Kyiv Metropoly which came under Moscow jurisdiction in 1686.
It's amazing how Ukranians are quite happy to watch Christians slaughtered in the thousands,
Where are you getting this??
and wish for Turkish rule
Yeah, that's right. I'm a huge Muslim fan. Me and Osama read Quran together. LOL
I said I didn't want neither. Choosing between Turks and Russia is like choosing between beaten by a baseball bat and tire iron. Call me an optimist, but I think the baseball bat will hurt less :).
It was Ukranians who moved it! Interestingly True Ukranians didn't like the notion of their brethren being beaten and killed by Poles for not confessing the filoque and when it was clear the Polish conquerers would not relent they moved the church.
Brest'-Litovsk 1596: The "Unia" makes us strong?
There is probably no other single issue in Church history that evokes sharper reaction and comment than the history of the Union of Brest'-Litovsk.
In the years following its signing in 1596, Church leaders and others produced many apologetical and even combative religious works to either praise or attack the "Unia."
Meletius Smotrytsky is probably one of the most interesting examples. Appointed Archbishop of Polotsk in Belarus in place of the Greek Catholic incumbent, Josaphat Kuntsevich, Meletius was well known for his defence of Orthodoxy.
As a result of a number of factors, Josaphat was killed in 1623. Some Orthodox commentators sympathetic to Meletius say that he took this event personally, as if his writings led to it. Over time, and as if to assuage his guilt, Meletius, they say, became an Eastern Catholic himself and began to write in support of the "Unia" he had earlier attacked.
After the death of Meletius, the Greek Catholics initiated canonization proceedings for him at Rome. An icon of him was painted, but his cause at the Vatican did not advance. The Orthodox, on the other hand, continued to honour his memory and his many services in defence of the Orthodox Church. His "going over" to the Unia was again something that was understood to have taken place for personal, and not doctrinal, reasons.
Another example of the terrible divisions that occurred as a result of the events of 1596 is the simultaneous veneration by Catholics and Orthodox of two persons, each of whom was killed by the other side in this affair.
Athanasius Filipovich, Ihumen of Brest, did not initially opposed the "Unia," according to Metropolitan Ilarion Ohienko.
But when he saw the Polish gendarmes go into the villages to enforce the recital of the "filioque" in the Creed, Athanasius reacted against what he understood as the clearly political motivation of the Roman Catholic colonial masters of his people.
Taking copies of the miraculous Icon of Kupyatitsk with him, he distributed these to the Members of the Polish Seym or Parliament. He then warned them of the Divine retribution they would be inviting on themselves if they didn't stop forcing the Union on the Orthodox people.
During one of the first victories of the Kozak armies of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky over the Poles in 1648, Athanasius was taken prisoner by Roman Catholic prelates and tortured for his condemnation of the Union. He was then led by military personnel into the forest where he was forced to dig his own grave, was shot twice in the head and was buried alive . . .
Athanasius was glorified a Saint and Venerable Martyr of the Orthodox Church. His Shrine and pilgrimage became opportunities for Orthodox Christians to prepare themselves to maintain Orthodoxy and combat the Union.
Josaphat Kuntsevich became the Eastern Catholic Archbishop of Polotsk and, as such, promoted the Union among the Orthodox. Even Catholic historians have suggested that his perspectives were not always the most diplomatic.
Josaphat was murdered by a mob angered by his activities, including the arrest of one of their number. He was beatified by Rome soon afterwards, largely under the impetus, however, coming from the Polish Royal Court in the first instance.
To become a "Greco-Uniate" or an "Orthodox in union with Rome" in those times meant very little in terms of outward liturgical change.
The Creed was, initially, not tampered with. When it was, the early Eastern Catholics, many of whom still believed they were in the Orthodox Church, simply added that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father "Istynno" or "truly." This was a play on the Slavonic word for "Filioque" translated as "I Syna."
The Roman Pope was initially never commemorated by the local bishops and priests, but only by the Metropolitan of Kyiv in union with Rome. Today, of course, the Pope is commemorated not less than four times during the Ukrainian Catholic Liturgy . . .
The Greek Catholic clergy were married, the Julian calendar was maintained, and the Byzantine-Slavonic Rite was scrupulously kept.
The Polish kings later abandoned the Union as a way to Latinize their western Ukrainian and Belorussian subjects by steps: They decided to do it wholesale, at once.
Most of the Ostrozhky Princes, apart from Constantine, Alexander and their sainted ancestor, Theodore, became Roman Catholic and, therefore, Poles.
Religious identification was not separate from national identification. To be Orthodox, was to be "of Rus'" and to be Roman Catholic was to be Polish. Orthodox identity in Eastern Europe implied, at one and the same time, that one was of an East Slavic national identity. This is why the going over to Catholicism of the western Ukrainian Princes meant, in and of itself, "denationalization."
Both Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox Churches suffered Latinization, however. Ukrainian Orthodox, desiring to combat the "brain drain" of their aristocracy through the introduction of Catholicism, went to western European universities to learn about the philosophy behind the Church that, as it must have seemed to them, spread like a destructive cancer throughout the national body of their country.
In so doing, they brought back with them a number of Latinisms, in theology and religious practice that obtain to this day.
It was only in the latter part of the twentieth century, after the Greek Catholic faith had "settled in" with the people of Galicia, that the possibility appeared of establishing a Ukrainian identity that did not necessarily imply a colonial influence as far as culture was concerned.
Metropolitan Andrew Sheptytsky, as Metropolitan Ilarion states, was of the "Byzantine" camp in the Ukrainian Catholic Church. He initiated the movement to "Easternize" his heavily Latinized Church. He was opposed by a number of his fellow bishops, however, and by Roman Catholic bishops. The divisions and problems that resulted still plague the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to this day.
Roman Catholic historians themselves have said that the Union of Brest'-Litovsk was a mistake on their church's part. It divided a nation, even though there are now, of course, better relations between Ukrainians on the basis of their national identity, as opposed to their religious confessions.
One individual once wrote that the "good" to have arisen from the Union was that a "great literature" developed in its aftermath. That literature was the various books and pamphlets written for and against the Union. It served to weaken Ukraine as a whole. How anyone can say that that was "good" is really beyond all telling . . .
The sad episodes of the Union is also a reminder about the fact that true Church unity is a matter of the heart and inner conversion. It is about faithfulness to the Fathers of the early Church and to Apostolic Tradition. Finally, it is about humility and not triumphalism of any kind.
It is my view that by cancelling the Union as a model of unification, the Roman Catholic Church has also, in theory at least, cancelled the underlying principles on which the existing Greek Catholic Churches are based.
If the Roman Catholic Church takes seriously its own views on "Sister Churches," then the only way for the Greek Catholic churches to proceed is by reintegration with the Orthodox Churches they came from.
This will only be possible through prayer and repentance, along with mutual love and understanding. Metropolitan Basil Lypkivsky, in his sermons about Ukrainian Catholics, said that, in its time, the Union could be understood as having some justification for its having come about. That does not obtain, he said, today.
It is time, I believe, for all Ukrainian Catholics and Orthodox to make the necessary steps to achieve real unity with Kyiv as their true Patriarchal Centre. Full unity will, in the final analysis, be achieved as God would have it, and not as we would have it.
Dr. Alexander Roman alex@unicorne.org
We know.
Mazepa -- your point about preferring to be conquered by the Islamics is really ignorant, I'm sorry to say. Look at any nation threatened byIslam, and that is when you will see the difference. You may dislike the russians (and I suppose they've been harsh ont he ukrainians), but I'll let peoples like Serbs, Greeks, Iranians, Indians, who have been under Islam's yoke, answer you