20 May 2012, 15:18 | Andrew Sorokowski's column

Pride and Propaganda

On March 30, 2012 Party of Regions deputy Vadym Kolesnychenko introduced a bill in the Ukrainian parliament prohibiting homosexual “propaganda” aimed at minors.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

14 February 2011, 08:02 | Andrew Sorokowski's column | 

Is there such a thing as catholic economics?

Nothing could be more distant from religion, many people would say, than economics. Economics is a hard-headed, hard-hearted field, known as "the dismal science." It is for pragmatists, not idealists; it deals with the corporal, not the spiritual.

20 January 2011, 13:51 | Andrew Sorokowski's column | 

Christianization, de-christianization, re-christianization

"Secularization" is one of the most popular topics in today's religious and political discourse. But what does it mean? In the strictest sense, it means turning something sacred into something profane: for example, turning a cathedral into a "temple of reason," as happened with Notre-Dame de Paris during the French Revolution, or using a church as a cinema, as happened throughout the USSR.

15 December 2010, 07:39 | Andrew Sorokowski's column | 

Shifting the east-west paradigm

There is a fundamental paradox in the world view of many Ukrainians. Ecclesiastically they are Eastern – whether they are Greek-Catholic or Orthodox. But socio-politically and culturally as well as economically, their orientation is Western. They see themselves as a part of Europe.

11 November 2010, 19:53 | Andrew Sorokowski's column | 

Decay and Rebirth

"The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without"