CNA Staff, Aug 22, 2024 / 17:00 pm (CNA).
Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, this week defended a new Ukrainian law that aims to limit the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church in the country because of its support for Vladimir Putin’s invasion and regime.
Shevchuk, who has spoken out frequently in Ukraine’s defense since the start of the war, said Russia has used the Russian Orthodox Church “as a tool of militarization” and that the new law aims to offer protection against ideology and narratives being pushed about Ukraine being part of the “Russian world,” Crux reported.
The Russian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church with an estimated 150 million members, accounting for more than half of the world’s Orthodox Christians. The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has garnered criticism and even international sanctions for his support of Putin’s invasion, which began on Feb. 24, 2022.
The new law, which passed the Ukrainian parliament on Aug. 20, bans the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukrainian territory. It also encourages religious organizations in Ukraine, including the Moscow-aligned Ukrainian Orthodox Church, “to break the existing ties with the Russian state,” according to the parliamentary news agency.
The parliament said the law “establishes a transparent legal procedure for identifying ties with Russia” by way of “an impartial and independent commission of experts. Then, through a judicial procedure, all the facts will be established and the severance of ties with Russia will be ensured.”
“The so-called ‘Russian Orthodox Church’ has become a de facto part of the state apparatus of Putin’s criminal totalitarian regime, and is used by Russia to justify and support aggression against Ukraine and Putin’s insane policies in general,” the news agency said.
“The Russian Orthodox Church sanctifies Russian actions and justifies the atrocities that Russians have brought to Ukraine. There can be no possibility for such Russian structures to operate in Ukraine, either directly or through organizations dependent on the ROC.”
In a statement issued on the first day of the attack, Kirill stressed that he was “the Patriarch of All Russia and the primate of a Church whose flock is located in Russia, Ukraine, and other countries” and called “on all parties to the conflict to do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties,” reiterating that “the Russian and Ukrainian peoples have a common centuries-old history.” The statement did not include any condemnation of Russian aggression but instead seemed to reaffirm the conviction that Ukraine is Russia’s canonical territory.
And in a March 27, 2024 document posted to the Russian Orthodox Church’s website, a council organized by the church called Putin’s “special military operation” a “Holy War.”
Pope Francis has not met with Kirill since their historic first meeting in the Havana airport in February 2016 — the first meeting between a pope and a patriarch of Moscow. A planned second meeting between the two leaders in Jerusalem in June 2022 was canceled following a video call between the pope and the Russian patriarch in March of that year.
Ukrainian troops staged a surprise invasion of Russian territory on Aug. 6 and captured a town and several settlements, about 480 square miles in all, but their advance has slowed. Meanwhile, Russian forces are advancing toward the strategically important eastern city of Pokrovsk.
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First, they came for the Orthodox…
Simplistic. If an outfit calls itself a “church” but is advocating war against you, are you going to channel your inner Voltaire with “I disagree with what you say but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it?” Because, thanks to that “church,” you may sooner find yourself in that latter position than you think.
Religious freedom, like all other rights, is not absolute. Many countries ban Salafist Mosques from operating on their soil because their Jihadist ideology is at odds with their country’s values and national security. The same applies to Putin’s waterboy Kirill. You can’t compare the Ukrainian nation to Satan and claim that the war crimes being committed by Putin are “God’s Will”, then act surprised when Ukraine prohibits your sect from operating on it’s soil.
This comes across to me as more of a political statement by the Archbishop in support of Ukraine and the Ukrainian government than anything else. Certainly not much spiritual content or thought about the Kingdom of Heaven in what he said. I suppose it’s not surprising when your country is at war, and when those countries have had such a long, sometimes tortured history. But a government taking this kind of action against a legitimate religion practiced by its citizens in order to punish some of its members is wrong, period. Regardless of which government does it, and why.
So no, Archbishop Shevchuk. The law is unjust. I pray that you reconsider this.
If you have spoken with many Ukrainian priests, religious, and faithful over the years – as I have – you know that the bishop speaks correctly. The UOC has been a puppet of militaristic Russian expansionism for decades.
I have listened to Archbishop Shevchuk before. As the leader of a small Catholic minority in a majority Orthodox country, he is between a rock and a hard place. Whether I think he is right or wrong is besides the point here.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the church that was just banned by the Ukrainian government, is peppered with Russian sympathizers hiding out in the clergy and laity who are actively working against Ukraine, l think that is unlikely, and is particularly unlikely after several years of war and active security investigations, because by now, they would realize that they are going to be caught and would have left the country. UOC laymen, as Ukrainian citizens, have served in the army fighting against the Russian army. Many laypeople have lost family members in the war, so it seems even more unlikely that they are secretly Russian sympathizers.
But eveb if the UOC has members who support the Russian Federation through a connection to the Russian Orthodox Church, and they present a danger to the Ukrainian government because they have been actively working to undermine it, by rule of law, the Ukrainian government has to bring charges against them in court, try them and find them guilty before punishing them. The government shouldn’t take the easy way out by declaring them to be guilty simply through belonging to a particular church or through a perceived affinity to a Russian identity, and then punish them.
However, I believe that concerns about Russian influence is only part of the motivation for the ban. The UOC was the primary Orthodox church in Ukraine until the previous president encouraged the formation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine as a rival “native Ukrainian” church that would supplant the UOC. That turnover was envisioned to be well underway by now. Only it hasn’t been successful and the majority of the UOC’s priest, monks, bishops and laity have not shown interest in the OCU. So the ban is supposed to put pressure on them–force them really–to move to the OCU so that it can become Ukraine’s primary church.
I am surprised to hear that Catholics, especially American Catholics, support the ban on a long-established Christian church like the UOC, especially an Orthodox church (the “second lung,” etc.). I always understood that when a government tried to restrict religious observance or ban it altogether, we would oppose that by principle. Similarly, I though we would be against situations where government agencies investigate foundational church documents and declare them to be illicit, or where a government goes after the clergy and members of a church and arrests them, simply for belonging to that church. At least I seem to recall Catholics declaring it was wrong when other countries did those things. I must have misunderstood. Maybe all of this is conditional on whether or not someone or something is considered to be an “enemy.” Once it is considered to be an enemy, then you can go after them as hard as you want.
I guess religious freedom is not so important to all Catholics after all. Apparently there is quite a bit about “real Catholicism” that I still don’t understand.
I am surprised to hear that Catholics, especially American Catholics,
American Catholics are an odd bunch in many cases believe that voting Democrat is the eighth sacrament; one that obviates the need for the seven; and can excuse supporting abortion, using contraception and the need to attend Mass on days other that Christmas or Easter.
The article is incorrect. There is no “Russian Orthodox Church” in Ukraine. There is a Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of Moscow Patriarchate but it has autonomy. Its leader is Metropolitan Onufry. Relatively recently he made a statement, a quote:
“Meanwhile, according to the sign given to us by the Lord Himself, indicating that a tree is known by its fruit, the whole world knows that the Patriarchate of Moscow has been deeply poisoned by the pseudo-religious teachings of the ‘russian world’, the poisonous and deadly fruit of which has become Russia’s current terrible war against Ukraine. The war is devilish and godless, which the Patriarch of Moscow called sacred and blessed the Russian ruler and army for all the crimes they have committed and continue to commit on our land.
Hence, having already learnt in a clear and undeniable way that both the root and the fruit of the ‘russian world’ are evil, it should be clear to anyone who truly wishes to preserve the purity of Orthodoxy and who cares about the good of the Church that one should distance himself from this evil and have no connection with this darkness.”
https://orthodoxtimes.com/metropolitan-of-kyiv-appeals-for-dialogue-with-metropolitan-onufry/
So, this Church is apparently being prohibited.
This war is literally a brother going against a brother because so many (probably the majority) Russians have Ukrainian relatives and vice versa. Before the war many in Eastern Ukraine sympathized with Russia. My acquaintance, a Ukrainian woman who lives in Europe, told me that her mother, an ethnic Ukrainian, is madly pro-Russian while her Russian father is more critical of Russia. The woman herself is totally pro-Ukrainian. So, if one can find those who are pro-Russian even on the Ukrainian territory, even during the war, no wonder that they can be found in the Ukrainian Church of Moscow Patriarchate – just like many others who are anti-Russians.
With all this Ukrainian Catholic severity against potentially Russia-sympathetic orthodox (including the still persecuted religious of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra), I wonder: has the Ukrainian Catholic hierarchy ever taken the time to criticize the gay pride parades held in Kiev? The new world order religion of LGBTQ? Or the sort of “humor” in which the current Ukrainian president specializes? Why are they going against the Russian orthodox–who are our natural allies against the sort of religion that was on display at the recent Olympics?