GREEK CATHOLICS IN AMERICA 199 



powers and authority their bishop shall ultimately have. Where 

 there is an evident and actual need for it the Holy See has 

 always granted the erection of Oriental dioceses, but where a 

 minority of a population seems bound to become assimilated 

 with, and eventually absorbed into, the surrounding population, 

 the case may be entirely otherwise. The newly-appointed 

 bishop has had success in establishing churches and parochial 

 schools and in inducing his Ruthenian flock to become Ameri- 

 can citizens and identify themselves with American Hfe while 

 not abandoning their faith and their Eastern Rite. He aims 

 to establish English-Ruthenian schools in each Greek parish 

 and to open a Ruthenian-American seminary at Philadelphia 

 for the education of American-born Ruthenians as priests of 

 the Greek Rite. There is already one American-Ruthenian 

 priest, lately ordained. In purely theological matters they will 

 be educated as in Latin seminaries, if not actually sent there 

 for lectures, but in the Oriental church rites, discipline, liturgi- 

 cal language, music and customs the proposed seminary will 

 fill a place for the Ruthenians which our present diocesan semi- 

 naries do not fill. The number of church or parochial schools 

 of the Ruthenians is about fifty, where instruction in English, 

 Ruthenian, church catechism and the elements of a general 

 education is given. No organized Sunday-school system has 

 as yet been established amongst them, nor are there any nuns 

 or religious engaged in teaching in the United States. 



In order to understand somewhat clearly the situation of the 

 Ruthenians in America, account must be taken of their national 

 home politics, which they bring with them and fight out often 

 quite bitterly in this country. As already said, they are from 

 the northern and southern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains. 

 The northern Ruthenians derisively call their southern breth- 

 ren "Hungarians" (Madyari), while the latter return the com- 

 pliment by calling the former "Poles" (Poliaki). The point 

 of this lies in the fact that each of the nationalities named is 

 cordially detested by the Ruthenians on either side. But these 

 are merely surface divisions between the two bodies of the 

 same race. Their actual factional differences are much deeper. 

 There may be said to be, broadly speaking, three Ruthenian 

 parties or factions in the United States : ( i ) The Mosco- 

 philes, or Moskalophiles (Moskal is the Little Russian word 

 for a Great Russian), who aim at an imitation, if not an actual 



