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Many people think of the Catholic Church as a monolithic structure with a clear leadership and traditions. People also mistakenly refer to the whole as the Roman Catholic Church. But this is not quite accurate.
The Catholic Church actually comprises twenty-two particular Churches in full communion with one another. There are twenty-one Eastern Catholic Churches, and one Latin Catholic Church (i.e., the Church of Rome). Each of these particular Churches is self-governing (the term in Latin is sui iuris, “of their own law”), even while being in communion with the Church of Rome Annual Spring Clergy Days Focused on Healing Trauma, Financial Transparency, and Future of Eparchy5/12/2024
Saint Josaphat Eparchy held its annual Spring Clergy Days at the Jesuit Retreat Center in Parma, Ohio, April 29-May 2. Over the course of the four-day gathering, clergy participated in conferences and prayed selections from the Divine Office, celebrated Divine Liturgy at the Cathedral, and enjoyed time together in fellowship. Bishop Bohdan kicked off the meeting Monday evening with a conference on the Synodal Way, United for Ukraine — which assists refugees of the war in Ukraine –, and the Eparchy’s future.
Thank you to all those who joined our 2024 Easter Egg Hunt and Easter Celebrations! Christ is Risen! Thank you to all those who volunteered for our 2023 Church Summer Camp! We had a blast and we hope all those who participated did to. See you next year!
Want to see what you missed? Check out the video. Since the start of Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, 8,800 civilians became victims of enforced disappearances and remain illegally detained, while more than 10,200 people are considered to be missing.
U.S. Bishops’ Doctrine Committee Issues Statement on the Proper Disposition of Bodily Remains4/2/2023
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Doctrine has issued a statement providing principles for evaluating some newer methods and technologies for disposition of the bodies of the deceased. The USCCB’s Administrative Committee approved the issuance of the statement on March 15. In their statement, the doctrine committee affirms that every human being has been created in the image of God and has an inherent dignity and worth. Furthermore, since “every man and woman is a unity of body and soul, respect for the person necessarily includes respect for the body.”
The Beginnings of Christianity in Kyivan Rus’:
Due to the creation of the Metropolitanate of Kyiv within the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the Late 10th century, Rus’ became part of Christian civilization, Prior to Christianity being officially adopted as the state religion in 988, there were already pockets of Christianity in the territory of the medieval Kyivan state and adjacent areas, though some of them had fallen into decay. There is a widely known tradition that St. Andrew the Apostle blessed the lands of what later became Ukraine. Hem ay have actually reached Greek settlements in today southern Ukraine, but it is unlikely that he travelled further north. There is also a tradition that St. Paul, when preaching in the Balkans, sent his disciple Andronicus, “one of the seventy,” to the Slavs. There is also the witness of the Fathers of the Church, including St. John Chrysostom (d. 407), St. Athanasius the Great (d. 373) and blessed Jerome of Stridon (d. 420), which tell us of the spread of Christianity among the Scythians and Samaritans. The Ukrainian Catholic Church has a complicated history. This is evident even in its very name, which is a combination of several profound, complex, and multi-layered concepts. This name did not appear in an instant, even more so, it was not always as we know it today. The only unchanging term that has ever expressed the identity of this group of people is the word “Church.” This community has always felt itself to be a group of Christ’s disciples who, united by the hierarchy, are on the pilgrimage through history breaking and consuming the Bread of the Eucharist and the Word of God, sharing the joys and sorrows of this life. The other words in the name reflect other traits of this community’s identity and appeared at different historical moments until their configuration has become as we know it today. “Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him” (Mt 2,13)
In our Eastern Christian Christmas traditions, we rejoice and celebrate that “God is with us,” singing the praises of the Prince of Peace in hymns and carols. Yet as we reread the Nativity account, we encounter the homelessness of the Mother of God, the anguish of Joseph, and the refugee status of the newborn Jesus. Herod appears, a homicidal tyrant craving hegemony, who massacres innocent children in Bethlehem in order to kill the Messiah— a vivid image of the lust for power. Herod’s determination to dominate was so overpowering that he even murdered three of his own sons. The Holy Infant bringing salvation to all was a menace to a tyrant pathetically clinging to his self-importance. During the Christmas season, some 100,000 Russian troops have been positioned on three sides of Ukraine: a nascent democracy, a country on a pilgrimage to freedom and dignity from the fear of a totalitarian past in which 15 million people were killed on Ukrainian territory. |