This paper explores some forms of interaction between the Catholic and Orthodox churches in different contexts. Some of these forms are helpful, but not always efficient, and some are not helpful. Theological dialogues belong to the former category of interactions: they are helpful, but not efficient. Alliances on an ideological basis, for instance on the basis of "traditional values," are unhelpful, because they polarise the churches internally. This article instead proposes a collaboration in the public domain as an alternative way of rapprochement between the two churches. The Ukrainian Maidan (the revolution of 2014) exemplifies a co-working space, which proved to be efficient for restoring trust between Orthodox and Greek Catholics.
During the winter of 2013–2014, hundreds of thousands protested in Kyiv against the regime of Viktor Yanukovych. As a result of the clashes with police, over one hundred civil protesters lost their lives, and hundreds were wounded by the troops loyal to the president, who eventually had to run away from Ukraine. Those events, which have been branded as “the revolution of dignity,” are unthinkable without the presence of the churches at the Maidan—the central square of the Ukrainian capital. Any picture of the Maidan missing the churches would be incomplete and incorrect. The Maidan was not only a political and social event, but also a religious phenomenon. It explained itself in religious terms and articulated its demands through religious symbols. More importantly and less obviously, it created a new matrix of relationship between the churches and society in Ukraine. This article explores some aspects of the new matrix. The role of the Ukrainian churches in creating a new model of their relationship with the public square, which was shaped by the Maidan, is rather passive. Most churches failed to fit religious expectations of the Maidan. Reactions of some of them are still inadequate to the social awakening of the Ukrainian people: instead of embracing the changes that the Maidan brought to Ukrainian society, they closed themselves in self-imposed ghettos, and preserved in those ghettos the pre-Maidan ethos. The churches received and still receive the Maidan and its outcomes differently. Their differentiation in this regard widens the existing gap between them. New strategies of rapprochement of the churches with the Ukrainian public square and between each other should be elaborated. This article concludes with suggestions for such new strategies.
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