“For God every soul is important,” Rev. Dr. Ihor Shaban on “proselytism” of Greek-Catholics

The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in its activities has often testified that it primarily cares about its faithful who due to various circumstances live throughout all regions of our country and require pastoral care.  Our goal is to proclaim the Good News to people who belong to our Church -- and not to entice or drag other Christians to our Church, as representatives of other Churches are groundlessly stating.

Rev. Dr. Ihor Shaban, head of UGCC Commission on Promoting Unity among Christians, stated this in a commentary to UGCC Department of Information.

Rev. Ihor stated that today in Ukraine, following years of Communist regime, in general, Ukrainians may be divided into these groups:

- Christians who consciously belong to a specific Church, openly profess their faith and testify this in their daily lives;

- Christians who consider themselves as members of Christ’s Church in general, but are not practicing believers and do not often go to church.  One can say, that they are in a state of searching;

- People who due to various circumstances, do not belong to any Church.

“For each of these groups, according to the teachings of Jesus Christ ‘Go forth and teach all nations,’ all Churches should proclaim the Good News, preach the Gospel, teach a Christian life, in other words, to carry out ‘new evangelization.’

Each Church bears a special responsibility for its faithful, for those, who consciously belong to a specific Church and openly profess their faith and bear witness to it,” emphasized the head of UGCC Commission on Promotion of Unity among Christians.

In referring to people who do not belong to any Church, His Beatitude Sviatoslav noted: “Here lies a great task for all Christians.  In particular, the task of UGCC is to realize ‘the new evangelization’ that lies in bringing to the contemporary Ukrainian the traditional preaching of the Gospel, so that he can accept Christ’s teachings of the Church and become a real, living Christian.”

“And if such individuals discover God in the Church, regardless of confession, we should all rejoice at such results, since for God every soul which reaches salvation is important,” explained Rev, Ihor.

In mentioning the recent article by the Archbishop of Luhansk and Alchevsk, Mytrofan (Yurchuk), head of the Department Public Relations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), Rev. Shaban said that, in his opinion, we  devote too much attention to confessions and too little to the average person, who truly needs this evangelization, needs our good Christian example.

“I am pleased that the discussions about supposed conflicting situations among our Churches in Galicia have been relegated to the past.  I hope, that also today’s  groundless accusations will not last too long since it is important for us, Christians, to have good, brotherly and truly Christian mutual relationships,” emphatically concluded Rev. Dr. Ihor Shaban, head of UGCC Commission to Promote Unity among Christians.

UGCC Department of Information