Identity - The European Question
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By Fr. David Petras
Our identity as Eastern Catholics living in the United States did not arise from a vacuum. We have taken our identity from our European ancestors. This does not mean that our Church has remained the same as it was in Europe. It has changed dramatically in its new environment, but it cannot be completely understood without a knowledge of its older history. The Church was transplanted into America roughly between the years 1880-1920, the peak years of our grandparents’ immigration. The Ukrainian Church has a different experience, since there was an extensive immigration after World War II. As is clear, we are no longer just third or fourth generation Americans. Our population is now becoming the fifth and sixth generation in this country, and there has been so much intermarriage that ethnicity questions are complex and secondary. They still exist, however, because the Eastern Church was so closely tangled up with its root European cultures. We must seek an understanding of these origins if we are to understand our future road.
No one is quite sure of the origins of Christianity in what we will call by the ecclesiastical name of Ruthenia. Technically, the central territory of the people of the Byzantine-Ruthenian Church was called Transcarpathian Rus (“podkarpatska Rus”), the Rusyn people living south of the Carpathian mountains. This Church comprised the dioceses of Uzhhorod, Prešov, Hajdúdorog, and Krievci. Each of these dioceses are now in a different country (Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary and Croatia). Depending on when they immigrated and from where, the descendants of these people in the United States may consider themselves Rusyn, or Slovak, or Hungarian, or Croatian. What they have in common, though, is that they are all “Greek Catholics.” This name was later changed to Byzantine Catholic to avoid an ethnic identification with Greeks. The term “Byzantine” is applied to this Church, because its theological, liturgical, spiritual and canonical heritage derives from the Great Church of Constantinople (original name, “Byzantium.”) We are Byzantine Catholics in the same way as the Irish, Polish and German Catholics are “Roman Catholic,” even though they are not Italian. The name refers to the culture of origin.
This area in Europe was one of the least advanced, we know very little of any history before the fourteenth century. The people were not well-educated, not on the main trade routes of Europe. They were poor, a peasant people who lived in primitive conditions and had many superstitions. They were continually under the domination of neighboring nations and cultures. However, their Church gave them a dignity and a culture. They received their strong faith through the conduit of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, perhaps the greatest Christian nation of history. They participated actively in the liturgy of the Church, especially through song, and in this way entered into the great and sublime mystery of divine salvation. A visitor there, Johann von Gardner, observed, “I was amazed at the theological information of the simple peasants. It was genuine dogma, quoted by heart from any place in the sung verse.”
There is no doubt that the Mother Church of the Ruthenian people was Byzantium. Therefore, they were a part of the Orthodox Church in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. In the seventeenth century, these people made a fundamental choice to seek communion instead with the Apostolic See of Rome. The reasons for this decision were complex. They were under the control of Western nobility, and saw their only chance for advancement and social equality in union with Rome. Certainly, at this stage of history, the Ecumenical Patriarch and Eastern lands were able to offer them little help. Constantinople itself was going through a dark age under the control of the Turks. The West was undergoing a cultural rebirth, great progress was being made in learning, the arts and science. It was on the verge of a technological revolution. The temptation to cast one’s lot with the West was overwhelming, and within a few decades all of Ruthenia had become Catholic. They maintained their love for their Eastern heritage, however, and the union was made only under the condition that their own traditions of faith and liturgy would be maintained. Unfortunately, that same presumption of the superiority of Western culture would eventually lead to a very strong latinization of the Church, not only in liturgy, but also in theology, spirituality and church discipline. There must have been in the union an ideal of one Church, and our Byzantine heritage was never completely betrayed. Indeed, even after the original social motivations for union disappeared, the people choose to remain Catholics in union with Rome.
The first wave of “latinization” was motivated by cultural reasons. The West appeared to be the superior, forward-looking, dominant culture of the world and, because of feelings of inferiority and training in Western schools, the people adopted many of the practices and much of the thought of the Roman Church. At the same time, there were always movements to maintain the integrity of the Byzantine heritage. A second wave of latinization occurred after the partition of Poland by Russia and Austria-Hungary at the end of the eighteenth century. In territories that were given to Russia, the Eastern Catholic Churches were disestablished and forced into Orthodoxy. As a defense, the Eastern Catholics began to emphasize their Catholic identity, creating a Church which would look outwardly much different from the Orthodox. These political imperatives were recognized by Pope Gregory XVI in his letter Perlatum ad nos (1841) and by Pope Pius IX in his letter, Omnem Sollicitudinem (1874). The difficulty with this project was that, while there certainly was and is a distinct Ruthenian Church, the differences from Orthodoxy were artificially heightened by deliberate Westernization not in keeping with the Byzantine spirit. The twentieth century has seen again an effort to reclaim our Eastern heritage in its integrity. This has been strongly supported by the Second Vatican Council in its decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches, and recently by Pope John Paul II’s letter, Orientale Lumen, and by the Liturgical Instruction of January 6, 1996 from the Oriental Congregation.
Throughout this century, the Ruthenian Church in Europe and in America have been going separate ways. Following World War II, a traumatic event occurred: the Communist occupation of the countries of Eastern Europe from 1946-1989. During this time, Eastern Catholic Churches were again disestablished and Catholics were forced underground. In the time of the Dubek reforms in Czechoslovakia in the late 60's, the Church of Prešov was re-established, and after the fall of Communism in Ukraine, the Church of Uzhhorod was re-established. The Communist occupation has left a bitterness against the Orthodox, who, though also persecuted by the Communists, benefited from the repression of the Eastern Catholic Churches. Our hopes must be that the Eastern Catholics and Orthodox in Europe will rediscover their common heritage, but it will be a difficult road.
In America, we have been able to live in freedom. It is true that Catholic and Orthodox feelings were sharpened in the fights over the celibacy issue, and the return of many of the Ruthenian people to Orthodoxy, but the divisions have not been as deep as Europe. We have followed a different road, and have come to a greater knowledge of Christianity through a genuine Eastern tradition. Our Churches in Europe and America are now quite different, but must continue to support one another through a love for our authentic heritage of faith.