Greek Catholic Union

Aside from the parish churches which served the spiritual needs of the Ruthenian and other immigrant populations in the United States 100 years ago, there arose fraternal or mutual aid societies to assist immigrants with financial services and welfare in times of need. The existing banks and insurance companies were not interested in immigrants at that time. This compelled many ethnic immigrant groups to develop mutual self-help organizations to aid in defraying the costs of burials, to provide aid in times of unemployment and to assist widows and orphans at a time when public social services were lacking.

The oldest social service organization created by Ruthenian immigrants was the Greek Catholic Union, founded in 1892 in Wilkes-Barre, PA. In the following decades it grew in membership and services. By 1928 its membership had reached 120,000 and it maintained 1300 lodges in communities where Ruthenian immigrants could be found. With the advent and growth of public social services and Social Security as well as the acceptance of immigrants and their offspring by the banking and insurance industries, the need for mutual aid societies diminished. As a result, by the 1980's, the membership of the Greek Catholic Union had dropped to 50,000 in 363 lodges.

In addition to its financial and welfare functions, the Greek Catholic Union played a major role in integrating immigrants into American life. Its lodges served as social centers where people of like ancestry could meet and interact socially among their own kind and be organized into mutually beneficial activities, social as well as political. The Greek Catholic Union published its own newspaper beginning in 1892 known originally as the Amerikanski Russki Viestnik (American Russian Messenger). Since 1952 it has appeared only in English as a monthly and is presently called Greek Catholic Union Magazine.

From its beginnings in the United States, the Greek Catholic Church, which had accompanied the Ruthenian immigration to the New World became involved in controversies with the prevailing Roman Catholic hierarchy. At that time, the Greek Catholic churches in the United States had no hierarchs of their own and were placed accordingly under the jurisdiction of the local Roman Catholic bishops. These bishops, then often of Irish background, had not the faintest understanding of the Eastern Church, its theology and traditions, and thus regarded Greek Catholics as strange Christians in dire need of thorough amendment. The one issue which stuck in the craw of these bishops was the ancient and venerable tradition in the Eastern Church of ordaining married men to the priesthood. For the first millenium of Christianity the Churches of East and West shared the same tradition of a married priesthood. Beginning early in the second millenium this tradition was abandoned by the Western Church in favor of ordaining only unmarried men to the priesthood on the supposition that celibate priests would be able, for various reasons, to function better sacerdotally, thereby giving rise to the strange anomaly or contradiction which exists to this day that marriage, a sacrament, is somehow deemed an inferior state to celibacy, which is not a sacrament, or, at least, incompatable with the sacrament of holy orders.

The matter came to a head early in the well known confrontation between the Ruthenian immigrant priest, Father Alexis Toth, who had been married, and Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, MN, to whom Fr. Toth reported before assuming his priestly duties in his parish. Archbishop Ireland was appalled to learn about Fr. Toth's marital status and forbad him to serve his parish. In 1891 Fr. Toth and his parish rebelled, broke with Rome and were welcomed into the Russian Orthodox Church. In the following decades Fr. Toth moved about the Slavic communities urging Greek Catholics to abandon Rome and to return to Orthodoxy as the only way to preserve their own traditions. Whole congregations followed Fr. Toth to Orthodoxy. The church which he founded eventually became known as the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). The OCA has subsequently canonized Fr. Toth as a saint.

In the decades which followed Fr. Toth's revolt, the Greek Catholic Union became increasingly the champion of Greek Catholic identity and integrity against the hostility of others. This conflict and the Greek Catholic Union's role therein did not cease with Rome's appointment of Greek Catholic hierarchs to assume leadership of Greek Catholic parishes. The thought of a Church with a married priesthood calling itself Catholic was more than the Roman Catholic hierarchy could tolerate. Unceasing agitation in Rome led eventually to Rome's intervention in the form of a papal decree, CUM DATA FUERIT, issued in 1929 which set forth the canons for the governance of the Greek Catholic Church in America. Most controversial was the requirement that henceforth no more married men would be ordained to serve Greek Catholic parishes in the United States augmented by the ban on the import of married priests from abroad and their service in American parishes. In addition the practice of holding church property in the name of parish trustees was prohibited in favor of the Roman Catholic practice of placing all property in the name of the local bishop as corporation sole. The Greek Catholic Union resisted the imposition of both requirements in vain.

CUM DATA FUERIT was followed by widespread desertions of Greek Catholic parishes priests and faithful to Orthodoxy. From this defection a new Orthodox church was created called the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church which placed itself under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

The creation of two Orthodox Churches out of the fabric of the Greek Catholic Church in less than 40 years had a profound impact on the thinking of those Greek Catholics who remained loyal to Rome. In the decades after CUM DATA FUERIT a school of thinking arose which advocated the Romanization of the Greek Catholic Church so as to diminish or eliminate its differences which annoyed Roman Catholics. To these Romanizers, Catholic meant Roman Catholic, and Greek Catholic meant, in effect, crypro-Orthodox or quasi-schismatic. In those decades Roman Catholic religious practices and devotions such as rosaries, stations of the cross, exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, etc., were introduced. (1) Roman Catholic organizations became common in Greek Catholic parishes. Icon screens vanished and the interiors of the churches and the altars came to resemble those of Roman Catholics. Greek Catholic young people abandoned the Church of their ancestors in order to enter or disappear into the mainstream of Catholicism, viz. Roman Catholicism. Needless to say, the Greek Catholic Union was not to be found among the advocates of this new development.

With the elevation of John Paul II (God grant him many years!) to the Chair of Peter, the Romanizers' movement fell into disfavor. In his speeches, encyclicals, letters, conversations and mandates the Polish Pontiff has made it clear that he wants the Eastern Catholic Churches to return to their ancient traditions, theology, rites, art forms and liturgies and to eschew everything which is alien to them. His encyclical, ORIENTALE LUMEN (2) and the INSTRUCTION FOR APPLYING THE LITURGICAL PRESCRIPTIONS OF THE CODE OF CANONS OF THE EASTERN CHURCHES (3), both of which are dealt with elsewhere in this Web site, constitute in their purpose a clear mandate to the Eastern Catholic Churches that they are to recover and restore their ancient traditions and make themselves less distinguishable from their Orthodox brethren of the same ecclesial tradition, thereby repudiating all that the Romanizers had sought.

CONCLUSION

For the past 100 years the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church and the Greek Catholic Union ran on parallel tracks, diverging from time to time when the latter believed that the old faith was going astray under alien influences. Today the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church is no longer the stepchild of the Roman Catholic hierarchy but fully autonomous, i. e., a Church sui juris with its own hierarchy answerable only to the Bishop of Rome. For decades in the first 50 years of its existence the Greek Catholic Union sought to have it so. It witnessed the Church's early years, sustained the first generations of immigrants and suffered the ignominy of witnessing the exodus of whole parishes to Orthodoxy. The Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church possesses the unique distinction of having launched two viable Orthodox Churches within a span of less that 40 years, not intentionally, of course, but unhappily as the result of Roman Catholic intolerance. (4)

In March 2000 the Greek Catholic Union filed an application with the Insurance Commissioner of Pennsylvania to merge with United Societies of USA, a Slavic Catholic mutual benefit society, under the name of the former. Under the terms of the merger, the members of United Societies will enjoy the same benefits of membership as members of the Greek Catholic Union. Among those services are the following: l) a credit union for the deposit of personal savings and for personal and automobile loans to its members; 2) a Visa card at no annual fee and at low interest rates; 3) home mortgages at competitive rates and low service fees; 4) scholarships for higher education; 5) $5000 in life insurance for all children of members until age 1; 6) the GCU Magazine; 7) the GCU Web site at http://www.gcuusa.com; 8) dining and recreational facilities at the Seven Oaks Country Club. For more information about the Greek Catholic Union and its services, our readers are invited to communicate with THE GREEK CATHOLIC UNION, 5400 Tuscarawas Road, Beaver, PA 15009-9513; tel. no. 1-800-722-4428; e-mail: info@gcuusa.com.

FOOTNOTES:

1) Whereas the rosary and the stations of the cross are alien to the traditions of the Eastern Churches and now discouraged by the INSTRUCTION FOR APPLYING THE LITURGICAL PRESCRIPTIONS OF THE CODE OF CANONS OF THE EASTERN CHURCHES as non-conforming in the context of the latters' own traditions, the cult of the exposition and veneration of the Blessed Sacrament is actually illicit because it contravenes the theology and the canons of the Eastern Churches which mandate that the Eucharist be distributed at the Divine Liturgy with only two exceptions for temporary retention, namely the communion of the sick not present at the liturgy and the communion of the pre-sanctified on non-liturgical days. See canon 713, par. 1 of the CODE OF CANONS OF THE EASTERN CHURCHES and section 60 of the INSTRUCTION above referenced.

3) Issued 1996 by the Congregation for the Eastern Churches. See summary in the Web page, INSTRUCTION, in this Web site.

4) For more information about the Greek Catholic Union and the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church, see THE CARPATHO RUSYN AMERICANS by Paul R. Magocsi, ISBN: 0877548668 and BYZANTINE RITE RUSINS IN CARPATHO RUTHENIA AND AMERICA, by Walter C. Warzeski, published 1971 by the Byzantine Seminary Press (no ISBN given).

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