…the UGCC and the OCU can learn from each other’s historical experiences.
The head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic
Church (UGCC) has hailed the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). In
this new situation, the two churches share similar challenges. Three of
those challenges concern a church’s relations with the state, with
politics, and with other churches and religious groups. A fourth
involves a church’s internal governance. In all three areas, the UGCC
and the OCU can learn from each other’s historical experiences.
As a part of the Catholic Church, the
UGCC benefits from nearly two millennia of experience with various
states – the Roman Empire, the early barbarian kingdoms, the medieval
feudal states, the Holy Roman Empire, the great monarchies of the early
modern period, the nation-states and empires of the nineteenth century,
and the ideologically-based regimes of the twentieth. Even after losing
its temporal power, the Holy See has been able to exert an influence on
world politics without becoming captive to any state. Thus, the UGCC can
draw on the Vatican’s experience with regimes both friendly and
hostile. And it can use that wisdom to keep a proper distance from the
state. That is a wisdom that it can share with the OCU. For the
prominent (and no doubt necessary) role of President Poroshenko’s
administration in the creation of a new Orthodox Church in Ukraine must
not lead to overbearing state interference in church affairs. That is
always a danger with a country burdened with the legacy of the Russian
Orthodox Church, which has exerted an often negative influence on
church-state relations in Ukraine since the seventeenth century.
Connected with church-state relations is
the matter of relations between religion and politics. Certainly,
religion has always influenced politics, and there is no sense in trying
to deny this. However, political influence on religion can be deadly.
The UGCC, both as part of the Catholic Church and in its historical
experience in Western Ukraine, has a good deal of experience – much of
it negative – to share with its Orthodox brethren. Catholicism has
struggled against modern political movements and ideologies like
socialism and fascism. The UGCC has a complex legacy of relations with
Ukrainian nationalism. In a time of foreign invasion and occupation,
there is a natural tendency for religion to become closely involved with
patriotism. At the same time, nationalism poses certain ideological
dangers. UGCC Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky’s distinction between
Christian patriotism and pagan nationalism is one of the lessons from
which the OCU could benefit.
The UGCC also benefits from the Catholic
Church’s recent experience with ecumenism, which dates from the Second
Vatican Council. Here, Rome has trod carefully, entering into
discussions with Orthodox and, to a limited extent, Protestants. It has
learned to maintain dialogue, never compromising its basic dogma, but
continuing discussions that can lead to better understanding, mutual
enrichment, and perhaps eventual reconciliation. The Roman Catholic
Church has also engaged in interreligious dialogue, finding common
ground and common cause with Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, and other
non-Christians. This experience, in which the UGCC shares, has nourished
a wisdom from which the OCU can benefit in its relations with the
Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate and other Christian churches,
as well as with Ukraine’s Jews, Muslims, and others.
But in the matter of internal
governance, it is the UGCC that can learn from the OCU. Broad
participation in church government is a venerable Orthodox tradition.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate invited ordinary clergy and laity as well as
bishops to the December 15 unification council. While the UGCC can draw
on the conciliar tradition of the Catholic Church, it can also learn
from the strong Orthodox traditions of synodality and lay participation.
This applies not only to the conduct of major councils, but to the
election of bishops and priests. The UGCC may not be prepared to take
such a decentralizing, “democratic” step as to allow parishes to elect
their pastors – a practice that the Soviet authorities used to undermine
and control the Orthodox Church. And lay election of bishops would seem
to violate the rule of apostolic succession. But even Roman Catholics
have sometimes called for lay participation in the election of bishops
to ensure accountability. In any case, there is much in the Orthodox
tradition that Greek-Catholics can study and consider.
In these four ways, Ukrainian
autocephaly should provide broader opportunities for Greek-Catholics and
Orthodox to enrich each other’s lives.