Response to a letter of the seminarian V.O.

1st March 2007, Pidhirtsi (Ukraine)

An open letter to the Bishops of the Czech and Slovak Republic

Most Reverend Bishops of CR and SR,

we are motivated to write a letter to You in order to clarify a certain public proclamation concerning us which was written by one of the former members of the OSBM Order. We do not condemn him but because his public proclamation will obviously come to You soon, we are obliged to react to it. It was written on 16th February 2007 in Bratislava, it contains an introduction and four points. Especially the fourth point is formulated in such way that we have to open again concrete facts regarding the Focolare movement.

The catchphrases about God’s Judgement, God’s face, clean conscience, sincerity, death… used in the introduction by the author, seminarist V.O., testify to the fact that he is writing this letter to someone else than to those to whom he is addressing it and who know him. For those who know him in person know that behind strong words there is not the spirit of sincerity but the spirit of hypocrisy.

The seminarist V.O. writes in his letter: “I am afraid lest God should once mark us as hypocrites and pharisees when we call others to repentance (Hu?ko, Vlk, Koubetch, Chautur, Tondra and others) but we do not repent ourselves.”

Neither him nor anyone else of those to whom he addresses the letter and whom he challenges to repentance called the above-mentioned Church personalities to repentance. Therefore from his part this challenge is illogical.

The author, however, does not have on mind only the events in Prague in 2003 but above all the contents of the book “Four Words from Ukraine” and the letters written to the Holy Father, to the cardinals and bishops (www.community.org.ua), where the central idea is the problem of HCT, the incorrect interpretation of Nostra aetate, that is syncretism with pagan religions, as well as the Focolare movement which makes inseparable unity with these two poisonous spiritual streams.

The next key topic of our letters is pointing at the abuse of the Church authority towards the liquidation of true life in the Church. We pointed at the antichristian system inside the Church, which was built by Cardinal Sodano and Cardinal Casaroli who had usurped the supreme rule in the Church and from the major part they thus bear the responsibility for her hard crisis. We claim that towards the recovery of the Church it is necessary to introduce effective punishments for those who abuse the entrusted Church office, not excluding bishops and cardinals.

The seminarist V.O. acts as if he is one of us, though he is not at all, and he artificially takes on himself the responsibility for the events in Prague and for the letters we have written to the Holy Father and to cardinals, and he even expresses himself as if he were a co-author of our letters and he is calling not us, the authors, but those who have not written them, to repentance.

Let us proceed to the first point of the letter written by the seminarist V.O. where he writes: “A false prophecy of Fr. Eliáš… which he told in the morning after the prayer (erko). He said that he had a vision of Canaan in the Czech Republic and that he had heard a date when it would be fulfilled (25th March 2003).  The prophecy was not fulfilled… A false prophecy is a deadly sin (besides the fact that there is an influence of the evil spirit).”

Response: After each hour of the interior prayer (erko) there follows at least a 15-minute common reflection. None of us four could recall anymore what V.O. was stating. Why? Because almost every reflection is full of encouragement and inspiring views related above all to the Holy Scripture and to our personal life. Concrete visions of Canaan served us for encouragement and they did not bind anyone in his conscience.

However, only now, when our attention was publicly drawn to this fact, we realized an astonishing thing: God actually did answer our plain childlike faith. We were praying for Canaan and the Lord began to work, but in a different way than we had thought. “God will give what we are asking for or He will give something better or He will give it later.”

Instead of Canaan in CR only, God is opening Canaan in the whole Church. At that time such idea did not even cross our mind. In 2003 we did not even anticipate that within two years Card. J. Ratzinger would become the Pope, that Cardinal Sodano would be divested of the office of the Secretary of Vatican and that even through our letters and other seeming trifles the Lord would open the door to a spiritual awakening. However, it would not be possible to preach the truth in public if by God’s Providence we had not been put in the situation and category of those most powerless and disgraced priests and religious who were even condemned to the dismissal from the Order for artificially invented guilts. Now we thank God that He permitted that L. Hu?ko was forwarded to the post of bishop because along with us also he became an implement to tear off the false mask of Focolare. Chiara L. has already pronounced triumphally: “One day the Church will wake up and everything around and inside will be focolarini.”

Concerning the field of the first commandment – the sin of occultism – and also concerning the historic-critical theology (HCT), we have been fighting against these two spiritual ulcers for a quarter of century. Without pointing at the three erratic blocks (HCT, false respect for foreign religions connected with occultism, and false spiritual stream of the Focolare movement) it would not be possible to start building the spiritual Canaan – the renewal of the Church.

And if we deal with the issue of prophecy in in general, we can see that biblical prophecies were many times accomplished only in the spiritual sphere. For example when the Archangel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary: “… The Lord God will give Him (Jesus) the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever…” Physically He did not sit on the throne; on the contrary, He was killed. Similarly, the prophecy of Jonah concerning Nineveh was not fulfilled because of the changed conditions – repentance of people.

Let us proceed to the second point: The author, though he was not initiated into the interior matters, concludes that the Ukrainians in Prague by no means intended to have their own exarchate and their own bishop but that all was the guilt of Basilians, and then he uses the following terms against us: “deceit”, “rebellion”, “slander”, “unrepented sin”, “God’s Judgement”.

We propose that at the challenge of the seminarist V.O. we should be committed to a Church trial, and that the whole case should be complexly treated there. We are not afraid of this trial; however, unfortunately, the other side is afraid, i.e. Bishop L. Hu?ko, Card. M. Vlk and the whole Focolare movement as well as Card. A. Sodano. We can prove in a simple way that we committed no offence either against God or against the Church. That is also why we thereby turn in humility to the Holy Father and ask him to appoint a just (impartial) tribunal which would examine not only all our deeds and words concerning the issue of the appointment of L. Hu?ko by Card. A. Sodano and Card. M. Vlk to the post of Bishop of the Greek-Catholic Church in CR, but also that the Holy Father submit for investigation the whole backstage and the way of appointment of L. Hu?ko, his past (lustration in StB /State Security Committee/ records), intrigues of Card. M. Vlk and of Focolarines and above all the whole antipapal and anti-Church policy of Card. A. Sodano with which the case of L. Hu?ko is integrally connected.

The third point of the letter is a commentary on a newspaper item (May 2003) published in the daily “Metro”. The seminarist V.O. claims that there was a great deceit committed because the author signed only put his signature to the mentioned item, identified himself with it but had not elaborated it himself.

Response: For example bishops and the Holy Father, too, are usually given drafts and even whole articles elaborated by people who are initiated into a particular issue and the Holy Father as well as bishops take upon themselves full responsibility by their subscription. 

The police which inquired into an alleged charge of a slander of L. Hu?ko officially confirmed that the article did not contain anything that would not be publicly known – namely that in CR there was such practice that a title of CSc. (Candidate of sciences) could not be granted to anyone who at the same time was not a member of KS? (the Communist party) or a collaborator of KS? or StB (KGB), and thus the police confirmed that the author of the article did not commit any criminal offence which Bishop L. Hu?ko demanded of them to uphold.

The fourth point of the letter is related to the issue of an attempt at state registration of the Ukrainian Church. Here one can clearly see how Focolare by help of personal contacts and various pressures, if need be even by help of bribes, manages to manipulate the state officials. What aim did Card. A. Sodano and Card. M. Vlk pursue by appointing a high official of Focolare as a bishop of the Greek-Catholic Church? It was two things: 1) Not to permit that in CR there could exist any opposition that would not be under the control of Focolare. In the case of Ukrainians the matter was a different Church than the Roman-Catholic one and the Ukrainians had their rights and titles to their Ukrainian Church and to their bishop; however, Card. M. Vlk did not care about it. He solved it on a higher level – with Cardinal A. Sodano. 2) The matter was a penetration of Focolare into the hierarchical structures of the Eastern Catholic Churches! The problem was the lustration of L. Hu?ko which was demanded by the Ukrainians in several-day-long successive protests in front of the Nunciature in Prague. However, Card. M. Vlk and Card. A. Sodano boycotted this problem by silence. Finally L. Hu?ko was installed. Since people demonstrated in silence even on the day of the consecration in the Church of St. Climent, the Focolarines “put things in order”. They broke the banners of several people and even children against their heads and in anticipation they had called an anti-terroristic police unit. When the police arrived and found out that there were only silent believers who were praying the Rosary and standing still with banners, to the shame of the Focolarines they left. For safety’s sake the Focolarines did not permit the television nor anyone else to shoot in the cathedral. None of the Ukrainians had the intention to thwart the consecration of L. Hu?ko. They only wanted to point at their human and religious rights. According to the Czech laws every higher state official must go through lustration, whether in the past he was not a confident of StB. L. Hu?ko and Card. M. Vlk along with whole Focolare were silent upon this and they saw to it that the massmedia were silent, too, as Cardinal M. Vlk confessed later. Only after three years L. Hu?ko “lustrated” himself by pronouncing that he had never been in any contact with the StB employees nor had he ever spoken with them.

The force of the Latin Church on Ukrainians who had no recourse in a foreign country, and moreover the public threatening by L. Hu?ko that he would let them be deported from CR, calling them a dark mass, was a big affront to poor believers who amidst the pressures of the world in a foreign country were seeking firm ground, a piece of home in their Church. A handful of intellectual Ukrainians, who had been living in CR even before the working migration came here after the fall of Communism in 1990, instituted an action committee headed by Dr. M.L. The aim was to stand up against the injustice which was insensibly represented by the Focolarines. Such manipulation and sin against our Eastern Church is called by a censorious term “latinization”. In Ukraine it was performed mostly by Poles and the reaction to it was that priests and believers were turning in protest to the Orthodox Church and many eventually completely defected into the schism. Nonetheless, the Focolarines did not want to learn from the history, they tenaciously pursued their aim even over corpses, yet still shielded by a catchphrase about love. The group of Ukrainians constituting the committee came to learn about the Czech laws related to various religious communities. The condition of the establishment of a religious community was 300 members and the statutes that must not have in their basis any principles supporting terrorism or manipulation of human mind.

The Ukrainians needed somehow to draw the attention of Rome to their rights, but through the concrete wall of Card. Vlk, and then in addition even of Exarch L. Hu?ko, it was not possible. Claiming their right and proceeding in compliance with the ecclesiastical bon ton which was controlled by this hierarchical group led to no result, so they decided to circumvent this Church machinery, to found their Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church before the state and then to demand of Rome to accredit this community ecclesiastically. They were convinced that they would not gain their right in any other way. The problem was that the majority of the Ukrainians were not citizens of CR, which was a condition of the registration. When there were about 70 signatures wanting, various friends of the Ukrainians, believing as well as unbelieving, resolved that they would support them by becoming members of this religious community and that after the community is established some of them would remain and others would return to the Church where they were registered. They thus wanted to help the Ukrainians to resist the Focolare dictatorship and monopoly of power. When the statutes and all formalities were ready, something unexpected happened: the Focolare leadership joined with the leadership of the state body which was to grant legal accreditation to this community according to the laws of the Czech Republic. The Czech state is tolerant and seemingly it has nothing to do with clericalism. Nevertheless, the Focolarines managed to influence the employee of the Ministry of Culture Mrs. RNDr. ?epová in such a way that she was even ready to go against the Czech laws. First she was inventing all kinds of tactics how to liquidate the whole thing and then she started to fight against an alleged schism by means of psychological manipulation. To each claimant whom she considered a citizen of the Czech Republic she wrote a missionary letter so that an unconscious Catholic should become conscious that faith cannot be changed. This religious propaganda performed by a person who considers herself an atheist was a wonder of the “Focolare mission”. It is a pity that the state official concerned did not take all Roman-Catholic registers in CR and did not write similar letters to those who even do not know that they are Catholics, so that they could wake up and remain faithful to the Catholic Church. It would be wonderful!

People who of their own free will made an application for the state registration were psychologically manipulated and intimidated by her letters to take back their voluntary request for the membership. Every ordinary man when receiving such a threatening letter from the ministry gets frightened that he is committing some crime for which he will be faced with a trial and therefore he rather recedes in good time. It is well known that in the atheistic CR it is a matter of principle with the state bodies that they do not comply with the demands of the Church. What a love and unity, obviously even in material aspect, the Focolarines are able to display when their interests are at stake. A state body which under normal circumstances is indifferent, as a rule reacting negatively, suddenly launched into an abnormal and, moreover, a personal activity that for the good of the Church it even broke the Czech laws, risking thereby the loss of employment at the ministry and impending punishments, in order to achieve the fulfilment of the aim of the Focolarines and thus to discourage the needed number of members so that the community would not be founded. The poor Ukrainians in CR thereby lost the last chance of defending their human and religious rights.

This atheist woman not only cared for the good of the Catholic Church but she also prevented a possible danger of an alleged schism. Then she referred to the Church hierarchy which had inspired her to it. The Ukrainians demanded an organization independent of the Czech Focolare hierarchy. According to international as well as religious laws every man is allowed to transfer to a schism or to whatever Church and the state must not obstruct him. The Czech Republic is not ruled by the Moslem laws of jihad, and now the Czech state all at once makes an exception seeing to it that these Ukrainians not fall into an alleged schism, in spite of the fact that none of the Ukrainians had such an intention. What an astonishing care of the Catholic sheep by an atheist who thereby trespasses human and religious liberty as well as the Czech laws. At that time Archbishop J. Graubner (a Focolarine) wrote a letter. Quotation: “We have confidential information that there is a danger of schism.” This statement on “confidential information” reveals the connection of Archbishop J. Graubner and of the Focolare leadership with the state bodies with an aim to preserve a governmental monopoly of Focolare even over the Byzantine Church! We did not agree with the proceeding of the Focolare leadership towards the Byzantine Church – to make her practically its vassal and deprive her of the liberty and the right to her identity. This is a crime against the canon law and against the religious minority which, on the contrary, even in accordance with the Second Vatican Council is to be supported, and not abused and gradually assimilated by the Roman Catholics. When we stood up for the disappointed Ukrainians by writing letters and appealing to various high state bodies, everything was turning back to Mrs. ?epová and the response was still the same catchphrases. This person was well aware of the fact that Ukrainians must not succeed at any cost, since this was the only way how to gain right for a religious minority in the Church. For the Focolarines who have the spirit of the world it is no problem to make unity with unbelieving people, and even with explicit enemies of the Church.

Only a few examples of how Focolare pushes through their people to Church as well as state bodies, and that to the key posts.

In CR there is a dictatorship of the Focolare movement in the whole Catholic Church and nowadays even in the Byzantine one! What about Slovakia? There is one Focolare bishop, but he killed a man in a car accident, so he has a certain cross. In the leadership of KBS (Conference of the Bishops of Slovakia) the secretary is a married Greek-Catholic priest at the age of something over 30 and at the same time there are two women employees from the Focolare movement. At the Ministry of the Interior there was an establishment post for a priest in spiritual ministry. The KBS secretary and Focolare saw to it that this post was given to a layman! The Focolarine Mr. Ch., father-in-law of the mentioned KBS secretary, shortly after his entering the job forwarded here two more Focolarines. Mr. Ch. put on a uniform, in spite of the fact that he had not gone through the military service, and receives a salary of 50.000 Sk a month. An average salary in Slovakia is 10-12.000 Sk. The matter here is not money but the influence which this movement has here, and such influence is not only at this ministry. These machinations of Focolare will in the end bring shame upon the bleeding Church which is being interiorly liquidated by this movement! If Focolarines do not get into power they pursue the following aim – to forward their people into power. And as soon as they come into power in the Church, e.g. L. Hu?ko in CR, then even counter to canon laws and counter to the orders of the Nuncio they enforce their interests. Then there follows a merciless liquidation of those who have the Spirit of God and do not have the spirit of Foco – the spirit of the world. Focolarines were not afraid because they were backed by Card. A. Sodano. They appeared in the name of the Holy Father and noone put up any resistance to them, they liquidated all in the bud either psychologically or by abusing the Church power. A picture of it is especially the Czech Republic. In Slovakia they have not yet gained control over the whole area. Provided that there are people of God appointed to the key posts here, then there may come a true reform of the Church which consists above all in the change of the spirit. However, against such internal revival the spirit of Focolare will stand up harshly.

Conclusion:

By the call for “repentance” from the seminarist V.O. we were forced to deal with the issue of Ukrainians and Focolare again. We ask that the whole affair connected with the consecration of L. Hu?ko and with the question of injury done to Ukrainians be solved by the Church court, and thereby also our alleged guilt.

We brought a legal action Libellus Litis to the Holy Father as against Exarch L. Hu?ko so against Card. M. Vlk (sheltering of an apostate Prof. T. Halík). We uphold this charge, since these are matters which are related to the faith and morals. Without a radical intervention in the spiritual system which has been built by Focolare in the Church in CR, there cannot come a true spiritual awakening.

In Christ,

Fr. Metod?j R. Špi?ík ThD. OSBM

(the former superior of the Delegature of St. Procopius)

Fr. Eliáš A. Dohnal ThD. OSBM

Fr. Cyril J. Špi?ík ThD. Ing. OSBM

Fr. Markian V. Hitiuk ThLic. OSBM

Copies to:

-     Apostolic Nuncio in CR and SR

-     Card. Tarcisio Bertone, State Secretary of Vatican

-     Cardinals and Bishops of the Catholic Church

Address: Monastery OSBM, 80660 Pidhirtsi, Brody district, Lviv region, Ukraine

www.community.org.ua