Victor J. Pospishil

Archimandrite Monsignor Victor J. Pospishil (1915 – 2006) was a Ukrainian Catholic priest and a leading scholar on canon law and the Eastern Catholic churches.

Biography

He was born 4 February 1915 in Vienna, Austria, then capital of Austria-Hungary. Raised Eastern Orthodox, he later joined the Catholic Church of his mother. A condensed version of his book was published as an essay in Diakonia, the journal of the John XXIII Center for Eastern Christian Studies at Fordham University, and attracted the attention of the New York Times. His ideas also circulated through Morris West and Robert Francis's 1970 book Scandal in the Assembly, which Time noted "appears to owe a considerable debt" to Pospishil's 1967 book.

Though the controversial conclusions of Divorce and Remarriage attracted attention, the book also received criticism. R. L. McEwen wrote a few years later in the journal Quis Custodiet?, "The monsignor's scholarship was so subjective, to use no less polite a word, and the supporting conclusion he drew from the contemporary matrimonial scene so blunt '...the only practical remedy ... is the acceptance of divorce by the Church' that the book had a deservedly faint reception" [ellipses in the original]. Responding to David Atkinson's To Have and to Hold, which also relied on Pospishil, Gordon Wenham dismissed Divorce and Remarriage as "a light-weight work of special pleading." Wenham wrote that "It was answered with great scholarly fairness and erudition by in L'Eglise primitive face au divorce.

From 1966 to 1976 he served on the religious studies faculty of Manhattan College.

Pospishil advised Ukrainian Greek Catholic bishops on canon law both in the United States and elsewhere. He argued extensively and ultimately successfully for the right of the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to convene his bishops from throughout the world as a synod, reducing the importance of the concept of canonical territory.

In 1976 was named an Archimandrite with use of episcopal insignia by Cardinal Josyf Slipyj.

A resident of Matawan, New Jersey, he died 16 February 2006 at Raritan Bay Medical Center in Old Bridge Township, New Jersey and is buried in St. Gertrude Cemetery in Colonia, New Jersey. Code of Oriental Canon Law, the Law on Persons: Rites, Persons in General, Clergy and Hierarchy, Monks, Religious, Laity, (Ford City, Pennsylvania: St. Mary's Ukrainian Catholic Church, 1960) Code of Oriental Canon Law, the Law on Marriage: Interritual Marriage Law Problems, (Chicago, Illinois: Universe Editions, 1962) Ford City, Pennsylvania 1887-1962: The First Seventy-Five Years of Our Town, editor, (Ford City, Pennsylvania: The Ford City Public Library, 1962) Orientalium Ecclesiarum: The Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches of the II Council of the Vatican, (Bronx, New York: Fordham University, 1965) Divorce and Remarriage: Towards a New Catholic Teaching, (New York, New York: Herder and Herder, 1967) Published in Italian as Divorzio e nuovo matrimonio : contributo a un rinnovamento teologico (Milan: Bompiani, 1968), trans. by Massimiliano Calindri The Quest for the Ukrainian Catholic Patriarchate, co-author with Hryhor M. Luznycky, (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Ukrainian Publications, 1971) Ex Occidente Lex, (Carteret, New Jersey: St. Mary's Religious Action Fund, 1979) The New Latin Code of Canon Law and Eastern Catholics, co-author with John D. Faris, (Brooklyn, New York: Diocese of St. Maron, 1984) Eastern Catholic Marriage Law, (Brooklyn, New York: Saint Maron Publications, 1991) Eastern Catholic Church Law, (Brooklyn, New York: Saint Maron Publications, 1993) Eastern Catholic Church Law, (Brooklyn, New York: Saint Maron Publications, 2nd ed., 1996)