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Kyiv, 7 March 2006

Address
of the Synod of Bishops of the Kyiv-Halych Metropolitanate
to the clergy, religious, and laity of the UGCC and to all people of good will
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Lviv Pseudo-sobor of 1946

Holy martyrs, you gloriously suffered and were crowned,

therefore, pray that the Lord have mercy on our souls…

With these words from the troparion, we today call on the souls of those who took upon their shoulders the burden of the great spiritual feat of preserving the faith and rescuing the Church 60 years ago, at a time when the very foundations of human civilization were shaken. It was a time when evil seemingly became all-powerful and persistently tore out the map of the world in its effort to become the master of human history. It took an especially acute spiritual sight to be able to see all the vanity of these efforts. It took a special “zeal for the Savior” to believe in the Easter resurrection of Good in the middle of that orgy of evil. Today we call on the souls of our glorious martyrs in order together to beg God for the gift of understanding and the wisdom to be able to answer : How should the Church, which has been going its thorny way of the cross for so long, act now? What does the Lord, Who in His plan has outlined such marvelous and mysterious paths for us, expect from us?

The mention of the way of the cross is not just a customary Christian metaphor. One of the main gifts received by our Church from the Lord is the gift of martyrdom for “the unity of all.” This way of the cross is known, particularly, for its three bloody milestones of three mournfully memorable dates , namely , 1839, 1875 , and 1946. The first is the date of the termination of the union in right-bank Ukraine and Belarus ; the second is the date of its destruction in the Cholm and Pidliashshia areas. The third milestone was the brutal destruction of the Greek Catholic Church in Eastern Galicia with subsequent destruction thereof in the Lemko and Nadsiannia, Transcarpathia, and Presov regions. The Lviv Pseudo-sobor, the 60 th anniversary of which we mournfully mark this March, became the culmination and symbol of that last period.

On this occasion, the Synod of Bishops of the Kyiv-Halych Metropolitanate is addressing you, dearly beloved in Christ, with this letter, intended to stimulate people to deep meditation and frank discussions, fundamental source studies, and theological reflections on the pages of our tragic and heroic past. We also hereby directly encourage all the clergy and laity of our Church, all our brothers and sisters, to join this prayerful meditation and discussion and share their thoughts in order to join our efforts in such an important matter as the healing of historic wounds and joint Christian testimony in future.

I

We call the Lviv assembly of 1946 a “pseudo-sobor” because it was convened under conditions of horrible terror and was held with inadmissible violation of the norms of canon law and the religious freedoms of the person. Its true purpose was the same as that of all the other “liquidations of the union”: rulers, states, and historic ages and dominant ideologies changed, but the main thing remained: the aspiration to obliterate the very idea of unity with the Roman Apostolic See from the life of the Kyivan Church. However, the centuries-long unity withstood and passed all the trials, having thereby confirmed again the truth of Gamaliel's words: if an intention and cause is from God, it is impossible to destroy it (compare Acts 5: 38-39). Martyrdom for the “unity of all” became probably the greatest sacrificial gift contributed by us to the treasury of the Universal Church , despite the fact that it has not yet been sufficiently appreciated by some of our fellow believers.

How did our Church survive the horrible years of persecution? To the surprise of the whole world, not only religious, but even entire generations of Christian families became strongholds of defense of the faith and Church. In 2001, during the visit of the Servant of God Pope John Paul II, the Universal Church publicly recognized that feat by the beatification of 27 sons and daughters of the Greek Catholic Church. In addition to these widely known names , there were also hundreds of thousands of martyrs for the faith who laid down their lives in prisons and concentration camps , whose names are not known to us and whose remains rest in the permafrost of Siberia and the polar regions , the steppes of Kazakhstan and Central Asia . Only God knows the number of all our martyrs. And we believe that Christ will reveal to us all their full number and magnitude on the day of His Second Coming.

Not all the children of the Church were given the honor of the thorny crowns of martyrs and confessors, but they also took upon themselves its heavy cross. Those who avoided the repressions made efforts to maintain centers of spiritual life at the local level in underground conditions of conspiracy. Private homes became underground churches , Christian families became small communities . On Sundays, people listened to Divine Liturgies on Radio Vatican . Sometimes the faithful secretly opened churches locked by the communist regime and celebrated services there without a priest. They found great support in the addresses of Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj , sent by him from prisons through reliable people with extreme difficulties. Taking advantages of rare occasions of the weakening of repressions, the underground Church gradually restored what was necessary for life and development by ordaining bishops and running underground spiritual seminaries and monasteries. And when, under conditions of regained religious freedom, the time came to proclaim the existence of the undefeated Church, it was these people who went out to Arbat Street in Moscow to starve and submitted applications for the registration of Greek Catholic communities, making the whole world wonder at such a powerful manifestation of a unanimous will.

The strict limits of the deep underground obviously could not envelop all the faithful. Part of the Greek Catholics attended operating churches. Despite the fact that their temples were arbitrarily passed to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), the faithful remembered that they were part of the Greek Catholic Church and still considered the churches their own. Part of the priests did not dare to resist the state terror for various reasons and decided to accept formally the “state Orthodoxy” imposed by Stalin's regime. They offered various explanations for their motives : some justified themselves by a forced compromise allowing them to retain at least minimal forms of church life , others by care for the fate of their relatives . Let the Lord judge them, as He knows the heart of everyone and weighs their intentions. The Church highly honors the sacrifice of its children and servants , but cannot demand martyrdom from all. And today, when the bloody wounds of the Lviv Pseudo-sobor are slowly healing, the Church especially calls for what it has prayed for to God for 2000 years now, namely, for the forgiveness of all who burdened their conscience with some guilt, intentionally or unintentionally.

The storm of history also drove Greek Catholics outside Ukraine , across seas and oceans , where they found shelter among Ukrainian settlers who had organized their church communities and hierarchical structures there as early as in the beginning of the 20th century in God's Providence . Despite the hard conditions of resettlement and post-war dislocation, the new wave of emigration considerably strengthened the existing centers of religious and national life of Ukrainians in Western Europe , Australia , North and South America, and developed new ones. It was the settlers of various generations who became the voice of free and unsubdued Ukraine and its Church, which was forced to be silent. Thanks to that voice, the world heard and many people unambiguously condemned the wrong of the Lviv Pseudo-sobor, the deception of which was obvious against the background of the dynamic development of the UGCC in the diaspora.

As for the exiles of the eastern diaspora, they could not practice the faith in its usual form under the conditions of Soviet totalitarianism. However, the memory of the spiritual shrines of their native land was alive in their hearts, and the example of faithfulness to the native Church and pastoral calling given by imprisoned bishops and priests, has kept their faith alive from generation to generation, up to the present, and has sown the seeds of the Good News of the Gospel among people who were deprived of their spiritual leadership or never heard the Word of God. We hope that now , by way of gradual development of possibilities of pastoral care and consistent assertion of the right to religious freedom in all regions of the former Soviet Union , the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church will be able to renew its spiritual connection and duly serve the needs of its willing faithful . The existence of church communities in Russia and Kazakhstan , which were established at the inspired initiative of local Greek Catholics, often despite a hostile environment, clearly proves that such a will is there.

Thus, the Church which was declared liquidated by the Lviv Pseudo-sobor survived the period of persecutions, organized itself in the underground, gave birth to the next generation of church leaders and faithful, returned to the lands where it functioned and was then destroyed several centuries ago, was extended to new regions outside Ukraine, and has lived to see the bright festival of Resurrection in the homeland. Today, we thank the all-merciful Lord for not leaving us on that thorny path and bringing us out of the “house of captivity,” and we recall the past, not to reproach anyone for wrongs done, or to seek sympathy or reopen historic wounds. Our goal is to understand what conclusions we should draw from the experience of the past in order to ensure the Christian character of our future.

II

The Lviv Pseudo-sobor of 1946 was an example of the brutal interference of the state in people's religious life. All the preparation, selection of participants, direction of work and implementation of decisions of that meeting were done on instructions and under the direct supervision of representatives of the authorities and repressive structures. Neither the metropolitan, nor any bishop of our Church gave their blessing for the convening of the sobor or participated in it. On the contrary, despite being imprisoned, the hierarchy of the UGCC unambiguously condemned the pseudo-sobor and its decrees and denied them by their life and death. No Greek Catholic ever even doubted that it was canonically illegitimate. Even our Orthodox brothers and sisters in the depths of their souls certainly cannot doubt the injustice of that assembly. They are afraid not so much of the recognition of the fact that the state resorted to terror and the instrumentalization of their Church but about the consequences of that recognition for themselves.

For, it appeared in the beginning that, by joint efforts of the Party leadership, the authorities, security structures and the Orthodox hierarchy, the “Uniate question” was solved once and for all indeed. The seeming “perpetuity” of the Soviet regime directly envisaged the “endlessness” of the prohibition of the UGCC. Having gained control over the buildings of the Greek Catholic Church , the official Russian Orthodox Church benefited much, as far as its personnel and economy was concerned, and also formally doubled the number of its parishes. The Vatican's so-called “Ostpolitik” (eastern policy), whose creators persistently sought to maintain dialogue with Moscow for the sake of rapprochement, understanding, and eventual unification, not only failed to produce the expected results but also directly promoted establishment of the conviction that the cause of the union would prove fruitless in the whole Christian world.

Suddenly, at the end of the 1980s, the Soviet Union, the modern Tower of Babel , collapsed. The monolith of “state Orthodoxy,” artificially constructed by the godless regime, came apart with the democratization of social life and restoration of religious freedoms. Millions of Greek Catholic faithful, deceitfully assigned to the ROC, and many priests educated in Orthodox spiritual institutions and even ordained by the Orthodox, remembered their origin and returned to the bosom of their Church. The way to church “unity,” pointed out by the bayonets of NKVD-KGB agents, proved to be a blind-alley and such “unification” proved to be a house built on sand (comp. Matt. 7: 26). In His inscrutable wisdom, it is as if God returned things to their places in order for us, having gained such a dramatic experience, to ask ourselves a question: What should be our way to genuine unification in the Lord?

The memory of the wrongs of the Lviv Pseudo-sobor and the victims associated with it provides the first , very substantial answer to this question : one cannot find a fitting , really Christian solution to the problem of church unity with the use of any violence , by the state or any group (“ All who draw the sword will die by the sword ”) . The tragic consequences of the evil done still poison the atmosphere and make impossible not only unification, but even mere coexistence and at least some agreement. For, on the one hand, having all necessary grounds to seek justice, the wronged party easily yields to the temptation of acting according to the Old Testament principle “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” And on the other hand, the reluctance to admit the sin does not allow those burdened with it to find out the truth and clear their conscience.

Another, not less important, answer can be provided by comparison of the events of 60 years ago and their consequences with what happened during the conclusion of the Union of Brest over 400 years ago. For, the confessional Orthodox conscience firmly holds a stereotype that the unification in Brest was “Catholic proselytism,” “forced polonization,” “a betrayal of Orthodoxy,” and so on, which stereotype is widely reproduced today as well. In particular , the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church in unison with official Soviet propaganda justified the convention of the pseudo-sobor by the necessity to “ eliminate the consequences” of the Union of Brest and “to return the Uniates to the bosom of the mother Church,” that is, to the Moscow Patriarchate, which neither the Greek Catholics nor their historic predecessors were ever part of. In addition to our ill-wishers in the East, some ecumenical circles in the West also contributed to the spread of an inadequate appraisal of the act of union in Brest . They unfairly stigmatized it as “uniatism,” making the union itself and the Church that grew from it seemingly the main obstacle in the way of the unification of all Christians.

The main reason for such a negativist position is probably the fact that the act of unification of the Kyivan Metropolitanate with the Roman Apostolic See is viewed by its opponents only from the viewpoint of non-church political reasoning or from the viewpoint of the abnormal prospect of the modern confessional division and feverish desire to “arrange” the overcoming thereof, whereas consideration of this event in the context of historic development and the specific circumstances of time and place would most probably allow one to see other, very positive and even edifying aspects in it.

For in Brest, being conscious of its particularity and ecclesial dignity, the episcopate of the Kyivan Church, which kept the memory of the indivisibility of the Body of Christ for centuries and constantly appealed for the restoration of universal unity, voluntarily made a synodal decision to renew communion with the Latin sister-Church and recognize the Bishop of Rome as the successor of St. Peter on condition of retaining all its liturgical-ritual, canonical-legal, and spiritual-cultural heritage.

An important motive for the signing of the union was the realization of the crises of their own Church and a sincere desire to rescue it, to ensure the people's rights, and to reach agreement in the state without doing wrong to anyone. Of course, this combination was not perfect, like any product of human hands and mind. Due to various political influences and different approaches to the understanding of church unity , personal ambitions and unfortunate mistakes , arguments arose even between those who originally initiated the efforts towards union and brought about a sharp conflict inside the Kyivan Metropolitanate and its subsequent division. The Latin side's growing conviction of the “unique correctness” of its theological teaching and the “superiority” of its ritual tradition did much harm to the union, which, in its turn, resulted in the loss of certain specific particularities of our Church and in borrowings which were not typical of it.

However, despite the fact that the political interests of neighbors and the general atmosphere in the confessionally-divided Christian world before the Second Vatican Council by no means facilitated preservation of the vision with which the hierarchy of the Kyivan Metropolitanate of 1596 renewed communion with the Latin West, our Church has not lost its particular uniqueness even after 400 years of union with Rome. And this is another proof of the correctness of the decision made in Brest . And what is more, according to a precise expression of the Servant of God Andrey (Sheptytsky), the road traveled since then and the trials endured, even to bloodshed and martyrdom for the faith, prove the grandeur and holiness of our union, as well as the pleasing-to-God and life-giving nature of exactly this way of preserving and developing our own ecclesial tradition, which has nothing to do with the label of “Uniatism” pinned on it. We could, however, consider the reproaches of the opponents of the Union of Brest, if there was any evidence that they succeeded in achieving church unity in a better way. However, apart from words of unfair criticism, no concrete and lasting forms of unification which would give hope have been offered so far.

Our Church has stated more than once , and today we would like to confirm again, that we condemn uniatism as a false method for reaching church unity, when one church subdues another under the pretext of unification and then gradually grows at the expense of the subdued one. This kind of a “uniate” model only harms the true unity of “the holy, catholic, and apostolic Church,” which is not about subordination or absorption, but about “meeting in truth and love.” For only this form of unification follows from Christ's commandments and has roots reaching to the beginning of Christian history. In this model of unity, called “the communion of sister-Churches,” no one feels offended, as its inherent communion manifests Christ's Church as an icon of the Holy Trinity, Whose unity exists in the diversity of the participating Persons and excludes any forms of domination or subordination, that is, uniatism.

If these criteria are applied to an assessment of the Lviv Pseudo-sobor, which, in the eyes of the Orthodox, deprived the historic Union of Brest of significance, it becomes absolutely obvious that exactly the “sobor” was a typical act of uniatism on the part of the Russian Orthodox Church, as it subdued another Church under the pretext of “reunion” and grew bigger at its expense. Without realization of this fact, the lesson of 1946 will not prove to have been learned. Therefore, all Churches have to overcome the syndrome of uniatism in their bodies and grow spiritually to the extent of the mentioned “meeting in truth and love.” We see our task in developing the “communion” model, primarily in relations with the Roman Church, in order to make that model attractive for others and to prove the purity of intentions of the Catholic side in the search for unity with the Orthodox Churches.

III

For peace in the whole world,

for the well-being of the holy Churches of God

and for the union of all,

let us pray to the Lord!

Dear friends in Christ! We have so far meditated on past events, particularly on the circumstances and consequences of the official prohibition of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church at the Lviv Pseudo-sobor of 1946, the mournful anniversary of which urged us to this meditation. The great and life - giving lesson of our past lies in the fact that a Church which had grown up thanks to its openness to others and a sincere desire for unity was able to survive contrary to prohibitions and liquidations and gave birth to true martyrs for the faith. However, the heroic resistance of the UGCC to persecutions and tribulations cannot turn our eyes from the bitter reality of disunity and contention, which still continues and for which we are partly to blame and responsible as well. Given such different historic experiences, we must decide on which principles we should base our work today and our future progress in order to reach true unity in Christ, or, rather, to regain its original character not only as historic fact but also as the basis of Christian existence.

Everyone who passed through the time of communist persecutions for the faith experienced special feelings of community and solidarity which united people, feelings which were so magnified by the Savior: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15, 13). It was this unity, expressed through love for one's neighbor, that was the rock which could not be overcome by the powers of evil. Under the difficult circumstances of underground existence, people blessed each other with mutual support and boundless trust, lived in care for their neighbor's pains, and easily sacrificed the most precious things for their neighbor. Our Church is supposed to foster this gift of unity in a sufficient way in future.

Behind the barbed wire of concentration camps, in the impassable woods and snows of the Siberian Taiga, amidst the piercing winds of the Kazakh steppes, we were blessed with another miracle of unity, the unity of people of different Churches and confessions. Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants lived with each other as true brothers and sisters. They were united into one body by the cross of Christ, and common suffering put them in solidarity. Moreover, all those whose only weapon of resistance was the inspired Word of the Creator found themselves together in an unequal fight with the godless regime. This “ ecumenism of the GULAG ” should become a spiritual treasury upon which we all , not only ethnic Ukrainians , but also Russians , Poles , Jews, and Crimean Tatars , believers and unbelievers, are to draw . Our objective is not just to keep the memory of that spiritual unity , but to make it the present foundation and develop it further. And then Ukraine , our common home, will become a blessed land, where law and grace will be deeply intertwined, basic civil rights and freedoms will be guaranteed, and where peace and agreement will prevail.

However, we must clearly affirm that it is impossible to reach true unity on the basis of only human solidarity deprived of a spiritual foundation or conditioned by the existence of a common enemy: for how can we otherwise explain the unfortunate and even shameful fact that, as soon as the visible enemy disappeared, we were drawn into a maelstrom of feuds and dissension and filled with the spirit of rivalry and confrontation? That spirit carried us away so far that we do not notice ourselves creating enemies for ourselves again, becoming vulnerable to outside intrigues and helpless before the numerous challenges of this world. These are all bitter fruit of the fact that we brought to God and his Church what was supposed to be left in the world of the earthly Caesar, namely, political interests, human ambitions and the mentioned spirit of rivalry. Even our trivial and so materially-minded misunderstandings are bombastically called by us “interconfessional conflicts,” as if to justify ourselves before God and coax out of Him high legitimization for our unworthy deeds. Something must be wrong about the way we believe if we live and act contrary to the clear commandment of the Lord: “that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You.” (John 17: 21).

In order not to get into a blind-alley again and not to be lost in hopelessness, we must again turn to the example of our martyrs for the faith, which allows us to feel the mystery of the sufferings and death of our Savior in a more personal way. He knew His future, knew who would persecute Him and who would give Him up to be tortured, who would merely “wash his hands,” and who would deny Him out of fear. And, knowing all that, anticipating all those spiritual and physical sufferings to be borne, and even, in a purely human way, praying for the cup to pass Him, He voluntarily took the cross on Himself, because it was the will of the Father, because it was the only way for Him to atone for the sins of mankind with His innocent blood. He did not curse or even reproach His torturers, but sincerely prayed for them. Therefore, the true faith is obedience to the will of God, readiness to drink the cup of sufferings to the end, even if there is a possibility to avoid it, deep conviction that the Lord will not leave one even in severe trials: “If we died with Him, we will also live with Him,” (2 Tim. 2, 11).

Such faith implies not only boundless hope for His mercy and omnipotence, to which our Church primarily owes its rescue, but also readiness to live, suffer and even die together with Christ. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3: 16). In the same way, our Church paid the blood of its best sons and daughters to atone probably the biggest sin, human pride, which is the main reason for any disunity. That sin separates us not only from each other, but, what is much more terrifying, from the Redeemer of humanity. No transient political or pragmatic rationales, however important and useful they may seem today, can justify this fundamental separation. Therefore, to be united with each other, people must necessarily be united with God in the first place. For the Lord said: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit” (John 15: 5). That is the main conclusion and the key to finding answers to the questions which we want to clarify as we are trying to understand the pages of our recent past.

History justified the sacrificial faithfulness of our ancestors to the cause of Church unity, for the martyrs and confessors of our Church were united with God as they had deep faith and held firmly to their promises. However, the state of unity with God is not registered only to us and is not granted forever, but is achieved by a righteous life. “Do not be arrogant, but be afraid,” reminds the Apostle Paul “…[God's] kindness is on you, provided that you continue in His kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off” (Rom. 11, 20-22). Therefore, unity with God does not always end in a martyr's sacrifice. But in order to find the way to the Father's Home, one must necessarily take the first step, namely, to admit one's inabilities and faults. Therefore, let us transform our hearts and encourage our neighbors to do so in order to perform jointly the paschal act of mutual penance and forgiveness: “And let us embrace each other! Let us also address as brothers those who hate us; let us forgive everything with the Resurrection…” Only then will the subtle power of the past crime cease to poison our thoughts, and the souls of the martyrs and their offenders will finally find rest within the inscrutable judgments of the Lord.

On behalf of the Synod of Bishops of the Kyiv-Halych Metropolitanate

+LUBOMYR

Also read Letter of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI to His Beatitude Lubomyr Cardinal Husar, Major Archbishop of Kyiv and Halych, on the anniversary of the Lviv Pseudosobor of 1946