When the Rusins came to America, they brought with them, as a part of their racial heritage, the Greek Catholic church, into which their national life had been so interwoven as to make nationality and church one and inseparable.
Until their coming, this branch of the Christian church, which occupies so interesting and distinctive a position, had been unheard of in the United States, and now, when it has more than two hundred churches with 550,000 members, its position is still known and understood by but few, so quietly and unostentatiously has its work been done.
The Greek Catholic church is first of all an object lesson on the fact that Rome, inflexible as she seems, can compromise and has compromised. The Great Schism in 1054 split the Christian world into two parts, one of which looked to Constantinople as its head, the other to Rome, hence the terms Eastern church and Western Church; or from the language of the liturgy at that time, the Greek rite and the Latin rite. As a matter of usage, the term Orthodox has come to be applied to the Eastern church, Catholic to the Western.
Each has always been certain of the correctness of its own position and has sought to evangelize the other. The Greek Catholic church is the result of the only considerable success in this line which has ever been achieved by either. It was brought about by a compromise offered by Pope Clement VIII to the Orthodox dioceses of Galicia at the end of the 16th century. This compromise may be summarized broadly as having made the church Roman in doctrine, but left it Eastern in practice. The very name Greek Catholic indicates the combination of sources.
The terms of the compromise required acknowledgement of the supremacy of the Pope and acceptance of the filioque clause in the creed, but permitted the retention of the Eastern arrangement of the church with the great screen in front of the altar; the three-barred cross, the lowest bar oblique; the use of leavened bread in the mass; the communion in both kinds to the laity; the liturgy in the language of the people; the administration of confirmation by the priest immediately after baptism; the Eastern calendar; and the married clergy. On these terms the union took place, hence the term United Greek Catholics, or Uniates.
The Ukrainians of Galicia were the first people to accept these terms, and they were soon followed by their kinsmen on the other side of the Carpathians, Russians of Hungary. The movement thus started has had some success in almost every Orthodox country, so that there are now Greek Catholic Rumanians, Croatians, Lithuanians, Syrians, Copts, Armenians, Italians, and Greeks. Its strongest hold, however, is still among the race who were the first to adopt it, and who are variously known, according to location or to political nomenclature as Little Russians, Ruthenians, Russinians, Ukrainians, or Uhro-Rusins.
Greek Catholic emigration to the United States began on both sides of the Carpathians in 1879, and was directed to that insatiable field of employment, the Pennsylvania coal mines. In 1884 a group of these immigrants in Shenandoah, Pa. had become strong enough numerically and financially to form a church organization and to send for a priest of their own race and faith. But their joy in the achievement was soon submerged in dismay at the conflict in which they unexpectedly found themselves. For this priest had brought with him his wife, and the Roman Catholic clergy of the diocese, acting sincerely, but without understanding, fell upon him and his followers with a storm of denunciation. The stranger priest was not only deeply shocked at this reception, but utterly bewildered, as nothing in his past experience gave him any clue to what the fuss was about. An exchange of letters between the bishop of the local diocese and the archbishop of Lemberg, now become a cardinal, established his regularity and good standing as a priest, and he was able to enter upon his work without further opposition. The controversy had, however, a very unhappy effect upon the people, to whom it seemed a part of the same persecution
