Redemption and Ritual: The Eastern-Rite Redemptorists of North America, 1906–2006 (review)

Reviewed by: Redemption and Ritual: The Eastern-Rite Redemptorists of North America, 1906–2006 Peter Galadza Redemption and Ritual: The Eastern-Rite Redemptorists of North America, 1906–2006. By Paul Laverdure. (Yorkton, Canada: Redeemer’s Voice Press. 2007. Pp. xviii, 421. $19.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-978-19442-0.) This is a must read for anyone interested in Eastern Catholicism and the Ukrainian Catholic Church in particular. It is also indispensable as a micro-history of a unique North American religious community. Paul Laverdure, who holds advanced degrees in religious studies and history and is a longtime archivist, has produced a meticulously researched study based on materials written in a dozen languages and scattered in repositories throughout the Western world. The Eastern-Rite (more specifically, Byzantine-Rite) Redemptorists evolved from the pastoral solicitude of a Belgian Redemptorist, Achiel Delaere, who came to Western Canada in 1899 and soon realized that many of the Catholics in his prairie parishes were Greco-Catholics (usually called “Greek Catholics”). Motivated also by a sense of “white man’s burden,” Delaere soon learned [End Page 182] Ukrainian and in 1906 received permission to celebrate in the Byzantine Rite. Several factors combined to impede his efforts (and those of his Belgian confrères, who constituted the majority of the community until the 1930s, when men of Ukrainian background began outnumbering the Belgians). To begin with, the fact that Roman Catholic authorities prevented married Greco-Catholic clergy from Eastern Europe from following their faithful to the New World—and 95 percent of Ukrainian priests were married—created resentment among the immigrants who could not understand why they had to be served by Belgians who had only a rudimentary knowledge of their rite and often spoke poor Ukrainian. Conversely, as the archival materials demonstrate—and the faithful no doubt sensed—these Belgians considered the Byzantine Rite a necessary evil to be tolerated until the Ukrainians could be assimilated to the Roman Rite. This spawned a cycle of mutual resentment: the Belgians were offended by the ingratitude of many Ukrainians, and the Ukrainians were angered by the Belgians’ disdain for their own clergy. In regard to contempt for married priests, the Belgian Redemptorists were just as obsessive as the Vatican or other Roman Catholic authorities. This point relates to one of the few areas where Laverdure could have nuanced his presentation. What Laverdure describes as a Ukrainian nationalist rejection of non-Ukrainian clergy was actually less a matter of nationalism and more a matter of attachment to distinctive religious traditions. The immigrant prairie farmers simply wanted clergy who knew and loved their liturgy, understood their mentality, and spoke their language. To be sure, nationalism fueled the creation in 1916 of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada, largely composed of disaffected Greco-Catholics. Between the 1960s and 1980s, it prevented individual Redemptorists from embracing a more universalist agenda as well as English in worship. However, in its “pure” form, nationalism did not permeate North American Ukrainian Catholicism until the post-World War II takeover of Church life by political émigrés, who managed to co-opt the Church as a surrogate for lost statehood. Laverdure reveals the tensions between the Redemptorists and the first Ukrainian (Ruthenian) Catholic bishop of Canada, Nykyta Budka (appointed in 1912), as well as the conflicts that nearly led to a disbandment of the Eastern-Rite Redemptorist mission in the mid-1920s. In the late 1920s, the mission was transferred from Belgian to English Canadian control, and the latter proved to be almost brutal in their demands for liturgical and linguistic assimilation. Rescue came in 1931 when the mission was placed under the Ruthenian Vice Province of Lviv (Polish Ukraine). The creation of the Lviv Vice Province is a fascinating example of a missionary need—in western Canada—spawning a vibrant community in a Church’s indigenous territory. The Redemptorists of Ukraine became a powerful force for spiritual renewal and bolstered the Church’s ability to survive in the underground during the Soviet era (1944–89). [End Page 183] During this same period, in the west the Yorkton Province of Eastern Redemptorists (elevated from vice-provincial status in 1961) shared the fate of many religious...

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