained on May 6.

"Now there is going to be a stream of them," he added.

The Lviv Theological Academy began offering courses in September 1994 after a forced hiatus of 49 years. In 1945 Soviet authorities closed the school, which was founded in 1929, after the Communist government reasserted control over western Ukraine at the close of World War II. The school was dealt a similar blow in 1939 when the Soviet Union took control over western Ukraine after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but was reopened and allowed to offer limited courses during the German occupation.

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