Found this actively updated map on UOC-MP defections to the (schismatic) Orthodox Church of the Ukraine, which was granted its tomos by Istanbul Bart this January. (h/t Insomniac)
Commenter AP has predicted that UOC-MP will become the near exclusive province of Ukraine’s Russians in the coming years.
But that doesn’t seem to be coming along too well. Remarkably, it’s not just the Novorossiya region that is seeing very few defections into schism, but some eastern and otherwise strongly pro-Ukraine regions, such as Poltava. Even Kiev isn’t that dense adjusting for population.
And this is all despite the official pressure – sometimes backed up by legal proceedings and SBU questioning – to go over to the UOC.
However, this has probably helped raised Poroshenko’s ratings in western Ukraine. Apart from sending the Constantinople Patriarchate into anathema – as proven by God displaying his displeasure by sending down a heart attack on the Greek hegumen sent to observe the enthronement of Dumenko (“Epiphanius I”) – this may have been its biggest effect to date.
How can a church be schizmatic after it has received its tomos? Your unrelenting pimping of IR’s listless blog here is a little over the top, IMHO. Let’s revisit this map in one year…two years…three years…
Close to 30 churches have made the move since the tomos was granted in left bank Ukraine (east of the Dniepr). Not bad for a month?
Gay and fake tomos for a gay and fake church in the gay and fake country. It all works out, you see.
I think what people miss in whole story is that this so called independent church has less autonomy toward Constantinople than UOC-MP toward Mosocow. If you add that some Anglo-Greek theologians (mostly from 2nd and 3rd generation of Greeks living USA, but some from Australia too) proclaimed that duty of Slavs is to “serve undisputed Helenic primacy” and also demand status of primacy without equals(Eastern papacy), obvious heresies and something that real Greeks from Greece protested, it’s was rather pathetic move from Kiev to accept it. Where is the freaking sense of honor?
If you’re interested in topic, try to check Romfea, or even more interesting site to see, one of the Archons of Constantinople Patriarchy. It’s organization that should have some continuity with old Archons, not sure why would they want that, considering that historical Archons were nothing more than quislings for Ottomans, and never really had a nice reputation. Still, what’s important that bunch of current ones are rather appalling persons, for example Demacopoulos from Fordham who runs blog named Public Orthodoxy, is textbook neomarxists, and it seems that has rather important role among them.
If Ukrainians are fine to be servants of people like those, they deserve all homo-globo blight that’s going to strike them.
Polls indicate that about 30% of the UOC-MP believers would leave after the OCU gets recognized by Constantinople. * However, for any individual church to switch 2/3 of its parishioners have to vote to do so. So if the defections were evenly distributed across all parishes, not a single parish would switch over. Of course this has not been the case. UOC-MP is getting wiped out in Ukraine’s West and Center (where people actually go to church weekly) but few parishes are switching in the East. In those areas the individuals will probably just be going to a different church and attendance in the Russian one will decline further.
Ultimately, I’d be surprised if more than 10%-20% (about 1,000-2,000 parishes) switch over, simply because of the 2/3 threshold necessary for each one to do so. So far the number is approaching 400.
I saw on the map (and relatives confirmed on facebook) that the church in the village 2 hours drive west from Kiev where one of my grandparents is from has switched.
Kiev region itself was heavily UOC-KP (more so even then areas to the west of Kiev) so there are fewer churches there to change over.
71% of Ukrainians consider themselves to be Orthodox.
Of these: 44% OCU; 38% “Simply Orthodox”, no particular preference; 15% OUC-MP.
OT: Is the Uniate Catholic Church common anywhere outside of Galicia or is almost purely a phenomenon in the West?
In Ukraine, Greek Catholicism is a phenomenon almost exclusive to Galicia (~50% of the population) and to a lesser extent Transcarpathia (~22% of the population) [1].
According to the Annuario Pontificio of 2015 [2], the eight eparchies of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church mostly coterminous with Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil oblasts have a combined population of 3,189,834 faithful, making up almost three-quarters of the UGCC’s membership. The separate Greek Catholic Eparchy of Mukachevo has 319,400 faithful in Transcarpathia. In comparison, the archeparchy of Kyiv, covering most of west-central Ukraine, has only around 240,000 faithful (officially 500,000, but this implies a doubling in only 5 years). The remaining exarchates (Donetsk, Lutsk, Odesa, and Crimea) have 164,832 faithful. Khmelnytskyi, Zhytomyr and Vinnytsia oblasts also have large numbers of Roman Catholics.
In the diaspora, there are over 650,000 Ukrainian Greek Catholics. Brazil officially has 85,000 faithful (in reality closer to 173,000), Argentina has 167,800, Canada has 91,640, Western Europe has 81,200, Poland has 55,000, the United States has 50,164, and Australia has 33,100. In North America, there has been a massive decline in UGCC membership in the last 25 years; the church has lost over two-thirds of its believers in the U.S., and in Canada over half. The attrition rate appears to be as severe as that of the Greek Orthodox Church [3], although this is after many generations abroad.
References:
[1] https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Католицька_церква_в_Україні – /media/File:Greekcatholic2010.PNG.
[2] http://cnewa.org/source-images/Roberson-eastcath-statistics/eastcatholic-stat15.pdf.
[3] https://www.pappaspost.com/90-of-americans-with-greek-roots-no-longer-in-communion-with-greek-orthodox-church/.
Some of them are in the Middle East.
It moved its headquarters to Kiev but is almost exclusively a Galician and Trancarpathian phenomenon (the latter have their own Church different form the one that was based in Lviv, now in Kiev). About 7% of Ukrainians belong to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
Before the Tomos some nationalistic Ukrainians in central Ukraine who were afraid of belonging to an unrecognized Church became Greek Catholics; they are now returning to Orthodoxy so the number of Greek Catholics outside Galicia may decline.
Thanks, AP
As a Latin Rite Catholic, I’ve never really trusted the sincerity of the whole Uniate movement, or what I understand of it. It doesn’t help that I’m a rare western Catholic who doesn’t have the highest respect for the Hapsburgs who once ruled Galicia. I don’t do LARPing in Franz Joseph uniforms or anything.
My mistrust has nothing to do with the specifics of today’s political controversy between Russophiles and Ukrainophiles, and everything to do with a rather sketchy history of people bouncing from one church to another for what seem to be mostly temporal reasons.
The above does not dissuade me. LOL
Its origins were in persecution and compromise (they wanted to preserve their Orthodox traditions and theology and needed to recognize Rome and to get Rome’s protection in order to do so) but since then it has been very sincere for the most part. Look at how difficult it was for the Russians to force a Greek Catholic eparchy back to Orthodoxy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_of_Chełm_Eparchy#Conversion
Nowadays Greek Catholics consider themselves to be Orthodox in communion with Rome – a return to what had been prior to the schism. Ukrainian Greek Catholics say that theirs is like the Church of Kiev was in the 11th century. Rome itself accepts this formulation, Orthodoxy of course does not. Ironically, because Galicia was less influenced by Communism than was any Orthodox place, these “Orthodox in communion with Rome” may be the most religious “Orthodox” people outside the Middle East/Greece.
If I may ask, why not?
In general, AP, I’m sure you know a lot more about this than I do.
It’s just this: I happen to have talked to an American Ukrainian Greek Catholic (well, she might have been Canadian, but, whatever) who directly told me that the church (Frankly, I’m not sure if this was just in North America, the Ukraine, or both) had decided to change its liturgical language from Old Slavonic to Ukrainian because the former was deemed “too pro-Russian.”
This might have meant “too pro-ROC” instead of “pro-Russian state/nationalism,” but, even then, I’d still think it was fake.
Now, her telling me this was was not the complaint of some pro-Russian zealot on the internet. Just an average person, and more interested in religious holiness than politics. But when I heard that, I was far, far from impressed. And I have no reason to think the lady was making it up. She certainly could be wrong or mistaken, but she didn’t have any political motivation to lie about it, anyway.
From a strictly theological perspective, I find this laughable and absurd.
But I’m also living in a world in which at least 85% – if not more – of Catholic bishops are a complete waste of time, and the better ones are afraid to “rock the boat,” so any sins of Ukrainian Greek Catholics are far down the list when it comes to sincerity.
Of course you can ask. Largely, I’ll say that the likes of Freudianism and the likes of the Mayerling incident are a source of disgust and mistrust. I certainly wouldn’t say I hate the Hapsburgs – and clearly their state was, overall, a fine one, and more pleasant (at least in the better parts) than this post-Roosevelt imperial America in which I live. But I’m less rosy about them than many historically-inclined Catholics. That’s all.
I don’t now 100%, but this is extremely doubtful. It might have been sold this way in some parishes. The reason to switch to the vernacular is at it was in Roman Catholic churches that moved away from Latin Mass, to make it more accessible to the people. The Russian Church in the USA has itself mostly dropped Church Slavonic.
There is no mention of this being a reason here:
http://www.byzcath.org/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/414539/Thoughts_on_the_Abandonment_an
The widescale adoption of Freudianism outside psychiatry and its decline within psychiatry represents degeneracy in both areas. Neo- or post-Freudians have done some good work helping people, but Freudian literary ideas are mostly garbage.