Ukrainian bishop, American church : Constantine Bohachevsky and the Ukrainian Catholic Church

Constantine Bohachevsky was not a typical bishop. On the eve of his unexpected nomination as bishop to the Ukrainian Catholics in America, in March 1924, the Vatican secretly whisked him from Warsaw to Rome to be ordained. He arrived in America that August to a bankrupt church and a hostile clergy. He stood his ground, and chose to live а simple missionary life. He eschewed public pomp, as did his immigrant congregations. He regularly visited his scattered churches. He fought a bitter fight for the independence of the church from outside interference – a kind of struggle between the Church and the state, absent both. He refashioned a failing immigrant church in America into a self-sustaining institution that half a century after his death could help resurrect the underground Catholic Church in Ukraine, which became the largest Eastern Catholic church today. This trailblazing biography, based on recently opened sources from the Vatican, Ukraine and the United States, brings the reader from the placid life of the married Catholic Ukrainian clergy in the Habsburg Empire to industrial America. The Ukrainian Catholic Church, formalized in 1595, melds Eastern religious practices with Western hierarchic structure, thus healing the 1054 Christian divide. While there is doctrinal unity, Eastern Catholic practice differs so markedly from that of the Latin Rite that Ukrainian immigrants in the US created their own churches. The death of the first bishop in 1916 and the long hiatus in naming a replacement led to widespread unrest. Yet, under Bohachevsky's forceful leadership, within a decade, the church developed a network of parishes, schools, colleges, and eventually a seminary, cultivating its clergy and its understanding of Eastern Catholicism. In 1958, the Pope erected the Ukrainian Catholic Archbishopric of Philadelphia and appointed Bohachevsky its Metropolitan/Archbishop. Contents List of Illustrations Preface Notes on Terminology and Transliteration Abbreviations Introduction. A Papal Choice and a Papal Charge 1. An Embedded Priesthood 2. Priestly Service in Times of War 3. An Unexpected Nomination 4. Church and Society in a New Land 5. The First Steps of a New Bishop 6. An Iconoclastic Bishop 7. The Fayt 8. The Critical Years 9. Stable Development in Unstable Times 10. Salvation through Education 11. The Second World War 12. Growth through Tragedy 13. The Productive 1950s 14. Task Completed Archives and Selected Bibliography Index "Based on archival sources on two continents, this book details the consolidation of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the United States through the life of the man primarily responsible for that achievement, Archbishop/Metropolitan Constantine Bohachevsky (1884-1961). It presents an integrated narrative of the Ukrainian Catholic church and its society in the first half of the 20th century"-- Provided by publisher This trailblazing biography of Constantine Bohachevsky, based on recently opened sources from the Vatican, Ukraine and the United States, brings the reader from the placid life of the married Catholic Ukrainian clergy in the Habsburg Empire to industrial America.