Primary Sources

This section contains nine primary source documents that focus on and highlight the struggles and conflicts the Carpatho-Rusyn people faced in establishing and practicing their Greek Catholic faith, after their arrival in the United States. The Greek Catholic faith was central to the identity of the Carpatho-Rusyn people; therefore, the story of the Greek Catholic Church in the United States is also the story of the Carpatho-Rusyn people in the United States.

The nine primary source documents presented here were obtained from Father John Slivka's 1978 book Historical Mirror: Sources of the Rusin and Hungarian Greek Rite Catholics in the United States of America 1884-1963. Father Slivka's book is a complication of hundreds of documents about the Greek Catholic Church in the United States from its initial establishment in 1884 through the 1960s. The book can be found fully digitized on the Internet Archive at: https://archive.org/details/HistoricalMirrorGreekRiteCatholics1884-1963.

Some of the nine documents include the full text of the original document, as printed in Father Slivka's book. Other documents are only sections of larger documents. Many of the documents in the book were originally written in the Rusyn language and are reproduced in the book as rough English language translations. The resources page includes the page numbers where the documents can be found in the digitized book on the Internet Archive for anyone to reference the complete documents.

These nine primary sources documents included in this section, date from 1890 to 1913 and consist of petitions, pamphlets, letters, and newspaper articles that detail the conflict between the Greek Catholic Carpatho-Rusyns and the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. The Carpatho-Rusyns wanted to be able to practice their Greek Catholic faith the way they had for centuries in the villages in their European homeland. The leadership of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States saw the Carpatho-Rusyns as a strange people who claimed to be Catholic but had religious practices closer to those of the Orthodox church. Since this strange group were Catholics, the Roman Catholic Church leaders felt that they had authority over the Carpatho-Rusyns and the practice of their religion. As these nine documents demonstrate, this conflict began with the arrival of the Carpatho-Rusyns in the 1880s and continued into the early years of the twentieth century.

Each document is presented on a separate page that can be accessed from the dropdown menu on the side of the Primary Sources tab. On each document page, the top of the page features a section that provides a brief historical background of the document and what the document is about. Under the historical background is the text of the primary source document itself. The documents are arranged in chronological order, the way that they were arranged in Father Slivka's book, with one exception. Document #1 is the earliest document dating to 1890 and Document #9 is the most recent document dating to 1913. The recommendation is to start with Document #1 then move to Document #2, then Document #3, and so on to Document #9.

After reading through all nine primary source documents, proceed to the Thinking Historically page. This section includes several open-ended discussion questions that reflect on the material included in the nine primary source documents and help to connect the story of the Carpatho-Rusyn people to other immigrant groups in the United States and the idea of the great American "melting pot."