Ekaterinoslav Roman Catholic parish before the challenges of religious law in the Russian Empire (the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries)

Abstract

In the Russian Empire, where the Orthodox Church was dominant, the RCC was oppressed. It was manifested both at the legislative level (until 1905) and in the creation of certain barriers to the construction of the church and the full functioning of the parish, as it was in Ekaterinoslav.

Catholic discrimination on the part of the authorities made some of them turn to Orthodoxy. The number of such transitions was not significant, especially against the backdrop of an increase in the total number of Roman Catholics in the city, which was largely due to immigrants from the western regions of empire, who traveled to Katerynoslav province in a search of work.

The analysis of data which was presented in the journal «Ekaterinoslav’s eparchial newsletters» on the transitions of representatives of different denominations and religions into Orthodoxy, allowed to outline three periods for the specified process for Catholics: I - 1888 - 1894; II - 1895 - 1900; III - 1905 - 1916. The most «productive» for the Orthodox Church of Ekaterinoslav was period from 1895 to 1900, its maximum - 31 transition to the ROC. It happened against the backdrop of an increase in the total number of Catholics in the province. Probably, in conditions of discrimination against Catholics of religious legislation, people with an uncompressed national consciousness (Catholicism for the Poles - part of national consciousness) in the nonOrthodox environment was more convenient to exist as an Orthodox one. During this period, the activation of the activities of Orthodox missionaries was also recorded, which could also produce certain results.

The indication of the period of 1905-1916 is not only the conversion of Catholics into Orthodoxy, the number of which has decreased, but also the transitions (or returns) of representatives of other religions to the RCC, which took place after the democratization of the religious law of 1905. To study this process allowed the corresponding entries in the books of registration of civil status acts of birth that were held in the Roman Catholic church and are now stored in the State Archives of the Dnipropetrovsk region. This process was not massive (maximum - 13 for incomplete 1905).

Most of those who decide to become Catholics are Orthodox young people aged 20 to 30, children and adolescents (sometimes returning to Catholicism by whole families). The process of the transition from Orthodoxy to the womb of the Roman Catholic Church lasted several months, without providing for different approaches for representatives of different classes.

The vast majority of Poles in Ekaterinoslav, even under pressure from the authorities, kept their religious and national identity. Conversions of Roman Catholics in Orthodoxy, and then in the opposite direction were not mass.