Kiev. December 15. Interfax - The leader of the Uniates Lubomir Husar called for the unification of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the self-proclaimed "Kiev Patriarchate and Ukrainian autocephalous Orthodox Church, as well as the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in one local Church of the country.
"We have a desire to see these four branches back to the primitive unity. But this unity will not be the same as in the times (prince), Vladimir (Grand - IF)," - said the head of Church in Tuesday's press conference Kiev.
According to L. Husar, the establishment of a united church of Kiev should occur in the form of participations - need to combine faith and traditions of each of the branches to leave. "We are all equal ... We are the same can be only in the holy faith. And those already operating time, tradition, way - this is secondary. We must learn to be tolerant to each other, take it, do not insist that we must all become like one or another branch ", - the head of the Uniates.
In the view of L. Husar, Patriarch, who will head one local church, could belong to any of the four branches, and the spiritual center of the united Church will be Cathedral of St. Sophia in Kiev.
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church came under the Brest union in 1596 to unite the Orthodox and Catholic churches in the territory of the Commonwealth with the recognition of the primacy of the Pope and a number of Roman Catholic canon, while maintaining the Eastern rite.
After the Lviv Cathedral Church in 1946 has been eliminated, although continued to operate illegally in the western regions of Ukraine and abroad. In 1989, the Church in fact was re-legalized as a result of diplomatic agreements between Mikhail Gorbachev and Pope John Paul II.
Source
Hat tip to Mike L. at the Byzantine Forum
Note: The above translation is from Mike L.
4 comments:
An interesting proposal, but I doubt the Vatican would approve of the Ukrainian Catholic Church leaving communion with the Pope. Would the other Ukrainian Churches be willing to enter communion with Rome? What would the Moscow Patriarchate think of that? Can corporate unity come without unity of faith?
It strikes me that this is an invitation for the Ukrainian Orthodox to abandon Orthodoxy and join the Roman Communion.
In ICXC
John
What John said. Being a Greek Catholic in good standing in a position of authority Lubomir can say nothing less: he has a one-true-church claim to uphold, just like the Orthodox. I don't know what will happen in the Ukraine, if it will continue to be post-Soviet secularist, egged on by the rest of Europe, or have a church revival. So far I've never even been there. But my guess is most churchgoers will remain Russian Orthodox and/or Russia may give them autocephaly some day and then the most Orthodox of the nationalist vagantes (schismatics) will come back. The US-backed Yushchenko or somebody like him might pull a Henry VIII and declare his nationalist vagante church the state church, literally forcing many of the real Orthodox into it and persecuting the Greek Catholics again. (But I can't see a pro-Western president doing that to the Greek Catholics and right now the nationalists and the GCs are rather friendly, all playing on anti-Russian nationalism.) Galicia centred on L'viv will remain Greek Catholic as it has been for 400 years.
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