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  • Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky and the Establishment of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the United States by Ivan Kaszczak
  • Judith Piszyk OSBM
Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky and the Establishment of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the United States. By Ivan Kaszczak. Toronto, ON: Basilian Press (Ukrainian), 2013. 211pp. $25.00.

In “Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky and the Establishment of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the United States,” Father Ivan Kaszczak gives an insider’s view of the origins of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the United States. Beginning with the reasons for erecting a diocese for Ukrainian Catholics, Kaszczak walks the reader through the myriad difficulties faced when the Vatican, at the request of Ukrainian Catholic Church primate Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, sent the first Ukrainian Catholic bishop to the United States, Soter Ortynsky.

The Vatican’s (and Sheptytsky’s) goal in sending Ortynsky to America was to meet the needs of the Ukrainian and Ruthenian immigrants (Ruthenians are from the area just west of Ukraine). However, many priests – especially Ruthenian priests – objected to Bishop Ortynsky’s appointment on the grounds that he was ethnically Ukrainian and not Ruthenian. As Father Kaszczak details the tenacity with which Sheptytsky and Ortynsky strived to win over the Ruthenian faithful and clergy and provide them with the spiritual care of which they were in such need, one feels the frustrations that the two men must have felt, and which possibly led to Ortynsky’s death at the young age of fifty in 1916. [End Page 82]

Surprisingly, the other stiff challenge to Ortynsky’s episcopacy came from the Latin Catholic hierarchy, who feared and did not understand the newcomers who used a different language and liturgy. Although one might think that Kaszczak, a Ukrainian Catholic priest currently serving in the United States, views this issue from a particular point of view, his well-documented research objectively lays out the obstructions Ortynsky faced in his struggle for full episcopal recognition.

This book will be of interest to church historians, anyone with an interest in the Eastern Catholic Churches in the United States, and anyone interested in the Ukrainian Catholic Church. It will also particularly appeal to fans of Orientalium Ecclesiarum, the Vatican II document that called for Eastern Catholic Churches to be true to their traditions. Such fans will find in Kaszczak’s book a very practical look at how such Eastern Churches were treated during the pre-Orientalium Ecclesiarum days of the early twentieth century, and probably come away with a newfound appreciation for the value of Orientalium Ecclesiarum.

Judith Piszyk OSBM
Sisters of the Order of St. Basil the Great
Jesus, Lover of Humanity Province
Fox Chase Manor, PA
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