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Ukrainian Nationalism and the Orthodox Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

John S. Reshetar
John S. Reshetar*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, Princeton University
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Extract

Eastern Orthodoxy, unlike Roman Catholicism, is organized on the principle of autocephalous national churches—each constituting an independent administrative entity. This fundamental difference between Eastern and Western Christianity causes the thinking Orthodox Christian to be confronted with a dilemma. He wants the Church to be close to the communicant and the clergy to teach him and pray in his own language, and yet if he desires that the whole Church be able to perpetuate itself and propagate the faith, he must grant to it a sufficiently centralized organization and at the same time combat all fissiparous tendencies. Thus, on the surface at least, there appears to be a conflict between Christ's injunction that there be “one fold and one shepherd” (John 10:16) and the actual establishment of national churches which can easily render unto Caesar what may be correctly regarded as “things that are God's“ ( Matthew 22:21).

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , February 1951 , pp. 38 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1951

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References

1 See Fortescue's, Adrian The Orthodox Eastern Church, 2nd ed. (London, 1908), pp. 285 ffGoogle Scholar. That the Orthodox Church in Ukraine exercised considerable influence on the Russian Church is made amply evident in the ponderous study by Constantine Kharlampovič, V., Malorossijskoe Vlijanie na Velikorusskuju Cerkovnuju Žizn’ (Kazan, 1914)Google Scholar, which deals with the period beginning in the middle of the sixteenth century and ending in 1762.

2 This is admitted even by a sworn enemy of everything Ukrainian. See Carinnyj, A., Ukrainskoe Dviženie (Berlin, 1925), p. 134.Google Scholar

3 Dorošenko, Dmytro, lstorija Ukraïny (Užhorod, 1930), II, 322 Google Scholar.

4 Ibid.; Appendix 11 contains the text of the Patriarch's letter.

5 Lotoc'kyj, Alexander, V. Carhorodi (Warsaw, 1939), pp. 92 fGoogle Scholar.

6 The Russian Church branded this whole procedure as “self-consecration“ (samosvjastvo) and regarded all priests who were ordained by these hierarchs as apostates, and the sacraments performed by them as invalid and blasphemous. See the brief and biased account of the establishment of the Ukrainian Church in Nicholas Brianžaninov, The Russian Church (New York, n. d.), pp. 159 ff. Reverend Lypkivs'kyj's ordination into the priesthood had been canonical because he had served as a priest in the Russian Church since 1891 following his graduation from the Kiev Theological Academy. He had demonstrated ability at an early date, and in 1903 he was appointed to the directorship of an ecclesiastical normal school in Kiev. He was removed from this post because of his enthusiasm for the 1905 Revolution; he then accepted a pastorate in a Kiev suburb which he held until he assumed the leadership of the movement for a national church.

7 See Dijannja Vseukraïns'koho Pravoslavnoho Cerkovnoho Soboru v Kyjevi 1921 'oku (Frankfurt am Main, 1946), pp. 14 f.

8 Ibid., p. 18.

9 Ibid., p. 9. For French translations of some of the documents pertaining to the Ukrainian Church see “L'Éiglise Orthodoxe Panukrainienne crééé en 1921 à Kiev,“ Orientalia Christiana, No. 3 (June, 1923), pp. 73 ff.

10 The Ukrainian Church was not unique as a reformed group in the Russia of this period. A similar movement arose within the Russian Orthodox Church in the form of the “Renovated” or “Living” Church which also endeavored to break the monopoly of the monastic clergy on episcopal offices by permitting bishops to many. It allowed clergymen to cut their hair and shave their beards and for a brief period in the mid-twenties preached the sinfulness of capitalism and temporarily won the support of the Soviet Government which hoped in this way to weaken the Moscow Patriarchate and the traditional Church.

11 Rev. Gavin, Frank, Some Aspects of Contemporary Greek Orthodox Thought (Milwaukee, 1923), p. 219.Google Scholar

12 Teodorovyč, Archbishop John, Blahodatnist’ Jerarkhiï Ukraïns'koï Avtokefalnoï Cerkvy, 3rd ed. (Regensburg, 1947), pp. 11 ffGoogle Scholar.

13 Ibid., pp. 50 ff. Also see Paul's Epistle to the Philippians 1:1.

14 Ibid., pp. 100 f. Archbishop Teodorovyč (pp. i24ff.) has cited considerable evidence which indicates that consecration of bishops by a college of presbyters was a practice employed by the Church of Alexandria for more than two centuries preceding the convocation of the First Ecumenical Council in 325 A.D.

15 Nicholas Kovalevs'kyj, Ukraïna Fid Červonyin Jarmom (Lviv, 1936), pp. 72 ff.

16 The demise of the Church in Ukraine itself did not hinder the development of independent Ukrainian Orthodox Churches in the United States and in Canada. Many of the Ukrainian immigrants in both countries desired such a Church, and when the movement first manifested itself in the homeland they were quick to assume the initiative. As early as July 18, 1918, a group of 150 laymen held a church congress in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The participants were members of the Uniat Church, adhering to the Eastern Orthodox ritual but acknowledging the Papacy, who were dissatisfied with the arbitrary nature of its administration and the principle of personal episcopal ownership of all church buildings and parochial property. They also objected to the attempt of the Uniat Church to obtain control of the Peter Mohyla Institute, a Ukrainian educational institution in Saskatoon. When the Uniat bishop denied them the sacraments, they decided to establish a truly national and democratically governed church and return to the Orthodox faith of their forefathers. The new Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church of Canada gained adherents from the Russian Orthodox Church which lost whole parishes composed of emigrants from Bukovina; many Uniats also joined the new Church which now has more than two hundred congregations although many of these are rural and small. The Canadian Church, unlike the movement in Ukraine itself, succeeded in obtaining recognition from a canonically consecrated Orthodox hierarch in the United States, the Syrian Metropolitan Germanos, who served as its acting bishop until Archbishop Teodorovyc succeeded him in 1924. The latter also assumed control over the numerically smaller Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the United States, but in 1947 he relinquished the leadership of the Canadian Church which now has a separate hierarch. It is significant that the Canadian Church did not accept the canons which were adopted at the Kiev Sobor in 1921, since it wished to be in a position to establish relations with the other branches of the Orthodox Church on the North American continent.