“Addressing Mass Poverty in Post Maidan Ukraine Doctrine and Witness of the Ukrainian Greco Catholic Church (UGCC)”Professor Robert P. Marko, Ph.D., Aquinas College In August, 2017, Cardinal Peter Turkston at a Conference dealing with corruption stated: “We shouldn’t speak about resolving the issue of corruption in theory. Instead we should confront corruption in every sector. It is the poor who pay for the parties of the corrupt.” As a twice Fulbright Scholar in Ukraine I immediately thought of my host nation “the borderland” where, depending on source, 60% of the people are economically poor. Corruption is a major factor in dealing with poverty.
I intend to address, if invited, all three areas proposed. First, we will review social documents of Ukrainian Greek Catholic bishops on the mission of Christians to society. Here we will rely on documents of UGCC from Metropolitan Sheptytsky on Rerum Novarum to Christ Our Pascha. Moreover, I will present how the witness of that Church itself had played an important role in both the Orange Revolution, 2004, and the Maidan Revolution of Dignity beginning 2013. Catholic social principles of the dignity of the human person, solidarity and the right to participate in society were evident in those experiences .Corruption will be targeted in not just publications of the Ukrainian Social Academy but in letters from the bishops read at liturgy. In fact, churches and particularly UGCC have one of the highest levels of trust among people of any “voluntary association,” 64.4% surpassed only by civil volunteer groups, 66.7%.
Second, we will consider how post Maidan Ukraine is not without its significant social problems. While the social sin of corruption has been identified as the greatest, historical Soviet ideology and deadening of moral conscience has contributed to the situation. Many of the Communist leaders became the oligarchs with literally “business as usual.” Nevertheless, there is a strong communitarian spirit among Ukrainians often showing itself as super nationalism. We will note resources available to address problems including the Ukrainian Social Academy; Ukrainian Catholic University; and Razom (Together) or Ukrainian young people working for change.
Third, we will discuss how prophetic voices in a diverse society as citizens can confront structural injustice. Concern for the poor while locally addressed among people, particularity within extended families, and a grossly underfunded “social assistance” system, with entitlements not going to the poorest 30%, have not uplifted the majority of people. Corruption, government bureaucracy, a “shadow economy,” lack of employment opportunities, and the war have all contributed to a sense of the waning of hope after Maidan Ukrainian colleagues claim their economic system is an oligarchy of cronies with Soviet remnants The answer does not lie in a deeper appreciation of the principles of common good and solidarity but rather in the application of those principles in the operation of existing political, economic, and legal institutions in order to establish just policies.
“The Church of the Poor: CEB’s and the Need for Ongoing Pastoral Conversion”Rev. Dr. Arthur P. Purcaro, O.S.A., Villanova University The prophetic concern of the Church for the poor, expressed at the convocation of the second Vatican Council, provides the context for specific guidelines which were considered in the deliberations of the Council and expressed clearly in the Covenant of the Catacombs in its waning days.
The Covenant served as an invitation to the hierarchy of the Church to live a "life of poverty" and to be a "servant and poor", as Juan XXIII entreated. Signers committed themselves to live simply, to reject symbols or privileges of power and put the poor at the center of their pastoral ministry.
These statements would find an echo in the final documents of the General Conference of the Latin American Bishops held in Medellín, Colombia in 1968. Medellin was charged with the mission of assuming and incarnating the Council for the overwhelmingly Christian continent, afflicted by an onerous abyss between a very few inordinately rich and an enormous majority wasting away in dismal poverty and inhuman wretchedness. The preferential option for the poor and the commitment to promote Comunidades Eclesiales de Base as a pastoral option are our inheritance from that Spirit-filled moment.
At a distance of more than fifty years, we have the opportunity to examine how we have responded to the reminder of our mission to be the Church of the poor as well as to re-evaluate the path travelled and point out possible steps going forward, a path marked clearly by the four major signposts of Catholic social thought identified in the Church’s Compendium: dignity, common good, subsidiarity and solidarity.
The political, economic and social conditions have changed markedly over these decades; our pastoral conversion perhaps less so. Subsequent to a period of revitalization and redefinition marked by baby steps toward the goal, the Church lived another period dedicated principally to a deepening of awareness and purpose. We currently live the kairos in which the Spirit invites and challenges us to a consequent pastoral conversion, to articulate and integrate our ecclesiology and spirituality with our pastoral activity.
As the concept of synodality comes to the fore, we explore ways in which the Church can become more fully an instrument of communion through actively listening to the cry of the poor and responding less with words, more readily with our deeds, which necessarily involves creating the structures which will allow us to listen and encourage the People of God to assume their vocation.
In the face of a continually expanding abyss between the extravagantly rich minority and the swollen belly of the marginalized majority of the members of the Body of Christ, we examine the path taken by Christian base communities, reweaving the fabric of the shroud from which the risen Christ continues to struggle to be liberated. Confronted by the ever-growing threat of individualism, marked and fostered by clericalism, the experience in CEB’s of the People of God gives life to the preferential option for the poor, providing markers for the pastoral conversion of our behemoth of a structure to become more fully an instrument of communion in contemporary society.
