www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Website: Destroyed Ukr. Orthodox Churches by Poles

"Aktsia Wisla" is the Polish name given to the forcible "ethnic cleansing" of the Greek-Catholic and Ukrainian-speaking Lemkos from their homeland in the Carpathian Mountains (specifically the Beskids) in southeastern Poland in the late nineteen-forties. The best source I know of is Oleh Iwanusiw's book Church in Ruins.

Fr. Serge

Really, can you please list their names and books please.

Father bless,
I think perhaps an even better book (as far as pictures go)is an older book published in Rome in 1975-76 called "Mystetsvo Lemkivs'koyi Tserkvy" (De Arte Sacra Ecclesiarum Lemcoviensium-Prof.Dr.V. Karmazyn-Kakovsky).
I came across this in the Stauropegion book store in Chicago years ago and was really suprised at the number of Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches that were turned into Roman Catholic,many more than what is shown in Church In Ruins.The big plus about Church In Ruins is it's large format and color pictures.
I only bring this up because this book hasn't been mentioned before and maybe people don't know about it.I also have a feeling that if anyone on this forum does know,it would be you!

In Christ,
Nino

I personally would not be interested in it... If it serves as a base for recriminations and polemic, it would do more harm than good.

While it may in fact be the case that Poles more often than not consider it essential to be Latin to be Polish... A question that can in turn be asked is "What got them to the point where they had such animosity to any they percieved as non-Poles?" No matter the answer, this isn't an attempt at justifying such a sad state of affairs as the highlighted episode of this topic... But it is more helpful in hearing the "fuller story" to understand that this expression of xenophobic nationalism is rooted in a far bigger picture that is, I believe, part of a much larger and sadder still ongoing struggle between nations.

Well, as it happens there are such people - and even clergy - as Polish Greek-Catholics. You might wish to ask them, and then explain why the Polish Greek-Catholics have also been the victims of serious mis-treatment, not to say abuse. Surely you are not asserting that Polish Roman Catholics and Polish Greek-Catholics are two different nations.

Are you living in Ohio? If so, do by all means discuss this subject with Father Bryan Eyman.

Fr. Serge

Father, please don't read more into it than what I wrote.

In a discussion about the animosity demonstrated to Eastern Christians in Poland, understanding how the majority could get caught up in seeing the Eastern minority as being tied to the "Russian other" is a discussion worth having.

Surely in fact I am not asserting that Polish Roman Catholics and Polish Greek-Catholics are two different nations. That is why I didn't write anything so ludicrous as that myself. (It is useful to isolate a small portion of the quote when even intimating that could have been my motive. I would hope it is rather more obvious that it is not.) I am glad we are on the same page there.

Thank you for your suggestion to speak with Father Brian. I have done so many times already.

My main concern in even broaching the subject - how often do I come to regret even bothering - is that I fear that this issue can be used to present a singular episode of a greater situation and use it to foment righteous indignation and outrage rather than discussion.

"A singular episode?" How many singular episodes are required before you will allow those of us who are all too painfully familiar with the situation to discern a pattern?

Fr. Serge

You don't need my allowances - you are allowed already.

But your response speaks well past my point.

Do you think it would be the least bit helpful to understand what these episodes were part of? Or is it just as useful to follow the lead of some posters who seem content to focus on them to the exclusion discussing motivation and the history leading up to that? When we do the latter, I admit, it ends up proving far more useful to the creation of an anti-Pole/Latin/Catholic sentiment.

I often can't help but suspect that is the intention in the first place with a good number of these threads.

Well said Simple Sinner!!!

[quote=Aunt B]Well said Simple Sinner!!! [/quote]

indeed!

I certainly do - and I've tried. But here are some questions which one might address:

In 1905, Tsar Nicholas II announced freedom of religion in the Russian Empire. This applied to quite a variety of religions, including Greek-Catholics in several places (including Moscow and Saint Petersburg), but mysteriously not in the Eparchy of Kholm and neighboring places where the Polish Latin hierarchy exercised their jurisdiction as one would exercise a race horse. Since then, Polish propaganda has claimed that the government of Nicholas II would not permit a Greek-Catholic revival in Polish territory.

At the end of World War I, Poland regained independence. The new independent Poland was faced with large numbers of people who had been forcibly aggregated to the Russian State Church in 1875 and who strongly wanted to return to their own Greek-Catholic Church. The Polish goverment and bishops would not stand for a revival of the Eparchy of Kholm, and finally "compromised" to the extent of allowing a few parishes to function as "chapels" of the local Latin parishes. When Rome appointed Blessed Nicholas (Charnetsky) as Bishop and Apostolic Visitor for these Greek-Catholics the Polish government did not recognize him. Nonetheless, he managed to form about fifty parishes.

After World War II, fourteen of those parishes remained in the altered territory of Poland. Thirteen of the fourteen were compelled either to join the Latins or to return to Eastern Orthodoxy. The fourteenth is Saint Nicetas the Martyr, in Kostomloty, which survived thanks to a highly intelligent priest (Father Alexander Prylutsky - Memory Eternal) and the support of Bishop Ceslaus Sipovich.

And so on.

In an effort to understand all this, I asked a bishop of the Orthodox Church in Poland just how this whole thing could be explained. The good bishop said: "Father Archimandrite, you have asked me a question. In response, I shall ask you a question: with which of their neighbors do the Poles get on well?" I mentally bordered Poland, realized the Bishop's point, and burst out laughing.

The moral of that one is easy enough: if you have a quarrel with one neighbor, that does not entitle the observer to conclude that you must be at fault. But if you do not manage to get along with any of your neighbors . . . you get the idea, I trust.

Fr. Serge

Here is an interesting Article in this months edition One Magazine titled: The Orthodox Church of Poland [cnewacanada.ca]

Mike

Not a very good article. But then it is a Catholic Magazine and geared toward the general public.
The Orthodox Church in Poland after WW2 was forced by the Polish communist government to use modern Polish as a liturgical language replacing traditional Church Slavonic and also to use Polish in sermons.
And their church journals/magazines had to be published in Polish and Russian. The use of Ukrainian was forbidden by the government.

Dear Miller,

Yes, indeed!

The head of the Polish Orthodox Church was/is an ethnic Ukrainian who led the glorification of the Orthodox Martyrs of Kholm.

This whole episode serves to indicate that it wasn't only the Russian Orthodox who were intolerant to Greek-Catholics - but also Roman Catholics under Poland (who have also been against the canonization of Met. Andrew Sheptytsky for his "treason" against his Polish ancestry in going over to the UGCC).

Look, there are no "saints" in this whole Eastern European mess.

There has been a significant rapprochement between Poland and Ukraine over the years and this despite enduring resentment (a couple of years back, Patriarch Lubomyr had to deal with charges made by a Polish bishop in Lviv that his priests were being abused by UGCC clergy in a church intended to be shared between them).

May this movement gain momentum by the Grace of God!

Alex