In the middle of the 19th century the German heresy of Karl Marx (1) began to infect the oppressed working classes of the industrialized societies of central and western Europe. From there it spread eastward to the Russian Empire where it found supporters among the intelligenzia and through it to the working classes, then in early stages of industrialization. Marxism as interpreted and applied by Lenin is a complete philosophical system for governing human societies which excludes all other systems of thought. Its world view is entirely materialistic and predicated on the Hegellan dialectic which sees human society in process of movement from primitive to complex wherein the cur- rent stage of development represented by capitalism would be overthrown violently and replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat. This process called socialism would resolve the economic and social anomolies of society by eliminating capital and the social classes dependent on it, thus preparing the way for the transition to the last stage of human development, namely Communism which is the classless stateless society in which all material needs would be met. Because man is entirely an economic creature there is no need for religion, regarded by Marx as the opiate of the people, i.e., a distraction in the class struggle of the exploited against the exploiters and wholly incompatible with dialectical materialism. The Communist Party, the party of the working classes, is the vanguard of the toiling masses in the struggle against capitalist oppression and exploitation. Once capitalism is overthrown and the socialist state installed in its place, the Party directs its development by eliminating its social and economic contradictions and preparing the way for the transition to pure Communism in which the state would wither away. This plan of action called not only for the restructuring of Russian society but for the reform of the entire world accord- ing to the vision of Marx. Exploiting the turmoil of World War I and the collapse of the Russian state in 1917, the Russian Communists or Bolsheviks seized power and proceeded to implement their plan for restructuring Russian society through the dictatorship of the proletariat under the leadership of the Communist Party. Seizing all of the instrumentalities of compulsion they moved quickly to suppress the enemies of the state at home and and to repel those from abroad. The Party set in motion the process by which the new order would be carried to the rest of the world. In World War II, the Russian or Soviet state succeeded in defeating Nazi Germany's efforts to destroy it and carried the Soviet socialist order into eastern and central Europe in the wake of the victori- ous Red Army. In the plan for restructuring society along Marxist-Leninist lines the suppression of religion in the occupied territories proceeded rapidly. Greek and Roman Catholics and the Orthodox too fell under the heel of the tyrant. Within those portions of eastern Europe newly annexed by the Soviet Union as well as in those countries dominated by the Communist parties under Moscow's control Greek Catholics were subjected to pressure to cut their ties with Rome and to rejoin Orthodoxy which was firmly under the control of the state. The Greek Catholic Church was simply outlawed and its churches, seminaries, convents, monasteries, schools, etc., were secularized or turned over to the Orthodox. Those who resisted were arrested and imprisoned or exiled. In the newly acquired areas annexed to Ukraine, the metropolitan, the bishops, most of the clergy and many of the laity were seized and exiled to Siberia and the Greek Catholic Church placed under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate. Similarly in the portion of Slovakia annexed to the Soviet Union where, in 1947, the Greek Catholic bishop of Uzhorod was murdered and the the diocese assigned to Moscow. So also was it in the dioceses of Peremyshl and Mukochevo. In 1947 the Polish Communist govern- ment abolished the Greek Catholic Church in that country and deported the Greek Catholics either to the Soviet Union or to the western lands recently seized from defeated Germany. The Polish government seized Greek Catholic properties and turned them over to the Roman Catholic Church. In 1948 the Greek Catholic Church in Romania was similarly suppressed and its properties given to the Orthodox. Likewise in Czechoslovakia the Greek Catholic Church was suppressed and its properties given to the Orthodox. By 1950 it had ceased to exist. Throughout these persecutions four Greek Catholic hierarchs stand out for their devotion to their Church and for their witness to Christ. 1) Bishop Paul Gojdich 1888 - 1960. Consecrated bishop of Preshov in 1927. When the Communists seized power in Czechoslovakia in 1948 Bishop Gojdich was denounced as a traitor and enemy of the people. He was imprisoned in 1950 for resisting the liquidation of the Greek Catholic Church. Rejecting the state's offer of rehabilitation he died in prison in 1960 thus winning the crown of martyrdom. 2) Bishop Theodore Romzha 1911 - 1947. Consecrated bishop of Uzhorod in 1944. Commanded by the Soviet authorities after the war to submit to the Patriarch of Moscow, he refused, was subsequently run dowm by a military truck but survived. While in the hospital he was murdered by the Communists in 1947, thus winning the crown of martyrdom. 3) Bishop Basil Hopko 1904 - 1976. Consecrated auxiliary bishop of Preshov in 1947. In 1950 Bishop Hopko was arrested. Efforts to compel him to submit to Orthodoxy failed. In 1952 he was tried for subversion and ties with foreign powers, viz., Rome, and condemmed to prison. He was eventually released years later but not restored to his eparchy. He died in 1976, thus winning the crown of martyrdom. 4) Bishop Alexander Chira 1897 - 1983. Consecrated auxiliary bishop of Mukachevo in 1945. After Mukachevo's incorporation into the Soviet Union the Soviets demanded that he place his eparchy under the jurisdiction of the Mowcow Patriarch. He refused, was arrested, tried in 1949 for sabotage and slander of the state and deported to central Asia where he died in 1983, thus winning the crown of martyrdom. RUSSIAN PATRIARCH ALEXY II There are many more hierarchs, priests and laity, Orthodox no less than Catholic, who suffered for their witness to the faith during the decades of Soviet rule in Russia and during the occupation of eastern Europe. The communist scourge of the Orthodox was scarcely less vicious than its persecution of Catholics.(2) For more details about the persecution of Greek Catholics the reader is directed to http://www.carpatho-rusyn.org/spirit. In spite of 40 years of Communist oppression the Greek Catholic Church continued to live in the hearts of the faithful. It became the silent church of the cellar, the field and the forest awaiting the eventual liberation of Europe from the German heresy. As late as 1988 on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary of the conversion of Rus by St. Vladimir the Great, Patriarch Pimen of Moscow boasted about the suppression of the Greek Catholic Church and its assumption by Moscow an attitude of hostility and rejection continued to this day by his successor Alexy II. The words were hardly out of Pimen's mouth when the thunder of change began to be heard. Within a year the Greek Catholic areas of western Ukraine and adjoining areas of eastern Europe were in revolt. With the collapse of Soviet power in eastern Europe the Greek Catholic Church emerged to reclaim the eparchies and properties which had been wrongfully seized. This remains a source of contention between Catholics and Orthodox to this day. There are few better explanations of this than that of Orthodox theologian and bierarch, Timothy Ware Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia, Auxiliary Bishop of the Orthodox Church in Great Britain under the Ecumenical Patriarch, who in his book, THE ORTHODOX CHURCH, ISBN: 0140146563, states in pertinent part as follows - "A particularly thorny problem troubling Russian Orthodoxy is the revival of eastern-rite Catholicism. In 1946 the Greek Catholic Church of Ukraine set up in 1596 through the union of Brest-Litovsk and numbering about 3,500,000 was reincorporated into the Russian Orthodox Church and ceased to exist. While there were doubtless some Ukrainian Catholics whose return to Orthodoxy was voluntary there can be little doubt that the vast majority wished to continue as they were in union with the Papacy. Not one of the Ukrainian bishops was in favor of the return; all alike were arrested and most died in prison or exile. Because of direct coercion and police terrorism many clergy and laity chose to conform outwardly to the Orthodox Church while still remaining Catholic in their inward convictions; others preferred to go underground. The hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate in conniving at the persecution of their fellow Christians by Stalin and the atheist authorities were placed in an unenviably equivocal situation. Surely as a matter of basic principle no Christian should ever support acts of violence against the conscience of other Christians. The fate of the Greek Catholics after the Second World War is perhaps the darkest chapter in the story of the Moscow Patriarch's collusion with Communism. Yet though driven underground eastern Catholicism was not exterminated. One of the fruits of Gorbachev's glasnost was that at the end of 1989 the Greek Catholic Church of Ukraine was once more legalized. By 1987 it was already becoming UKRAINIAN METROPOLITAN MIROSLAV LUBACHIVSKY abundantly clear that the Greek Catholics would re-emerge from the catacombs and seek to recover the churches now in Orthodox hands that had once belonged to them. If only the Moscow Patriarchate had taken the initiative in proposing a peaceful and negotiated solution it would have won immense moral authority and much bitterness could have been avoided. Regrettably there was no such initiative. In 1987 and again in 1988 the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, Cardinal Miroslav Lubachivsky, approached the Moscow Patriarchate both verbally and in writing proposing that the two sides Orthodox and Catholic should make a public and formal gesture of mutual forgiveness; but no response came from the Moscow Patriarchate. It is easy to understand how wounding the Greek Catholics found this silence. Now the moment of opportunity has passed. From 1989 onwards there have been sharp local disputes often marked by violence over the possession of church buildings. With passions thoroughly aroused on both sides reconciliation is going to prove slow." pp 164 - 165 In the four centuries of its existence, The Greek Catholic Church in eastern Europe was ill regarded by both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox peoples which surrounded them. The Roman Catholics saw them as benighted Eastern Christians in need of Romanization and the Orthodox treated them as renegades beneath contempt. Moreover, all of the prevailing peoples of the region, viz., Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles and Russians, refused to recognize that Ukrainians and Ruthenians had any independent right to national or ecclesiatic independence in derogation of the prevailing nationalities' political and national aspirations. The Greek Catholic witnesses to the faith stood the ultimate test and paid the price of their loyalty to the Church of their ancestors. Seventy years of Communism in Russia and forty years of the same infestation in eastern Europe passed without achieving one of the main goals of the German heresy, namely the abolition of religion and the Christian witness to Christ. The four hierarchs and martyrs are testimony to that. See also: http://www.byzantines.net/byzcathculture/unifier.html   TROPARION OF THE SAINTS Your Church throughout the world, 0 Lord, is clothed with the blood of Your martyrs as with fine linens and purple robes: and so the Church cries out to You, O Christ our God: Send down Your goodness upon Your people; grant peace to Your Church and great mercy to our souls. KONTAKION OF THE SAINTS To You, 0 Lord, Author of all creation, the universe offers the God-bearing martyrs as the first-fruit of nature. Through their prayers and the intercession of the Mother of God preserve Your Church, Your dwelling place in perfect peace 0 Most Merciful One. THIRD ANTIPHON OF THE RESURRECTION LITURGY Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered and let those who hate Him flee from before His face. As smoke vanishes so let them vanish as wax melts before a fire. So let the wicked perish at the presence of God and let the righteous ones rejoice. TROPARION OF THE EXALTATION OF THE HOLY CROSS Save Your people, 0 Lord, and bless Your inheritance; grant victory to Your Church over her enemies and protect Your people by Your cross. LIFE-GIVING CROSS VICTORIOUS OVER COMMUNISM (3) FOOTNOTES: 1) The German heresy - socalled because that is exactly what it was. Out of the intellectual and philosophical ferment of 19th century Germany there arose several philosophical systems which envisioned the reordering of society along totalitarian lines in which the masses would be led by an enlightened and self-appointed elite. Such systems were intolerant of parliamentary or democratic institutions or any notion that the masses were capable of self-government. Both Marxism and Nazi fascism grew out of these heretical ideologies and evolved into plans of action for seizing political power formentlng social upheaval, restructuring the social order and waging war. Most of the 20th century was devoted to the extirpation of these German heresies which caused in that century more grief loss of life and destruction of property than in all other centuries in the history of mankind. 2) The participation of some leading Russian hierarchs in the suppression of the Greek Catholic Church and the refusal of their present successors to acknowledge the same and to seek to make amends accompanied by continuing hostility toward the existence of Greek Catholics in Russia bode ill for the reconciliation of the Churches. Equally regretable is the oft-made assertion of the Russian Church that the presence and activities of Greek and Roman Catholics in Russia somehow diminish the primacy of the historical Russian Orthodox Church as the saint-making, martyr- producing and soul-saving Church in Russia in full possession of apostolic succession, valid sacraments and the true faith for which it is second to none. Such claim of exclusive turf is as equally invalid as any similar assertion that the existence and activities of Orthodox Churches in Western countries diminish the mission of the Roman Church as patriarchate of the West. Claims of exclusive geographic jurisdiction valid long ago lose relevance in the fact of the movement of peoples everywhere and their practice of bringing with them their ecclesial and liturgical traditions. 3) The three-bar cross of gold standing over the inverted, defeated black hammer & sickle, symbol of Marxism-Leninism, represents graphically the victory of the Church over the primary enemy of mankind in the 20th century. This type of symbolism is not without precedence. Following the capture of Muslim Kazan by Tsar Ivan IV in the 16th century the custom arose in Moscow and the other cities of Russia to place atop cathedrals and churches the cross over the inverted crescent moon as symbol of the triumph of Christianity over Islam. In the graphic image above, the cross is colored gold, the color of light, virtue, royaly and resurrection and of the liturgical vestments on Resurrection Sunday, whereas the hammer & sickle is in black, the color which represents evil, death and hell.   Our Church:  Our Identity  |   Parish History  |  Our Temple  |  Byzantine Metropolia Instruction-Canon Law  |  Greek Catholic Union  |  Four Hierarchs-Four Martyrs Garden of All Saints  |  Parishioners in Iraq Our Traditions: Theophany-Epiphany  |  The Diaconate  |  Our Lady of the Willow Frankincense  |  Water  |  Iconostasis  |  Hagia Sophia  |  St.Nicholas of Myra Pentecost  |  Theotokos  |  Cosmology  |  Ordination of Married Men The Orthodox Brethren: Eternal Memory  |  Mother of Churches  |  Christ the Savior Miscellanous: Islam-Jihad  |  The Chaldean Church  |  Other Sites Home Copyright © 1999 - 2005 by Epiphany Byzantine Catholic Church. All Rights Reserved.