Religion and Identity in the Carpathians [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 87-107]

96
PAUL ROBERT MAGOCSI
Ironically, within the Soviet bloc, it was only in ostensibly anti-Slavic
Hungary-where the Diocese of Hajdudorog had long ago taken on a purely
Hungarian character-that Greek Catholicism survived as a legal church.31
However, despite their Communist governments and even strongly
pro-Stalinist orientation, neither Poland nor Czechoslovakia was the Soviet
Union. As a result, the relatively less rigid approach of Warsaw and Prague
to religious matters allowed for new movement on the Eastern Christian
front. In Poland, following the political changes in October 1957, a churchstate modus vivendi provided a "tolerated but not recognized" status to
the Greek Catholic rite within the Roman Catholic Church. This meant
that Lemko Rusyns and fellow Greek Catholic Ukrainians scattered throughout the western and northern parts of the country were permitted to have
services conducted at some fifty "pastoral points" by the approximately
fifty surviving Greek Catholic priests who were now designated bi-ritual
assistants in Roman Catholic parishes. In practice, Greek Catholic services
were held in Roman Catholic chapels provided the resident priest agreed.32
In effect, the hierarchy of the Polish Roman Catholic Church was mildly
tolerant of these activities, while the response among the lower echelons
of the Polish priesthood ranged from Christian solidarity with to fierce
opposition against their Greek Catholic brethren.
Also, beginning in 1957, some Lemkos were allowed to return to
their ancestral villages-provided they could arrange to convince Polish
families to sell them back their confiscated homesteads. By the mid-1960s,
about 3,000 had returned, and this process of resettlement in the Carpathian
homeland has continued so that today there are about 10,000 Lemko
Rusyns living once again on the northern slopes of the Carpathians.33 This
has meant that the Eastern Christian presence, which had been physically
removed by 1947, has now returned in the form of both a semi-legal Greek
Catholic and fully legal Orthodox community.
The numbers are albeit small, with the estimated 10,000 Lemko Rusyns
living in the Carpathians being divided more or less evenly between Orthodox, Greek Catholics, and non-believers. In response to this mini-revival,
the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church established (or reestablished)
in 1983 a new Eparchy of Przemysl and Nowy Sacz, specifically for the
Lemko Carpathian region. It is based in Sanok, has 33 parishes served
by 14 priests, and is headed by a bishop of Lemko Rusyn background,
Adam Dubec.34 In 1985, a symbolically major event took place in the
small Lemko Rusyn village of Zyndranowa, where the first Orthodox church
newly constructed in the region since before World War II was opened.
Two other Orthodox churches are under construction in Krynica and in
the town of Gorlice.
This activity among the Orthodox has caused concern within Polish
Roman Catholic circles and has forced a slight change in their traditionally
intolerant attitude toward Greek Catholics. When the first Greek Catholics