Ukrainian Catholic university Rector out to change mould of what a university is
The UCU in Lviv Ukraine could be the first university in the world to build a dormitory to house a community of mentally handicapped on campus, the university’s rector, Fr Borys Gudziak, told The Record.
This compassion for the mentally handicapped - one of the defining features of UCU - is “counter-intuitive” for a university, he said.
But breaking the mould is exactly what UCU wants to do.
“We’re trying to rethink what a university is,” Fr Gudziak said.
“Yes, academic achievement is important but what we hope we can pursue is teaching and learning the school of dignity, which at the same time is a school of service,” hesaid.
Fr Gudziak said that alongside all the complicated intellectual topics, they bring in “guest lecturers in human relations in the school of love; among the best are the mentally handicapped”.
The university is the centre of coordination of 30 “Faith and Light” communities in Ukraine, providing faith and fellowship for parents and their handicapped children, Fr Gudziak said.
For the last ten years, the university has been coordinating these communities through its Centre for Spiritual Support in conjunction with L’Arche, the international organisation founded by Jean Vanier, a Canadian who chose to live with people with an intellectual disability in 1964. This was the start of the worldwide L’Arche community that shows compassion through spiritual and practical support to those living with a handicap.
L’Arche is predicated on the truth that all people are of divine dignity, Fr Gudziak said.
“The heart of L’Arche is that living with the mentally handicapped helps us; they have gifts to share. They can’t put on a mask; they tell it like it is,” Fr Gudziak said. “They want to know if you know how to love. They ask you, ‘Do you love me? I want to love you.’”
Despite needing another 3-4 million dollars, UCU is taking care for the disadvantaged to the next level.
“The hole is dug,” Fr Gudziak said, for the construction of a dormitory that will house a L’Arche community of mentally handicapped on campus alongside 220 regular students, eight faculty apartments and four apartments for the Institute of Advanced Study.
In a city of 140,000, there are 1,400 students at UCU, 600 of them full-time.
Although founded just eight years ago, the UCU is rooted in an educational tradition begun in 1929 when the Lviv Theological Academy (LTA) was founded with Joseph Slipyj as its Rector. Today, the UCU emerges from an extraordinary history of persecution and Soviet Communism. The LTA was closed by Soviet authorities in 1945 but later reopened in 1994, as the first stage of development for UCU.
Pope John Paul II visited Ukraine in June 2001 to beatify 27 martyrs and a nun. While visiting, he also blessed the future cornerstone of the university, which was later founded on 29 June 2002.
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church uses the Byzantine liturgy and has been in full communion with Rome since the 1596 Union of Brest. The Church was described by papal biographer George Weigel as the repository of Ukrainian national identity and aspiration throughout the Soviet period.
However, in 1946, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was “completely liquidated, declared illegal and was in the catacombs,” Fr Gudziak said, referring to the so-called Lviv Sobor, a meeting of Bishops, priests and laymen, who ultimately voted to annul the Union of Brest. Whoever accepted the so-called Lviv Sobor of 1946, became Russian Orthodox and placed themselves under the canonical jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Moscow wrote Weigel.
“Those who did not, became members of the largest illegal religious body in the world,” he said.
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was thus in the ‘catacombs’: liturgies were held in forests and houses in secret while someone would keep watch. Any evidence of the Mass had to be hidden since it was illegal to celebrate Mass.
The Ukrainian Catholics who held onto the faith despite these external pressures are a shining witness and this forms part of the foundation of UCU.
The students of the UCU have conducted 2000 interviews with survivors from the underground Church, the catacombs, which reveal how simple people endured suffering and how they maintained the faith even in concentration camps, Fr Gudziak said.
This, combined with the witness of the 27 martyrs beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2001, is proof that “there is no place and no situation in which you cannot live a spiritual life,” Fr Gudziak said.
But the fear continues to live in the hearts of the Ukrainian people, “just below the surface”.
Despite the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991 and the independence of many parts of the Soviet Union including Ukraine, Russia has not really accepted the separation of Ukraine from Russia.
It has used many means to try to ensure that Ukraine follows a totally pro-Moscow line.
This was a major issue in the Ukrainian election in 2005 and the newly elected president, Victor Yushchenko, was almost killed by poison. The perpetrator remains a mystery and is yet to be brought to justice.
Fr Gudziak described the fear that continues to exist, as being similar to the Ukraine’s nuclear reactor disaster that struck in 1986.
“Like the radiation of Chernobyl, you can’t taste it or see it on a sunny day but it is there, just below the surface,” he said.
The martyrs, who were Bishops, priests and men and women of family, “met the greatest challenge of the 20th century of totalitarianism,” he said.
“Totalitarianism wants to negate the fundamental truth about a human person. The scriptures in our faith say we’re created in the image and likeness of God and that we’re free and called to a divine dignity – that was the whole mission of Christ, to call us to a divine life,” he said.
The Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes sought to make a human being a cog in a system, Fr Gudziak said.
The murder was “wanton and systemic” and while there was “tremendous fear” there were also Christians maintaining principles and trying to pass on the Good News, he said.
“People in the whole society were manipulated and everything, even the dignity of the person, was subsumed into a system,” he said.
“Totalitarianism takes away people’s freedom. But the martyrs were as free as people can be; they weren’t holding on to anything,” Fr Gudziak said.
In 1968, the head of the Ukrainain Greek Catholic Church, Cardinal Iosef Slipyj visited Fr Gudziak’s hometown in Syracuse, New York.
Cardinal Slipyj survived 18 years’ imprisonment in concentration camps in Siberia.
“He passed on this profound conviction that the Lord is present and powerful in situations where humans are reduced to what seems like great weakness,” Fr Gudziak said.
“This raises a profound question for everyone, even for those who live in peaceful Perth,” Fr Gudziak said.
“Can we wake up to this truth? Sometimes the good things in life lull us into the false sense of security,” he said.
“The fact that we do pass from this life can help us ask the question, what is this life really all about? Is it my car, my iPhone, my facebook virtual relationships? Or am I possessed of a dignity that the Church and the Scriptures speak of?
“Can I be open to the mystery of God’s great love for the world, the world’s great beauty and the miracle of life and human relations?” he said.
Ukraine saw 5-7 million people die of starvation in a deliberate famine created by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1932 and another 17 million people die during World War II.
Despite this, and in light of its history, Fr Gudziak is confident that it is possible to “present a fresh model of what a university and the Church can be”.
The UCU began by offering courses in theology, the humanities and education.
Then three leading businesses including a gas and oil company, the biggest software company in the United Kingdom and a clothing manufacturer, approached the UCU to ask them to offer a business school.
“They said, ‘We like your style. There’s no corruption at your university, there’s creativity, a lot of humour and quality in the teaching and education and there’s a sense of beauty in the way you put together your modest buildings.’
“They wanted business managers who would be competent, well trained but who also had an ethical approach to business and for whom culture was important, and not just profit.”
Bridget SPINKS
September 6 2010 The record
