Szlezak: Greek-Catholics and Flagism

Yesterday I wrote about a conference in Czyzanów devoted to the 80th anniversary of Ukrainian genocide in Poles. The conference was attended by Marian Buczek, a retired bishop of the Diocese of Charkovsko – Zaporoš. Bishop Buczek's speech was interesting due to the fact that he gave cognition of the current attitude of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic clergy towards the genocide of us Volyn. The clergy have a peculiarly shameful function in this matter. In 1943, many Greek-Catholic clergymen were instigators and managers in the bestial killing of Polish neighbors by Ukrainian peasants. This Greek-Catholic church gave moral justification for genocide and absolution for it. In this dimension, this church, its clergy and hierarchy are full liable for participating in genocide. Today, the Greek-Catholic Church is most likely the largest institution in Ukraine that sustains and promotes the genocidal cult of the CNS-UPA, and in peculiar the leaders of these organizations. A akin attitude is represented by the vast majority of the clergy of this church in Poland.

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It is essential that among the highest hierarchs of this church there is no will to confess and settle its key function in genocide. And what about the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Poland? It appears that as a consequence of the attitude of the Ukrainian clergy, Roman-Catholic priests of Poles were besides murdered.

To call the behaviour of the church hierarchy in Poland a disgraceful 1 is to specify it rather gently. Since the late 1980s and 1990s, erstwhile in Poland it was possible to talk about it freely, no bishop has always straight said it in public. Not even Pope John Paul II, while in Lviv. The circumstances may not have allowed this at any time, but his stay in Ukraine should have encouraged him at least to remind the Ukrainians that their national church is subject to the crime of genocide.

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He didn't. For respective years now, however, there has been a tendency to blur the focus of this problem by organising events from the “we forgive and ask for forgiveness”. According to Bishop Buczek, there have already been 12 specified “conciliations”. Another took place a fewer days ago in Warsaw and Lutsk. In Lutsk they were accompanied by embarrassing performances of Andrzej Duda and Włodzimierz Żeleński in the roles of the presidents of Poland and Ukraine. Similarly, another letter signed in fresh days by the leaders of the Church in Poland and the Church in Ukraine, is specified an effort to explain genocide and standing in the truth, but in fact, it is another pathetic slip on the problem without wanting to scope its essence.

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The essence of the problem is that the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church accepted and accepted the OUN-UPA genocide ideology as its mission. This ideology is related to the ideology of German Nazism, and erstwhile it is studied its canonical text, which is "Nationalism" by Dmitri Doncov, it becomes convinced that Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is simply a milder version. If we recognise that the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church is based on teaching, tradition, doctrine, mission or how to describe it, shaped by Christianity symbolized by Rome and Byzantine, then accepting the OUN-UPA ideology is simply a complete denial of what this church should be. There can be no question of reconciliation, forgiveness or any dialog until the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church recognizes its guilt, does not cut off and condemns this anti-Christian and genocideist ideology. Without this, any "sorry and ask for forgiveness" will be an empty motion that does not make any fresh quality in both theological, moral and political terms, due to the fact that specified a dimension has ecclesiastical actions "we forgive and ask forgiveness."

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This case has a broader context. There are many indications that the OUN-UPA ideology becomes the perfect foundation of the Ukrainian state. The war on Russia is accelerating this process. possibly it is besides late to halt this process. However, it is inactive not besides late for the authoritative representatives of the Catholic Church in Poland and the authoritative representatives of the authorities of the current form of Polish statehood to make this substance clear to Ukrainian state and church authorities. Without the denial and condemnation of the OUN-UPA ideology there will be no average Polish-Ukrainian relations, nor on the level of relations between states or churches. However, I am afraid that the most crucial positions in the state and the Church in Poland have been filled with mediocrity specified that they will never get there. due to the fact that what do you anticipate from Andrzej Duda and Mateusz Morawiecki or the modern top of the episcopal? specified a case requires the wisdom and courage of a statesman. It is not essential to look for specified in the ranks of the largest parties in Poland, as well as the episcopate.

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A Do you think there will be individual who will officially tell the Ukrainians that the CNS-UPA will never agree with us?