“Talk about Catechism is talk about the identity of our Church,” Bishop Petro (Stasyuk)

“Talk about Catechism is talk about the identity of our Church. Many people think that they know what our Church is, know its essence, its history. When we look closer, we see that our church has changed in the last 100 years, and that is because there was a lot of influence that was foreign to our Church’s rite, but in some way we have appropriated them,” said Bishop Petro (Stasyuk), head of the working group on writing the Catechism. According to the Bishop Petro, every national church has to have its own Catechism. Patriarch Lubomyr said in the introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church that our Church will “give its faithful theological explanations on the basis of its own tradition.” “I want to ask all people who will hold the Catechism in their hands to look at this book as an expression of our faith, an expression of the Ukrainian soul, to find here a rational grain in search of God. In addition, let them have an open heart and mind, and be conscious that there is part of their inheritance in this book,” concluded the bishop. We remind that soon the world will see the first edition of Catechism of Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The work on the text, which was coordinated by the Patriarchal Catechetic Committee, lasted for nearly 9 years. Its result were presented to the Synod of Bishops of UGCC on September 2-9, 2010, in Lviv-Bryukhovychi. According to the Bishop Bohdan (Dzyurakh), the Secretary of the Synod, “the bishops will still examine it. Final observations will be made, and we hope that during the next year final decisions will be made and the Catechism will enter the world.” The planned number of copies is 50 thousand. The Catechism is to be printed in three languages: Ukrainian, English, and Portuguese or Spanish. There is also talk about a Russian version.

Information Department of the UGCC