HOLY AND GREAT COUNCIL DOCUMENT

Draft Synodical Document

Δευτέρα 22 Ιουνίου 2020

CONTEMPORARY ECUMENICAL CHALLENGES OF HISTORICALLY CHARGED LITURGICAL CULT: THE SERVICES FOR JOSAFAT KUNTSEVYCH, AFANASIY FILIPPOVYCH, AND ANDRZEJ BOBOLA

 
Maria Takala-Roszczenko, School of Theology, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland 

The seventeenth century was a period of political and religious turmoil in the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania. The confessional conflicts produced martyrs whose cults consolidated the confessional boundaries of the Roman Catholic, the Orthodox, and the Greek Catholic Church. In my article, I compare three such saints: Josafat Kuntsevych (1580-1623, Greek Catholic), Afanasiy Filippovych (c. 1595–1648, Orthodox), and Andrzej Bobola (1591-1657, Roman Catholic), who were martyred in the hands of their Christian neighbours. For material, I use the hymnographical services composed for the saints. I argue that, in quest of genuine ecumenism, certain content in these services, such as exclusive concepts of the true faith and church unity, may actually induce rather than prevent hostility between the Churches. Keywords: hymnography, liturgy, Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic, confessionalization, ecumenism, saint, cult, martyr Introduction The seventeenth century was a period of great political, social, and confessional turmoil in the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania, a multi-ethnic state that covered large areas of Central Eastern Europe. The religious pluralism of the Polish-Lithuanian society was, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, giving way to the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church, which was being restored after the Protestant Reformation had shaken its foundations in the sixteenth century. The movement of the “religious tectonic plates” in the Polish-Lithuanian lands also resulted in a division within the Eastern Orthodox Metropolitanate of Kiev. In 1596, at the Union of Brest, representatives of the Kievan Metropolitanate proclaimed their loyalty to the Roman See.1 During the following century, the new Greek Catholic Church........
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