Fr. Petro Balog OP wrote the book ‘Dual Communion: The Project of Uniting the Greek Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches in Ukraine.’ The book is based on his dissertation, defended in 2019, which was first published in Polish and now in Ukrainian. The author focuses on churches in Ukraine, but the book also addresses a number of related issues concerning Orthodox-Catholic dialogue on the global level. In his review, Volodymyr Bureha analyses this book and supplements it with valuable comments on the prospects for rapprochement between traditional churches in Ukraine.
The book presents both the historical perspective of church communion and the development of this concept among the leaders of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church over the past decades. In particular, it concerns the status of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the peculiarities of understanding the primacy of the bishop of Rome in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and the idea of dual communion as a global ecumenical programme. The impetus for communion between Orthodox and Catholics is the actual recognition of the sacraments. In particular, this is the recognition of Orthodox sacraments by the Catholic Church, which has existed since the Second Vatican Council.
In his book, Fr. Petro Balog points to two fundamentally different visions of the ministry of the bishop of Rome in the Universal Church, which to a certain extent coexist within the Catholic Church. The first is traditional in Latin theology. It can be called the ‘jurisdictional’ or ‘monarchical’ model, according to which the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome extends to the entire Universal Church.
However, in the 20th century, the UGCC consistently sought to develop a different understanding of the ministry of the bishop of Rome, which can be called the ‘communion model.’ According to this view, the bishop of Rome has jurisdictional authority only over the Roman Church. This manifests his ministry as patriarch of the West. In relation to the rest of the Universal Church, the Pope is the Universal Bishop who ensures its unity.
The distinction between these models presents us with a choice: to consider the Roman Catholic Church in its relation to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as the Mother Church or the Sister Church? An important document for the consciousness of Ukrainian Greek Catholics was Lubomyr Husar’s Pastoral letter “One People of God in the Land on the Hills of Kyiv”. In this letter, the transition to the current model of relations between the UGCC and Rome is clearly linked to its obtaining the status of a patriarchate. The completion of the patriarchal structure will mean the final confirmation of the current communion model, in which the Roman Church and the UGCC will be perceived as sister churches. And it is this model, according to Lubomyr Husar, that should become the model for restoring unity between the Catholic Church and the Local Orthodox Churches in the future.
Volodymyr Bureha emphasises: in contemporary theological thought of the UGCC, the idea of obtaining patriarchal status, transitioning to a communion model of relations with Rome, establishing communion with Orthodox Churches at the local level in Ukraine, and ecumenical efforts to restore communion between the Churches of the East and West are closely intertwined. In this context, the reviewer touches a number of documents – the declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith “Dominus Iesus” (2000), the Chieti document of the official Orthodox-Catholic dialogue (2016) and the recent document “The Bishop of Rome” (2024). At the same time, the reaction of the Orthodox Churches to such initiatives on the part of the UGCC remains restrained.
