Lubomyr HUZAR: Christianity as a Dominant Component of the History of Ukrainian Culture
Prior to Constitution Day in Ukraine, Archbishop and Cardinal Lubomyr Huzar, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, kindly agreed to an interview with The Day , in which he focuses on the church’s most pressing and sensitive problems, canons, and the complex issue of religious education (His Eminence Cardinal Huzar has particular views on this matter), as well as external church relations that also remain complicated. While interviewing the archbishop, with whom I failed to agree on certain matters, I can only feel happy that Ukraine has such spiritual pastors — extremely tolerant, well educated, intelligent, and above all so very optimistic, despite all the hardships.
Your Eminence, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) is one of the largest Uniate churches in Ukraine within the worldwide Catholic Church. No one can dispute its right to a patriarchate. Meanwhile, this matter has been at a standstill for decades on end, since the days of Cardinal Josyf Slipyj. The new Vicar of Christ, Pope Benedict XVI, hasn’t said no, but neither has he said anything in particular concerning any deadlines; he hasn’t outlined any conditions for the UGCC patriarchate. What is the problem? What is behind the Vatican’s reluctance to give the Ukrainians the right to this patriarchate?
L.H.: The main reason is the attitude of the Moscow patriarchate; they can’t reconcile themselves to the idea of Ukraine having this patriarchate. And the West doesn’t want to argue with the Moscow patriarchate, owing to economic reasons. And there is another reason. As you may know, a patriarchate means a degree of autonomy, higher than that of a diocese, which is the status that we have; a patriarchate means that most of the important issues are to be decided internally, regardless of what the Vatican has to say. Power is something no one would be willing to let out of one’s hands. We all remember the recent power play in Ukraine. It was a pitched battle, with bloodied victims. Sometimes power is coveted and acquired for reasons other than money. Hitler is a vivid example. He was never interested in property. What he was always after was subjugating the masses.
We will, however, continue to struggle for our church rights, so that we can be what we want to be, also to demonstrate to the rest of the Christians, among them Orthodox adherents, the advantages of living in communion with the Ecumenical Church, as it was in the first millennium, before the church became divided.
Not so long ago the Moscow patriarchate issued another protest against your transfer of the UGCC archdiocese to Kyiv. What is your personal attitude? Moscow keeps talking about the “inadmissibility from the canonic, ecclesiological (teachings on the church), and pastoral point of view concerning the idea of mentioning Kyiv in the title of the Head of the UGCC and the transfer of its seat to this city.” The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) insists that Catholicism cannot be allowed to be promulgated in Ukraine. We know that Metropolitan Kiril of Smolensk and Kaliningrad (ROC) said this during the recent meeting with Cardinal Walter Kasper of the Vatican in Moscow.
L.H.: Some people believe that the residence of the metropolitan at the head of UGCC in Kyiv is incompatible with that of the metropolitan of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church governed by the Moscow patriarchate (UOC MP). But these protestations are irrelevant because the UOC MP and the UGCC, which is in communion with the Vicar of Christ in Rome, are two different churches, albeit of the same origin. These two churches are on the same territory geographically but not canonically, for they are not canonically associated. Therefore, there are no ecclesiological or canonical obstacles to the coexistence of their hierarchies.
In ancient times, especially after the calamitous years of the Golden Horde, some metropolitans found themselves in different localities, but they always remained true to the Kyivan See. Let me remind you that in 1596 it was the metropolitan of Kyiv who, along with his bishops, resolved to reaffirm their unity with the Vicar of Christ by signing the Union of Brest. And so the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church came to be not in 1596 but at the time of the Christianization of Rus’. At present, the UGCC is one of the four parts of the original Kyivan Church: the UOC MP, UOC KP, UAOC — and the UGCC.
Do you have any personal ideas about how to overcome the Orthodox rift in Ukraine? We know that the president of Ukraine is personally supervising this matter.
L.H.: Yes, I do. The main thing is for the state to ensure that all Orthodox adherents have absolutely equal rights. We hear the UOC MP saying that all of Ukraine is their canonical territory, that we are heretics, so what kind of equality can there be? Equality can be established only by equal partners. We’re planning to transfer the archdiocese from Lviv to Kyiv and there are endless protests. Coming from whom? From the Moscow patriarchate. This shouldn’t be so! There are Christians living in Ukraine who are affiliated with Moscow, Byzantium, and Rome — meaning us. Everyone must be allowed to live the way he chooses. They are trying to impose their will on us; this is being done by all of the “three Romes.” Interestingly, the greatest degree of liberty appears to come from the First Rome, i.e., the Vatican.
The situation in Ukraine must be such that every Christian can freely choose his church and confession. You want to be affiliated with Moscow? Byzantium? Rome? God bless. We’ll have true religious freedom only when we discard words like schismatic and heretic, which are still in church use. After all, we must remember that all of us come from the same Church of Kyiv. It’s only on such terms that we’ll be able to discuss our church problems, never otherwise. We don’t want any restrictions imposed on anyone by anyone; we don’t want anyone reproaching anyone for anything; we want everyone to respect everyone else’s choice. This is what we understand by rapprochement.
I dream of my Ukraine as a genuinely religious and tolerant country — and I mean tolerance, not indifference, for we have atheists rather than tolerant believers, people who want everyone to join their ranks. We must remember the great cause that we must serve: to fulfill the will of Jesus Christ, who said that we should be united in our faith. Such is His will. Jesus established a single Church, so we all must find our way to it while respecting each other’s course.
What’s happening is very different. There is an invisible force kindling the small fire of religious differences, trying to turn it into a firestorm. This was the case with the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, and this is what they’re trying to do to our church; they want to weaken it by various kinds of internecine conflicts.
Right now there is an unresolved problem that concerns our whole society. I’m referring to the study in schools of a subject that is variously known as God’s Law, Catechism, Christian Ethics, and so on. Characteristically, only one option is being debated, namely introducing this subject into the grade school curriculum, which makes this difficult problem even more complicated, for this immediately entails another problem, that of the students’ confessional affiliation (Orthodox, Greek Catholics, Protestants, Roman Catholics, Moslems, Jews, and finally atheists). The following question emerges: Why is only one option of religious education being considered? Even now Ukraine has over 30,000 churches and some 22,000 schools. Why not adopt the parish [Sunday] school option to teach religion? Why should priests go to classrooms rather than children go to schools run by the church?
L.H.: It’s true that Ukraine is a polyconfessional country. However, it’s also true that our state has its visage and identity. For me personally, this is what outlines our heritage. By His will I was born in this land, in this environment, amongst these people; for a thousand years we had our princes and hetmans, our language, folkways — in a word, our history. All this and many other things have combined to form our Ukrainian character and culture, which is the sum total of all that happened in the past. Of course, the new Ukrainian state is being formed by various peoples representing different confessions. However, the character of our nations, viewed from whichever angle, reveals a strong religious element; it’s not a heathen, Judaic, Khazar or Latin element. It’s a genuine Christian Byzantine one that made such a strong impact on this people’s way of thinking and doing. Here’s an example. Prince Yaroslav the Wise made an extraordinary decision in his time when he banned capital punishment. What made him act that way? Apparently it was his Christian faith. The same applies to the old school of literacy and literature (they were all inspired by the church). In a word, a great many elements of our culture are determined by Christianity in its specific Eastern Orthodox manifestation.
Needless to say, Christianity was not the only factor that influenced the formation of Ukrainians. We often use words like koliadky and koliady [carols]. The word “koliadky” comes from the Christian heritage and “koliady” from the heathen legacy. Christianity, however, remains the dominant element in our national culture, meaning that whoever wants to learn more about Ukraine and understand it better must learn our Christian dominant, among other things, because without it any attempt to understand Ukrainian culture and character is futile. Getting back to your question, I would say that we need a subject for all students in Ukraine. I would define it as something like “Learn about Your Native Land.”
Several years ago people representing all the Eastern Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches gathered in Lviv. They suggested a separate school subject that they defined as Christian Ethics. However, the name doesn’t answer our concepts or the very idea of the discipline. It’s not about ethics; it’s about Christianity as the basis of Ukrainian culture.
And so we are proposing and requesting that all our schools and all their students, regardless of their family religious background, be taught the spiritual fundamentals that make up our national culture. Christianity is one of these dominant elements. Therefore, anyone who wants to become a true citizen of Ukraine, with a true understanding of his native land, must have this knowledge.
Were I to live in Turkey or in Iran, I’d have to learn more about Islam, which is the cultural dominant of these nations. And so I think that Cultural Ethics is a very inadequate description of the subject, and the same is true of proposing to teach God’s Law in schools. After all, non-Christian students should learn about precisely the Christian cultural dominant. Also, it’s important to note that, while studying our culture, its Latin, Judaic, Moslem, and other components cannot be ignored.
Families wishing to raise their children as Judaic, Catholic, Baptist, or Orthodox adherents must enroll them in Saturday or Sunday schools, so that every boy and girl could go to the right kind of school and be taught to pray and sing songs and observe the rituals the right way. Every such school sees its ultimate goal in teaching God’s Law and rules of conduct as laid down in the Scriptures. Given this pattern, all children could study their religion in such church-run schools.
Let me stress again that I’m personally dead-set against teaching God’s Law — or any other religion — in state-run schools. In that case, schoolchildren would have to be divided up according to religious beliefs: the Orthodox from the Greek Catholics from Jews and other adherents. That’s very bad. Imagine a priest appearing in class and saying the “Hail Mary” with Protestants and Jews among the students! That’s wrong. Another factor that militates against the introduction of God’s Law — or whatever the subject’s name in other schools — in the school curriculum is that teaching religion this way makes it simply another subject in the class schedule for pupils, meaning grades, having to take exams again, and suchlike. That’s bad. But when children go to parish schools it means becoming prepared for a religious life.
Meanwhile, we — I mean our churches — still have no right to set up religious study grade schools. Schools in today’s Ukraine can be either state- or private-run, but not religious study schools. There is a lyceum in Lviv, which was founded by a pious philanthropist. Yet we as a church can’t do the same. We’re doing our best to convince the state to allow us to run such schools. How would they differ from regular schools? Only by having God’s Law in their curriculum, along with regular subjects, and a special Christian educational program. Theologians, people who are well versed in the field, are working hard on this project. We have 6 such schools, but we run them through private founders. Once again, I wouldn’t introduce religion as a subject in a government-run school. You have to consider children from non-Christian families. In our schools all non- Christian children — those from Moslem, Jewish, Tatar, or Korean families — must feel at home.
Generally speaking, all our schools must have the kind of textbooks and teachers that correspond to the spirit of our people. What do we have now? There is a fifth-grade textbook entitled Humanist Ethics, meant for children aged between 10 and 12 years. It has a chapter called “Safe Sex.” So, as we shall teach, so shall we reap results. All our churches, the general public, schoolteachers, and scholars in the educational field should oppose this. And so should all parents. We must all confront our government and say, “We want a healthy educational system with every standard conforming to the needs of the people and universally accepted moral dictates.” However, a general and very important question should be answered first: What do our children and society expect from school?
How well is the UGCC prepared and equipped to step into classrooms? Are your parish priests sufficiently qualified to teach children and youth? Are they intelligent and tolerant enough? Are they familiar with the fundamentals of pedagogy and didactics, considering that government-run schools cannot admit instructors without an adequate teacher’s training? Another problem concerns the curriculum and class schedules. I’m also sure that none of the churches in Ukraine has a sufficient number of clergymen with enough training to undertake such sensitive jobs. This is very important. You can imagine a physics teacher who isn’t popular in class. But a teacher conducting religious classes and failing to win the students’ respect may well cause a disaster in terms of world perception, leading to aggressive, even sacrilegious, atheists.
L.H.: By and large the church isn’t prepared yet. We are trying to introduce pedagogy into the curricula of seminaries and other religious schools to make it part of a 5-year theological program, plus 2 years of practice, in which time the candidate can choose between theology, instruction, parish priesthood, and so on. We’re thinking about adding a course in pedagogy to these 2 years so that our priests can have teacher’s certificates. Then they’ll have the right to teach in school — well, at least some of them will.
How many graduates — sufficiently trained priests — can all your educational establishments produce today?
L.H.: I’m pretty sure about 40 per graduating class in Lviv. All these priests stay in the region after graduation.
But there are far more parishes, let alone classes in schools.
L.H.: In the past 5-6 years we have worked out a comprehensive program for our theological schools. Our priests have an average age of 45. They still have a long way to go; they were all raised in difficult conditions, so most of them aren’t sufficiently educated. We failed to pay enough attention to theological training in the first couple of years after 1991. Some priests don’t have much respect for knowledge and some don’t even consider catechism a science. Recent graduates have proved to be essentially different. It’s also true, however, that our curricula need upgrading; we must have intelligent priests capable of conducting a conversation with peasants as well as scientists, with literate and illiterate individuals. We have few such clergymen so far.
In our churches today we can see manifestations of phenomena that can be described as democratization or lawlessness; some religious communities are expressing distrust of their parish priests or their superiors; they demand replacements, they elect new priests for themselves, and apply methods of pressure on the hierarchy that are not always proper. What do you personally regard as acts incompatible with the dictates of church life? Or maybe what’s happening should be expected in a democratic society? How do you feel about such incidents that have become known in your church?
L.H.: The church has existed for many years and it has accumulated a great deal of experience in communicating with people, in studying human nature. Certain rules and methods have been worked out proceeding from this knowledge. These rules aren’t perfect, of course, but they meet the requirements of regulating church life at sufficient length and depth. The problem with Ukraine today is that this society isn’t accustomed to understanding and respecting the laws, let alone living by them. A religious community may want something, and sometimes these people can get what they want by using force. In other countries such communities may also want to vent their resentment or have something changed for the better, but in these countries people do so by adopting long-established procedures. Most importantly, they are tolerant and traditionally respect law and order. Of course, raising people in this spirit takes generations.
People raised under the Soviet regime often equate freedom with lawlessness; they figure they’re free to act as they please; that they can get what they want by using whatever means they wish to apply, without regard to others, and worse still, without bothering to consider the consequences. This is, of course, a hangover from the totalitarian system and it is evident elsewhere, in what was East Germany, for example.
Yet people are always instigated to act that way. Here is a recent example. A parish that was dissatisfied with its priest wanted him replaced. To do so the parishioners marched on Lviv and literally occupied the metropolitan’s quarters. I didn’t want to call the militia, of course, so the intruders thought nothing of spending the night on the premises. It was a provocation, of course, planned and prepared by clergymen, for none of the parishioners would have conceived such a plan. But if clergymen can do this, so can laymen, for that is our traditional modus operandi. Respect for fellow humans and the law remains to be instilled in our flock.
Today, similar things are happening in every religious group, in every confession. People want to live by the law of the jungle. Winner takes all; to make matters worse, our society doesn’t seem to condemn such behavior. Another reason is that people have no idea about the normal procedures of resolving conflicts; that shouts, curses, and acts of violence have never yielded good results. And so the main reason for all this remains the same: lack of knowledge about the simple rules of civilized conduct.
