News is now spreading of the consecration shortly before March 23 -- Easter Sunday according to the Gregorian Calendar -- of four Ukrainian Greek Catholic priests as bishops, without being nominated by the Major Archbishop of Kyiv and head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), Lubomyr Cardinal Husar, and without receiving the necessary Papal blessing.
The UGCC has issued a communique condemning the consecrations. At present, secrecy and uncertainty cover the identity of the consecrating bishop. Some have even questioned whether this bishop (whoever he is) is a real, validly consecrated bishop in the first place. (However, it does not seem likely that these four bishops would have sought consecration from a bishop of doubtful orders.) Speculation on the identity of the consecrating bishop currently centers on Michailo Osidach, who claims to have been clandestinely consecrated by the late Metropolitan Volodymyr Sterniuk C.SS.R. during the Soviet era.
The UGCC has issued a communique condemning the consecrations. At present, secrecy and uncertainty cover the identity of the consecrating bishop. Some have even questioned whether this bishop (whoever he is) is a real, validly consecrated bishop in the first place. (However, it does not seem likely that these four bishops would have sought consecration from a bishop of doubtful orders.) Speculation on the identity of the consecrating bishop currently centers on Michailo Osidach, who claims to have been clandestinely consecrated by the late Metropolitan Volodymyr Sterniuk C.SS.R. during the Soviet era.
This comes a little more than four months after the excommunication of Fr. Basil Kovpak, founder and head of the Society of St. Josaphat (SSJK), a Ukrainian Greek Catholic society of priests which is currently associated with the Society of St. Pius X. Fr. Kovpak was excommunicated by Cardinal Husar for attending the ordination of two SSJK priests and five SSJK deacons by SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson.
While the two events do not seem to be related, both have their roots in the same controversies now shaking the UGCC. In their Open Letter to the Holy Father the new bishops profess filial devotion to Rome while justifying their consecration as a necessary action in the face of the alleged modernism and hyper-ecumenism of the current Major Archbishop. In particular, they denounce the Balamand Agreement of 1993, which rejected Uniatism as a model for the future. They also condemn what they consider to be the schismatic and apostate attitudes of the Cardinal Husar and of the UGCC hierarchy, as well as the negative attitude being shown within the UGCC to Latin devotions such as the Rosary, Way of the Cross, Devotion to the Sacred Heart, etc. The letter also declares that theological modernism is beginning to pervade the UGCC and speaks of its "practical schism" from the rest of the Catholic Church. The letter, thus, reveals a theological and spiritual position that is identical at least in certain important points with that of the SSJK.
These consecrations seem to be the latest sad chapter in the theological and liturgical debates currently besetting Ukrainian Greek Catholicism (as well as certain other Byzantine-Rite Catholic Churches). One of the important issues around which these debates revolve, is the question of whether the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church should return to a purely Byzantine liturgy and theology and should attempt to be as close to Eastern Orthodoxy as possible (even sharing the same theology -- a position that Cardinal Husar has publicly endorsed while expressing his belief in the necessity of communion with Rome), or whether it must keep the Latin elements that were introduced from the 17th to the early 20th centuries into the UGCC's liturgy and spiritual life, and continue to emphasize its Catholic identity and mission vis-a-vis Ukrainian and Russian Orthodoxy.
More analysis of this event can be found here.
