The Carpatho-Rusyn Aftermath

The story past St. Alexis Toth’s death: the papal decrees Ea Semper (1907) and Cum Data Fuerit (1929) that reignited the celibacy conflict he had felt in Minneapolis; the second wave of Rusyn returns under Fr. Orestes Chornock; and the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese (Johnstown / ACROD), received under the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the late 1930s. This is aftermath — sequel to Toth’s movement, not his own act — and it is reported factually and without polemic.

Tradition: Carpatho-Rusyn / American Orthodox

Why There Was an Aftermath

The forces that produced Toth’s movement did not exhaust themselves in his lifetime. The underlying grievance — the Latin Church’s refusal to honor the Eastern married priesthood in America — was not resolved by 1909 but institutionalized, and then sharpened, by a series of Roman decrees over the following three decades. The result was a second wave of Rusyn returns to Orthodoxy in the 1930s, larger in some reckonings than the first, that produced a distinct Orthodox jurisdiction. This aftermath is treated here to complete the history and to place Toth accurately: he is the father of the first wave and the precedent for the second, but the second unfolded a generation after his death and under other leaders, and the collection is careful not to backdate it onto him.

Ea Semper (1907) and the First Greek Catholic Bishop

Rome’s first structural response to the losses Toth had opened was to give the American Greek Catholics a bishop of their own. In 1907 the decree Ea Semper appointed Bishop Soter Ortynsky as the first Greek Catholic bishop in North America (Society of Saint John Chrysostom, “The Eightieth Anniversary of Cum Data Fuerit,” ssjc.uk; Magocsi, Our People, 2005, ch. 2; the decree also cited in the Orthocath survey of the celibacy question, orthocath.wordpress.com). But Ea Semper came at a price the Rusyns felt as a betrayal of the very guarantees for which the Union existed: it carried provisions favoring clerical celibacy, signaling Rome’s intent to bring the American Greek Catholics toward the Latin discipline (ssjc.uk; orthocath.wordpress.com). Rather than stanching the exodus, the decree deepened the grievance that fed it.

Cum Data Fuerit (1929) and the Second Wave

The decisive blow came in 1929, when Rome issued Cum Data Fuerit, which forbade the ordination of married men to the priesthood in the Eastern Catholic Churches in the United States — codifying for America the Latin celibacy rule that the Rusyns had been resisting since Toth’s day (Society of Saint John Chrysostom, “The Eightieth Anniversary of Cum Data Fuerit,” ssjc.uk; orthocath.wordpress.com, “Can East & West Coexist With Married Priests?”). To the traditionally minded Rusyn clergy and laity this was the confirmation of everything Toth had argued: that the Union’s guarantee of a married Eastern priesthood was worthless in America, and that Rome would, in the end, Latinize them. As the Orthocath summary puts it, where Rome saw celibacy “as simply a small matter of discipline,” the pro-Orthodox Rusyns “saw it ultimately as a repudiation of their faith” (orthocath.wordpress.com).

The reaction produced a second mass movement into Orthodoxy in the 1930s — the direct heir of Toth’s first wave, and explicitly understood as such by its participants (Magocsi, Our People, ch. 2; ssjc.uk). Its leader was Fr. Orestes Chornock, a Greek Catholic priest who, like Toth before him, refused the terms imposed on his people.

The Johnstown Diocese (ACROD)

Under Chornock the second wave organized itself into a distinct church body. Resisting Cum Data Fuerit, the pro-Orthodox Rusyns formed what became the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Diocese — the “Johnstown” diocese, from its see in Johnstown, Pennsylvania — in the mid-to-late 1930s; Chornock was elected bishop by his fellow clergy and consecrated by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, placing the new diocese under Constantinople rather than under the Russian-descended jurisdiction that had received Toth (Magocsi, Our People, ch. 2; Society of Saint John Chrysostom, ssjc.uk; Wikipedia, “Stephen Varzaly,” as locator for the diocese’s formation).

[Disputed: the exact dates of the Johnstown diocese’s formation and Chornock’s consecration. Accounts variously give the diocese’s organization to 1936–1938 and Chornock’s episcopal consecration by the Ecumenical Patriarchate to 1938 (with 1937 also cited); the reception under Constantinople is agreed, the precise year variously reported (ssjc.uk; en.wikipedia.org, “Stephen Varzaly,” as locators). The collection places the formation and consecration in the late 1930s and notes the range rather than fixing a single year.]

This diocese — today the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese of North America (ACROD), under the Ecumenical Patriarchate — is the institutional monument of the second wave, and it is significant that ACROD itself venerates St. Alexis Toth as a forefather, publishing his life and honoring him as the precursor of the very return Chornock’s generation completed (ACROD, “St. Alexis Toth,” acrod.org). Toth, received under the Russian mission (the ancestor of the OCA), is thus honored across the jurisdictional line by the Constantinople-based ACROD as well — a shared father of the Carpatho-Rusyn return claimed by both of the Orthodox jurisdictions it produced.

Placing the Aftermath

Two cautions govern the report of this aftermath, in keeping with the collection’s method. First, chronology and agency: the celibacy decrees and the second wave came after Toth’s death in 1909 (the decrees of 1907 and 1929; the diocese of the late 1930s), and the second wave’s leader was Chornock, not Toth. The collection presents these as sequel and vindication of Toth’s argument, not as his own deeds; to fold the 1930s movement into Toth’s biography would be an anachronism the methodology forbids. Second, standpoint without polemic (METHODOLOGY §4.1): the decrees are stated as historical facts and their effect on the Rusyns reported plainly, but the Roman discipline of celibacy is described as a discipline sincerely held, and the Greek Catholics who remained — including those who accepted the decrees in obedience — are treated with the same dignity as those who left. The Eastern Catholic Church itself has, in the decades since, largely restored the ordination of married men in North America and laments the losses of this period; that later reconciliation-minded development is part of the honest picture (orthocath.wordpress.com, on the eventual softening; on the confessional standpoint, METHODOLOGY §4.1).

The aftermath thus closes the arc the collection has traced. The grievance Toth met in a Minneapolis parlor in 1889 was not personal or local but structural, and it worked itself out over half a century: a first wave under Toth, the hardening decrees of Rome, a second wave under Chornock, and two Orthodox jurisdictions — the OCA’s returned parishes and the Johnstown ACROD — that between them carry the Carpatho-Rusyn return into the present, both of them honoring Toth as its father.

See Also

References

  • Society of Saint John Chrysostom. “The Eightieth Anniversary of Cum Data Fuerit.” ssjc.uk (also orientale-lumen.blogspot.com) — for Ea Semper (1907), Bishop Soter Ortynsky, Cum Data Fuerit (1929), and Chornock.
  • “Can East & West Coexist With Married Priests?” and related posts. orthocath.wordpress.com — for the celibacy question and the Rusyn reaction.
  • Magocsi, Paul Robert. Our People: Carpatho-Rusyns and Their Descendants in North America. 4th rev. ed. Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2005.
  • “Stephen Varzaly.” Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org) — used as locator for the formation of the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese and Chornock’s consecration.
  • American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese. “St. Alexis Toth.” acrod.org — for ACROD’s veneration of Toth as forefather.