22 April 2012, 11:09 | Andrew Sorokowski's column | 

Questioning “FEMEN”

On Tuesday, April 10 – in the midst of the Eastern Christian Holy Week leading up to Easter – five members of the women’s group FEMEN suspended a seven-meter-long banner reading “Stop” from the belfry of Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. The messagesignified their opposition to draft law No. 10170, which would overturn Ukraine’s rather permissive law on abortion and substitute a more restrictive one. The letter “t” in the English word “Stop” was written in the form of an Eastern Christian cross.

22 March 2012, 09:20 | Viktor Yelenskyi's column | 

Research & Branding Fake

The reasons of the rather unique “research focus” become clear very quickly – as soon as the survey authors begin asking questions about ownership, which they have carefully saved to the end.

20 March 2012, 09:54 | Andrew Sorokowski's column | 

Was the Church a source of fascism?

According to one report, in his March 1 talk about Stepan Bandera at the German embassy in Kyiv, Polish-born German historian Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe placed special emphasis on the “active and direct participation of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in support of the OUN-UPA, precisely as a movement with a pro-fascist ideology.” He even called it “a source of Ukrainian fascism.” Could this be so?

18 February 2012, 09:39 | Andrew Sorokowski's column | 

Beyond Identity

Ever since the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (1962-1965), the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church has been concerned with restoring its “Eastern” identity – or more properly, its Kyivan-Byzantine identity. The Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches (1964) called upon Eastern Catholics to “preserve their legitimateliturgical rite and their established way of life,” to“attain to an ever greater knowledge and a more exact use of them” and, if needed, “take steps to return to their ancestral traditions”

17 January 2012, 00:10 | Andrew Sorokowski's column | 

The New Colonialism

Ukraine is well acquainted with the old type of colonialism, projected by an imperial state onto a subject population. But today, it may be the object of a new type as well – one practiced not by an alien nation-state, but by a transnational socio-economic and ideological elite.

25 December 2011, 17:41 | M | 

On the Birth of Christ and the Fall of the USSR

Christmas is also a judgment on modern Pharisees, pillars of official religiosity. A baptized, but unenlightened Rus, needs a free unpoliticized Church. While the Church and the Kremlin develop the Russian world, Christ does not enter their doors. He is outside the lavish palaces, but with the people.

16 November 2011, 16:37 | Andrew Sorokowski's column | 

Two Visions Of East Slavic Christendom

Why is the Moscow Patriarchate concerned by the structural development of the UGCC? There are several possible interpretations.

19 October 2011, 15:03 | Andrew Sorokowski's column | 

Inculturation

Inculturation is the process by which a religion, entering a particular culture, takes on some of its features while infusing it with its message. The process is necessary in order to make that message comprehensible to that culture.

15 September 2011, 16:57 | Andrew Sorokowski's column | 

Catholicism And Democracy

One may or may not agree with the respected churchman's evaluation of how history has shaped Ukrainian national character. But few people are likely to be surprised that a Catholic prelate is proceeding on the assumption that democracy is good and desirable.

31 May 2011, 14:50 | M | 

On 'Ukrainian Christianity'

“Ukrainian Christianity” is not Christianity sui generis, it is the same Christianity that serves all, and in our case, serves the Ukrainian people. In this sense, Kyiv- or Ukrainian-centrism is not a religious and political counterweight of Moscow or the Vatican, but an orientation to serve in the epicenter of one’s nation’s life.

16 May 2011, 08:24 | Andrew Sorokowski's column | 

Sirens, Monsters And Whirlpools

Buffeted by unabating winds from the north, the Ark of the Church is navigating perilous straits. On the one hand, she hears the siren song of militant nationalism.

11 May 2011, 14:37 | Kateryna Shchotkina's column | 

Rain at the End of the Century

The twentieth century was embodied in Karol Wojtyla – its national awakenings and catastrophes, world wars, discoveries and disappointments, crises, the Beatles, the scientific and technical revolution, mass media, secularization and thrusts of globalization. According to various theorists, the twentieth century was to bring the defeat of religion, destruction of the authority of the church, nullification of faith, its replacement, redefinition of postulates, and the making of faith and even God himself irrelevant.

4 May 2011, 16:46 | Viktor Yelenskyi's column | 

April: On the Church and Government

Out of all that was written or said about religion, society, and the state in April, I was personally most blown away by the Ukrainian president’s annual address to the Verkhovna Rada “Modernization of the Country: Our Strategic Choice.

17 April 2011, 15:38 | Andrew Sorokowski's column | 

Moral Relativism In Moscow

Recently American philosopher George Weigel reported that in an interview with Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, he had asked whether the March 1946 "Council" of Lviv, which purported to liquidate the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, was a "theologically legitimate ecclesial act." Hilarion had unhesitatingly replied in the affirmative.

1 April 2011, 17:36 | Viktor Yelenskyi's column | 

March: The election and the role of personality in history

During the enthronement of the newly elected head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church it is likely that the same thing occurred to many of the guests. When Bishop Sviatoslav reaches the age at which his predecessor asked the pope to accept his resignation, the 21st century will be at its zenith and the world will be different.

12 March 2011, 13:12 | Andrew Sorokowski's column | 

Succession Stories

In resigning from office last month, Archbishop Major Lubomyr Husar paved the way for a smooth and orderly succession. He thus dealt effectively with what has been a perennial problem, and not only in the Church.