Professor Peter Caladza puts evangelism at the center of a compelling plea for improved relations between the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (Uniates) and the Ukrainian Orthodox, separated by schism since Vatican recognition of the Uniates in 1596. It suggests a question for all the world’s Christian bodies – individual and corporate: how might commitment at least to a path toward following Christ’s teachings in our treatment of each other affect our gospel witness?
With reference to the draft document “Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World”, the Very Rev. Dr. Caladza, acting director of the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, Canada, writes:
...The rapid rejection of Christ’s truth in the West, and the equally widespread secularization of the educated classes in the East, demand a new commitment to “modeling the new man in Christ” (cf. par. 23). This “new man in Christ” blesses those who curse him and does good to those who hate him (cf. Mathew 5:44). This kind of love shatters secularism’s self-assuredness.
In 1987, the Primate of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church, Cardinal Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky, publicly asked forgiveness of the Russian Orthodox Church in the following words: “Following the Spirit of Christ, we extend our hand of forgiveness, reconciliation and love to the Russian nation and the Moscow Patriarchate. We repeat the words of Christ that we spoke during our act of reconciliation with the Polish nation: ‘Forgive us, as we forgive’ (Matthew 6:12).” Unfortunately, this gesture has remained unanswered to the present day. Can Orthodox and “Uniates” not begin a new era of relations by having their Protohierarchs send – and respond to – such letters on a regular basis?
Read the full essay at Public Orthodoxy
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