Fr Borys Gudziak, Rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University which has produced spectacular results on a shoestring budget, addressed the University of WA on the subject on 27 July. The Record reveals its success story.
By Dr Andrew Thomas Kania
Director of Spirituality,
Aquinas College
The Orthodox theologian Jaroslav Pelikan once described Metropolitan Andrii Sheptys’kyi with the words that he was: “the most influential figure … in the entire history of the Ukrainian Church in the 20th Century.” Overseeing the direction and protection of the Ukrainian Catholic Church for nearly half a century as its Primate, Sheptyt’skyi set in place the structures within his Church that would see its eventual survival against not only the oppression of the Nazi regime, but also the 45 years of Communist persecution which were to follow.
One of Sheptys’kyi’s lasting legacies was his dream of building a Ukrainian Catholic University, a place solemnly charged with the development of scholars who could not only sustain and develop the Byzantine Rite, but play a role in the spiritual as well as the political germination of Ukraine.
Sheptyts’kyi himself was a man of great education; he had earned three doctorates: philosophy, theology and law – and he was also fluent in a dozen European languages, as well as Hebrew.
Education for Sheptyts’kyi was the key to the survival not only of the Ukrainian Catholic Church – but the Ukrainian national identity. In one of his pastoral letters, Sheptyts’kyi told his faithful: “A nation which has scholars wins respect and honour among other nations. And other nations must reckon with such a nation. And for people in the villages, education is an item of almost primary need. A dark, uneducated people easily wastes all that it has and lets itself be misled in every way. Such a nation is unapproachable with even the best idea. It doesn’t know its own faith …”. (Sirka, 1989, p 270). Due to tensions between the Polish government and the Ukrainian population living on Polish soil, Sheptyts’kyi’s ambition for a Ukrainian Catholic University did not come to fruition in his lifetime.
In its place, in 1928, he established the L’viv Theological Academy and appointed Reverend Iosyf Slipyj (later of Morris West’s Shoes of the Fisherman fame) to be its Rector.
Despite the fact that the Polish government forbade any awarding of degrees from the Academy, Sheptyts’kyi continued to plan for the time when this Academy, which by World War II had 300 students enrolled, could begin life as a recognised university. Ever the philanthropist, Sheptyts’kyi provided scholarships to students to study abroad at the universities of Vienna, Freiburg, Rome and Innsbruck, both clergy and laity.
At the time of its closure by the Soviets, the L’viv Theological Academy had two faculties: theology/philosophy and law. In a period of less than two decades, Sheptyts’kyi’s dream had become the wellspring from which some of the greatest minds of the Ukrainian Catholic Church of the 20th century were to germinate.
Tragically, it was also to become the garden-bed of some of the Catholic Church’s greatest martyrs of the 20th century; a by-product of the strong faith development engendered by the Academy, and the viciously oppressive persecution of the Communist regime.
As Fr Borys Gudziak, the current Rector of the now Ukrainian Catholic University of L’viv writes about those early years of the Theological Academy and the people it produced: “They walked our streets and rode on our roads, sat on our episcopal thrones and in our confessionals; they gave lectures at solemn conferences and reports from their professorial chairs, they studied in our Theological Academy and seminaries.
“They probably did not think that the terrible trial of martyrdom and its everlasting crown was waiting for them.
“They wore priestly vestments and the habits of our religious communities, they heard stirring words from their spiritual directors about self-giving and self-dedication, which we often hear, but receive as something everyday, as an abstraction, something unreal and far away in time and space”. (Gudziak, 2004, p 4).
Of the 25 Ukrainian Catholics beatified by Pope John Paul II on 26 June 2001, many of these Ukrainian Saints had an association with the Theological Academy as either staff or students.
It goes without saying that the foundations on which the Ukrainian Catholic University, established in 1994, now stands were dearly bought; purchased from decades of struggle and martyrdom.
The Ukrainian Catholic University is today not only the first Eastern Catholic University in the world but also the first Catholic University established in what was once the Soviet Union.
In a remarkably short space of time, the University has earned itself astonishing accolades.
In an article in the Daily Telegraph in London (6 June 2009), Damian Thompson wrote about the University: “You probably haven’t heard of the Ukrainian Catholic University – but I suspect that is going to change. For this wonderful institution offers a philosophy of teaching in radical contrast to the moribund model of Catholic further education found in this country and much of the West.” Moreover, a feature article in the international magazine The Economist (26 April 2010), praised the work of Gudziak and his colleagues: “In the evening, it is time to visit an old friend, Borys Gudziak, the inspirational rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University.
“In the early stages of the second world war, the Soviet occupiers of western Ukraine murdered the university’s staff and sent the students to the gulag.
“Fr Borys – a Harvard-educated American-Ukrainian – has re-founded it, with spectacular results.
“Run on a shoestring, it has educated thousands of students in theology, philosophy, classics and other subjects (it has just launched an MBA). But it is not just an academic powerhouse: part of its mission is to provide a loving life for mentally handicapped people.
“Like many ex-Communist countries, Ukraine too often adheres to the shameful standards of the Soviet Union in dealing with such matters.
“Fr Borys is raising money for a grand building in which the finest accommodation will be reserved for mentally handicapped people.
“That teaches the students something even more valuable than what they learn in the classroom … UCU is a jewel in Ukraine’s educational system.
“But it struggles.
“A few years ago, the authorities hassled it and indirectly threatened Fr Borys with deportation.
“It is affiliated with the Greek Catholic church, which is under the Pope’s authority but uses Orthodox liturgy.
“Harshly persecuted in the Soviet period, the Church is still regarded with suspicion by some Soviet-minded Ukrainians. UCU’s independent curriculum, high academic standards and insistence on admitting solely on merit are a sharp challenge to Ukraine’s educational establishment.”
Today, the Ukrainian Catholic University – nearly a century after Sheptyts’kyi first dreamt the idea, is fast taking its place on the world-stage as a major player in higher education.
But it has a unique nature – it is a university with a growing reputation for academic excellence – but it lives under the glowing light of men and women who in the past, lived lives of Faith, not merely as conjecture, or from force of habit, or cultural osmosis – but out of deeply reasoned and committed certitude; where Faith and Reason are not opponents, but are conjugal partners in the human spirit.