Brotherhoods Active in Ukrainian Church Affairs

On February 15 at the Ukrainian Canadian Art Foundation (KUMF) Gallery in Toronto, Frank E. Sysyn delivered an enlightening  talk on Brotherhoods in the Ukrainian Church organized by the Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Association in Toronto. In his opening remarks, UCPBA President Roman Nazarewycz welcomed the near capacity crowd. In her introduction, Olga Kuplowsky highlighted Dr. Sysyn’s impressive credentials and emphasized his important skill to lead at the Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies by underlining his ability to communicate academic and scholarly information to the public.

Dr. Sysyn is co-editor with Prof. Serhij Plokhy from Alberta and contributor to a recently published collection of essays on religion - Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine.

Dr. Sysyn began his talk by stating that Ukrainian church brotherhoods (and sisterhoods assisting the poor) existed in both Uniate and Orthodox denominations. Intrinsic not only to the Ukrainian tradition, brotherhoods were created out of the laity, played an active role in higher matters of the Church with the involvement of chaplains and the clergy, especially from the XV to early XVIII Centuries.

In a comparative overview and in the context of a native church functioning under alien rule, there are similarities between the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox in Ukraine. The Coptic Church was founded by Christ’s Apostle St. Mark and paid reverence to the Great Patriarchate of Alexandria. When Egypt passed from a Muslim “colony” to a British colony, the Coptic Church missed out on the intellectual currents after the XIII-XIV Centuries and faced the Western challenge of the missionary word brought by the Protestant and Catholic Churches.

A ruling aristocracy, primarily in the role of colonial “tax collectors”, gained importance in Egyptian society and the church laity  movement grew as an educated middle class. The clergy remained generally uneducated and illiterate. The more enlightened members of the laity movement realized that the Coptic Orthodox Church was “getting left behind”. They were instrumental in the election of a Patriarch or “Pope of Alexandra” who was supportive of the laity movement outside of the clergy. With a new church hierarchy in place, the laity wanted to restore the Coptic Church to its traditional place as a major Eastern church and restore its monastic tradition through contact with monks.

The Ukrainian Church differs from the Coptic Church in that the latter has maintained continuity on its native territory. Both Churches are similar in that they fill in for local civil society needs while under “alien rule”. In Galicia, while under Polish rule during the interwar period of the 1920’s and 1930’s, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic particularly under Metropolitan Sheptycky, served the societal needs of native faithful even though Poland was nominally a Catholic state.

In Ukraine’s early modern period, a Noble ruling class in effect acted as a brotherhood laity, making decisions on Church affairs and established the Ostrovskii Academy around 1580. By the XVI Century, especially in urban centres of commerce such as Lviv and Lutsk, Ukrainian townspeople or burgher groups, merchants and craftsmen were dominated by the Roman Catholic Church under Polish rule. They banded together as guilds and turned into brotherhoods seeking advice on local Church matters from the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria. The brotherhoods believed that their hierarchy of Ukrainian bishops were not contemporary with the time. The bishops were viewed as ineffectual to deal with changes in the church in response to the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-reformation. The burgher brotherhoods, especially those in Lviv, were still viewed with skepticism by Kyevan Metropolitan Petro Mohyla who was known for his open mindedness.

By the turn of the XX Century, in Central and Eastern Ukraine, a laity movement had been established and began to challenge the Russian Orthodox Church notably in 1905 and the wave of revolutionary activities in the Russian Empire. By the end of the XIX Century, small groups of clergy had declared themselves as Ukrainian who were part of a “local church tradition”.  Church laity contemporaries formed into Ukrainian Orthodox Brotherhoods by 1917, the first being in Pochaiv, and then others around Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence in 1918. The brotherhood laity movement sought the modernization of the native Orthodox Church in Ukraine and reformed it into the new Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephalus Church. This new national Orthodox church was eventually usurped by the Russian Orthodox Church – Moscow Patriarchate in the 1930’s.

In Western Ukraine, by the end of the XIX Century, brotherhood guilds had become increasingly secular and anticlerical, distinct from church laity brotherhoods. In response, Metropolitan Andrij Sheptycky attempted to defer secularization that had occurred for over two generations in Galicia, Western Ukraine. Rather than substitute the local Uniate Catholic Church with a new national Ukrainian Church, Sheptycky opted for the “re-easternization” of the native Church realized in the form and hierarchy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

Dr. Sysyn continued his talk on Ukrainian Church Brotherhood laities in North America and the rise of “Strict Faith Churches”. The disciplined adherence to faith and order placed importance on the giving of sacraments, ordination of priests, consecration of bishops etc. In the new world, the native Church (i.e. of ancestors) remained part of a community and coexisted with it. To complicate matters, however, the local church became distinct and devolved its own “national community sense” as an ethno-cultural institution and evolved more-so into a community of religious faithful. Simplistically, someone born “Ruthenian” was not forced to attend the local “Ruthenian” Church as before in Ukraine. Now, someone chose to attend church of Orthodox, Catholic or other denomination, independent of their sense of nationality or ethnic background.

Dr. Sysyn concluded the formal part of his presentation of ideas with contemporary statistical information on Churches in Ukraine, current thinking of the faithful, notably with respect to the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches – Kyevan versus Moscow Patriarchates. The question of Church canonicity set the tone for a stimulating question period, followed by lively discussion in a fraternal atmosphere served with refreshments.