Mail
and Commentary from Our Readers………………..January 1, 2004 to present date.
Mail from Our Readers is our latest
feature where we will post e-mail messages and excerpts from the cards and
letter that we receive. In all cases e-mail addresses and names will not be
published in order to protect the anonymity of the sender.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
E-Mail Received 11-7-04
The following e-mail was received from Mr. Ihor Sawon,
President of St. Andrew’s Brotherhood, So. Bound Brook, NJ. This is Mr. Sawon’s
reply to an earlier anonymous e-mail we received on September 30, 2004. (See
following e-mail)
To
my Ukrainian Orthodox Brothers,
Slava Isuszu Christu !
I have read and reread the letter your website received on 09-30-2004.
This Orthodox Christian has stated that his/her parish is ethnocentric. This is
truly a peculiar statement. If this person was not raised in an ethnic
environment, he or she would be like the "Jews wandering in the
desert". However, the Jewish people have found that without
"traditions" they are nobody. Ask any practicing Jew why they still
have Hebrew schools and Jewish religious class. Their answer is to never loose
their roots and traditions !!!!
However, we, descendants of Ukrainian origin, may feel about the language issues
in our parishes in the United States, we have an obligation to our families and
our ancestors to never forget the mother language and our traditions. This will
instill resiliency in our ethnic group to never forget who we are.
Ukrainians, who need the English language liturgy, are in our midst and several
parishes do provide the spiritual nourishment in both languages.
This person has “fire in the heart”, but with no one to exchange these
thoughts. I travel to various parishes and would readily share some of my input
as to how they should go about to bring home the younger members of the local
Ukrainian Orthodox community.
Please share with this Orthodox Christian my name and e-mail address.
Ihor Sawon
President, Brotherhood
St. Andrew Memorial Church
S. Bound Brook, NJ
*****************************************************
E-mail
Received on 9-30-04
We
received an interesting but misguided e-mail from one of our readers. We
decided to post the e-mail hoping that the writer and others like him (her)
will better understand our position and mission. The Save Our UOC Mission
Statement has been posted on our website since its inception and we refer the
author of the 9-30-04 e-mail to that page listed in our Table of Contents.
Glory to Jesus Christ!!!!
My dear fellow Orthodox
Christians:
I am a devoted member of a UOC USA
parish on the East Coast that is dying along with its' elderly ethnocentric
members. The fact that the remaining members are successful at manipulating and
holding our pastor hostage about issues such as celebrating the Holy Liturgy
only in Ukrainian serves only to accelerate the death of our parish. Face
it, there are hardly any young people in our parish and I seriously
doubt that there will be anyone left to inherit the temporal assets
established by the original founders.
I for one would prefer to worship
my Lord and Savior in an "Orthodox melting pot" than not have any
church at all to attend. It's time to be an Orthodox Christian. Serve the Lord
first, your family second, your country third and finally, venerate and honor
the country of your birth or ancestry as I do.
I'm pleased for the UOC-USA
parishes that still have young people in them. From what I see in this part of
the world, that is a rare commodity. The Church should not be responsible for
cultural instruction but rather, to ensure and guide us towards spiritual
salvation. Ultimately, instruction in Ukrainian cultural
traditions should come from the home and become part of one's social life.
In other words, save it for Coffee Hour or within the community.
Please understand that I am proud
of our Ukrainian nation and culture as you are, but I fail to see anything
remotely Christian in your articles on your webpage. Rather, the tone appears to
be one of anger and revenge towards the Synod and your spiritual
blindness will do nothing more than divide the membership of our Church in
the USA, prevent new membership, which incidentally is our future, and further
accelerate the destruction of our Synod.
In the name of our Lord and
Savior, Jesus Christ, please discontinue this nationalistic negativity and
selfishness and focus on being better servants for Him.
May the Lord have mercy on all of
us!
*****************************************
Correspondence
We received a copy of an
interesting letter written by Mr. Victor Babanskyj of Watchung, NJ which was
directed to the Ukrainian publication “Svoboda”. The letter, written in
Ukrainian, is a reply to a cleric of UOC-USA
Fr. Volodymyr Borowsky of Minniapolis, MI. The letter is directed to us
because apparently “Svoboda” refused to publish Mr. Babanskyj’s response to Fr.
Volodymyr. We are posting the letter in Ukrainian since we do not have an
English translation.
Свобода 28 вересень 2004
Факс
973-644-9510
До
Редакції
“Свобода”:
Цікаво
було читати
лист “До
чужого ярма
не впрягайтесь”
в Свободі,
патниця, 24
вересень 2004 написано
о.
Володимиром
Боровським з
Мінеаполіс,
Мін, клерик
УПЦ-США.
Але
в той самий
час виникає
питання до о.
Влодимира.
Під такою
порадою
чомуж тоді
архиреї
УПЦ-США в 1995
році наділи
на себе і на
своїх вірних
правосланих
парафіян ярмо
щужої церкви?
Чому в 1995 році
архиреї УПЦ-США
зріклись
матері-церкви
на Україні і
підійшли під
“ярмо”
омофора
чужого,
грецького
патріарха?
Чому архиреї
УПЦ-США
домовились з
патріархом
чужої церкви
зріктись
Автокефалії
і
Соборноправоности
УПЦ-США і
надіти на
себе ярмо як
Діоцезія Константинополької
Церкви?
Вже
майже 9 років
як “Пункти
Згоди” були
підписані
архиреям УПЦ-США
в Істамбулі,
Туретчина.
Коли вірні
УПЦ-США
дістануть
відповіді на
ці питання?
Пораду
о. Володимира
ми всі мусим
приймати до
серця. Але
поміж
словами о.
Володимира
можна читати
хитриві
думки
архиреїв
УПЦ-США....
“Робіть як ми
кажем а не як
ми робим”.
Нема
ріжниці
поміж ярмом.
Ярмо є ярмо
чи то політичне
чи релігійне.
Віктор
Бабанський
Watchung, NJ
*************************************************************************************
E-mail
Received on 9-30-04
We
received an interesting but misguided e-mail from one of our readers. We
decided to post the e-mail followed by our reply hoping that the writer and others
like him (her) will better understand our position and mission. The Save Our
UOC Mission Statement has been posted on our website since its inception and we
refer the author of the 9-30-04 e-mail to that page listed in our Table of
Contents.
Glory to Jesus Christ!!!!
My dear fellow Orthodox
Christians:
I am a devoted member of a UOC USA
parish on the East Coast that is dying along with its' elderly ethnocentric
members. The fact that the remaining members are successful at manipulating and
holding our pastor hostage about issues such as celebrating the Holy Liturgy
only in Ukrainian serves only to accelerate the death of our parish. Face
it, there are hardly any young people in our parish and I seriously
doubt that there will be anyone left to inherit the temporal assets
established by the original founders.
I for one would prefer to worship
my Lord and Savior in an "Orthodox melting pot" than not have any
church at all to attend. It's time to be an Orthodox Christian. Serve the Lord
first, your family second, your country third and finally, venerate and honor
the country of your birth or ancestry as I do.
I'm pleased for the UOC-USA
parishes that still have young people in them. From what I see in this part of
the world, that is a rare commodity. The Church should not be responsible for
cultural instruction but rather, to ensure and guide us towards spiritual
salvation. Ultimately, instruction in Ukrainian cultural
traditions should come from the home and become part of one's social life.
In other words, save it for Coffee Hour or within the community.
Please understand that I am proud
of our Ukrainian nation and culture as you are, but I fail to see anything
remotely Christian in your articles on your webpage. Rather, the tone appears
to be one of anger and revenge towards the Synod and your spiritual
blindness will do nothing more than divide the membership of our Church in
the USA, prevent new membership, which incidentally is our future, and further
accelerate the destruction of our Synod.
In the name of our Lord and
Savior, Jesus Christ, please discontinue this nationalistic negativity and
selfishness and focus on being better servants for Him.
May the Lord have mercy on all of
us!
********************
Dear
Sir:
Glory to Jesus
Christ!
First of all,
thank you for your letter and for your interest in our website. We are
always interested in receiving input and other viewpoints. We believe that
honest and open discussions can only benefits all parties.
Addressing your
specific comments in the order that you presented them:
Like
you, we too are proud of our Ukrainian nation and culture. The Ukrainian
Orthodox Church has been the protector and nurturer of both. The
"Orthodox melting pot" or OCA was a concept created by the Russian
Orthodox Church, controlled by the Communist regime, to eliminate the distinct
national traditions and cultures which were kept alive by the ethnic Orthodox
Churches in the US. The late Patriarch Mstyslav understood this and
vigorously opposed the OCA and Pan-Orthodoxy for this very reason.
In closing we
again thank you for your thoughts and ask to be remembered in your prayers.
Save Our UOC
Committee
******************************************************
The
September 28th edition of the Orthodox News website, contains a
headline from the 9/24/2004 issue of The National Herald: “Patriarch
Disappointed in U.S. Church Leadership”.
The actual article lists 4 specifics for the disappointment, the first
being “the ostracism of the Greek language, education and Hellenic identity in
general”. The Patriarch this article refers
to non other than His All Holiness Bartholomew. So it appears that for the Greeks, the mission of the Church is
not just to save souls, it is to nurture and preserve the Hellenic identity
including language.
Contrast
this to the repeated statements made by Archbishop Antony and his sycophants
that the one and only mission of our Church is to save souls and everything
political (read Ukrainian) belongs outside the Church.
It
appears that Archbishop Antony’s superior and boss, in spite of his Ecumenical
title, realizes and understands that without the “Greek”, there is no Greek
Orthodox Church, just like without the “Russian” there is no Russian Orthodox
Church, without the “Serbian” etc. The
Ecumenical Patriarch wants the Greek Orthodox Church in the US not only to save
souls, but also to preserve and perpetuate the Greek language for it is one of
the fundamental keystones of Greek culture.
He understands that if the language and culture is not preserved by and
within the Church, than there is no reason for people to travel miles to go to
a Greek Church – they can attend an English language service at a closer OCA or
other Orthodox jurisdiction. Probably
their souls could be saved in these other jurisdictions, but that is not enough
for the Ecumenical Patriarch.
So
the question arises, why do our hierarchs not understand this basic
concept? If they understood it, they
would not state that the one and only mission of our Church is to save
souls. And if they truly believe that
this is the single mission of our Church than why are they collecting monies to
build cultural centers, museums, etc?
These endeavors have nothing to do with saving souls.
Bottom
line is our hierarchs fly the Ukrainian (political) banner when they want to
raise money, but continue to deny that they were ever part of Patriarch
Mstyslav’s UAOC, and they can’t wait for Pan Orthodoxy to become a reality in
the US.
The
Ecumenical Patriarch will never admonish Archbishop Antony or Metropolitan
Constantine for ostracizing the Ukrainian language or identity. The Ecumenical Patriarch does not care if
the Ukrainian Orthodox Church exists in the US or anywhere else in the
world. He and his predecessors never
did and never will. Nor does any other
non-Ukrainian Patriarch. Patriarch
Mstyslav and any other Ukrainian Patriarch would care and would strongly
admonish our hierarchs, and this is one of the reasons our hierarchs want
nothing to do with the Church in Ukraine.
And
to my continued amazement the Ukrainian people who build the Churches, who
donate the monies to continue expanding the Metropolia Center, who in reality
pay and financially support our hierarchs, these people are silent and do not
object to the stated mission statement and action of our hierarchs.
Simon Nahnybida
****************************************************************
E-Mail Received May 14, 2004
The current edition of the Ukrainian Orthodox Word reminded its readers that the 17th Sobor of the UOC-USA is scheduled for October 13-17th, 2004 at the Diocesan headquarters in South Bound Brook.
Am I the only one that has noticed that the Sobors of our Church have started to acquire the characteristics of “soviet party meetings”: the leaders are glorified; the agenda is predetermined; any opposition is quickly out-shouted, outvoted, silenced and ostracized; and only loyal sycophants are nominated for the elected positions. At the last few Sobors there was only one name on the ballot for Consistory President, the Church’s highest administrative position. The delegates had a choice to either vote for Archbishop Anthony or not vote at all.
To object to the pre-determined outcome of the Sobor elections and to show opposition to our hierarchs placing the UOC-USA under the jurisdiction of Patriarch Bartholomew and the Church of Constantinople, fewer and fewer parishes are bothering to attend the Sobors. Indeed, there are doubts if there was even a quorum at the 16th Sobor in 2001.
These are not positive developments. I totally disagree with the parishes that stay away in protest, because that results in unanimous support for decisions and resolutions that are contrary to the basic principles under which our Church was founded. However, I do understand the pain and frustration that brings about the decision to stay away. It is sad to feel like a stranger in the Church that once nurtured and supplied the spiritual essence and identity for us and for generations of Ukrainian patriots that preceded us.
Then the question arises...why convene a Sobor? The decisions made by the Sobor are questionable; the elections are predetermined, only one candidate is presented for the position of Consistory President; and the fanatical and pro pan-orthodox UOL members shout down any opposition or dissent.
Why have a Sobor when the clergy and the lay-delegates do not have the power or authority under the Points of Agreement with Constantinople to elect a bishop or a metropolitan, but can only nominate a slate of candidates for “election” by the Holy Synod of Constantinople?
Why have a Sobor when at the 16th Sobor Metropolitan Constantine washed his hands of the “problems” in Ukraine and announced…“our work in Ukraine is finished. Now it is up to them to unite”, and Archbishop Anthony wrote in the UOW…“It does not sound very positive, but it is…we have made a conscientious decision to accept the fact that our influence in Ukraine is negligible…” But wasn’t influencing and working with the Church in Ukraine the very reason used to justify accepting the jurisdiction of a foreign Patriarch in Constantinople? I remember hearing that this step would help the Church in Ukraine be accepted and recognized by the Orthodox World. I also remember hearing that this step would enable our hierarchs to better state and defend the position of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. What happened to those arguments? Ongoing events continue to show that the Ecumenical Patriarch supports all of the actions of Moscow, most currently joining Patriarch Alexey’s protest to the Vatican against establishing a Ukrainian Catholic Patriarchate in Ukraine.
Why have a Sobor when more and more parishioners are protesting the actions of our hierarchy, showing this by electing Parish Boards that are adamant in their opposition to Bound Brook’s lawsuits and steadfast in their refusal to be intimidated by threatening letters from the Consistory.
Why have a Sobor and spend thousands of dollars when the money could be better used for repairs of St. Andrew’s Memorial Church in South Bound Brook. During the services on St. Thomas Sunday (Providna Nedilia) on April 18, take a good look at the interior of St. Andrew’s. The roof is leaking and plaster is falling from the ceiling above the main chandelier. The walls within the alter area are water stained with plaster pealing, and the entire interior needs painting. There are no monies for essential repairs, but thousands of dollars have been spent on lawyers and lawsuits to prevent parish boards from following the will of the parish majorities.
One reason to convene a Sobor is to perpetuate the fallacy that our Church is governed by its Constitution, and that the voices of the faithful are heard and listened to. In other words to pretend that our Church is not hierarchical, while falsely claiming it is in court. After all, hierarchical churches do not have or require Sobors. In those churches the hierarchs dictate and do not need concurrence by the faithful.
For the parishes and faithful that decide to stay away from the 17th Sobor, the following predicts some of the events that will occur. Your attendance may stop these from taking place.
· The Sobor will pass resolutions thanking Patriarch Bartholomew for his guidance and support, and expressing gratitude to our hierarchs for their untiring work.
· Metropolitan Constantine will announce his retirement. This will cause much concern and discussions, but he will remain firm and will not change his mind.
· Although the Greek hierarchy would prefer Archbishop Vsevolod to be elected Metropolitan, this is unlikely due to his health and the ambition of Archbishop Anthony.
· Archbishop Anthony will be unanimously elected to the position of Metropolitan and simultaneously bestowed with the honorific title “Blessed”. To remain firmly in control he will “nominate” Father Nakonachny or another sycophant for President of the Consistory. The Sobor will obediently comply.
· The Sobor will be presented with a predetermined list of candidates for bishop and will be instructed to “approve” all of the names for submission to Istanbul for ultimate selection and “election” by the Patriarch’s Holy Synod, as required by the terms of subjugation agreed to by our hierarchs. Hieromonk Daniel will be on the list. Archimandrite Andrew will not. This list will not contain any individual who does not unquestionably support the subjugation of UOC-USA to the Greek Patriarch and the concept of pan-orthodoxy, or one Orthodox Church in the US.
· Celebration of Christmas will be changed to December 25. The rational will be to be in sync with our fellow Greek and OCA Orthodox.
· The constitution will be amended to eliminate the word “Autocephalous”, which will complete and authenticate our subjugation to the jurisdiction of the Greek hierarchy. Also, changes will be started to limit the rights of the individual parishes; specifically, wording will be introduced to have all of the parish property owned by Bound Brook with temporary management in the hands of the local parish boards.
· The situation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches in Ukraine will again be categorized as “their problem”.
· Patriarch Filaret will continue to be maligned and put forth as the main culprit responsible for the lack of progress among the Orthodox Churches in Ukraine.
· The lie will be repeated that the Ecumenical Patriarch will recognize the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Ukraine only when the churches there have united. The truth will not be told that he already recognizes the church that is under Moscow’s jurisdiction, and that he will continue to recognize and support the Moscow Patriarch’s position that Ukraine was, is, and will remain under the canonical jurisdiction of Moscow.
· Most of the proceedings will be in English. Delegates that speak Ukrainian will be belittled and ridiculed.
It will be interesting to see how many of these predictions will be on the mark.
S. Taras
City
and State withheld by request.
********************************************************
E-Mail Received 4-20-04
Dear Readers of Save Our UOC
website,
Recently I was browsing on the web and noticed the following statement
on the site of St. John The Baptist UOC in Johnson City, pastor Father Zinoviy
Zharsky: “Although
we are extremely proud of our Ukrainian heritage, most of the Divine Services
are celebrated in English…”
This statement really came to mind
a few weeks ago. I happened to be in
London on Palm Sunday and I wanted to go to Church. I got up early on
Sunday morning, but to my chagrin I could not find a listing for the Ukrainian
Orthodox Church in the Yellow pages (I did find Ukrainian Catholic, Russian,
Greek, and Serbian Orthodox Churches). Since London is 5 hours ahead of
NY, I did not want to call home at 4 AM to try and get an address.
Instead I visited the Ukrainian Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches.
And the one fact that was obvious from both visits was that both Churches
were extremely proud of their respective heritages. However,
unlike most of the Ukrainian Orthodox parishes in the US, I did not hear one
word of English during either of the services. Not during the Liturgy,
not during the reading of the Gospel, and not during the sermon. All, not
most, of the Divine Services were celebrated exclusively in Ukrainian and Greek
languages in their respective churches. And both Churches were packed
with worshipers of all ages, especially young adults.
This really hit home for me in the Greek Orthodox Cathedral, which is a
magnificent Byzantine style edifice on Moscow Road, a short walking distance
from Hyde Park. It was obvious that the Greek community has been in
London for hundreds of years – there were plagues on the walls commemorating
soldiers who died in wars that the British fought on different continents.
Yet there was no attempt to assimilate, integrate or make the English.
The Church was proudly Greek and understood that one of its roles was and
is to preserve the Greek language, culture, and tradition. Looking at the
many worshippers of all ages, I wondered which of them were recent immigrants
and which were 3rd, 5th, or even 10th
generation Brits with Greek ancestors. It was beautiful to behold that they
were united with each other and with their predecessors in the way they
worshipped. I have no doubt that their Church will be there hundreds of
years from now and that their children’s children’s children will be worshiping
the same way.
Sadly I fear that if there is a
Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the US hundreds of years from now, it may have a
sign in English reflecting some “pride in Ukrainian heritage” but little else.
Simon Nahnybida