Posted by Olya on April 30, 2001 at 16:28:57:
In Reply to: Re: Pysanky posted by I am a Greek Catholic Byzantine on April 28, 2001 at 14:01:32:
The Austro-Hungarian Empire was one of the major occupying forces of Ukraine and Ukrainian territories. Most Greek Catholics in Slovakia today are Ukrainian and aware of their ethnic identity, but a good number of Greek Catholics of Slovakia are actually Slovakicized Ukrainians. They are descended from seminomadic Ukrainian herders who migrated to this territory in the late Middle Ages. Some preserved their Ukrainian identity while others were assimilated by the Slovaks. The Slovaks, per se, are actually Roman Catholic and Protestant, not Greek Catholic or Orthodox. The Byzantine Church in the United States was formed earlier in this century as a result of a split within the Ukrainian Catholic Church. This split came about because a segment of the church which was dominated by Hungarian and Hungarian-oriented clergy chose to split from the rest of the church. Finally, Ukrainians are actually among the most religious people in the Christian world today. But they are also very proud and patriotic due to the history of political domination, genocide, and oppression perpetrated by neighboring foreign powers.