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The Australian context…
In the Australian context one of the strongest examples of latinization
was the banning of Eastern Catholic married clergy within Australia, which
took place on the 9th of November, 1949 at the behest of the Latin Church.
With regard the Ukrainian Church, the imposition of such a sanction was
totally contrary to the Articles of the Union of Brest of 1595 ratified
by Pope Clement VIII. Articles IX and XI of the Union specifically
refer to respect which must be shown married clergy and the respect which
must be given to the Eastern Church hierarchy and canon law all which
were completely trampled on in the desire to protect the Latin Church
of Australia from the scandal of married priests. The ban on married clergy
was in total breach of the Union of Brest.
What added to the pain of the Ukrainian Catholics is that their Metropolitan,
Andrii Sheptyts'kyi had released many of the married clergy (due
to the responsibilities they owed their families) into the diaspora
so as to minister to the faithful who were escaping religious persecution.
Sheptyts'kyi requested the celibate clergy to stay in Ukraine so
as to witness to the Gospel even to the point of death — which they
did, alongside a great number of married clergy who in fact chose to stay.
The Australian Bishops in 1949, invariably added
to the persecution of the Church, by rejecting the possibility of the
Ukrainian parishioners being ministered to by the available married clergy
who could have come to Australia. For whose
welfare was this ban imposed? Quite simply — for the Latin Church.
Such actions recalled the formulations of Innocent III and Innocent
IV, who subordinated the Greeks to the Latins: "when
native officials are allowed some jurisdiction but are supervised by representatives
of the dominating power". (Congar,
1959, p. 26) Yet the actions of 1949 would certainly come under
the category of "unjust and fanciful opinions"
as described by a later Pontiff, Pius XII. (Pius
XII, 1945, §29)
Cultural imperialism of the Latin Church…
Inevitably this attitude of cultural imperialism relegated the Eastern
Catholic Churches to a level of second-class Catholicism, for the whims
of the Latin Church had taken precedence over the canon law of the East.
The Ukrainian Catholic married priest Father Paul Smal was expelled
from Australia as a result of this decision. It
was not until May, 1998 that the Australian Council of Catholic Bishops
reversed this abhorrent decision. In
hindsight the best interpretation that could have been made of the decision
taken by the Latin Church was that the Eastern Catholic Churches were
sacrificed in order to promulgate a false or at least shallow vision of
the Catholic Church construed specifically by and for the Latin Church.
Should Eastern Catholics be grateful to the Latin Church hierarchs for
the eventual lifting of this ban? I would suggest
that Eastern Catholics should be as grateful as the Australian Aboriginal
when being magnanimously told in 1967 that they were now indeed citizens.
Obviously an enormous vacuum of ecclesiastical maturity exists between
the actions of the Latin Church hierarchy of 1949 in Australia and the
exhortation of John Paul II in Orientale
Lumen in 1995. In this work the Pontiff categorically stated
that: "I particularly urge the Latin Ordinaries
in these countries to study attentively, grasp thoroughly and apply faithfully
the principles issued by this Holy See concerning ecumenical co-operation
and the pastoral care of the faithful of the Eastern Catholic Churches,
especially when they lack their own hierarchy." (John
Paul II, 1995a, §26)
"Cultural imperialism" even in 1998…
 Yet
even after the proclamation of Orientale Lumen,
the situation regarding married clergy came to another critical head in
early 1998 when on the request of the Polish Latin Church hierarchy, the
Vatican Secretary of State, Angelo Cardinal Sodano ordered all
married Ukrainian Catholic priests out of their parishes in Poland back
to Ukraine, due once more to the Latin Church claiming their presence
as being scandalous. What had occurred was that with the collapse of Communism
in the East, the Ukrainian seminaries had now been re-opened, their thresholds
being crossed by hundreds of young married men. Then in 1998 — these
ordained young men were now flooding from their seminaries to once abandoned
parishes, along with their wives and children. This was all too much for
a fiercely Latin Church nation, such as Poland. The tone of Cardinal Sodano's
order and its clause that only celibate priests be allowed within Poland's
national boundaries was gravely in breach of the spirit of unity in diversity,
and the Papal exhortation of 1995.
The use of the Latin term 'uxorati' in Cardinal Sodano's
letter referring to married clergy was also another key area of contention.
This action created an enormous backlash from the Eastern Catholic Churches
worldwide to which the decision was later revoked and an apology was forthcoming.
Many Orthodox Churches were also scandalized
by the attempt to ban Eastern Catholic married clergy — for in witnessing
the treatment of the Catholic East, they perceived in part a glimpse at
perhaps their own future — if they had taken the step to become reconciled
with Rome.
Most infamous sanction occured in the United States…
However the most infamous example, of the sanctions imposed by Latin
Church hierarchs on Eastern Catholic married clergy, occurred in the United
States. In the early 1920's a similar ban to that attempted in Poland
in 1998 was placed on the Ruthenian Catholics on the East Coast of the
United States. In response to the ban on married clergy as outlined in
the document Cum Data Fuerit,
250,000 Eastern Catholics protested by transferring to the Orthodox Church.
This was exactly the situation that Benedict XIV as early as 1755
had tried hard to avoid. In defence of the right of the Eastern Catholic
Churches to maintain the discipline of married clergy, Benedict XIV
issued the decree that: "Considering that
this practice was at variance neither with divine nor natural law, but
only with Church discipline, the popes judged it right to tolerate this
custom, which flourished among Greeks and Orientals, rather than to forbid
it by their apostolic authority, to avoid giving them a pretext to abandon
unity." (Benedict XIV, 1755, §22)
In a subsequent bizarre twist of irony the only ordinations permitted
in the United States of married men to the priesthood after the Cum
Data Fuerit tragedy were to take place in the Latin Church,
where married men who had been ordained in the Anglican and Lutheran Churches
were admitted to the Catholic priesthood. Thus once more the Latin Church
had served herself at the cost of the welfare of the Eastern Catholic
Churches; for the ban on married clergy for Eastern
Catholics as imposed by the Latin Church hierarchs in the 1920's, still
remained for the Eastern Catholic Churches in the United States —
even while Protestant married clergy converts were
being admitted to the priesthood of the Latin Church. The exact
same situation occurred in Australia.
Laws and restrictions prejudicial to Eastern Catholics…
The mono-dimensional perception of the Catholic Church has also been
perpetuated within some Catholic nations by laws and restrictions prejudicial
to Eastern Catholics. One of the most vivid examples of such treatment
was to be found in Poland, a predominately Latin Church nation, during
the last century.
To illustrate the suppression of the Eastern Churches in Poland, Professor
Ryszard Torzecki of the Historical Institute of the Polish Academy
of Sciences in Warsaw has in an article, "Sheptyts'kyi
and Polish Society", described the lack of tolerance
given to religious diversity in that country. Torzecki, a senior
Polish academic, writes that Poland in the early 20th Century was a
nation on a deliberate path of religious cleansing: "the
committees launched an intensive propaganda campaign for the conversion
of the Orthodox to the Roman Catholic rite (sic). With the help of armed
forces, they closed down or expropriated deserted or old Orthodox Churches…".
(Torzecki, 1989, p. 90) Torzecki even
quotes former Polish Prime Minister Janusz Jedrzejewicz's recollections
of this historical period: "Time went by,
external and internal dangers accumulated, and 'Poland' waited for the
full presidential term of office to expire and for the next one to begin;
in the meantime, it was frightening Jews, burning down Orthodox churches,
and trying to reclaim by force Catholic souls led astray by schismatics,
and to bring them to the paths of redemption, which were to lead the peasants
back to the forsaken faith of their forefathers…."
(Torzecki, 1989, p. 90)
The number of Orthodox Churches destroyed was said to be over two
hundred, and the number of Eastern Christians both Catholics and Orthodox
who 'converted' to the Latin Church was large due to a Government policy
of providing employment or promotion opportunities only to Catholics of
the Roman Rite. It was none other but a young Yves Congar who
protested the treatment of the Orthodox in Poland to the world in La
Vie Intellectuelle in 1938. (cf. Congar,
1962, p. 425)
In words, that have enormous contemporary relevance, the Ukrainian Catholic
Metropolitan, Andrii Sheptyts'kyi released a pastoral letter on
the 20th of July 1938 in which he stated: "The
developments in [Polish controlled Ukraine] destroy in the souls of our
non-united Orthodox brothers the very thought of any possibility for reunion,
and they present the Universal Church as hostile and dangerous to the
Orthodox people. In the eyes of several million people of Poland, the
Apostolic See is being presented as the source of destructive work. A
new abyss has been created between the Eastern Church and the Universal
Church… Who, therefore, in a Catholic state, while under the eyes
of several Catholic bishops and a nuncio representing the Apostolic See,
has the audacity to deal such a cruel blow to the Universal Church?"
(Torzecki, 1993, p. 91) For this and for his
other protests to Rome, on behalf of the Orthodox, Sheptyts'kyi
was placed under house-arrest by the Polish authorities.
Forced conversions…
Metropolitan Sheptyts'kyi's official biographer, a French convert
to Eastern Catholicism, Fr. Cyril Korolevsky, paints an even more
lurid portrait of this sad epoch in East-West relations: "A
Polish circular dated L'viv 11 June 1921, coming from a nationalist committee
and addressed to all the Polish parish priests recommends that they make
Roman Catholics, especially in the cities, out of the school children,
the children of mixed marriages (which marriages should be made as difficult
as possible), those whose ancestors were Roman Catholics, Ukrainians who
wished to buy land from a Pole, or to seek employment or any assistance
from the commission of agriculture or reconstruction, or to have a Pole
for a sponsor at a baptism. These 'conversions' would be done freely by
the prefecture of the district and if the prefecture delayed, the parish
priest should proceed anyway, producing a certificate of Roman Catholic
baptism and retaining himself the certificate of Greek-Catholic baptism."
(Korolevsky, 1993, p. 245)
Once more Latin Church hierarchs and clergy
directly disobeyed Papal authority by latinizing Eastern Catholics.
These actions defied not only the Pope, but the
entire Spirit of the Church Universal by going against the integral notion
of unity in diversity. Leo XIII
as early as 1894 had spelt out the Papal stance on such actions as those
which had taken place to the Ukrainian Church in Poland: "Any
Latin rite missionary, whether of the secular or religious clergy, who
induces with his advice or assistance any Eastern rite faithful to transfer
to the Latin rite, will be deposed and excluded from his benefice in addition
to the ipso facto suspensio a divinis
and other punishments that he will incur as imposed in the aforesaid Constitution
Demandatam. That this decree stand fixed
and lasting. We order a copy of it to be posted openly in the churches
of the Latin rite." (Leo XIII, 1894, , §9, I)
A half century later, Pius XII was strikingly
honest in his appraisal of this process of persecution pointing out "some
Catholics took part" in the emasculation of the Eastern Catholic
Churches. (Pius XII, 1945, §14)
TO
PART V>>>
ARTICLE
NAVIGATION: PART I | PART II | PART III | PART IV | PART V
|
 Andrew
Thomas Kania is a visiting scholar at Oxford University where
he is completing a book on Dag Hammerskold. He has taken 12 months
leave of absence from his position as Director of Spirituality at
Aquinas College, Manning in Western Australia to complete this book.
Prior to this appointment at Aquinas Dr. Kania was a lecturer for
the School of Religious Education at the University of Notre Dame
Australia as well as for the Catholic Institute of Western Australia
at Edith Cowan and Curtin Universities. Dr. Kania belongs to the
Ukrainian Church and is interested in ecumenical issues as well
as contemporary problems facing religious educators.
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©2007
Dr Andrew Thomas Kania
[Andrew Kania's Archive]
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