The Drama of Ukrainian Orthodox Identity: between alternatives and parody
The twentieth century has left high controversial version of three “rebirth” of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) in the political vocabulary. By these “three rebirths”, we understand the autocephalous movement of the 1920’s, at the head of which was Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkiwsky; the creation of a hierarchical structure of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 1942, on the territory of the Reich Commissariat “Ukraine”; and the events of 1989 to 1992, that were marked by the mass transfer of Orthodox communities of Halychyna into the jurisdiction of the episcopate formed by Bishop Ioan Bodnarchuk. The most optimistic of publicists even to this day speak of the latter as the “third rebirth” of the UAOC.
The Christian Church identity always carries an element of drama in itself. And such an element arises in the course of the encounter between the transcendental Word and that group of Noah`s descendants who wearied of earthly wandering and emerged from the ruined tower of a dust-covered Babylon acquire some common lineaments of their way of familiarazation with God and formed, ultimately, into a national culture. Likewise, those on the Ukrainian way through its recent history, who still goes round the phantom towers of the contemporary Babylon, that at times shines with Kremlin-like stars on top and sometimes remarkably remind the vision of a depleted gas well.
The twentieth century has left high controversial version of three “rebirth” of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) in the political vocabulary. By these “three rebirths”, we understand the autocephalous movement of the 1920’s, at the head of which was Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkiwsky; the creation of a hierarchical structure of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 1942, on the territory of the Reich Commissariat “Ukraine”; and the events of 1989 to 1992, that were marked by the mass transfer of Orthodox communities of Halychyna into the jurisdiction of the episcopate formed by Bishop Ioan Bodnarchuk. The most optimistic of publicists even to this day speak of the latter as the “third rebirth” of the UAOC.
Actually, a concept of the “third rebirth” contains within itself the sub-versive idea of the self-sufficiency in the process of the creation of the new church structure, independent of émigré centres abroad. Furthermore, this was reflected in the saying, popular in circles at the beginning of the ‘nineties: “We need neither Moscow nor Rome.” From the point of view of canon law, of course, 1989 didn’t present the creation of a new church, but only the beginning of a process in returning the church communities in the Ukraine under the jurisdiction of the émigré centre. This centre, in fact, was just the same as the centre of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the U.S.A., because an effective administrative centre in Western Europe had not as yet been created. And, uniting the primacy of both the UOC in the U.S.A. and the UAOC in his person, Metropolitan Mystyslav in reality provided the administration of the London, West European, Australo-New Zealand, and South American eparchies of the UAOC, from the headquarters of the UOC in the U.S.A., located in Bound Brook, New Jersey. It was this centre that Orthodox Ukrainians in the diaspora lovingly referred to as the “Ukrainian Jerusalem”.
It goes without saying that in the diasporal section of the UAOC, there were few sup- porters of a complete unification with the UAOC in Ukraine. Actually, the separation from the Ukrainian section of the Church of the various diasporal eparchies, which occurred after the repose of Patriarch Mystyslav in 1993, made it easier for these eparchies to transfer under the omophorion of the Ecumenical Patriarch, while saving all their own proper local identity. However, the motherland section of the UAOC, which had so loudly proclaimed its recognition of the jurisdiction of Patriarch Mystyslav over itself, undertook steps throughout the period of 1989 to 1992, which were uncanonical for any community subordinated to the émigré centre to take.
This process of disintegration had begun almost immediately with the accession of Ioan Bodnarchuk, retired Bishop of the Moscow Patriarchate, to the UAOC. For the duration of several months, Bishop Ioan became the “first hierarch of the UAOC in Ukraine” and organized new episcopal consecrations outside the centre of the jurisdiction in such a manner that, afterwards, he would be able to blackmail the bishops he had consecrated and plant suspicion in them of a break of episcopal succession in their consecrations. Thus, the First Local Sobor of June 5-6, 1990, took place without the participation of the UAOC in the diaspora, and without the presence of the primate as well, but which, nevertheless, took decisions associated with the whole Ukrainian Orthodox plenum. First and foremost was the decision which raised the primate of the UAOC (who, let it not be forgotten, was also the primate of the UOC in the U.S.A.) to the rank of Patriarch. A contradictory result of the sobor was also the ratification of the statute concerning the administration of the UAOC, copied from a similar document of the ROC.
In these episodes, one can trace influences of the Moscow secret service, and glimpses of the personal ambitions of the new leaders of the UAOC in Ukraine, through the euphoria of the years marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the gradual break with the Kremlin by the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Unfortunately, however, much of that can also explain the immaturity of the ecclesiological thought of the com- munity that declared itself as the “UAOC” in Ukraine in 1989, and the morbid traces in its own self-perception of its ethno-confessional identity.
When one compares the three historical episodes already mentioned, which are often pro- claimed as the “three re-births” of the UAOC, it is worthwhile to fix one’s attention on the various levels of theological foundation underlying the church’s development during the periods 1917 – 1921, 1942 – 1943, and 1989 – 1992. The first period was marked by a wide use of the fruitful results of historico-ecclesial studies, which had been carried out previously in the Kiev Theological Academy, with the goal of uncovering the uniqueness of the life of the Kievan Church in the 16th to 18th centuries. Moreover, from the begin- ning of the 20th century, both in the church and secular press of the Russian Empire, active discussion had taken place regarding the possible reversal of the deformation of religious life that had occurred throughout the so-called “synodal period”, and ended with the Local Sobor of 1917-1918, followed by the rebirth of patriarchal administration in Russia.
The second period we must examine, in the context of the process of renewal of Ukrain-ian identity, taken place within the Orthodox Church of Poland, whose Volynian eparchies served as the nucleus for the formation of the juridically independent UAOC on the German-occupied territory. The scholarly works of Alexander Lototsky, as well as the historical research of the Kharkivan Professors, Ivan Wlasowsky and Natalya Polonsko-Vasylenko, undertaken in the diaspora, formed a solid academic background for the activity of authentic church institutions.
The completely new phenomenon in the development of the UAOC within the years of 1989 to 1992 was its complete concentration practically within the province of Halychyna. This presented a unique possibility for the utilization of the pure Byzantine-Ukrainian tradition, almost untouched by assimilated influences of other local churches, as the substratum for the reconstruction of the disfigured traditional Kievan rite in Volynia, Center, and Eastern Ukraine, deformed by the unified tendencies of the Moscow Synodal Orthodoxy. Perhaps alone in his consciousness of this perspective, which underlay the charismatic mission of the Galician communities, was Fr. Volodymyr Yarema — the future Patriarch Dimitry, a man grounded in theological knowledge and wide erudition.
Unfortunately, among the Orthodox priests of Halychyna, educated as they were in the seminaries of Odessa, Moscow, and Leningrad, there were short of educated individuals, who were able to appreciate the momentousness of the historical context in the events initiated in Stt. Peter and Paul Church. Attempts at creating an academic foundation for the church’s development were generally realized outside of the church itself, by secular historians, political scientists, or scholars of religion, who imparted a certain theological “cleverness” to these attempts. It is strange, but at the same time somewhat characteristic, that foundational projects involving the in-culturation of new translations of the Holy Scriptures, works of the Fathers of the Church, and the unification of liturgical texts, were all realized within a non-Orthodox context.
In the greater majority of cases, the UAOC has been used as a means of Orthodox community survival in regions with a vigorous Catholic tradition. Brutal inter- confessional conflicts from 1989 to 1992, followed by a pseudo-patriotic rhetoric, transferred the church problem solely into the political sphere. Against a certain cosmo- politanism ascribed to the Catholic community, was counter-posed a “cossack patriotism” of the Orthodox, which can be derived neither from historical documents nor academic works—such would be very difficult to find—but from romantic literature. Such literature is marked dependent on the anti-Polish and, correspondingly, anti-Catholic, policy of tsarist Russia at the time of the November (1830-1831) and January (1863-1864) uprisings in Poland.
The declared intention of seeking an alternative to the ROC has naturally resulted in consideration of matters such as liturgical language and church management. Ritual identity of the faithful remained as a completely unperceived reality, although, under conditions of Halychyna at the time, it had been foreseen as the factor of involving the sympathizers, who were strongly attracted by the traditional form of Byzantine-Ukrainian worship. However, there were not the ancient Galician liturgical books, that highlighted this identity most of all, but the “devotions” (Latin para-liturgical rites), introduced after the Synod of Zamosc, 1721: the way of the cross, the holy hour, the May moleben to the Mother of God, the June moleben to the Sacred Heart, the feast of the Immaculate Con-ception, and others. When, at the Local Council of 1997, the new statutes of the UAOC were ratified, Chapter 2: “The Rite” elicited a disturbing response when the section was read affirming “The Celebration of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, church and private services and prayers, must be performed according to the practice and traditions of the Byzantine-Ukrainian Orthodox rite.” Certain priests from the Sub-Carpathian region
urgently inquired, “Does this not force us to forbid our parishioners the use of devotions which are greatly beloved of them?”
Since 1989, much has been spoken in the UAOC about a return to the traditional conciliar (“council-ruled”) government of parish and eparchial life. However, the principle of “council-rule”, highlighted by “The Kievan Canons of 1921,” which subsequently de- generated into a “council-rights” theory, highly-criticized by Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkiwsky, and in a strange way being co-announced with Khruschevian elements, was enacted in order to bypass the clergy in the administration of the parishes. The retention of this foreign element served in Halychyna as the basis of parish administration. Thus,
the attempts of the Lviv, and subsequently, The All-Ukrainian Brotherhood of the Apostle Andrew, the First-called, to widen the participation of lay people in church life, had minimal effect.
Perhaps the key problem in the search for a true perspective on the UAOC lies in the nature of the role of parish priest. The Synodal Church, re-animated in the USSR in l943, directed the clergyman to function as an ecclesiastical bureaucrat, a dispenser of the sacraments and services, and a transmitter of the politics of the civil authorities. The tradition of the Kievan local church, however, which never experienced the same brutal subjection of the Orthodox Church to the structure of state power, preferred to envisage the priest as pastor, spiritual leader, and teacher of the Christian community capable of demonstrating independence with regard to the civil reality, and more tied to his flock than to the hierarchical structure of the Church. Financial and property matters, which intimately connected the parish priest with the community, made him thereby, in fact, somewhat independent of the church authorities, and forced the latter to accommodate themselves to some degree to this newer direction.
A worrisome feature is also the tendency of the UAOC to conceal her distinctiveness, by comparison with the ROC, for reasons of proselytism. That is to say, to unite to the UAOC, people who are only superficially familiar with Russian church life, leading them to believe that the Ukrainian Church is indistinguishable from the Muscovite one, except in the case of liturgical language. The practical results of this tendency were minimal at best, most often simply disturbing church life with solely short-term political effects.
Lack of a clear awareness of the alternative to Muscovite Orthodoxy, which lies at the heart of the very existence of the UAOC, associated with a completely ineffectual infor-mational process regarding a genuine experience of authentic church life, has resulted in a seriously problematic situation just after the commencement of uniting of Galician communities into eparchies. Low efficiency of the bureaucratic apparat, together with its inherent corruption imported from the east, the mission work was rather announced but never realized, the ineffectiveness of three seminaries--copied in terms of their curricula and teaching methods on the Russian schools of the ‘seventies--all contributed to this. The copying of the patriarchal administration of the ROC, that included even the exclusive use of Russian patriarchal vesture, has created a far-reaching problem in relations with the Constantinopolitan Mother Church, which considers the granting of patriarchal administration, as well as the tomos of autocephaly, her prerogative.
The alternative to the Moscow Patriarchate—the UOAC—announced by the initiative group on Feb. 16, 1989, truly turned into a parody of the ROC in administrative structure, intra-church relations, proper activity, and in relationships with the secular authority.
And although the UAOC existed in a situation of suppressed resistance with regard to the puppet government of the Ukrainian SSR until the fall of the soviets, after the advent of the post-communist administration of Leonid Kravchuk, there arose a drama of collabor- ation by the patriarchal chancellery with the Kiev “big-whigs”, that resulted in the attempted liquidation of the UAOC and the creation of the UOC-KP, modeled on the Moscow Patriarchate. It was on this precise basis that the afore-mentioned Galician eparchies of the UAOC were incorporated. And only with the Local Council of 1997, was the process of restructuring the UAOC on the basis of Kievan Church identity under-taken, a process which continued consistently until the demise of Patriarch Dimitry.
The schism of 2002 revealed the incompatibility of two tendencies within the UAOC: the striving for the renewal of the autonomous Kievan Church on the basis of our authentic church tradition, in the context of universal Orthodoxy, and the inclination to complete imitation of the tradition of the ROC to the point of parody. The challenge, the Kharkiv-Poltava Eparchy meets at this moment, as well as the entire Ukrainian Orthodox community worldwide, has not so much a theological nature, as a pastoral and ecclesiological one. This challenge is one of an awareness of our own proper identity, without which it is useless to expect success in pastoral work among our people. And without a suitable response to this challenge, we will again and again find ourselves spinning our wheels in the dust at the foot of a fallen tower of Babylon.
Archbishop Ihor ISICHENKO
4 January 2011 Kharkiv-Poltava Eparchy
