A new catechism

PERTH, Australia (CNS) -- The writers of the first comprehensive catechism for Ukrainian-rite Catholics hope it helps diminish the effects of the "Latinization" of the Byzantine church, said the bishop in charge of the project.

Australian Bishop Peter Stasiuk of the Ukrainian Catholic Diocese of Sts. Peter and Paul of Melbourne said Ukrainian Catholics worldwide "have become instilled" with teachings of the Latin rite.

"We attend Roman Catholic schools, we read their religious literature and we have become more or less immersed in Roman Catholic theology and tradition. No wonder our church is deeply Latinized -- to the extent that we have become so comfortable that we do not even see a need to change or to rediscover our own roots and traditions," said the bishop, who also chairs the Synodal Catechetical Commission of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
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The catechism, a draft of which is 600 pages long, will be divided into three sections: "Our Faith," "Our Prayer" and "Our Life," he said.

The first section will explore the Nicene Creed, the Ukrainian Catholic liturgy and how God has revealed himself, Bishop Stasiuk said. The second section will focus on prayer and the liturgy and will follow the cycles of the day and the year in the prayer life of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, he said. The last section will be dedicated to morality.

The "thread that will keep the catechism" together will be the prayers of St. Basil the Great recited during the act of consecration during the liturgy, he said.
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Read the complete article Catechism will help Ukrainian Catholics recover identity, bishop says from Catholic News Service.

I'm interested in picking this up once there's an English translation. It's nice to see the Ukrainians reclaiming their identity. I'm sure Moscow is not going to be pleased with a catechism aimed at strengthening the identity of the Ukrainian Church in Ukraine itself.

I read the other day about how the Ukrainian Orthodox community was pushing on with its efforts to form their own church independent of the Moscow Patriarchate. All the noise that the Russians make regarding the Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Catholic situation I'm sure is muted compared to the internal battle surrounding the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Personally, if I were the Ukrainian Catholics, I'd let the Orthodox situation resolve itself. That way, if the local Orthodox do indeed get their own patriarch, then Moscow would perhaps be quiet since a Catholic patriarch in Kiev would not really its problem anymore...