PART II
Ends and means
Recognition (or creation) of a patriarchate was not the movement’s only goal. In accord with the Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches, the patriarchal movement also sought to revive the Kyivan-Byzantine tradition and ecclesiastical culture. Thus, on the parish level it advocated the return of traditional liturgical practices such as infant communion and the elimination of “Latinizations” such as kneeling. Its members opposed the mandatory clerical celibacy imposed on their clergy in North America.2 They protested against the introduction of the Gregorian liturgical calendar in place of the Julian, which prompted impassioned demonstrations in Chicago in October-December 1964. While the patriarchal movement did not object to the replacement of Church Slavonic by modern Ukrainian as a liturgical language, following the Second Vatican Council’s 1964 Instruction on the Liturgy, it strongly opposed the replacement of Ukrainian by English. From time to time it took up various other issues.
The patriarchal movement sought to free the Church from curial control, particularly on the part of the Sacred Congregation for the Eastern Churches, and to assert the territorial jurisdiction of the major archbishop throughout the diaspora (Code of Canons Can. 78 Sec. 2, Can. 86 Sec. 2, Can. 146 Sec. 1). The latter demand set it at odds with some of the bishops.
The movement was particularly militant in Great Britain. In 1975 Bishop Augustine Hornyak refused to commemorate the major archbishop as patriarch, and forbade his clergy to do so, since neither the pope nor an ecumenical council had created a Ukrainian Catholic Patriarchate. Bishop Augustine considered their authority superior to that of the exiled Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj. A majority of the laity left his parishes and began to attend liturgies held in rented Anglican churches by “patriarchal” Ukrainian Catholic priests – two of whom were suspended by the bishop. The split was only resolved after 12 years, when in 1987 Bishop Hornyak resigned and a temporary exarchial administrator was appointed.
The patriarchal movement opposed the Vatican Ostpolitik towards the Russian Orthodox Church, conducted from the 1960s by the Secretariat of State (on the political level) and the Secretariat (later Pontifical Council) for the Unity of Christians (on the theological level). Ukrainian Catholics perceived this ecumenical initiative as entailing a betrayal of the Ukrainian Church through diplomatic concessions aimed at pleasing a Russian Church that had no genuine interest in church unity and functioned as an arm of the Soviet state.
In 1971 a Russian Orthodox Church Council (Sobor) elected Pimen (Izvekov) as patriarch of Moscow. At his installation, Pimen mentioned the March 1946 “council” of Lviv that had purported to dissolve the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. When it became known that visiting Vatican representatives Cardinal Johannes Willebrands and Father John Long had failed to object, Ukrainian Catholics raised a storm of protest. In this ongoing dissent from Vatican policy they were eloquently and tirelessly led by Cardinal Slipyj, himself a living exemplar of the suffering Church in Ukraine. Slipyj’s example, moreover, inspired a small but active generation of young seminarians studying at St. Sophia Seminary, which he founded in 1968 in Rome.
While it viewed the Russian Orthodox Church as the willing instrument of the Soviet state in the liquidation and persecution of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, the patriarchal movement cultivated a kind of grass-roots ecumenism with the Ukrainian Orthodox in the diaspora. This was particularly evident in the observances of the Millennium of the Baptism of Rus’ in 1988. Denouncing the “false ecumenism” cultivated by Rome and Moscow, Ukrainian Greek-Catholics in the diaspora, particularly those in the patriarchal movement, envisioned the creation of a joint Catholic-Orthodox patriarchate in Ukraine, as had been attempted in the 17th century.
What were the methods of the patriarchal movement? The collection of signatures for letters and petitions, which constituted its first mass activity, continued. On September 29, 1987, the head of the Ukrainian World Patriarchal Federation delivered a petition to Pope John Paul II with over 60,000 signatures. One of the most common tactics was the public demonstration – which critics saw as excessively political.
On December 1, 1969, the prefect of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches, Cardinal Maximilian de Fuerstenberg, wrote to Cardinal Slipyj in the name of Pope Paul VI that the Ukrainian metropolitan did not have the right to convoke a synod, because his jurisdiction was limited to the Lviv Archeparchy. The gathering of Ukrainian bishops was only a conference of bishops, said the prefect, not a synod. Six days later, when Cardinal de Fuerstenberg arrived for the celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the Ukrainian Catholic Metropolitanate of Philadelphia as papal representative and guest of honor, he encountered some 300 demonstrators from the Patriarchal Society in front of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. This was also a protest against Metropolitan Ambrose Senyshyn, who had failed to participate in Cardinal Slipyj’s synod of bishops and to sign a petition for a patriarchate.
On October 28, 1972, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Villot wrote to the Ukrainian bishops, casting doubt on the legality of Cardinal Slipyj’s project of a constitution for his Church, which he had circulated among them. Less than a month later, on November 25, over 700 Ukrainian Catholics demonstrated before the offices of the Apostolic Delegation in Washington against the Secretary’s action. When on November 24, 1974, Cardinal Willebrands, president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, arrived for a mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York on the 10th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism, he was met by demonstrators protesting Vatican-Moscow rapprochement.
Members of the movement demonstrated against episcopal nominations that had been confirmed without the involvement of Cardinal Slipyj.3 Thus, on February 22 and May 4, 1971, the apostolic delegate in the U.S.A. announced the nominations of John Stock and Basil Losten, as suffragan bishops to Metropolitan Senyshyn, which had been made without consulting or even informing Cardinal Slipyj. About 1,000 lay activists demonstrated on May 25 outside the cathedral in Philadelphia, where the two consecrations were taking place, and about 150 made their way into the cathedral.
More conventional methods included the convocation of lay congresses of the U.S. society and the world federation, in addition to the world federation’s congress of delegates held every three years. Patriarchal activists also held press conferences. Scholarly events included an international seminar at Fordham University in July 1972 and symposiums at Loyola University (Chicago) in November 1974 and at La Salle College (Philadelphia) in April 1975. The movement enjoyed some success in finding allies among the Roman Catholic clergy and lay intellectuals.
The patriarchal movement mobilized a mass following through the print media as well as parish-based activism and even radio.4 Up to 1971 the three chief diaspora newspapers – the daily Svoboda, the Catholic newspaper Ameryka, and the Philadelphia archeparchial newspaper Shliakh – reportedly refused to publish Cardinal Slipyj’s pastoral letters. While it is impossible to divine the editors’ motives, it was rumored that conformity with the wishes of the hierarchy was a factor. In 1967 the Patriarchal Society therefore began publishing its own journal Za Patriyarkhat (from 1977 titled Patriyarkhat), as well as various other periodicals, brochures and even a series of books in a series called “The Layman’s Library.” In some parishes, patriarchal activity proved divisive, for example, when during the liturgy part of the congregation stood before communion while the rest kneeled.
The movement also organized an effective fund-raising network. Increasing affluence and mobility permitted its leaders to coordinate their activity on an international level. Thus, its leaders were able to organize lay conferences coordinated with Cardinal Slipyj’s convocation of archeparchial synods in Rome. Members typically devoted a good deal of their free time, including vacations, as well as their private funds, to the movement.
The social profile of the Ukrainian patriarchal movement merits study. It was led by an educated elite – a rather rare instance of Ukrainian intelligentsia involvement in church affairs.5 Among its leading members were a lawyer, a physician, and a number of professors and engineers. Women played a prominent role. Although formally speaking the patriarchal societies were lay organizations, members of the clergy served as advisers.
Conclusions and perspectives
In some ways, the Ukrainian Catholic patriarchal movement was unusual for its time and place. Not many modern Western popular movements have focused on religious goals. Also notable was its dissemination of theological knowledge among the laity, especially in the field of ecclesiology.
At least one well-informed observer, however, found the theological, canonical and historical knowledge of the lay activists wanting, and their diplomatic skills limited. Some of their letters, appeals, and declarations exhibit a naïve pathos and a strident self-righteousness that may have appealed to the mass of the faithful but no doubt irritated many Vatican officials. Some Ukrainians have also judged the movement to be excessively political in its spirit and particularly its tactics. This may have reflected an initial sublimation of frustrated political goals – the liberation of the homeland from Soviet control – into religious forms.
Some critics also felt that a cult of personality had developed around Metropolitan Slipyj. This was expressed not only by adulation during his lifetime but also after his death, when pilgrims would venerate his body, embalmed and encased in a glass sarcophagus in the crypt of St. Sophia Cathedral near Rome.6
Did the patriarchal movement succeed? Strictly speaking, it did not, for a Ukrainian Catholic patriarchate has not been established or recognized by the Holy See. Nevertheless, it did contribute to the religious knowledge and consciousness of the faithful, and may thus have slowed the diaspora Church’s general decline. It successfully gained broad approval of the patriarchal cause. Today, it is no longer controversial or unusual for a priest to commemorate the major archbishop as “patriarch.” All Ukrainian Catholic bishops support a patriarchate. To be sure, other factors have intervened – including the passing of the controversial Cardinal Slipyj, as well as of some of the bishops who opposed him, and the recovery of the Church’s canonical territory – but the patriarchal movement can surely take much of the credit.
But perhaps its most important achievement has been to foster the development of the substance – as opposed to the mere form – of a patriarchal Church, including a heightened consciousness among the laity of their Byzantine identity and of their mission as a bridge between the Orthodox East and the Catholic West.
The Ukrainian patriarchal movement was marked by a certain duality. For while it challenged episcopal and curial prerogative in ways that bordered on the insubordinate, it was essentially traditionalistic, advocating a faithful adherence to the Ukrainian religious heritage and respect for legitimate authority. By mobilizing the laity behind greater independence for the Ukrainian Church, the patriarchal movement reflected the twin heritage of Vatican II’s decrees on the lay apostolate and the Eastern Catholic Churches.
In the future, the patriarchal movement is likely to provide an instructive example of how a traditionalist Church responds to modernity in the culturally alien environment of the diaspora. The legacy of Patriarch Josyf, which emphasized the need to “preserve” the Ukrainian liturgy, language, culture and identity, arose at a time when the underground Church in the homeland was struggling for its existence. The Church in the diaspora thus bore much of the responsibility for its survival. The centrality of identity, moreover, was characteristic of the age of modernism.
In our own time, however, the problem of Ukrainian identity has largely been solved; according to one contemporary historian, Ukrainians should now shift their attention from identity to values. The same may be true for the Church. At the same time, a trait of post-modernism is the shift from individualism to relationships. If identity is individualistic (even for a Church), values are relational, for they can only be realized with regard to others – whether these be persons, groups or institutions. And if identity is static, values and relationships are dynamic. It may be time, then, for the patriarchal movement to shift its focus from affirming the Ukrainian Church’s identity, to living out its values in the various social contexts in which it finds itself, both in Ukraine and throughout the world. For the patriarchate is not merely a state of being, but a perpetual becoming.
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Survey conducted in April 2001 among leading members of the patriarchal movement in North America and several active members in Great Britain and Australia.