In Ukraine, a Catholic university offers a way forward for a tired Western Church

[didymus]

The Telegraph:

In Ukraine, a Catholic university offers a way forward for a tired Western Church

You probably haven’t heard of the Ukrainian Catholic University - but I suspect that is going to change. For this wonderful institution offers a philosophy of teaching in radical contrast to the moribund model of Catholic further education found in this country and much of the West.

As Fr Boris Gudziak, Rector of UCU, told me when I interviewed him recently: “We recognise that the handicapped have gifts to bring us. Our university is a place where we drop facades, the images of ourselves that the world wants us to construct, and strive towards a powerful sacrificial love.”

The website of UCU will tell you what Fr Gudziak means when he talks about a “holistic” education - and it couldn’t be further from the wet nonsense dressed up as Catholicism in English colleges where the chapel is given over to a celebration of Mohammed’s birthday. That outrage happened at Newman University College, Birmingham; but if you want a glimpse of how Cardinal Newman’s “idea of a university” might have translated into 21st-century terms, then you should look to Lviv, not Birmingham.

Actually, you should do more than look to UCU: you should support it financially, because you can be confident that every penny will be spent wisely, not on livesimply propaganda or other exercises in social engineering embraced by the Catholic Education Service.

You might say: why can’t you sing the praises of the UCU without your ritual abuse of England’s Catholic trendies? The situation of the Church in this country and Ukraine is very different.

True. But the UCU’s ethos is Catholic, not Ukrainian, whereas the ethos of the UK’s Catholic institutions is heavily influenced by public-sector dogma and can only really be described as Catholic-lite.

Incidentally, why don’t we have a Catholic university? Perhaps we should ask Fr Gudziak how to start one.

 

[KyivAndrew]

This is absolutely fantastic news that this university is growing in prestige. To think that just 25 years ago this Church (Ukrainian Catholic) was illegal in Ukraine thanks to Moscow and here we are with this particular university probably among the top 2 in Ukraine when it comes to high standards of education (the other I believe is the Kyivan Mohyla Academy).

In 1946, the entire hierarchy of this Church was tortured and killed mercilessly by the atheistic Soviet Regime (apart from the future Cardinal Josyp Slipyj who was sent to the Gulag), and now perhaps their souls can find further consolation to find the fruits of their work finding new life. Wonderful! God Bless.