Intervention of Card. Lubomyr HUSAR, Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Halyč (UKRAINE), “IN
SCRIPTIS”
I intend to intervene on two topics that, among numerous others, are present in the
Instrumentum laboris and that constitute elements that require close attention, in
my opinion, and constant concern insofar as they involve us as Eastern Churches, going
beyond our geographical and historical boundaries. Then I will conclude with two concrete
proposals. 1. The first point I intervene on is the whole world of emigration.
We Ukrainian Greek Catholics share with the brothers of the Middle East the drama
of the migration of our faithful, even if the reasons are different. The statistics
show that in these last few years five million Ukrainians emigrated towards the rest
of the world and Western Europe in particular, half of whom came from the regions
where the majority of our faithful live. We have to acknowledge that generally
in the countries they have emigrated to they have been welcomed by the Latin dioceses,
but this does not relieve us of the serious responsibility we have of safeguarding
the faith according to the Eastern tradition to which they belong and in which they
have to be looked after with the appropriate specific pastoral care of their own rites,
in line with what is also written clearly in canon law In the Instrumentum laboris
this right-duty of ours is recognized at no. 6 where we read: “The faithful of the
Churches sui iuris are understood to be individual persons and their respective communities
as a whole”. It seems evident that these, although having left their homeland, have
to be placed in a position where they can exercise their faith of origin with the
guarantee of all the means which their Church has at its disposal for pastoral care:
their own priests, their own rite, their own spirituality, their own community life. The
objection might be raised that this guarantee could constitute an obstacle to integration
in the new situations in which our faithful have decided to live. Our centuries-old
experience teaches us that this is absolutely not true: our faithful in the Americas
and in Australia, as well as in the various countries of Europe, are perfectly integrated
today while maintaining intact their patrimony and exercising full membership of the
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Allow me to make an observation as regards this:
one Church Father defined it as “circumdata varietate” to mean that the unity of the
Church should not be identified with uniformity, but should express the richness of
God the Creator in the harmony of differences and multiplicities, wishing to employ
the term chosen that is also used in the Instrumentum laboris. As St. Ignatius of
Antioch explains clearly with the image of the strings of a cithara and the symphony
of a choir that sings, diversity is not a danger but an inalienable treasure for the
Universal Church, bearing in mind, naturally, that the Successor of Peter has the
divine mandate of conducting the choir to avoid flat notes and thus guarantee the
symphony of truth and charity. We have to find the courage in the Holy Spirit to
live the harmony in multiplicity or diversity in all those regions that, up to few
decades ago, were characterized by the presence of a single rite and were used to
a sort of monopoly. We can observe that territory, faced by the growing challenge
of migration, today is no longer a geographical but an anthropological concept. Applying
the principle enunciated in the abovementioned quotation from the Instrumentum laboris,
it seems to me we have to conclude that the territory of all the Churches sui iuris
is made up of people of faith there where, for various reason, they have decided to
live. Wehave to, therefore, rethink and review the instruments, including juridical
ones, to ensure this principle practically, to guarantee the salus animarum of our
faithful for whom we are responsible wherever they are as pastors, and to overcome
the eventual danger of assimilation that impoverishes the structural nature of the
Church as desired by Our Lord Jesus Christ.2. The second topic I wish to offer for
shared reflection comes from no. 20 of our Instrumentum laboris having as its subject
“apostolicity and missionary vocation”. Here it is affirmed: “In being apostolic,
our Churches have a special mission to bring the Gospel to the whole world. Such has
been the case throughout history”. Sadly I have to concur with what is stated in critical
terms immediately after this, referring to a typical closed mentality of those who
feel besieged or who have lived within absolutist ethnic or ideological boundaries,
such as happened to us for 70 years with the Soviet Communist regime. It is true that
the “evangelical ardor” has decreased. I ask myself: are the signs that can be seen
in our Churches sui iuris - the Church in Ukraine as well has rumblings of new problems
- and the singular phenomenon of mass emigration of our faithful that strikes us so
profoundly not perhaps a sign sent by the Holy Spirit so that we, like Abraham, should
leave the certainties of Ur of the Chaldees and set off on a journey through the whole
world? And I am not scared to say “the whole world”, that is, also where the Church
until today or yesterday knew situations that I could define as being of peaceful
possession, presently in profound crisis because of defection or superficiality or
the opposition of anti-Christian people and cultures. I ask myself: if the whole Universal
Church is missionary, is this situation not perhaps a provocation for us of the Eastern
tradition to decide to go ad gentes, wherever this gentes needs or awaits the Word
that will save them? The wealth of our spirituality and our Liturgies is a patrimony
to be shared and not jealously guarded or even hidden in our communities. It is true
that we are poor compared to many other brothers, but we must never forget that God
always chooses the humble and the poor to perform his marvelous works, as in the case,
the sublime example, of Mary, the Thetokos. 3. The two issues I brought to our
shared attention are just a small part of the great challenges that we have to face
daily and in front of which we often feel unprepared or inadequate or weak, in any
case, in difficulty. We need the help of Peter. And here is the proposal-appeal
that I make in all simplicity and with profound faith: to set up a body formed by
the Patriarchs and Major Archbishops of the Eastern Churches in communion with Rome,
similar to the Permanent Synod of the Eastern Tradition, through which the Successor
of Saint Peter can comfort, support and advise us on how to give evangelical fullness
to our ministry and mission. 4. Based on this first proposal, I put forward a second.
I ask the Participants at this Synod to ask the Holy Father to dedicate a Synod in
the near future to the general theme of the nature and role of the Eastern Catholic
Churches.