Does the end justify the means? Blessed Bishop Hryhoriy Khomyshyn about Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky’s proceedings in the religious and national fields

• Main Author: Osadczy Włodzimierz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institute of Modern Humanitarian Researches 2017-12-01
• Series: Studia Humanitatis
• Subjects: Uniate Church; Bishop Hryhoriy Khomyshyn; Galicia; diocese of Stanyslaviv; Eastern rite; Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky; Ukrainians; nationalism
• Online Access: http://st-hum.ru/en/node/600/

In the first half of the 20th century the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky and the Blessed Bishop Hryhoriy Khomyshyn represented two ways of the development of the Uniate Church in Galicia, and later in Western Lesser Poland. The Metropolitan Archbishop from Lvov was obsessed with the idea to impose Catholicism in Russia. To achieve this he was ready to take the most desperate steps – to merge the Uniate tradition with the Orthodox tradition, to reconcile with different political forces, which was recorded in his letter to the Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Hitler, and Stalin. In order to get more support from the Ukrainian people, he completely ignored the spread of outrageous nationalism. Such position was strongly criticized by Hryhoriy Khomyshyn, the Bishop of Stanyslaviv, whose main purpose was to preserve the original Uniate rituals reflecting the integral unity with the Western Latin civilization. Being devoted to his beliefs, Greek Catholic Archbishop mercilessly condemned nationalism and de-Christian social life of the Ukrainian Uniate community. Those problems are the focus of attention of the book “Two Kingdoms” by Bishop Hryhoriy Khomyshyn, published in Ukrainian in 2016, translated into Polish in 2017.