Post pope coverage inconsistent
While some of the Kyiv Post’s (June 21, 2001) coverage of the visit of Pope John Paul II to Ukraine represents solid, objective journalism, other elements clearly show that for lack of time or effort, Olga Kryzhanovska, Peter Byrne and Katya Cengel have simply succumbed to the Moscow Patriarchate’s propaganda onslaught and swallowed whole the inflammatory agenda of the last institution of the Russian Empire, passing it off as investigative journalism.
Katya Cengel (“Visit Highlights Age‑old Divisions,” June 21) says that the visit is hailed as a triumph for Ukraine’s Catholic believers. On the contrary, it is the Moscow Patriarchate that has labeled the visit a triumph of Catholicism, in no way “hailing” the event, but fomenting fears of it. Old oversimplifications of the Orthodox‑Catholic schism as dating back to 1054 ignore the fact that the schism is something that took hundreds of years to harden into what it is today. Certainly, in Ukraine the number of religious factions nearly exceeds the number of political factions, as Cengel reports. In the United States the number of religious factions outnumbers political factions by at least 100 to 1. To say that the majority of Ukrainian citizens are Orthodox is to ignore the fact that more than half of the population is not baptized and therefore belong to no Church. Cengel quotes an unnamed Orthodox archbishop who makes ridiculous assertions (“We pray to the East, they pray to the West.”) without checking the veracity of such statements.
Olga Kryzhanovska’s “Poles, Cossacks and the bloody origins of Greek Catholicism,” furthers patent myths about how part of the Orthodox Kyivan Metropolia joined the Catholic Communion. A little research could have helped the writer see things a little more clearly. Polish King Zygmunt III and Pope Clement VIII were surprised by the initiative of the Orthodox Bishops of the Metropolia of Kyiv; they did not plan it. The Poles at the time did not desire a union of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. What they wanted was the complete polonization and conversion of Ukraine’s and Belarus’ Orthodox to Roman Catholicism, with no such thing as an Eastern Church in union with Rome.
The enticements by the Polish king that Kryzhanovska writes about were, in fact, very audacious demands on the part of the Orthodox bishops of the Metropolia of Kyiv before they would consider union with Rome. While it is true that some Ukrainians opposed the union of Brest, to say that the 1596 Union was “the primary reason for an anti‑polish uprising by the Cossacks between 1591 and 1596” is clearly anachronistic. The author is right when she mentions the bloodshed between the Cossacks and the Polish gentry, but the Union was only one issue, and was, in fact, an ecclesiastical attempt to stop Polish meddling in Ukrainian and Belarusian Church affairs. The historical excursus conveniently ends at 1654, with Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s treaty with Russia. Ending at that point allozws the author to ignore the fact that the Cossacks under Hetmans Vyhovsky and Mazepa fought equally bloody wars against the Orthodox Russians when the latter intruded, and most importantly leaves aside the crucial issue of the forced incorporation of the non‑Catholic portion of the Metropolia of Kyiv into the Moscow Patriarchate in 1686. This fact would help the reader to understand today’s divide between the Moscow Patriarchate and the two autocephalously minded Orthodox Churches who would like to return to the self rule Ukrainian Orthodoxy enjoyed before Moscow’s encroachments of the late 17th century, a situation that is equally held uncanonical by the Mother Church in Constantinople.
Peter Byrne (“Pope visit magnifies new schism,”) tries rather hard to be objective, but falls short on a few crucial issues. The vast majority of Ukrainian Christians may identify themselves as Orthodox, but more than half the population is not baptized. That is a non‑negotiable condition for membership in the Orthodox Church. This is so easy to verify that any serious journalist would have no difficulty with the distinction.
Byrne does not attribute this to anyone and thus leaves himself identifiable as the source for the absurd comment, “the Vatican is an ideological bulwark, the very origin of the West that the East sometimes calls corrupt and aggressive.” To identify the papacy with its greatest enemies and to suggest, even in vague terms that Pope John Paul II is a poster boy for the bad habits of the West is laughable. Corruption is greater in all the successor states of the USSR than in most of the world. Aggression was quite ably handled by both Tsars and commissars. To repeat blatant propaganda under the guise of journalism brings shame to the publishing newspaper.
By no means is this a wholesale rejection of the work of the staff writers of the Kyiv Post. It is simply a reminder that journalists must be infinitely careful, in a situation of tense relations between various groups to remain as objective and informed as possible, so as not to add fuel to the flames of a dangerous situation. Ukraine may be independent as a country, but its people still ache for freedom. As Jesus Christ said so long ago: “The Truth shall set you free.”
Rev. Prof. Andriy Chirovsky
Director
Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies
Ottawa
DON’T FORGET OZ
I am please to read that the Ukrainian Government is to scrap the requirement for visa to be registered in the OVIR within 72 hours of arrival (“Two steps backward,” editorial, June 21). In the absence of an Australian Ambassador (Something of which I hope Australia will address) can I also ask that consideration also be given to Canadian, New Zealand and Australian citizens ‑ not just U.S. and European citizens, when advocating exemptions for requirements of Visa to visit Ukraine.
I consider Ukraine to be one the most interesting and beautiful counties I have visited and I would welcome any action that facilitates and encourages the development of Ukraine’s tourist industry.
Anthony van der Craats
An Australian in Kyiv
