Every year more Carpatho-Rusyns leave Christianity and become irreligious. We can see this process happening rapidly within the youth of our community. Finding a group of twenty and thirty-year-olds that go to church more than twice a year is searching for a needle in a haystack. Many in our older generations do not try to reach out to these young people and bring them back into the fold. Even worse, some individuals see this as a positive trend! The abandonment of our forefathers’ way of life is a necessity in this new high-tech era. However, not everything should be left behind. 

Erosion of our Eastern Christian beliefs is the destruction of an important part of our identity as a people. The church and its practices have kept Carpatho-Rusyns together for a millennium. A moral code that a person can attempt to follow. An important indicator that set us apart from those who didn’t share our beliefs. Do you think we would have lasted until today if we had the same denomination of our rulers? If we converted fully to Roman Catholicism as the Hungarians wanted, how many of us today would believe we were Hungarians? A person only needs to look at Carpatho-Rusyns in America to find the answer.

My grandparents and many others traveled by sea to a new land in the west. A land of promise and plenty for those willing to work for it. This came at an extreme price. At the beginning, some communities opened up their own Ruthenian churches and lived in ethnic enclaves. Over time however many left for marriage or other reasons. These people’s descendants are now by and large lost to us forever. Most don’t even know the words Podkarpatska Rus or Carpatho-Rusyn, thinking of themselves as only Eastern European. Some even worse yet choose a Russian or Ukrainian culture.

This letter is not an attempt to excuse the faults of the Ruthenian Greek-Catholic Church or ACROD. Over the last century, they could have done much more towards the survival of our culture. In some cases, they were even complicit in the assimilation that took place for the majority of the 20th century. This should be acknowledged and sought to be corrected. But having something, even if flawed, is better than nothing. 

This is where tradition was passed down from generation to generation. A place one learned how to connect with God and their culture. This is where I learned these things. Without this space, it’s hard to believe rituals, stories, and traditions can be so easily learned through another way. Organizations have neither the spiritual nor traditional authority that a priest and church contain. Many lack the funding to even have their own building. How can we trust them to pass on needed cultural information?

We can change whatever we want about our culture. However one should be sure that what they change something to is better than what came before. If we make the wrong choice by not acting now, then our community will take generations to regain the knowledge and wisdom that it lost. Let us reconnect with our lost traditions and faith. It will be better than the alternative.