The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church is and associated Church of the Catholic Communion. This means, therefore, that it is in full communion with the Patriarch of Rome. It is neither part of, nor subordinated to the largest of the Churches in the Catholic Communion, the Latin Catholic Church. It is indeed startling for some Western Christians to find that the Catholic Church is not a monolith, but rather a communion of Churches, all of whom share one sacramental life. The relationship of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church to the Latin Church is not a juridical one but, most importantly, a sacramental one.

When a Church is in communion with another Church it means that they can celebrate the Eucharistic Liturgy together. As we know from experience within our Detroit community, we frequently celebrate non-liturgical services together with our Ukrainian   Orthodox and Protestant brethren.

When our Church reestablished full communion with Rome, we retained all of our ancient, apostolic traditions. Our traditions include the particular way we worship, the way that we think about God (theology) and the way that we live our Christian lives. Our theology and spirituality is, as hopefully you are discovering from the Bulletin articles, different from that of the Latin Church even though we are in communion with the Latin Church. Our Church is equally Catholic as the Latin Church. What too often happens is that many people think that “communion” with Rome means that we have to look like and think like the Latin Church in order to be considered “Catholic.”

Our communion with the Latin Church means that both they and we recognize each other as being of the same faith and, therefore, able to celebrate the Eucharist together. The Eucharist is the ultimate sign of unity.

Saying this, it is important that we restate that our communion does not mean that we think about the truths of the faith in the same way. It also means, however, that we also don’t maintain positions that contradict each other. We just state things in a different way.

For example, while we don’t include the Filioque in our Creed, we don’t assert that the Latin Church is in error because it does insert it. Our position is based on our understanding of the Trinity, if such a thing is even possible.

I know that at times people seem to find it difficult to accept the fact that we are Catholic and yet approach our faith in a different manner. We are not second-class Catholics. Our approach is equally true.