Onyshchuk I. Russian greek-catholic church: history, canonical status and legal regulation of activities

DOI: 10.33098/2078-6670.2019.8.20.38-47

The purpose of the study is to reveal the history of the Russian Greek Catholic Church and the development of state-confessional relations. The methodological basis of the research was provided, in particular, by the dialectical method of scientific knowledge. Dialectical logic ensures observance of the general principles of scientific knowledge. The method of comparison is used to establish similarities and differences between historical and legal phenomena and legislative processes in the environment of the Russian Greek Catholic Church, as well as in identifying common features of the problems studied. There is also a historical method applied.

The scientific novelty of the study is to uncover the history of the development of the Russian Greek Catholic Church and the formation of state-confessional relations in the context of ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox Christians.

Conclusions. The Russian Greek Catholic Church originated and evolved through the care of such prominent hierarchs of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky and Patriarch Joseph Slipyj. The years of communist persecution did not become an obstacle to the preservation of the Russian Greek Catholic Church in Russia and in exile. And after the fall of the communist regime, the Russian Greek Catholic Church emerged from the underground.

For Russia, its own uniates – a hint of the possibility of “alternative history” in which there is no rigid opposition to the West itself. The development of positive trends in the field of state-church relations in the last years will be the more successful, the sooner the Russian Federation (at federal and regional levels) will be able to abandon the inertia of the past decades, when state-church relations were seen as something third in the hierarchy of its interests.

Key words: Russian Greek Catholic Church, Andrew Sheptytsky, Joseph Slipy, Viktor Novikov, Joseph Verte, state-confessional relations, legal regulation.

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