www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Russo-Orthodox official urges Vatican action on Ukraine dispute

In addition to the sources I discuss here

http://easternchristianbooks.blogspot.com/2011/09/metropolitans-in-print.html

one should also consult the following scholarly article for a thorough debunking of these tiresome Russian claims: Andrij Yurash, “Orthodox-Greek Catholic Relations in Galicia and their Influence on the Religious Situation in Ukraine,” Religion, State & Society 33 (2005): 185-205.

You mean like the ones the ROC built?

I recall the report of a priest who, in the late eighties/early nineties (I forget exactly when it happened, but I read of it within months) took the Church which had just been built by the ROC, and claimed it for the Vatican. He announced that by switching the names in the diptychs. He admited that many in the congregation howled and shouted to drown his chanting out when he did it, but he claimed that he "kn[e]w [his] people," and claimed that they were crypto-adherents to the UGCC. The local authorities took his word for it, and a Church built by the resources of the ROC half a century after the liquidation of the UGCC was turned over to it. I don't know in that particular case what happened with Ukrainian independence, but I highly doubt it was returned to the Church that built it, i.e the ROC.

Then there are the questions about property such as St. George Cathedral in L'viv: as is well known, the bishop of L'viv refused to sign the Union of Brest (although they simply affixed his seal instead), and it took a century until the PL Commmonwealth managed to get the bishop of L'viv to turn. The Orthodox Cathedral was torn down-as King Casimir III in 1340 did to the original (1280) Church-and the present baroque-rococo structure put on top of it. By what means was the Church alienated from the Metropolitinate of Kiev-Halych, which had obtained its charter in 1632?

The thousands whom the Austria Hungarian authorities sent to Talerhof, like St. Maxim Sandovich, for returning to Orthodoxy, who got their Churches? Those who returned to Orthodoxy, despite Polish persecusion between the World Wars, who owns their Churches?

What of the UGCC parishes in Poland either destroyed or turned over to the Latin Poles. Did the UGCC just write them off? Or is it only worried about Russians?

Then there is the question of Church properties predating 1596...

This isn't it, that's sure:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/j...apl_19951112_iv-cent-union-brest_en.html

If the Vatican wants to canonize Isodore of Kiev, it is free to do so. But it will win no friends in Moscow nor Kiev in doing so.

Maybe it would like the Priestly Society of St. Josaphat or the Pidhirtsi fathers of the UOGCC even better.

For those who cannot read French, the quoted source has this amuzing-because it is so easily debuncted-assettion:

Through its over 1000 year history, Galicia was always part of the Metropolitinate of Kiev and All Rus' from the first primate St. Michael in 988 until brief interruptions in the 13th century, until St. Peter, nominated to be consecrated Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus' by Boleslaw Yuri II of Galicia-the last of the Galician Rurikid dynasty-became Metropolitan of Kiev and translated the see to Moscow in 1325, where it continued (hence why Isidore of Kiev was resident in Moscow) and became autocephalous in 1448, and continued to hold jurisdiction over all the Rus' until 1589, when it was elevated to the Patriarchate and transferred jursidciton of the Rus' lands controlled by Poland-Lithuania to Constantinople, who reconstituted the Metropolitinate of Kiev, Galicia and All Little Rus' (a term originating in Constantinople), transferred back to the parent line at Moscow in 1686, where it remained. IOW, for the all its 1023 years, Galicia has spent the last 324 undisputedly in the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Moscow, and only the the 103 years before that undisputedly under Constantinople and seperate from Moscow. Since Constantinople prefered to have one Metropolitan over the Rus', Galicia and Moscow spent their first three centuries in the same Metropolitanate, followed by a period of some interludes in seperate Metropolitanates, but mostly in the same, until St. Peter came from Galicia and settled the Metropolitanate in Moscow.

Not sure what it would mean if it were not so-most of the parishes in the West are held by the UAOC and UOC-KP-but it does undermine the credibility of Moscow's detractors who put up such claims.

Well...If the Moscow Patriarchte wants to return to mid 16th century, the UGCC shall remember it that at the time not only all Right Bank Ukraine, but also all Belurus and lots of towns now in Russia as Smolensk were, freely, under the UGCC....

UGCC shall remember that most of the parishes under question can be claimed only for the after-1943 delinquent alliance between the ROC and the Soviet Communist Party.

Why ROC-MP now wants the help of Rome? Because H.H. Sviatoslav Shevchuk is strong and resolute, and ROC-MP wants to humiliate him, by-passing him.

What Rome have to do now? Nothing. Leave the matter to H.H. Sviatoslav Shevchuk. Not to answer to the sweet-talks of Metropolitan Hilarion. If a Christian, who theoretically preaches Christ, wants to be payed (in parishes) to shake hands with an other Christian, the problem is only in him.

An interesting article from RISU just passed to me


RISU Article [risu.org.ua]

and a Church built by the resources of the ROC half a century after the liquidation of the UGCC was turned over to it.


curious; please tell us your understanding of the events and forces informing the so called sobor involved in the so called, "liguidation" of the UGCC?

Sin has far-reaching consequences. How unfortunate that the parishioners in this case should, these many years later, be new victims of the communists and complicit Russian churchmen who facilitated and made possible the fraud of this priest.

A reminder to posters: it is the long-standing policy of this forum that clergy be titled respectfully.

"Hilarion" is an unacceptable usage. Please speak of Metropolitan Hilarion - and all other clergy and hierarchs of the Apostolic Churches - by their proper titles.

Many years,

Neil

JDC,

I think you miss the point of Isa's statement. Unless I am mistaken, he is alleging that the priest in question abandoned the ROC and embraced the UGCC - not the other way around, which seems to be how you read it.

Many years,

Neil

I understood him exactly.

If the Russian Orthodox hadn't colluded in the stealing of churches and forcing of conversions in the first place, this priest would have had no way to perpetrate his fraud these years later.

If I am a thief with a dollar in my pocket, and I steal ten from you, if later you claim you had eleven, and the police require me to turn over to you all the money I hold, I will have been unjustly deprived of my own dollar. Your dishonest claim is wrong, and it will be my own stupid fault for setting up the situation in the first place.

A priest who intentionally perpetrates such a fraud has, with the early help of the communists and the Russian Orthodox who colluded with them, sinned against his parishioners.

There is nothing in this example to evoke sympathy for the Russian Orthodox Church. She did it to herself.

You seem to be demanding sympathy for the UGCC and the Ruthenian "sui juris" (a rather odd dsignation, given it being directly dependent on the Vatican) church:I know that many in the UGCC, evidently including the self elevated "patriarch," do not acknowledge the distinction between the two, but their supreme pontiff has insisted on it.

Given the circumstances of Brest in 1596 and Uzhhorod in 1646, on what basis do you criticize L'viv 1946, in particular, given the issuance by the Vatican of Apostolic Letters praising both Brest and Uzhhorod?

btw, I note that you skipped any answer to my questions about Latin Polish liquidation of the UGCC.

LOL. In the mid 16th century NO ONE was under the UGCC, free or otherwise.

If you meant 1650, no, most were not under the UGCC nor freely so: in 1632 Met. St. Peter Movila had obtained the royal charter legalizing the Orthodox again, and he was fully in possession of Kiev. So too much of Right Bank Ukraine, and Galicia: the bishop of L'viv had refused to sign at Brest, it is not ever suggested that a successor of his even secretly agree to it until 1677-1681, which was not made public until 1700 (that Bp. Shumlanski was a crypto-unionist, when the Kingdom of Poland rules L'viv says something about how "free" it was), and even then it was decades until all its parishes were forced to join the union.



Hardly. Very few if any outside of West Ukraine, and in the region of West Ukraine in its pre-Soviet phase the South-East was nearly all Orthodox, the South-West over a third Orthodox and rising, the North was nearly all Orthodox. Only in the center region could such a claim be made for the UGCC, and even there, in the former Galicia, a half million of the UGCC had returned to Orthodoxy before 1939.

Btw, I've seen the number of UGCC parishes registered as 3,431 in 1946 in West Ukraine: any dispute as to that number? (I think it includes the Ruthenian Eparchy of Mukacheve)

I still submit that most of this discussion has centered around a tangential point - whether or not the ROC or the UGCC deserves the properties in question - instead of the bigger issue (seems to me, anyway), which is the way the ROC is going about trying to achieve its goal.

Alexis