The Right to Marry

Uniat churches, often called "Greek Catholic," are churches of the Near East recognizing the papacy and all Roman Catholic dogma. They are not to be confused with the Orthodox churches of the Near East which, likewise, are often lumped together as "Greek." Uniat churches exist because of a Catholic policy similar to the old trust builder's maxim: If you can't lick them, join them. The Roman Church absorbed numerous Orthodox faithful by allowing them to keep their customs, the discipline of their clergy, and their rites. To U. S. Catholics, Uniat Catholics of the Greek Rite were almost unknown until some 50 years ago. Then they appeared in districts where immigrants were arriving from Russia, the Ukraine, the Carpathian Mts. The newcomers claimed to be Catholic but they lived by the Julian Calendar (Christmas on January 7), segregated men and women in their churches, had married priests who gave them the bread & wine of the mass mixed together in a spoon.

With the growth of Greek Rite Catholicism in the U. S.--it now numbers 1,000,000 faithful with 300 churches--the Roman hierarchy instituted a subtle campaign to Latinize its conduct. Feeling that a minority of married priests might cause envy among celibate Catholic priests, Pope Pius X in 1907 issued an apostolic letter enjoining celibacy upon all priests laboring in the U. S. In the same year he established the first U. S. Greek Catholic diocese, sent Bishop Stephen Soter Ortynski to fill it and enforce the order. So incensed were the Uniats--claiming that by the Treaty of Ungvar in 1646 their clergy had been granted the right to marry before ordination -- that Carpatho-Russian and Ukrainian members of the church snubbed the papal letter. It remained unenforced.

Last week in Pittsburgh this old battle was once more raging. Its centre was the person of the fat, gimlet-eyed, Carpathian-born bishop of the Carpatho-Russians, Rt. Rev. Basil Takach. Sent to the U. S. in 1924, Bishop Takach had won instant approval by ordaining married men to the priesthood. But in 1929 another apostolic letter was issued by the Vatican, this one forbidding bishops to appoint married priests to Greek Rite posts. Bishop Takach obeyed the order, but in Bridgeport, Conn., a priest dared not only oppose it but circularized Greek Catholic churches to stir up more opposition. This priest, a widower named Rev. Orestes Peter Chornock, was thereupon removed from his rich, comfortable Bridgeport parish, rusticated to a tiny church in Roebling, N. J.

Last week, Bishop Takach, sitting tight in his episcopal residence in smoky Munhall, Pa., had a full-fledged revolt on his hands. Father Chornock was named bishop of a new, dissident faction, to be called the Carpatho-Russian Greek Catholic Diocese of the Eastern Rite, U. S. A. Bishop-elect Chornock's diocese was born when 36 of Bishop Takach's priests petitioned him to appeal the second papal order. Father Chornock and five other clergy were excommunicated by the Vatican. By last week their faction had grown to include 40 parishes, drew 300 lay and clerical delegates to a convention in Pittsburgh.

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