CCHA Historical
Studies, 71 (2005), 94-109
Harvesting Heritage Seeds in
Prairie Soil: The Role of Ukrainskyi
holos in the Formation of the Identity of the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox
Church of Canada[1]
Myroslaw TATARYN
In the first
decade of the twentieth century Ukrainian settlers in Canada found themselves
in a new society, surrounded by unforeseen ideas, and an unexpected diversity
of religious and political opinions. Gradually emerging from the initial phase
of addressing immediate questions of survival, the pre-World War I period was
marked by the rise of an educated class cognisant both of its Ukrainian
identity and the need for the community to raise its general educational level.
This new class of people was responding to the altered socio-cultural circumstances
in which Ukrainians found themselves in Canada and the traditional Church’s
inability to offer leadership in this new situation due to the lack of priests
in Canada. Stella Hryniuk has ably described the significant role played by the
Ukrainian (Greek) Catholic Church in Western Ukraine in the late nineteenth
century:
Within this society, the
priest dispensed the sacraments and functioned as the community’s moral
authority. He also dispensed advice and generally set an example in respect of
modern agricultural practice, and usually played a pivotal role in a village’s
cultural life in the 1880’s and even the 1890’s. . .[2]
By 1912 there
were between 130,000 and 150,000 Ukrainian Catholic settlers in Canada,[3]
with only twenty-one priests, including many of non-Ukrainian heritage.[4]
Hryniuk observes: “of all the institutions of the homeland the village church
with its priest was the one most acutely missed.”[5]
This combination of a missing social institution and non-Ukrainian priests
proved volatile. Bohdan Kazymyra describes this situation as a “confusing
pluralism.”[6] The new
settlers quickly became targets of Protestant and Russian Orthodox missionary
activity. As Mark McGowan noted:
After 1904, immigrants could
seek spiritual guidance from several Ukrainian-born priests in the new
Independent Greek Church, which
drew from the followers of Seraphim Stefan Ustvolsky and was financed by the
Presbyterians. In addition, desertions to the Russian Orthodox fold caused a
number of court battles over church property between Uniate and Orthodox
factions within existing Catholic congregations.[7]
The arrival in
1912 of the first Ukrainian bishop of Canada, Nykyta Budka, seemed to offer
hope for an improved situation. However the bishop’s arrival neither alleviated
the problem of too few Ukrainian priests nor facilitated a better understanding
of the Ukrainian situation by the dominant Roman Catholic Church.[8]
The Church, unable to lead the community in securing its identity in the new
land, gave way to a rising class of educated, nationally conscious teachers.
The movement to
provide sustained and nationally conscious leadership for the Ukrainian
Canadian community was created by graduates of the Ruthenian Training School in
Winnipeg and members of the Ukrainian Teachers’ Association.[9] This core group of educated, community
conscious activists formed the independent Ukrainian National Publishing
Company which established the Winnipeg based newspaper Ukrainskyi holos (The Ukrainian Voice) in 1910.[10]
Oleh Gerus has described the paper as speaking “on behalf of crusading and
nationalistically minded intelligentsia.”[11]
The editors identified their paper as “an educational, economically and
politically progressive newspaper for the Ukrainian people in Canada.”[12]
The editorial board’s commitment was clearly socialist and
nationally-conscious; some have even called it nationalist.[13]
However, this commitment to the values of equality and education also led the
paper to develop very definite positions concerning the religious life of the
Ukrainian community and the extent to which the various Churches supported the
growth and development of that community. It is this latter concern which led
the paper to become critical of Churches working among Ukrainian settlements
and ultimately, from August 1918, to strongly support the Ukrainian Greek
Orthodox Church of Canada, founded in Saskatoon that July.[14]
Yuri Daschko has observed that “the church and its secular organization, the
Ukrainian Self-Reliance League, have always enjoyed the support of Ukrainskyi holos, which still speaks
with authority for the church hierarchy.”[15]
This support was not only in the form of providing a media outlet for the
Church, but perhaps more significantly, critical personnel from the newspaper
became leaders in the newly minted Church and the newspaper became the major
architect of the Church’s identity. In particular the first editor of the
paper, Wasyl Kudryk (1880-1963), although beginning his public career as a
strong supporter of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, became a member of the
new Church’s consistory, and in 1923 was ordained an Orthodox priest. Thus the newspaper’s clearly political focus
and ostensibly neutral position on inter-Church rivalries in the pre-1918
period served to strengthen the argument of the scholars who see the creation
of the new Orthodox Church as an expression of nationalism, rather than
“doctrinal dissent.”[16]
By studying the
editorial pages of the newspaper in the period up to and including 1918, it is
contended that the latter dichotomy between nationalism and “doctrinal dissent”
is too strongly drawn. Analyzing the editorial content of the paper reveals a
history of concern over the impact of religious life on the community and a
yearning for a Church to function like their Church in Ukraine where “there was
a populist clergy which valued the interests of the people and at times even
went against the interests of the powerful.”[17]
Ukrainskyi holos gradually came to
the conclusion that the religious life of Ukraine would not be successfully
grafted onto the life of the settlement communities and only a new creation
(almost an accidental creation) would be needed, given the reluctance of Bishop
Nykyta Budka to be the kind of community religious leader that they desired. Only
after the events of 18 and 19 July 1918, when a “Confidential” Meeting of over
150 representatives of Ukrainian settlements in Western Canada met in Saskatoon
to discuss pressing issues affecting the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, but
instead initiated the creation of the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church in
Canada, would Ukrainskyi holos
understand these events in the context
of the historical desire of some Ukrainians to have an ecclesiastical reality
which represented their experience of Christian faith as a support and
encouragement in the face of seemingly perpetual struggles for survival. And
so, in August 1918, Ukrainskyi holos
initiated a liberatory theology born of the seeds planted by the Greek Catholic
Church in Ukraine, but coming to harvest on the prairie soil as the Ukrainian
Greek Orthodox Church in Canada.
Generated by the
valid concern for the survival of the settlement communities in their new land,[18]
the founders of Ukrainskyi holos used
their paper to support and strengthen the public, bilingual school system in
Manitoba and Saskatchewan. While this theme dominates the editorial pages of
the paper far more than any other issue appearing
in ninety-three editorial articles between 1914-1917, it also generated tension with more
ecclesiastically focused community circles. Martynowych notes: “The teachers
and other would-be enlighteners met with resistance from several quarters:
Russophile school trustees; Latin-rite settlers who thought of themselves as
Poles; Bukovynians under the influence of Ukrainophobic Russian Orthodox
priests; and pious Catholics who feared for the salvation of their souls.”[19]
This latter concern was clearly fed by the Ukrainian Basilian priests and the
French and Belgian Redemptorists based in Yorkton. Public education was “a
frequent Basilian target,”[20]
and as Martynowych reports, a
French priest stated that
“Ukrainian public school teachers were not only ‘pedantic and puffed up with
the little knowledge they may have acquired,’ they were also ‘perverted, imbued
with Protestant principles.’”[21]
Thus Ukrainskyi holos’ support of
public, bilingual education was often condemned from the Catholic pulpit and
reportedly challenged in the confessional.[22]
This conflict was not limited to the Catholic sector. However, since the Catholic
Church was the largest community-based Church the dispute resonated with
meaning for the entire community. For the editors of the newspaper the tension
was regarded as only part of a historic pattern: Rome’s ongoing attempts to
destroy “our rite are as old as the world;”[23]
both Orthodoxy and Catholicism tried to make Ukrainians into “willing serfs;”[24]
and it was hard to comprehend what the Polish Roman Catholics have tried to do
to “our people.”[25] In the end,
the paper saw the Ukrainian people as deserving sainthood since “our
long-suffering and tormented people, burdened by the Polish Roman Catholic
insult cannot to this day come to themselves.”[26]
Nevertheless, the paper saw reason to hope that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic
Church could play a more positive role.
Although a
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Bishop, Soter Ortynsky, was appointed for the United
States in 1907, the Vatican was reluctant to do the same for the Canadian
Ukrainians. As a result of positions taken by Archbishop Langevin and others,
the efforts for the creation of such an episcopate were greatly troubled. It
was not until 1912, thanks to a great extent to the intervention of
Metropolitan Sheptytsky, that Nykyta Budka was appointed the Bishop for
Ukrainians in Canada.[27]
Ostensibly appointed in order to abate the growing unrest and defections among
the settlers, the new Bishop was seen as the key to consolidate the Greek
Catholic Church’s authority in the community. Also, the new Bishop’s attempt to
recruit diocesan priests and seminarians from Ukraine was seen as a way of
stemming growing dissatisfaction with the non-Ukrainian clergy who had played
such a dominant part in the Church’s life in Canada thus far.[28] He was therefore, initially very well
received by the community.
Budka’s
recruitment of new, Ukrainian born, diocesan clergy was perhaps the most
welcome initiative of his Episcopal career. In 1914, Ukrainskyi holos noted:
Polish anarchy and the
persecution by the nobility aimed at leading members of the clergy, made life
for some of our priests unbearable in Ukraine. They left our native land, the
enslaved people for whom they wished to dedicate their lives, and everything
which they held dearest and departed into the land where they could breathe
more easily and to which our muzhik
had come, to America.
But having arrived here they did not waste their time. They rolled up
their sleeves and often, though cold and hungry, and in spite of various other
problems that they were forced to deal with by the Latin bishops, they went
among the people, taught them, enlightened them, led them forward and organized
them.[29]
Although the
previously recognized problem of foreign priests had not disappeared, the
newspaper valued the arrival of more populist priests from Ukraine. Sadly,
Budka’s efforts to Ukrainianize his contingent of clergy did not make
significant headway until the mid 1920s, too late to avert the crisis of 1918.[30]
Budka’s other
positions were not as warmly embraced. After issuing a Pastoral Letter in the
spring of 1913, Ukrainskyi holos
expressed its regret that the Bishop perceived issues in the Ukrainian
community from a much too narrow sectarian viewpoint. Budka seemed to conflate
the community and the Church, and this view, the paper stated, “is erroneous
and perhaps even very harmful.”[31]
Possibly of more importance to
the editors was the Bishop’s assertion that the community schools needed to be
Greek Catholic. The editors’ response was unequivocal:
Catholic schools are grist
for the French mill. We should stand by the need for public schools, not
sectarian ones. These schools should teach our children in our language, about
our history and literature.[32]
For the paper the
problem in the community was one of leadership. Budka’s letter had derided the identification of “Ruthenian” Catholics in
the 1911 Census, an absence which the editors argued was due to “. . .[the]
Basilians, who have lived in Canada for a while now and have had the
time to teach the people. But it seems, they have not taught the people, and
they themselves were ashamed of identifying their Greek Catholicism to the
government officials.” This leadership
issue extended, for Ukrainskyi holos,
to the issue of non-Ukrainian priests:
We need to recognize that most of our Greek Catholic clergy are in the
main foreigners . . . for whom our people’s affairs, or even the question of
the organisation of Canadian Ruthenians, is of as much interest as for us is
last year’s snow. The Bishop will do well to turn his efforts to speedily get
rid of, from among our people, these uninvited ‘guardians’ because they clearly
paralyze our national organism. [33]
Reflecting upon
this situation a year later, the editors expressed their support for local
community efforts to engage Bishop Budka in the enterprise of strengthening the
community’s identity and cohesion. The editors added: “The people fully
understand the Church question; the people see that things cannot long continue
as they are. But why talk about the people when we can even find priests who
will tell us that our Church in Canada is less ours than that same Church in
Halychyna.”[34] In the 1 November 1915 issue the editors
called upon Bishop Budka to take a stand on the bilingual schools issue and
echo the assessment of the recently fired
editor of Kanadyiskyi rusyn (The
Canadian Ruthenian),[35]
that Budka is in a “French jail” and so the French priests have a greater say
in Ukrainian affairs in Canada than does the Bishop.[36]
Tensions further
increased between the paper, its supporters and the official Greek Catholic
camp over another educational issue: bursy
or student residences. In order to support and encourage higher education among
Ukrainian students, a series of student residences were established in various
Canadian cities. The newspaper appealed to its readers to financially and
morally support the Kotsko residence in Winnipeg (1915) and the Mohyla
residence in Saskatoon (1916). Not surprisingly, the non-denominational policy
of the governing boards echoed the policy of Ukrainskyi holos. But in both instances this produced a conflict
with representatives of the Catholic Church. Hryniuk understands this conflict
as revolving around the Catholic versus secular character of the residences,[37]
whereas Martynowych places the official Catholic response to the rise of the bursy in the context of Budka and the
Belgian priests’ fear of Protestantism.[38]
However, the supporters of the residences saw their position as neither
anti-Catholic nor pro-Protestant. Non-denominational student residences were
not the same as the work of the Presbyterian missions, ostensibly represented
by the paper Ranok, and their efforts
to create residences to build the community’s national self-consciousness. The
projects were two different creatures. The paper argued its position in late
1916:
We are not getting mixed up
in religious affairs, there are enough dilettantes who are attracted to the
religious question and go about reforming, upsetting and making a mess. As far
as the religious education of children (and the residences have no children) is
concerned that is the affair of the parents who select the Church to which
their children are sent and the character of the religious education they wish
them to receive…. Now most members of the Board of the residence are Greek
Catholics, but not such bigots as to force anything upon people… [39]
The Mohyla
Residence was founded by the First Ukrainian National Convention in August 1916
quite explicitly as an institution for all Ukrainians which would nurture the
students’ “moral and religious education.”[40]
This non-denominational policy was attacked not only by the Greek Catholic
press organ Kanadyiskyi rusyn, but
also initially by the Presbyterian funded Ranok.
In fact in 1916 and 1917 most editorials defending the policies of the Mohyla
residence were responding to the Ranok
attacks. The Mohyla residence became a symbol for those forces within the
Ukrainian community wishing to have the community develop a unique sense of its
national and religious identity. The need to clarify the relationship between
national and religious identity arose then, not as a result of a theological
question, but rather because of continuing attacks against the bursy by the Presbyterian funded Ranok, which the editors of Holos came to identify with the force of
assimilation and integration.[41]
Within the
context of this wider question of religious and national identity the editorial
pages of Holos offered a series about
a “People’s Church.” However these articles, while containing muted attacks on the Greek Catholics, were primarily a
response to a perceived greater threat from the Presbyterians. In January
1917, one of these articles directly attacked the Protestant community:
affirming that Ukrainians can be good Protestants, but a Protestant cannot be a
good Ukrainian![42] During this
same month the paper ran a series of articles under the heading “The Saskatoon
Comedy of our ‘Independent Protestant’ Bankrupts,” in which the Convention of
Christian Farmers (December 1916) organized by the Ukrainian Protestant leaders
Ivan Bodrug and Paul Crath was derided.[43] A very different tone was taken in the 17
January issue. When referring to the Greek Catholic Church, the “People’s
Church” editorial affirmed that the problems which have arisen are not
reflective of a hopeless situation:
Absolutely not. The Church
reflects the people generally. If the Church had informed and intelligent
people, then the Church would be like that. In Halychyna, once the general
consciousness and spirituality of the people was raised, so was their national
consciousness…[44]
For the editors
of Holos, religious and national
identity were intimately linked and the cleric as community leader (or perhaps
even ethnarch) was the linchpin in the development of that integrated identity.
However, this rather sympathetic attitude towards the Greek Catholic Church
changed in late 1917 and 1918 when the polemic with Kanadyiskyi rusyn heated up and there was no doubt that the Rusyn was a surrogate for the Bishop
himself.
By April 1917 the
pages of Ukrainskyi holos were
dominated by reports from various parishes about conflicts with the clergy. It
is into this context that the paper placed its growing polemic with official
Greek Catholic circles. Under the heading “Parochial Misunderstandings” the
situation was once more perceived as a question of individuals and community
leadership rather than an institutional or, better, fundamentally religious
problem:
misunderstandings exist not
only between Ukrainskyi holos and
priests (although not all), but between the people and priests. And where this
will lead we cannot tell. However, it is another matter that certain people are
dismissive of the Church and religion and thus are insulting in their conduct,
but fortunately we have none of those people at Ukrainskyi holos…[45]
A few issues
later the same theme was taken up, when again in response to the polemic with Kanadyiskyi rusyn the paper noted:
Lest
someone suggest that we are enemies of Catholicism . . . we say that the issue
is not Catholicism, but people. This same Catholic Church will be progressive
and valuable if it is led by progressive people, however in the hands of
reactionaries it will be reactionary and worthless. Neither the form, nor the
name of a Church, but the idealism of its priests and their work will give the
Church its worth.[46]
This position was
sharpened in the next issue when the author commented: “Experience has shown
that often, when the clergy take the lead, the life of the people did not
progress, but rather declined. The politics of the clergy is often not the
politics of the people.”[47]
Yet, the earlier argument about the possibility of a Protestant being a good
Ukrainian is explicitly not applied to Greek Catholics. The paper observed:
Because a
nationally-conscious Ukrainian can be a Greek Catholic and a Greek Catholic a
Ukrainian, nonetheless a ‘true Catholic’ cannot be a nationally-conscious
Ukrainian, nor can a nationally-conscious Ukrainian be a ‘true Catholic’. This
is so because Greek Catholicism and ‘Catholicism’ are two separate worlds, two
separate ideas. . . Evil people…wished to convert Ukrainians to Roman
Catholicism but fortunately, thanks be to God, the people did not listen, but
rather stopped in mid-road and stayed as they were, just changing one thing,
began to call themselves Greek Catholics. But they did not change their rituals
and in no way grew closer to the Catholics. That is why Rome continues to this
day to regard Greek Catholics as not quite ‘true Catholics,’ but rather some
kind of half Catholic or material for becoming Catholic.[48]
Ukrainskyi holos was reflecting a nuanced
understanding of the varying roles that Christian Churches were playing in the
life of the community. In the articles on the “People’s Church” the authors
recognized that all Churches play a leadership role in the life of the nation
and often the state:
In Austria the Catholic Church is closely connected
with state organisations. In England and the English colonies we have strong
ecclesial organisations – Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglican – which have as
their aim the expansion and strengthening of the English state. Their motto is:
One State, One Banner, One Language.
Every Church, besides its
clearly religious function cares, nurtures, and develops the state agenda or
the popular strivings within their state, or of their people. It is not
surprising then that every intelligent person recognizes that the Church with
an educated clergy fulfils a leading role in the growth of the people and their
state.[49]
Such a symbiosis
between the life of the Church and the strivings of the people existed in
Ukraine, where the Greek Catholic Church was judged as “being the closest to
the national interests and so has the greatest possibility of being a truly
people’s Church.”[50]
It was even evident among the clergy in the United States, who did not fear to
challenge Metropolitan Sheptytsky in 1902, by asserting that the Greek Catholic
Church had suffered many losses as a result of its relationship with Rome.[51]
This analysis of the community’s religious life served to clarify the paper’s
view of the nature of the Greek Catholic Church and its role in Canada: it sought not only to protect the
community’s identity, but to foster that identity as it had in Ukraine. This
conservative position ultimately saw
the paper defend the Church against
the inadequacies of the clergy: “when Ukrainskyi
holos wrote about Church issues, it was not writing against the Church, but
against bad priests, against their carelessness, their lack of tact, their
apathy, and their lack of idealism. Ukrainskyi
holos did this…to remind them of their priestly, community responsibility.”[52] The evolving theme reappeared in October,
when the paper again focused on the inadequacies of the non-Ukrainian clergy.
These problematic clerics were contrasted to the preferred married clergy
because:
The cleric’s family tied our
old-country priests with the people and their life, because it was among this
people that their children would grow and work. The priest’s family became a
great cultural strength for our people…[53]
At the end of
1917 Ukrainskyi holos saw itself as
defending the character of the Greek Catholic Church as it had developed in
Halychyna (to the noted exclusion of the Stanislaviv Eparchy under Bishop
Khomyshyn)[54] and hoping
that this inheritance would be allowed to flourish in Canada.
In the midst of trumpeting the need for more community-focused priests
the editors were also aware that Polish and French priests played exactly this
community leadership role for their people. In various remarks over the years
the editors lamented that Ukrainian priests did not take the lead from their
Roman Catholic counterparts who did not shirk away from defending their
people’s community life. In reflecting upon the history of Ukrainian-Polish
relations, in a series of articles entitled,
“Throughout Hundreds of Years” the editors highlighted the many injustices of
those relations. Yet, they also pointed out how Polish priests were not
constrained by their faith from serving the interests of Poland and tormenting
the Ukrainian peasantry, just like the Polish landowners.[55] In a 1917 “Correction” to a report on a
Winnipeg teacher’s convention, W. Arsenych pointed to the lack of a truly
populist Church for Ukrainians:
Our neighbours have
‘People’s Churches’. Our neighbour’s Churches serve the precious things of
their people. They strengthen their people and often establish themselves among
other peoples in order to benefit their own people. We do not have a people’s
church; our churches are not our own.[56]
In the same issue, in discussing “Current Issues” the editors again
affirmed: “Among other peoples the Church serves the people, it is as the
people wish it to be….why do our Church organisations rather serve foreign
interests…?”[57] Although this desire for a Church which
supported and encouraged the community’s life and identity was strong, it was
increasingly difficult to reconcile with the positions taken by Bishop Budka.
In mid-1917 a new
obstacle thwarted any attempted reconciliation between the Bishop and the
paper’s supporters. The paper began publishing a series of articles by Michael
Stechishin (1888-1964) critiquing the Episcopal Incorporation Act which sought
most controversially to incorporate all church property in the name of the
Eparchial Bishop, but with no guarantee that the Bishop would be Ukrainian. The
timing of this critique was particularly significant in that Budka was
increasingly insistent that the privately incorporated Mohyla Institute should
be placed under the Episcopal Act. This ceaseless conflict over the Mohyla Institute
was worsened by a public confrontation between the Bishop and two community
leaders, Wasyl Swystun (then rector of the Mohyla Institue) and Michael
Stechishin (a law student and promoter of the Ukrainskyi holos agenda), at Canora’s railway station on 16 June
1917. The paper’s comments on this new development were telling. In the past it had identified the
Church problem as having to do with the quality of the clergy, now it focused
on the leadership, that is, on Budka himself. “If our Church’s leaders
demonstrated some understanding, then they would recognize that the days of our
serfdom and the Church’s aristocratism have passed.”[58] Budka had become the problem, but as Michael
Stechishin (who apparently only occasionally attended Orthodox services) is
reported to have noted in his autobiography,[59]
in mid-1917 Swystun still thought that the battle could be won within the Greek
Catholic Church.[60]
The events of
1918, leading up to the establishment of the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church of
Canada were turbulent and not well reflected on the editorial pages of Ukrainskyi holos. This suggests that the
new Church’s rise was not well planned. Michael Stechishin’s memoirs suggest
that the verbal assault unleashed
by Bishop Budka on Wasyl Swystun at the Easter service in Saskatoon, was the
final spark that caused Swystun to proclaim to Stechishin that now he is
Orthodox.[61] Yet, both Swystun and Stechishin chose to
organize a “Confidential Meeting” in July 1918 to discuss
the Church issues, hopefully with Budka in attendance. This decision meant that
a leading supporter of a new national Church, Onuphry Hykawy, the editor of Kanadyiskyi farmer and a vehement
opponent of Budka, refused to participate in the organization of the gathering.
Ironically, in the end Budka refused to attend. Fr. Semen Sawchuk a key leader
of the new Church, wrote in his memoirs (before 1927) that “the result of this
confidential meeting nobody knew.”[62]
This statement gains credibility from the late reporting of the events in
Saskatoon by Ukrainskyi holos. In the
24 July issue the paper provided a Ukrainian translation of the report of the
Saskatoon events as printed in the Saskatoon
Star, with an explanation that the postal strike in Winnipeg made it
impossible to get any other information about the meeting. The first extensive
coverage of the meeting awaited the 31 July issue; this coverage involved
extensive and clearly affirmative reports, yet there was no editorial comment.
The main focus of the editorial pages at this point was events in Ukraine.
Editorial attention on the new Church’s establishment only gradually gained
prominence. But as the editorial position evolved, it became clear that the
editors were setting out the argument that this Church in fact embodied all
that was good in the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine. In the 18 September 1918
issue the first such exposition appeared. Under the heading “Where to Find
Reasons” the editors expounded upon the historic desire of the Ukrainian
community in Canada to make the Greek Catholic Church a central agent in their
life. “He [the people] built churches, decorated them and now it was the
clergy’s turn to further that work, while the people are always ready to assist
further.”[63] In their
estimation, Bishop Budka and the clergy did not work to unite the community nor
defend the Church from Roman Catholic attack. In fact, the Greek Catholic
Church in Canada, in the assessment of the editors of Ukrainskyi holos, failed in its mission:
The majority of the people want a Church, but a Church which cares for
their moral, spiritual and cultural development rather than the class interests
of the clergy and the Roman Church. When the Bishop and clergy failed to and do
not wish to understand this, then one cannot be surprised that a stronger movement
in the direction of improvement of our Church situation had to develop.[64]
In October, the
editor also commenced a much stronger line against the Greek Catholic Church in
Ukraine, suggesting that reported missionary activity in Eastern Ukraine may
have been spearheaded by Belgian Redemptorists, who had now been effectively
demonized by many in the Ukrainian community.[65]
At this point, rather than differentiating Greek Catholicism from Catholicism,
as it had done in June 1917, the paper suggested the Greek Catholics had
themselves discarded the modifier “Greek” in favour of simply “Catholic” and
thus identified themselves with a foreign Church. The paper concluded:
The Ukrainian people must
create their own life and be done with foreign protectors and any foreign
dependence. History has taught us that this is the only road to independence,
strength and good fortune.[66]
In November the
editors published a report claiming that Metropolitan Sheptytsky was about to
impose obligatory celibacy on the clergy. Laying claim to the heritage of the
past, prior to July 1918 meant that aspects of Church life in Ukraine could
still be used constructively in the development of the new church’s self image.
After July 1918, the newspaper began to identify the new Ukrainian Orthodox
Church in Canada as the sole bearer of the best of the heritage of Christianity
among the Ukrainian people. Clearly, the newspaper had moved in the direction
of being the organ for the development of the identity of the new Church, but
an identity which lays direct and exclusive claim upon the heritage of the
past.
If we configure
religion as simply the positions enunciated by those in authority, then it
would not be difficult to argue that the editors of Ukrainskyi holos were anti-religious and strictly interested in
politics. However, in reviewing the editorial pages of that newspaper it is
clear that they regarded the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as a necessary and
important agent in the life of the community. This Church had a legitimate claim
to leadership in the new Canadian context, a role which the editors affirmed it
had historically played in Ukraine. Prior to July 1918 the newspaper’s editors
consistently argued that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church needed to more
fully actualize its promise in the Canadian setting for the betterment of the
entire community. That role was
not to be somehow exclusively given over to the one Church, in spite of its
adherents dominating the newspaper’s supporters. The democratic and modern
spirit awakening in Ukraine at this time and present in the very fabric of
Canadian society had already been internalized by the editors. They were
initially open and accepting of a degree of religious pluralism within their
community, as long as it was respectful of the needs of Ukrainians.
Points of tension
with Church authorities were unrelenting and apparently irreconcilable. These
tensions and conflicts interestingly reflected issues unique to the Canadian
context: obligatory celibacy, legal registration of land property titles,
community halls and student residences. In Ukraine, given the history of the
Greek Catholic community and Church, these issues had not appeared as points of
tension. Ostensibly the only major issue sparking a conflict which affected both
Canada and Ukraine was the authority of the Bishop. In both settings the
canonical authority of a Catholic bishop was virtually unassailable. Yet, a
distinction between the two locales must be made. In Canada, there was only one
bishop and thus his approach, his attitudes, and his decisions were dominant
and unquestionable. In Ukraine, there were a number of bishops and, as any
observer would agree, a great variety of styles. The strongest differentiation
can be made between the style and approach of Metropolitan Sheptytsky in Lviv
and Bishop Khomyshyn in Stanislaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk). The former has come
to symbolize a more nationally conscious, populist and Easternizing bishop,
whereas Khomyshyn both on the pages of Ukrainskyi
holos and more generally in popular consciousness, has come to be seen as
authoritarian and a Latinizer.
A plurality of
approaches and opinions present in Ukraine did not translate at all into the
new setting of Canada. Thus the attempt by Ukrainskyi
holos and most other members of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to
graft the identity and life of that Church from Ukraine onto the community’s
life in Canada was doomed to failure. The events of July 1918 did not simply
create one new Church, but, it may be suggested, two new Churches: the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church of
Canada. The latter may have in name been the same Church as existed in Ukraine,
but Canada made a difference. And the seed planted on Canadian soil produced new fruits, which
commencing in 1919 waged an often vicious war between each other, for dominance
in the Ukrainian community. Both laid exclusive claim to the heritage of
Ukrainian Christianity and an influential voice in this process belonged to the
newspaper Ukrainskyi holos.[67]
[1] I would like to acknowledge and thank the financial support for this project given through a Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Research Grant. This paper was presented in an earlier form at the meeting of the Canadian Catholic Historical Association in Winnipeg, May 2004.
[2] See Stella Hryniuk, “Pioneer Bishop, Pioneer Times: Nykyta Budka in Canada,” in Prophets, Priests, and Prodigals: Readings in Canadian Religious History, 1608 to Present, edited by Mark G. McGowan and David B. Marshall (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1992), 148. Most Ukrainian settlers in Canada in the pre-World War I period came from Galicia, a smaller group from Bukovynia. The latter group was predominantly Russian Orthodox, whereas the much larger Galician group were almost exclusively Ukrainian (Greek) Catholic. This Church was created as a product of the 1596 Union of Brest when the majority of Bishops of Ukraine and Byelorussia (then belonging to the Polish Crown) united with the Church of Rome. This union was undertaken with the proviso that the rites and traditions of the Ukrainians (then termed Ruthenians) would be unchanged. Thus was born the Greek Catholic Church, sometimes derogatorily termed Uniate. Michael Marunchak presents an overview (although at times idealized) of the religious situation of the early settlements in his The Ukrainian Canadians: A History (Winnipeg: Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences, 1970), 99-114.
[3] Mark McGowan notes the difficulty with the estimates of Ukrainian
Catholics in Canada at this time, although he pegs the number at 150,000 while
Hryniuk suggests 128,000. See Mark G. McGowan, “‘A Portion for the Vanquished’:
Roman Catholics and the Ukrainian Catholic Church,” in Canada’s Ukrainians: Negotiating an Identity, edited by Lubomyr Luciuk and Stella
Hryniuk (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1991), 222, n. 12.
[4] McGowan, 222.
[5] Hryniuk, 149.
[6] Bohdan Kazymyra, “Sheptyts’kyi and Ukrainians in Canada,” in Morality and Reality: The Life and Times of Andrei Sheptytskyi, edited by Paul Robert Magocsi (Edmonton: CIUS, 1989), 329.
[7] McGowan, 222.
[8] McGowan, 226f.
[9] Orest Martynowych, Ukrainians in Canada: The Formative Years, 1891-1924 (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1991), 175.
[10] The influence of this paper on the Ukrainian community was attested to in 1925 by Theodore Bodnar, chair of the Ethelbert School Board in a letter to the Manitoba Deputy Minister of Education, Dr. Robert Fletcher. Bodnar wrote: “We know that the majority of our Ukrainian teachers read the Ukrainian Voice whether they read the Free Press or Tribune or not.” See www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/transactions/3/ukrainianteachers.shtml; 17 May 2004.
[11] Oleh Gerus, “Consolidating the Community: The Ukrainian
Self-Reliance League,” in Canada’s
Ukrainians, 160.
[12] Ukrainskyi holos (The Ukrainian Voice) Winnipeg (1910- .) 16.III.1910, 1. All English translations in this paper are the author’s, unless otherwise noted. Hereafter this newspaper will be cited as UH.
[13] Martynowych, 175. Martynowych also provides a helpful overview of the persons involved in the Ukrainian Publishing Company and Ukrainskyi holos, op.cit., 245.
[14] The Church is regarded as having its origins in the Saskatoon meeting of 18-19 July1918, and as such seems to be the product of the work of an urban educated class. See Paul Yuzyk, The Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church of Canada, 1918-1951 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1981). However, the first service took place in St. Julien (across the South Saskatchewan River from Rosthern, Saskatchewan) in October, 1918 and thus the first Church community arose on the rural prairie rather than in the city. Here the local Ukrainian Greek Catholic community refused to register their property in the name of the Episcopal Corporation and in September opted for entering the jurisdiction of the newly minted Church. See George Mulyk-Lutzyk, Istoriya Ukrains’koi Hreko-Pravoslavnoi Tserkvy v Kanadi [History of the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church of Canada] Vol. III (Winnipeg: Ecclesia, 1987), 412-419. Yuzyk’s work is the standard text on the genesis of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada. See also Odarka S. Trosky, The Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church in Canada (Winnipeg: 1968) and Myroslaw Tataryn, “Creating a Canadian Religious Tradition: Conceiving the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada,” Toronto Journal of Theology. Vol. 20:1 (2004), 7-21.
[15] Yuri Daschko, “The Ukrainian Press in Canada,” in A Heritage in Transition: Essays in the History of Ukrainians in Canada, edited by Manoly Lupul (Toronto: McClellan-Stewart, 1982), 272.
[16] Martynowych, 410.
[17] UH 27.XII.1916, 6.
[18] Paul Rutherford opines, “the ethnic newspapers were definitely an obstacle to the assimilative influences of the majority society.” See Paul Rutherford, The Making of the Canadian Media (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1978), 41-42.
[19] Martynowych, 280.
[20] Ibid., 198.
[21] Ibid., 199.
[22] This clerical opposition continued even under Bishop Budka. Support of public schools, so dear to the editors of Ukrainskyi holos, was one of the factors identified by Budka in 1914 as requiring ecclesiastical sanctions. Martynowych, however, notes, “While the bishop and the Redemptorists invoked the regulations, many secular priests regarded some of them with scepticism.” See Martynowych, 386.
[23] UH 18.III.1914, 6.
[24] UH 27.V.1914, 6.
[25] UH 7.I.1914, 4.
[26] Ibid., 4.
[27] See Martynowych, 201-206. For a more extensive discussion of Sheptytsky’s relationship with the situation in Canada see Kazymyra, “Sheptyts’kyi and Ukrainians in Canada,” 329-348.
[28] Martynowych, 206.
[29] UH 16.IX.1914, 6.
[30] Hryniuk observes that when Budka arrived in Canada, “there were…about eighty Ukrainian Catholic parishes and missions, thirteen secular and nine regular clergy, four small convents with thirty-two nuns, and two day schools. By 1927 there was an organized diocese with twenty-nine secular and eighteen monastic priests, two hundred ninety-parishes and mission stations… It was no longer a collection of disparate entities but a united body whose survival and integrity in Canada was not in doubt.” “Pioneer Bishop,” 162.
[31] UH 14.V.1913, 6.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid.
[34] UH 8.VII.1914, 4.
[35] Mykola Syroidiv was fired by Budka as editor in December 1913. Syroidiv’s critiques of Budka’s dependence upon the French-Canadian hierarchy were published in Ukrainskyi holos in early 1914. In one such article, “For the Clarification of the Matter,” Syroidiv wrote: “The reason for my departure were [sic] the ‘French-Belgian-Ruthenian fathers’ who for the longest times were conspiring against me. Bishop Budka, who admitted to me that he was totally materially dependent on the French-Catholic missions, felt obliged to fire me as the editor of Kanadyiskyi rusyn because this was the demand of the French and the French-Ruthenian ‘fathers.’” See UH 21.I.1914; 4).
[36] UH 1.XI.1915, 4.
[37] Hryniuk, “Pioneer Bishop,” 158.
[38] Martynowych, 405 f.
[39] UH 1.XI.1916, 6.
[40] UH 6.XII.1916, 9.
[41] The attacks on the Mohyla Institute in particular are discussed in Iuvileina Knyha 25-littya institutu im. Petra Mohyly v Saskatuni [Jubilee Book on the 25th anniversary of the Petro Mohyla Institue in Saskatoon] (Winnipeg: P. Mohyla Institute, 1945), 61-69.
[42] UH 17.I.1917, 6.
[43] UH 17.I.– 31.I.1917, 6.
[44] UH 17.I.1917, 6.
[45] UH 25.IV.1917, 6.
[46] UH 30.V.1917, 6.
[47] UH 6.VI.1917, 6.
[48] UH 13.VI.1917, 6.
[49] UH 27.XII.1916, 6.
[50] Ibid.
[51] UH 27.V.1914, 6.
[52] UH 25.VII.1917, 4.
[53] UH 31.X.1917, 6.
[54] One of the numerous derogatory references to Bishop Khomyshyn can be found in the editorial article “Also For Consideration” where he is described as “ours by blood, but Roman in education.” 27.V.1914; 6).
[55] UH 7.I.1914, 4.
[56] UH 15.VIII.1917, 5.
[57] UH 15.VIII.1917, 6.
[58] UH 3.X.1917, 6.
[59] See Mulyk-Lutzyk, Vol. II (Winnipeg: Ecclesia, 1985), 181, n.11. This autobiography was written in 1962.
[60] Ibid., 190.
[61] Ibid., 191.
[62] Ibid., 273.
[63] UH 18.IX.1918, 4.
[64] Ibid., 4.
[65] UH 2.X.1918, 4.
[66] UH 20.XI.1918, 6.
[67] In 1918 the new Orthodox Church established was called the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church in Canada, however this nomenclature changed in 1990 when that Church simplified its name to Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada. Similarly, the Ukrainian Catholic Church (current terminology) was in the first half of the twentieth century called the Greek catholic Church or sometimes the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.