Following 1596 and the Union, the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (UGCC), being an Orthodox Church in communion with Rome, ought to have continued to live an ecclesiological life of prayer traceable to its Patristic roots. Yet the Union of Brest-Litovsk, through a scholastic division of theological categories unknown to and artificial in the Eastern Christian tradition, had the consequence – unintended from the perspective of the Ukrainian Orthodox bishops who signed it – of stunting an organic growth from Patristic roots of a moral and systematic theology specific to the UGCC. Unlike the Orthodox Churches, notably the Russian and Greek Churches, whose contemporary life has been marked by just such an organic growth of a Patristic-based moral and systematic theology, founded in its total life of prayer, the Union began an unjustifiable importation of Western dogmatic and moral theology, in addition to similar encroachments in relation to the sacraments (known as the Holy Mysteries in the Christian East) into the life of the UGCC. To such an extent did these encroachments – known as ‘Latinizations’ – occur that by the time of the mid- to late-twentieth century much theological writing in the UGCC, even by those of the highest hierarchical rank, was a ‘…mere rehash of Latin theology manuals.’ This process of Latinization continued virtually unchecked until the twentieth century. Two events of the twentieth century have stemmed the advance of Latinization in of the Eastern Catholic Churches. The first of these events was the Second Vatican Council. During the plenary sessions of the Second Vatican Council, Patriarch Maximos IV Saigh of the Eastern Catholic Melkite Church refused to speak Latin and continually promoted the rights and status of the Eastern Catholic Churches. It was his role in the Council that had a major   influence on the content of the document ultimately produced by the Council Fathers on the Eastern Catholic Churches.

Thus, the Second Vatican Council raised Latin Catholic awareness of the status and role of the Eastern Catholic Churches, a group which includes the UGCC, in the contemporary life of the universal Catholic Church. The second event was the pontificate of John Paul II who, drawing upon, supplementing and advancing the work of the Council, wrote his 1995 Apostolic Letter The Light of the East (Orientale Lumen),   followed closely by his 1995 Encyclical Letter On Commitment to Ecumenism (Ut Unum Sint).       Much More to Follow!