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One of the obstacles in the dialogue between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches is the question of Uniatism. The Mixed Commission for Catholic-Orthodox Dialogue at its 1990 session in Freising (Germany) stated the following regarding Uniatism: 'We reject it as a method for the search for unity because it is opposed to the common tradition of our Churches.' In 1993, during the seventh plenary session of the Joint Commission which took place in Balamand (Lebanon), the representatives of both Churches confirmed that Uniatism 'can no longer be accepted either as a method to be followed or as a model of the unity our Churches are seeking.' Many practical guidelines were developed in order to lessen the tensions that exist between the Orthodox and the Catholics in various regions of the world, where they co-exist. The document also stated the following: 'Pastoral activity in the Catholic Church, Latin as well as Eastern, no longer aims at having the faithful of one Church pass over to the other that is to say, it no longer aims at proselytizing among the Orthodox. It aims at answering the spiritual needs of its own faithful and it has no desire for expansion at the expense of the Orthodox Church.'

The above statements may seem to have solved the problem. Unfortunately, however, the recommendations which were made have so far remained on paper, and the Greek-Catholics do not want to follow them. On the contrary, an active expansion of Uniatism takes place in the Ukraine. Uniatism attempts to go beyond Western Unkraine, which for several centuries was its traditional area of habitat, and to expand to the East, where it was never any prominent. The recent transfer of the headquarters of the Greek-Catholic Archbishop from Lviv to Kiev is a clear testimony to this. From the point of view of the Orthodox, the only explanation for this transfer is that the Greek Catholics want to increase their membership through proselytising among the Orthodox Christians.

We must clearly state that the politics of double standards in unacceptable for the inter-church relations. It is inadmissible that Uniate expansionism be condemned on paper but fostered in practice. Unia is not only a regrettable fact of the past, which deepened the division between Christian East and West, but also a serious obstacle towards unity at present. Only conscious abstention of the Greek-Catholics from expansionism and adherence to the practical recommendations of the Balamand document may reduce tensions between them and the Orthodox and pave the way towards a significant improvement in the whole area of Catholic-Orthodox relations.

At the end of 1980s, when the atheist regime in Russia weakened and religious freedom began to flower, hope was brought to both the Orthodox and the Catholics in the territory of the then Soviet Union. The ties between the two Churches, which in Soviet times were quite close (in the face of a common enemy people tend to be united), could have become closer still. I remember this period most vividly. At the time I was a parish priest in Lithuania, a Soviet republic with a predominantly Catholic population. The Orthodox and the Catholics had coexisted there peacefully (this, fortunately, is still the case), and there was a significant degree of mutual trust and assistance. Catholic seminarians came to me for advice before ordination - I was present at their ordination in the Catholic seminary - and meetings between the clergy of the two Churches were frequent. Some Catholic priests and bishops began to return from prison or from exile. I remember my conversation with the newly appointed dean of the theological seminary: when I asked him about his previous 'appointment' he said that he had just returned from prison, where he had spent some ten years. Another Catholic priest spent twenty-five years in a Soviet camp: he had been accused of teaching religion to children, which was forbidden by Soviet law.

My simple mind says why doesn't His Holiness politely suggest to the Russians that they should actually talk with the UGCC ?

From the statement of the Moscow Patriarchate, it would appear they are willing to tolerate "uniatism" only within the territory defined by the political boundary between the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires in the first half of the 17th century; i.e., uniatism can exist in Western Ukraine, but nowhere else in the jurisdiction of the Church of Moscow, regardless of where the faithful of the UGCC may find themselves as a result of the economic and political exigencies of the past century.