Your question could also be reversed to read: Why be Ukrainian Orthodox and not Ukrainian Catholic? However you phrase it, there is a tragic separation in the one Church of Kyiv. When the Great Schism divided the Eastern and Western Churches in 1054, the Kyivan Church remained in communion with Constantinople, following the spiritual, liturgical, canonical and theological tradition of Byzantine Orthodoxy. In 1596, due to political and church-related pressures which threatened its survival as a distinct Church, the Metropolitan of Kyiv and five of the other seven bishops of Ukraine, re-established communion with Rome through an agreement known as the Union of Brest, thus forming the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
In my humble opinion, a Ukrainian Catholic is truly a Ukrainian Orthodox who is in full communion with the Pope of Rome. As such, we have the benefit of the Roman experience of Christianity while maintaining our Byzantine-Slavic heritage. On this point, our Patriarch Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky (1984-2000) famously stated, “We are Orthodox in faith and Catholic in love.” We celebrate the same Holy Mysteries/Sacraments, we worship the same God in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy and other liturgical services.
Our human frailty, our sin, stands in the way of full communion with one another, so let us pray that we may be one as Jesus, the Son of God and the Father are one. Jesus said: “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17: 22-23).
Respectfully submitted by Fr. Julian Bilyj
Thank you very much for your worthy and considered response. I wish to make a personal comment which you may freely publish if you wish.
The Ukrainian Catholic Rite suffered greatly from processes of Latinisation in the centuries following the Union of Brest – and from the 1950’s it adhered to canon laws that limited its full theological and sacramental expression. I thank God that we have now returned fully to the theological and liturgical traditions which HAD been guaranteed to us on union with Rome.
But in the 1980’s we still followed the dictates forced on us by Rome which forbad the giving of Holy Communion to infants and children. Can you imagine baptising a child into the Christian family and then ‘starving” it from the very essence of that communities life? Consequently, in 1983 and again in 1986, I and my beautiful wife agreed to have our precious infants baptised, given Chrismation (which Latins call ‘confirmation’) and given the precious Body and Blood of our Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, all at the same time in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
We have never regretted that decision – and from that time our family would attend liturgy and all four of us would receive the Holy Eucharist together. Now, I attend either the Catholic or Orthodox Church and feel equally at home in both.
Thank you for allowing me to express my joy that finally Ukrainians have our own patriarchy, our national independence, and a faith that can truly bind us together.