December 6, 2019

WWSD 2

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In our last column we considered Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky’s economic ideas and activities, asking “What Would Sheptytsky Do” (WWSD) in today’s world. We turn now to his relations with the Ukrainian intelligentsia. By “intelligentsia” we mean those engaged chiefly in mental work, whether as professionals (physicians, lawyers, engineers), or as journalists, poets, novelists, painters, musicians and other artists (the “creative intelligentsia”).

In his relations with the intelligentsia, Sheptytsky encountered widespread anti-clericalism, agnosticism and even atheism. These trends came from different sources – Western European intellectual fashion (including materialism, socialism and Marxism) disseminated by Ivan Franko, Mykhailo Drahomanov and others, as well as currents from Russian-ruled Ukraine. Anti-clericalism reacted partly to the Russophile attitudes of much of the Greek-Catholic clergy, which the Ukrainophile populists abhorred, and partly to economic conflicts. Sheptytsky sought to overcome these divisions. In his first pastoral letters as bishop of Stanyslaviv in August 1899, he took up the problem of the intelligentsia. In the letter addressed to the faithful, he addressed the intelligentsia directly (No. 14). In his letter to the clergy, he urged priests to work with the intelligentsia. “…First of all,” he wrote, “we ourselves have to know everything that they write, so that we can successfully refute their errors.” “And then,” he continued, “we have to get to know them” – explaining Christian dogma clearly in private conversations as well as in sermons (No. 8). Later, as metropolitan of Halych, he addressed a pastoral letter specifically to the intelligentsia (1901).

On the 10th anniversary of the death of anti-clerical (and reputedly atheist) writer Franko in 1926, Sheptytsky had to decide whether to permit religious memorial services. Having already held a memorial service for the writer by request of his daughter in Kyiv in 1918, the metropolitan would not forbid his clergy to do likewise. One can compare his approach to that of Bishop Constantine Bohachevsky of Philadelphia, who forbade them. Sheptytsky focused on Franko’s literary achievement and popularity as a patriot, considering his socialism and atheism less important (but let Bishop Constantine decide what was best in the U.S.). In a letter to the bishop, Sheptytsky observed that, in general, prohibitions were not effective; the better approach was to teach (Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak, “Ukrainian Bishop, American Church,” 2018, pp. 220-229). What Would Sheptytsky Do with today’s agnostic or atheist Ukrainian and Ukrainian American intellectuals? Most likely he would engage with them, seeking points of agreement and striving to overcome their anti-religious prejudices through reasoned argument and persuasion.

A key segment of the intelligentsia are writers, artists and musicians. The problem in 1900 was that there was practically no support for this “creative intelligentsia.” Sheptytsky understood that culture was not just an ornament of national life. “It is not external circumstances or the political situation that places the fulfillment of great historical tasks in the hands of peoples, but the internal power of culture,” he wrote in his 1907 pastoral letter “The Times Are Approaching.” Or as is sometimes said today, “politics is downstream of culture.”

Sheptytsky saw Ukrainian culture as rooted in the Greek and Roman classics, which were combined in Byzantine culture. That culture developed further in Kyivan Rus’. Just as the Union of Brest had joined the Kyivan to the Roman Church, so the Byzantine and Western traditions would join in a new synthesis in Ukrainian culture – not just ecclesiastical, but secular as well. It was Sheptytsky’s dream to bring this Ukrainian culture onto the world stage. As Liliana Hentosh puts it, the metropolitan believed that “by way of a synthesis of the ancient Byzantine and Rus’ cultural strata (elements of which, Sheptytsky thought, were still present in folk culture) with contemporary achievements of Western European culture, one could create a contemporary Ukrainian high culture.” He supported the development of Ukrainian secular art insofar as it did not reject Christian moral and ethical principles (Liliana Hentosh, “Mytropolyt Sheptytsky (1923-1939): Vyprobuvannia Idealiv,” 2015, pp. 270-271). Given his support of the painter Oleksa Novakivsky, he must have been comfortable with contemporary trends like expressionism (though not some of their more scandalous manifestations).

What would Sheptytsky do in today’s society, when both seminary and college graduates, deprived of a classical education, often lack linguistic, philosophical, and cultural depth and sophistication? No doubt he would welcome the recent revival of the Greek and Roman classics in charter and private schools. In the Church, he would probably continue the peculiarly Ukrainian synthesis of Byzantine and Latin culture reflected in our ecclesiastical art. But he would surely criticize the artistic and architectural hodge-podge and kitsch so common today in both Ukraine and the diaspora. He would no doubt promote the current imaginative development of iconography and sacred music.

Beyond the Church, Sheptytsky would likely wish to see “secular” Ukrainian art, music and literature as developing in the national tradition rather than separated from it. In the 1930s, as Ukrainian painters followed contemporary trends in France, Sheptytsky opposed the superficial imitation of European modernism (see Myroslava Mudrak, “Sheptytsky as Patron of the Arts,” in Paul R. Magocsi, ed., :Morality and Reality: The Life and Times of Andrei Sheptytskyi,” 1989). Today, one would expect, he would engage with artists and writers, perhaps supporting them financially, yet remaining critical of shallow imitations of Western models in literature as well as in painting, sculpture, music and film. While he would not approve of the occasional overtly anti-Christian work, his intelligence would permit him to appreciate artists who engage with religious faith in unconventional ways. Sheptytsky would, of course, welcome Christian public intellectuals such as the late Orthodox thinker Yevhen Sverstiuk and the Catholic Myroslav Marynovych, promoting worthy Ukrainian counterparts to such as Charles Taylor, Rod Dreher, George Weigel, Patrick Deneen and David Bentley Hart.

Asking “What would Sheptytsky do?” is not an idle thought experiment. It is a way to get into the mind of this extraordinary man – and a keen tool for grappling with the problems that face our people.

Andrew Sorokowski can be reached at [email protected].

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