St. Alexis Toth of Wilkes-Barre

Today marks the death of Alexis Toth, a former Eastern Rite priest who is venerated as a saint in the Orthodox Church. Pope John Paul II has compared the Latin and Eastern Rites of the Church to the lungs of the human body, For the Church to breathe, it needs both lungs. The late nineteenth century saw the arrival of the first Eastern Rite Catholics in the United States. Today there are about 550,000. The two most numerous group are (and have been) the Ukrainians and the Ruthenians, who are known as Byzantine Rite Catholics.

By World War I, some 500,000 Ukrainians had emigrated to America. Their first parish was started in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, in 1884. The Ruthenians were the first group to come in large numbers, the majority settled on the east coast, especially in Pennsylvania. In 1907, the first Byzantine Rite Bishop was appointed in the United States, a Basilian monk named Soter Stephen Ortynsky. But the Ruthenians didn’t like him because he was of Ukrainian descent. (In 1924, they go their own bishop.)

Sometimes these Catholics encountered more prejudice from their Catholics than they did from non-Catholics. In 1889, Alexis Toth was a Ukrainian priest assigned to Minneapolis. His meeting with Archbishop John Ireland is worth recording at full length:

I appeared before Bishop Ireland December 19, 1889, kissed his hand according to custom and presented my credentials, failing, however, to kneel before him, which, as I learned later, was my chief mistake. I remember that no sooner did he read that I was a a ‘Greek Catholic,’ his hands began to shake. It took him fifteen minuted to read to the end after which he asked abruptly—we conversed in Latin: ‘Have you a wife?’ ‘No.’ ‘But you had one?’ ‘Yes, I am a widower.’ At this he threw the paper on the table and loudly proclaimed: ‘I have already written to Rome protesting against this kind of priests being sent to me!’ ‘What kind do you mean?’ ‘Your kind.’ ‘I am a Catholic priest of the Greek Rite. I am a Uniate and was ordained by a regular Catholic Bishop.’ ‘I do not consider that either you or this Bishop of yours are Catholic; besides, I do not need any Greek Catholic priests here; a Polish priest in Minneapolis is quite sufficient; the Greeks can also have him for their priest.’ ‘But he belongs to the Latin Rite; besides, our people do not understand him and will hardly go to him; that was the reason they instituted a church of their own.’ ‘They had no permission from me and I shall grant you no jurisdiction to work here.’ Deeply hurt by the fanaticism of this representative of papal Rome, I replied sharply: ‘In that case, I know the rights of my church, I know the basis on which this Union was established and shall act accordingly.’ The Archbishop lost his temper. I lost mine just as much. One word brought another, the thing had gone so far that our conversation is not worth putting on record.