Filaret Calls For "Spiritual Rebirth"

Patriarch Filaret said his church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) are involved in dozens of joint projects, including pastoral ministry and religious education in the armed forces, in prisons and in schools, where students take a course in Christian ethics. But, he said, if Pope John Paul recognizes the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as a patriarch, that relationship will sour quickly. ``The relationship between all the Orthodox world and the Catholic Church would worsen,'' he said. Currently, the Vatican refers to the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as the major archbishop of Lviv, the principal city of western Ukraine. But Eastern Catholics, citing the traditional structures and titles of Eastern Christian churches, often refer to him as a patriarch and want the Vatican to make the title official.

Patriarch Filaret said the move would be particularly serious if a Catholic patriarch were named and given the see of Kyiv, the traditional heart of Ukrainian Christianity, instead of Lviv. “It would be seen as the first step in trying to encroach upon the Orthodox Church,'' he said. ``The Greek Catholic Church today is limited mostly to western Ukraine.'' Naming a Catholic patriarch in Kyiv, he said, ``would be like the Orthodox naming a patriarch of Rome.'' Patriarch Filaret said Ukraine's Christians have more immediate and important matters to attend to, and it is not just a matter of baptizing more people. ``A growing number of Christians will not do any good if there is not a spiritual, a moral renaissance,'' he said. Throughout Europe, he said, the majority of ``prostitutes, alcoholics, drug addicts and criminals were baptized'' as children. ``The quantity of Christians has not always translated into quality.'' “We should shift the emphasis of ecumenism,'' the patriarch said. ``While creating the one church of Christ is one of our aims, we do not have to think about only that. Experience shows that goal is far off and too difficult to predict. The more important task of the churches is to create a spiritual rebirth,'' he said.