“In Ukraine, a Seismic Ecclesiastical Shift,” by George Weigel, National Review, December 18, 2018 (see https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/orthodox-church-of-ukraine-geopolitical-implications/):
The creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) …is a seismic event in world Christian history that could also have significant geopolitical repercussions. …
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko …reminded the throng [gathered in St. Sophia Square on the day of the Unification Sobor] that Russian president Vladimir Putin had described the USSR’s demise as “the geopolitical disaster of the 20th century”; the creation of the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Poroshenko claimed, is a “second geopolitical disaster” for Putin, but “this time the scale is not of the century, but of the millennium.” …
The first phase of Vladimir Putin’s attempt to re-create some form of the old Soviet empire in the Russian “near abroad” has unfolded under the banner of the Russkiy Mir, the “Russian world,” which, Putin claims, extends far beyond the boundaries of today’s Russian Federation.
…Putin’s attempts to resurrect the Russkiy Mir depended in part on the cultural magnetic field created by the claim of Russian Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow to ecclesiastical sovereignty over the Orthodox Churches in Ukraine and Belarus. That claim has now been falsified by the creation of the OCU. …
The drive for unification and autocephaly within Ukrainian Orthodoxy was quietly supported by the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, whose leader, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, described the unification project as a matter of righting a historical and cultural wrong and opening up new evangelical and ecumenical possibilities in Ukraine. A unified Orthodoxy in Ukraine, Shevchuk argued, would also eliminate sacramental scandals. None of the previously contending Ukrainian Orthodox Churches recognized the others’ baptisms, a theological absurdity that led to pastoral harshness: Ukrainian soldiers who died in defense of their country were too frequently denied Christian funeral rites and burial by one of the divided Ukrainian Orthodox Churches if the dead soldier happened to belong to another Orthodox jurisdiction.
Shevchuk’s thoughtful and measured approach to all this was not always appreciated in a Vatican that, for four decades, has bet heavily on Russian Orthodoxy as its chief bridge to the Christian East – a deference rewarded by the Moscow Patriarchate’s ongoing demonization of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church as an “aggressor.” Perhaps Rome will now listen more carefully to its point man on the ground in Ukraine, whose instincts and judgment have once again been vindicated by events; perhaps the Holy See will rethink its Russophilia, which is in serious need of a reset after the Moscow Patriarchate described the drive for Ukrainian Orthodox unity as a Vatican plot; perhaps now Major Archbishop Shevchuk, leader of the largest of the Eastern Catholic Churches, will be given the cardinal’s red hat he has thus far been denied.…