ST. ALEXIS TOTH, LEADER OF EASTERN CATHOLIC CONVERTS

On December 18, 1889, Fr. Alexis Georgevich Toth, an Eastern Catholic priest from the Subcarpathian region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, arrived in Minneapolis and presented himself to his bishop, John Ireland. After venerating (kissing) the bishop's hand, per Eastern Rite, Slavic custom, rather than genuflecting, Toth handed his papers to Ireland.

I remember that no sooner did he read that I was a «Uniate than his hands began to shake.⁴⁸ It took him fifteen minutes to read to the end, after which he asked abruptly (we spoke in Latin):

»Have you a wife?«

»No.«

»But you had one?«

«Yes, I am a widower.»

At this he threw the paper on the table and loudly exclaimed, «I have already written to Rome protesting against this kind of priest being sent to me!»

«What kind of priest do you mean?»

»Your kind."

«I am a Catholic priest of the Greek Rite, I am a Uniate. I was ordained by a lawful Catholic bishop.»

«I do not consider either you or this bishop of yours Catholic. Besides, I do not need any Uniate priests here. A Polish priest in Minneapolis is sufficient. The Greek Catholics can also have him for their priest.»

«But he belongs to the Latin Rite. Our people do not understand him. They will hardly go to him. That is why they built a church of their own.»

«I gave them no permission to build, and I shall grant you no permission to work there.»

The Archbishop lost his temper, I lost mine just as much. One word brought another, so that the thing had gone so far that our conversation is not worth putting on record.⁴⁹

This exchange would inspire Toth to undergo a conversion he had already been considering and lead to the conversion of tens of thousands of Carpatho-Rusyns, a people native to the Subcarpathian region.⁵⁰ As this chapter will show, Toth (and the Carpatho-Rusyns who followed him) responded to their situation of perceived and experienced difficulties at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church by turning to the Orthodox tradition of their ancestors. In so doing, Toth encouraged his fellow Carpatho-Rusyns to look to Russia and to unite under the Russian Orthodox Church.

For Toth, as well as for large numbers of Carpatho-Rusyn converts who followed him, America provided the opportunity to turn to tradition not merely as a means to escape Roman Catholic prejudices, though as shall be seen below, that was an important dimension, but as a way in which to return to the Eastern Orthodox Christianity of their ancestors. Toth perceived Orthodox Christianity to be true, apostolic Christianity, and for him, this was a highly important point, even while denning (and presenting) the Orthodox tradition as being an integral part of Carpatho-Rusyn ethnic heritage. He believed the Eastern Orthodox Church of his forefathers, not the Eastern Catholic Church (Eastern Christians under the Roman Catholic Church), was the legitimate church of his people. Furthermore, his understanding of church history included the belief that Western Christianity had deviated from true Christianity in the ninth century. He also saw that the Roman Catholic Church was often heavily biased against Eastern Christian practices, even when Eastern Christians submitted to Roman Catholic authority. Toth, therefore, saw Eastern Orthodoxy as the true Christian tradition and the solution to the religious difficulties faced by the Carpatho-Rusyn people.

America provided Toth with a context in which he was able to act on his beliefs and feelings in new ways. In America, he would encounter a country that had forged a tradition of anti-tradition known as restorationism. This created a context that provided the flexibility necessary for the beginnings of what became known as the «Toth Movement,» a movement based on an appeal to the Orthodox origins of the Carpatho-Rusyns» Christianity. In fact, it is precisely through his apologetical writings that one can ascertain just how important that earlier Orthodox tradition was for Toth.

For his evangelization efforts and pastoral work on behalf of his fellow Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants, Toth would later be canonized as a saint by the Orthodox Church in America.⁵¹ The Orthodox Church in America itself is an autocephalous Orthodox Church whose make-up consists of a significant number of parishes that can trace their history back to Toth's own personal efforts.⁵² For example, one can look to Minneapolis (1891), Mayfield (Pennsylvania, 1902), Wilkes-Barre (1892), Streator (Illinois, 1898), Bridgeport (Connecticut, 1894), Joliet (Illinois, 1907), and the Pennsylvanian towns of: North Pittsburgh (1891), Osceola Mills (1893), Philipsburg (1894), Catasauqua (1891), Lopez (1907), and Edwardsville (1910).⁵³ In fact, Toth helped form seventeen Orthodox parishes in Pennsylvania alone.⁵⁴ Although Toth was not the first Carpatho-Rusyn in the West to consider Orthodoxy, it was his activities that led to the Toth Movement, the conversion of tens of thousands of Carpatho-Rusyns to Orthodox Christianity.⁵⁵ This movement occurred byway of newly converted Orthodox Carpatho-Rusyns who returned to their homeland and so successfully encouraged their fellow countrymen to convert to Orthodox Christianity that the number of Orthodox adherents went from about 440 in 1900 to over 118,000 by 1930.⁵⁶ The Toth Movement proved to be most effective after Toth's own lifetime and set the stage for further Roman Catholic-Orthodox tensions in a region that had experienced continual Latin Rite-Eastern Rite struggles since the ninth century. The strife would continue throughout the twentieth century.⁵⁷

During Toth's own lifetime, the Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants would be forced to discern between a Roman Catholic Latin Rite clergy who held negative views of the new Eastern Catholic immigrants on the one hand, and Russian Orthodox clergy who had a love-hate relationship with their newfound brothers in Christ on the other. Often, the Carpatho-Rusyns would vacillate between the two, with some returning to Eastern Catholicism even after they had formally converted to Orthodox Christianity. This was certainly the case for the Carpatho-Rusyn clergy in America during Toth's time. As shall be seen below, several factors were involved in this vacillation, including the fact that the Carpatho-Rusyn parishes were lay-dominated entities. Other likely factors included the relatively poor pay of the clergy themselves and tensions with the Russian Orthodox clergy. The Americanist controversy also affected the outcome inasmuch as it helped shape the views of the Latin hierarchy including Archbishop John Ireland, in North America.⁵⁸

As important as the American setting would become, Toth's promotion of the Eastern Christian tradition had a well-established history of its own in his homeland. These West-East struggles in the Subcarpathian region prior to Alexis Toth, as well as those struggles he himself experienced and knew, greatly shaped his viewpoint. The tensions between Eastern Christians and Western Christians in Subcarpathia, combined with intra-Western religious tensions (between Protestants and Catholics), had led to the eventual Union of Užhorod. No documentation exists, but it seems that on April 24, 1646, 63 priests made a profession of faith before the Roman Catholic bishop of Eger.⁵⁹ Efforts to Magyarize the Carpatho-Rusyns, that is, to assimilate them to the Hungarian nationality, language, and culture, began in the late eighteenth century. When the 1867 Ausgleich (compromise) established a dual monarchy for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, however, the Hungarians enacted a policy of forced Magyarization that was much more intense than what had been established previously.⁶⁰ Protestants and Orthodox created autonomous groups immediately, which were recognized by the government, but the Hungarian government refused to grant autonomy to the Carpatho-Rusyn Eastern Catholics.⁶¹ Those involved in the forced Magyarization sought to rewrite the actual history of the Carpatho-Rusyns, so as to eliminate the Carpatho-Rusyns» own national and religious identity and subsume them under the Magyars, or Hungarians themselves.⁶² To this end, the Hungarians sealed Carpatho-Rusyn archives and established a Latinization religious policy, whereby the Carpatho-Rusyns were to adopt an increasing amount of Latin and Western Rite practices in addition to suggesting, in some cases, that Hungarian could replace the Carptho-Rusyns» Slavonic liturgical language.⁶³

The ethno-religious element, that of overlapping national and religious concerns, greatly shaped the Carpatho-Rusyn context prior to and during Toth's ministry. Toth found himself living within a context that included Russophilism, Ukrainophilism, and Rusynophilism.⁶⁴ Both the 1848 pan-Slavic conference held in Prague and the advance of the Russian army into Ukraine and the Subcarpathian region when it put down the Kossuth rebellion inspired Carpatho-Rusyn Russophilism.⁶⁵

An additional complicating factor was the conflict between the episcopal sees of Užhorod and Prešov. The establishment of the eparchy of Prešov created two eparchies for the Carpatho-Rusyns.⁶⁶ This was done in order to divide the Carpatho-Rusyns against themselves and allow for a more pro-Hungarian approach to church life.⁶⁷ Although Toth had been a student at Užhorod before teaching at Prešov, he seems to have aligned himself more closely with the thinking at Prešov.⁶⁸ The priests from Užhorod were more pro-Hungarian than those from Prešov, which can be seen from the fact that in America, the clergy from Prešov were far more likely to react against Latin practices and become Orthodox.⁶⁹

The Hungarian divide and conquer tactic exacerbated the plight of the Carpatho-Rusyns and this exacerbated tension was about to explode on the American scene.

When Alexis Toth arrived in America, he was part of a larger movement that was already underway. During the period of 1880–1908, around 200,000 Carpatho-Rusyns emigrated to America.⁷⁰ These immigrants were in need of pastoral oversight, which was to be assigned from Subcarpathia, transplanting the Eastern Catholic-Roman Catholic tensions onto American soil Indeed, as described in the encounter with Archbishop Ireland, Toth was about to encounter a situation that would strike him as being too much to bear from Roman Catholic hierarchy.

In 1885, Metropolitan Sylvestr Sembratovych assigned Fr. Ivan Volans'kyi (1857–1926) to the Eastern Catholic parish in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.⁷¹ Volans'kyi not only helped organize the Shenandoah parish, but also parishes in other areas of Pennsylvania and the East Coast as well as Denver and Minneapolis (Toth's future parish).⁷² Volans'kyi's interaction with Catholic hierarchs in America foreshadowed what Toth was about to experience. In Minneapolis, Archbishop Ireland refused to let Volans'kyi serve liturgy in any of the Western Rite parishes.⁷³ In Philadelphia, Archbishop John Ryan refused to meet with him, forcing Volans'kyi to write both to Sembratovych and the Roman Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.⁷⁴ Volans'kyi later returned to Galicia, was sent to Brazil as a missionary, and ended his career in Galicia.

It should be pointed out that bishops were not the only ones who held such views. For example, Fr. Albert A. Lings, Archbishop Corrigan’s dean in New York, expressed relief in 1892 that the wife of Fr. Eugene Szatala, a Carpatho-Rusyn Eastern Rite Priest, remained in Europe.⁷⁵ An 1898 trip to L’viv would force Lings to admit later that married priests could be effective.⁷⁶ Although Lings should be commended for changing his mind on the effectiveness of married priests (at least in the European context), his is but a more tolerant example of the sort of prejudice the Eastern Catholics encountered from both bishops and priests of the Latin rite.⁷⁷

In response to the arrival of the Carpatho-Rusyns (and their priests, notably Volans'kyi and later Toth), Ireland began working on a «solution» to the «problem» of the Eastern Catholic Immigrants.⁷⁸ When Toth returned to his parishioners shaken, upset, and distraught, Ireland told the local Polish priest to denounce Toth from the pulpit, instructing the laity not to accept any ministrations from Toth.⁷⁹ This decree was later published in Roman Catholic parishes throughout the Minneapolis area.⁸⁰ About six months after the confrontation with Toth, in May of 1890, Ireland raised the issue of «priests of the Greek rite» before the annual meeting of bishops in Boston.⁸¹ He believed strongly in a change of rite, claiming that changing from Eastern Rite to Western Rite would assist in breaking down ethnic ghettos and further the «Americanization» of the new immigrants.⁸²

Ireland had the explicit support of the other American Catholic bishops in this regard as well as Rome's.⁸³ For example, Bishop Richard Phelan of Pittsburgh claimed, «a married priest could neither be a good priest, nor a good Catholic.»⁸⁴

One might be tempted to think it was only those who could be termed «Americanists» who supported this view, but even those who were not «Americanists» opposed the immigration of Eastern Rite clergy and snubbed the Eastern Rite practices.⁸⁵

Toth responded to his situation by eventually turning to his Eastern Christian tradition, a move not wholly unlike American Protestant restorationism, but though he claimed he had long considered becoming Orthodox, he did not immediately make this turn toward Orthodox Christianity⁸⁶ First, he tried to operate from the platform of his Eastern Christian tradition within the larger Catholic Church. Toth wrote to his bishop (Ivan Valyi) three times but claimed a «Reverend Dzubay» asked him to write a fourth letter detailing the difficulties, which could then be forwarded to Rome (though the letter proved to be «too harsh» to be sent).⁸⁷ After the letter exchange, Toth called and chaired a meeting of Carpatho-Rusyn clergy in America.⁸⁸ The clergy met on October 29, 1890. The group attending the clergy meeting was small, with eight of the ten priests in America attending.⁸⁹

At this meeting, the Carpatho-Rusyn priests adopted nine proposals: (1) to petition for a bishop over the Eastern Rite Roman Catholics (2) that the Eastern Rite be maintained (3) bishops in Europe should send only married priests (4) parish property should be appropriately deeded, i.e., not left solely in the hands of a small group of the laity (5) Church organizations are not to accept non-Catholics and officers must be installed in a church building (6) parish boundaries must be flexible, so that people have the freedom of attending the parish they helped build (7) the local priest is the one who should head parish finances and property (8) those assigned the duty of collecting pledges must be honorable men and their collection books must contain an introduction by a pastor (9) each parish should have an annual meeting.⁹⁰

One can extrapolate two factors that will become important to Toth's later success from the nine proposals. First, there was a clear desire to promote and maintain their traditional Eastern Christian heritage to the fullest extent, even going so far as to bypass Western Rite clergy within the American dioceses that already existed. Second, the parishes were largely controlled by lay members, often a small group of lay members.⁹¹ The first three proposals speak directly to the Carpatho-Rusyns» difficulty with maintaining their religious tradition. In proposal two, demanding that the Eastern Rite be allowed, they wrote of the «intolerance and total ignorance» of the American Catholic clergy and claimed such «negative influence can only harm our Greek Catholic tradition and draw our faithful into the Latin rite.»⁹² The final six proposals addressed the situations caused when a parish was deeded to a member, or handful of members, of a given congregation without including the governing oversight of the local priest and his bishop.⁹³

Following the meeting, Toth sent a summary to Bishop Valyi. In this report, Toth wrote, «The first alarming piece of news came form [sic] Philadelphia, where suspicious-looking individuals were said to be trying to lure Hungarian Greek Catholics to the side of the schism.»⁹⁴ That is to say, the seeds of discontent had been sown and looking to Orthodox Christianity was something Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants had begun to consider. Toth was not alone, not even the «first,» but as we shall see, he became a catalyst who established a tradition-focused pattern.⁹⁵ Having already claimed in the aforementioned December 16, 1889, letter that some Carpatho-Rusyns were in the habit of taking a two to three day journey one way to Alaska for a major feast where they attended an Orthodox parish, he claimed that unless Catholic clergy in America changed their position, «one portion of the faithful will turn against religion, another portion will join the [Orthodox] and still another portion will become Roman Catholic.»⁹⁶ Toth’s concerns expressed not only the reality for many a Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant, but for his own parishioners and himself as well.

America provided them precisely the opportunity they needed to follow through on asserting their commitment to their Eastern Christian tradition. Two different versions of how Toth and the Minneapolis parish contacted the Russian Orthodox bishop, Vladimir, exist, though they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. One version places the impetus in the hands of one John Mlinar and some fellow lay members. According to John Mlinar himself, after traveling to San Francisco with the intention of collecting funds for the parish, he secretly met with some fellow lay people, who then went to Toth, asking for Toth’s endorsement of their decision to become Orthodox.⁹⁷

Toth’s account describes the meeting as occurring upon his decision to gather together his parishioners in order to inform them that given the circumstances, it would probably be best if he left. They responded by reminding him that the situation would be no different for the next priest and that they ought to go to «the Russian Orthodox bishop.»⁹⁸ Since neither Toth nor his parishioners knew where Bishop Vladimir resided, Toth wrote to the Russian Consulate and learned the whereabouts on December 18, 1890.⁹⁹ The parish then sent John Mlinar to San Francisco, during which time (and after some difficulties communicating linguistically), Mlinar wrote to Toth wondering what Church it was to which they belonged since he only knew himself to be «Orthodox.»¹⁰⁰ This point from Mlinar is an important one, for even though they had been under the papacy in Rome since 1646, the Carpatho-Rusyns had continued to call themselves Orthodox (pravoslavniĭ).

The meeting was a success in that Mlinar and Bishop Vladimir were able to further the petition of the Minneapolis congregation. Igumen George Chudnovski, rector of the cathedral (and whose own native dialect allowed him to understand Mlinar reasonably well) wrote to Toth, explaining the status of the Russian Orthodox Church in America and informing Toth, «your business has been forwarded to St. Petersburg. Write also to the remaining churches that they may follow your blessed path.»¹⁰¹ In February of that year, Toth traveled to San Francisco and on March 25, Bishop Vladimir visited Minneapolis and received Toth and the parish into the Russian Orthodox Church.¹⁰² When news reached Prešov, Bishop Valyi requested that Toth accept another parish in America as a temporary assignment before returning to Europe, a futile request since Toth no longer understood himself to be under Valyi's jurisdiction.¹⁰³

Toth quickly earned the love and respect of Bishop Vladimir and by September of 1891, Vladimir asked if Toth would be willing to serve both Minneapolis and Chicago and praised Toth’s evangelization efforts toward Carpatho-Rusyns in Pennsylvania, exclaiming, «May the Lord help you win Pennsylvania over to the truth. Do not be dejected. Be patient, and may the Lord bless and help you.»¹⁰⁴ In July of 1892, the Holy Synod officially recognized the reception of Toth into the Orthodox Church by Vladimir and the Russian Mission, though by that time, a new bishop, Nicholas, had been assigned to America.¹⁰⁵

Toth had started his ecclesiastical career in tension-filled Subcarpathia and ended it by adhering to Orthodox Christianity in America. In so doing, he was on the forefront of a mass Carpatho-Rusyn movement from Eastern Catholicism to Russian Orthodoxy. The Eastern Christian tradition was, for him, paramount and the American context allowed him to pursue it more fully than he had been able previously. Initially, holding fast to his Eastern Christian roots meant writing to his bishop back home and meeting with fellow Eastern Catholic clergy, but that proved to be but a short lived initial step. For both Toth and his parishioners came to believe that the only way to maintain their Eastern Christian tradition was to turn to the Orthodox tradition, to restore Orthodoxy as the Carpatho-Rusyn faith. For Toth, this turn, or conversion, had a serious religious grounding. To understand how he perceived his conversion to Orthodoxy to be a return to the tradition of his Orthodox ancestors, however, one has to engage his apologetics, both in evangelistic efforts and his writings because it is there that one finds his motivations and beliefs expressed and witnesses what drew others to follow him.

In November of 1892, Toth's efforts with people residing in Pennsylvania bore fruit and he was contacted by the Eastern Catholic parish in Wilkes-Barre, asking him to become their pastor.¹⁰⁶ Initially, Toth thought it could be a joke, but after being assured otherwise, he made the trip in order to inform them about Orthodoxy.¹⁰⁷ Toth served the liturgy and explained to them what would be necessary should they become Orthodox, including differences in teachings and practices as well as the fact that they would have to submit to Bishop Nicholas, which included deeding the property to him and the Russian Mission.¹⁰⁸ Toth spoke at length and then left the people alone in order that they might decide whether the teachings and practicalities of such a conversion were acceptable. They agreed and sent a petition to Bishop Nicholas.¹⁰⁹ Bishop Nicholas responded by way of telegram, accepting the parish and assigning Toth as their rector.

Toth's methods in Wilkes-Barre would not prove unique. In his personal encounters with groups seeking to convert and form an Orthodox parish, Toth responded in a manner that demonstrated an awareness and concern for who the Carpatho-Rusyns actually were. In each case, Toth held meetings with the entire group of interested people and proceeded carefully to inform them of the doctrinal and jurisdictional aspects of converting to the Russian Orthodox Church. Toth kept to this approach even when it seemed that a less structured approach might work (at least temporarily). One example occurred in Mahoney, Pennsylvania:

I found there only seven people. After one and one-half hours of waiting, finally the rest came… To my question, what motives brought them the wish to reunite with the Holy Orthodox faith, after a long silence one of them finally said in the Slovak language, «We don't have any more patience with the premacy [sic] of Mr. Smith [the local lay-leader] and we cannot pay so much to the priest and to have so many collections, and in the church treasury there is nothing»... To that I told them it is not the interest of the Holy Orthodox Church and faith to make now [sic] disagreements and unrest in a Uniate parish, and because of that, if you think that the goal of Orthodoxy is to liberate you from the «rule» of Smith and others, you are mistaken. You are mistaken also that in the Orthodox Church it is not necessary to pay the priest and deacon.... I started to give them a dogmatic and historical explanation of Orthodoxy and Unia. I did it for more than an hour. They listened with attention and when I finished, the brother of the president came and he began to talk. He was very drunk. ... I saw that there the matter was not about the soul, not about the church, nor about the faith, but only about private interests. I told them simply that an Orthodox can be only that one who has a real love of God, the church of our forefathers, and of the Russian nationality, that the Holy Orthodox Church does not want to use the means used by the Uniates and their ksendzes [priests], that the Orthodox Church is going in a simple way, does not twist, does not dodge, but teaches God's truth and honesty and I left them.¹¹⁰

Although nothing came of this meeting, Toth’s description proves consistent with his aforementioned encounter with the parishioners in Wilkes-Barre as well as his description of meeting Carpatho-Rusyns in Scranton.¹¹¹ In each case, Toth was concerned for both proper and legitimate conversions. This may be seen in the way in which he described the Orthodox tradition to them, as «the church of our forefathers» and as something belonging to «Russian nationality.» One may also see Toth’s concerns for the people themselves, displaying an awareness of the sort of concerns and agendas and behavior his fellow Carpatho-Rusyns tended to have. This latter point of sensitivity for his fellow Carpatho-Rusyn will prove important but is by no means secondary to Toth’s emphasis on the need to look to the Orthodox tradition for an answer to their plight.

According to Toth, Carpatho-Rusyns converting to Orthodox Christianity were turning to the tradition of the true, historical church of Christianity and the faith of their fathers. Toth made this clear from the very beginning of Where to Seek the Truth?, a self-published treatise that went through several editions but was first written in 1893. The treatise itself begins with sixteen opening questions that are followed by short answers. The first question asks who established the Christian faith, the answer being Jesus the Christ, the Son of God. The next ten questions, however, which seek to define where the Christian church began, where the Ecumenical Councils assembled, and where the greatest fathers lived all have answers that begin with a reference to «the East.» So, for example, questions eight and nine read as:

8. Where did the greatest holy fathers of Christ's church live?

In the East – such fathers as St. Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom, St. Athanasius, St. Gregory, St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, and others.

9. From where did our ancestors, the Russians, accept Christianity?

From the East – Constantinople.¹¹²

The point is clear. There is no mention of Augustine. The greatest fathers were in the East and it is this faith that their Slavic ancestors adopted. Although the omission of Augustine might make a contemporary Western reader wonder whether Toth himself actually believed this, it is important to remember that Augustine's stature in the East is but a glimmer of what it is in the West. It should hardly be surprising that Augustine did not make Toth's list of greatest saints.

The argument that Orthodoxy is the traditional faith of the Carpatho-Rusyns may be found in the second part of the pamphlet, titled under the heading «church,» thus linking church, tradition, and ethnicity. Continuing the question-answer format, Toth wrote:

3. What do the words «schism» and «dissidence» mean?

They mean «renegade.» Such a faith or church, is one which has splintered off – separated itself from the ecumenical church in its observance of rites.

4. What does the word «heretical» mean?

Heretical is a faith or church, which has not only reneged from the ecumenical church in observance of rites, but is teaching the opposite of the church's teachings, something false or invented which is not acceptable to God.

5. Can a person please God as a member of a schismatic or heretical faith?

No, especially if he knows or hears that he belongs to a misguided faith.¹¹³

Toth, as a former professor of canon law and church history correctly distinguished between the notions of schism and heresy, though it is intriguing to see the manner in which he did this. A schism was caused when a group continued to teach correct doctrines, but on its own changed the forms of worship and discipline. A heresy occurred when a group not only changed the forms of worship and discipline but also began teaching doctrines contrary to those held by the historical, apostolic church. Interestingly, though, the results, for Toth, were the same. People in either situation have placed their salvation at serious risk, especially if a person learns that he or she is a member of a schismatic and/or heretical group.

Naturally, the question arises as to what churches are schismatic and heretical. Toth answered this in question fifteen:

15. When were these churches founded?

The Papist, or Roman-Catholic church was founded in the ninth century after Christ.

The Protestant (Lutheran, Calvinist, and others) were founded in the sixteenth century after Christ

The Uniate (Greek-Catholic or kalakuts» church) was founded in the seventeenth century after Christ.¹¹⁴

On the basis of the importance of both rite and doctrinal teaching, Toth claimed there were four types of Christianity. In this way, he set up Orthodoxy as the Christian tradition because the Orthodox Church had stood as the church while the other groups had left either by way of schism or by way of both schism and heresy.

Later, in section five (entitled «Unia»), Toth continued to argue that the Orthodox faith was the faith of the Carpatho-Rusyn ancestors prior to the 17th and 18th centuries.

1. What does the word «unia» mean?

This is a Latin word (unio) that means union or joining, and the faith and church that keeps such union is called the Uniate faith and the Uniate Church....

14. When did the Unia start in Hungary and why?

It started in Hungary in 1649. The Orthodox people were persecuted there by the wild Hungarian-Papists, who persecuted them as did the Poles in Poland... They were forced to denounce their grandfathers» Orthodox Church and not only their faith and church, but also their nationality.¹¹⁵

Clearly, Toth was playing on emotions, here, referencing «their grandfathers» Orthodox Church,» but the point remained. Prior to the Union of Užhorod in 1646, there was no Unia and the Slavic people in the region were members of the Orthodox Church, the one true church that had maintained the faith of Christ.

The broad outlines of Toth's understanding of the history of Christianity may be seen from these last few quotes. Toth believed there was one church until the ninth century, when the East and West formally split.¹¹⁶ The Eastern Churches held to the true faith and kept the faith of the Eastern fathers, making it the traditional Christian church. This same Eastern Orthodox Church Christianized his ancestors and the Slavic peoples beginning in the ninth century. The Western Church persecuted the Carpatho-Rusyns even after they formally accepted Roman Catholic oversight. On this point, he made no distinction between the local Hungarian Catholic Church and the Roman papacy. The one served the other.

Since Toth closely linked the true faith of his Rusyn ancestors with their Slavic heritage, denouncing their Orthodox Church went hand in hand with denouncing their «nationality» (narodno). «Each true Russian, even if he is not the Czar's citizen, every person who has even one drop of Slavic blood, has to pray for his health and for his royal house because the Russians and the Slavs have in the Russian Czar their only protector on this planet.»¹¹⁷ This and other very similar remarks, which permeated not only this treatise, but all of Toth's writings, simply verifies the final point he raised in the opening section of the pamphlet:

What does the word «catholic» mean? This word is Greek and it means «sobornyi» This means that the Christian Faith must spread over all the world... And why is the Orthodox faith also called »Russian»? Because this faith is confessed by the most glorious, greatest, and most religious people, the Russians. It is missionized by the great, glorious, mighty Russia where more than eighty million people are Orthodox.¹¹⁸

According to Toth, the Russian Orthodox Church has been charged with evangelizing the world on behalf of the Orthodox faith. Toth’s statements situate him squarely within a late imperial (1855–1917) Russian Orthodox movement that had encompassed Nicholas Bjerring, the first American convert priest in the 1870s and early 1880s, «Orthodox patriotism.»¹¹⁹

Although he was an Orthodox patriot and believed religion intertwined with the historic destiny of the Russian, Slavic people, which included the Carpatho-Rusyns, one should assume neither that this means Toth subsumed the theological arguments under nationalistic arguments nor that Toth promoted some sort of tribalism.¹²⁰ The guiding factor was Orthodox Christianity. Its connection to Russia and the Slavic peoples was that they were given a special calling by God to spread and defend the Orthodox faith throughout the world. Although Toth was clearly writing to Carpatho-Rusyns whom he believed were part of the larger Russian people, their guiding principle was to be their faith.

These were two important arguments for Toth. Orthodoxy was the traditional faith of the Carpatho-Rusyns and the Carpatho-Rusyns were part of the Russian people, whose lives were furthered by the tsar and the Russian Orthodox Church. These two contentions were brought to bear upon a central point that Toth wished to emphasize – the Roman Catholic Church had persecuted and continued to persecute both the Orthodox and the Eastern Catholics. Specifically, Toth listed four main abuses:

Their [the Orthodox] holy, only-saving Christian faith and church were called «peasant.»

Their priests were called "Jews» and under the leadership of Polish ksendzes or Jesuits. The priests were attacked, beaten, even dragged on the ground by their hair and beards.

Corpses were thrown from their coffins. During funerals the dead and mourning parishioners were dragged to the marshes or to waste places. The priests and Orthodox believers were hit and many times people were even killed.

(d) The Orthodox churches, it is horrible to say, were turned over to the Jews to control. When an Orthodox priest needed to have a service, to baptize or wed or bury people he had first to pay money to receive the key and to be admitted to the church.¹²¹

One needs to be careful in assessing the list of abuses Toth provided. The Hungarians looked down upon the Carpatho-Rusyns and did consider them peasants (which they largely were, though in this case, it was clearly a pejorative term). The Hungarians were also clean-shaven and expected the Eastern Catholic clergy to be clean shaven as well, per the standard Western custom of the time. We also know that Hungarians (as well as Poles and Russians) would hire Jews and use Jews to further their own intra-Christian struggles.¹²² One must be cautious, however, of giving too much weight to dead and mourning parishioners being dragged off and corpses stolen from their coffins. Orthodox have had their dead stolen from coffins, most recently by Presbyterians and Methodists in Alaska in the early twentieth century, but Toth was almost certainly referring to abuses attributed to Josaphat Kuntsevych.¹²³ Kuntsevych joined the Catholic Church and eventually became the Eastern Catholic bishop of Polotsk. Toth compared him to the leaders of the Spanish Inquisition:

The Spanish Inquisition was an ecclesiastical court, where Dominican monks judged everyone, using horrible tortures ... The main villain inquisitors were Peter Arbuesis and Thomas Torquemada. These were shouted out as saints by the pope as also was the kalakut Josaphat Kuntzevich! God protect us from that type of saint. Whoever does not believe us should take the service book, the L'vov edition, and there in the proskomide can find that after Ss. Basil, John, Nicholas, and Athanasius, is also written, «St. Holy Martyr Josaphat.»¹²⁴

To this day in Poland and other areas of Eastern Europe, one may find pamphlets describing a host of abuses attributed to Kuntsevych, though many of the abuses themselves cannot be verified.¹²⁵ For Toth, church history all too readily bequeathed a history of abuses in the name of papal authority against those who did not accept Latinization. By including Kuntsevych in the proskomide prayers, the propagators of union with Rome displayed a triumphalism Toth found intolerable. The proskomide service is a service of preparation in which an Eastern Rite (whether Orthodox or Eastern Catholic) priest prepares the bread that is to be placed on the altar during the divine liturgy. This service occurs on a small table to the north of the altar (which is oriented east) from which the bread and wine is processed to the altar during the portion of the liturgy known as the Great Entrance. The priest performs this preparation service with prayers that include commemorating significant saints of the church. To include Kuntsevych would be to elevate his importance for Eastern Catholics and would make the implicit theological statement that his actions and uniatism are on par with the actions and doctrinal writings of St. Basil the Great. Nor did Toth present the persecution simply as Roman Catholic versus Orthodox. He noted the more recent Carpatho-Rusyn church history and reminded his readers that in Hungary, the Eastern Rite Roman Catholics themselves «are beaten and persecuted; their Uniate church and their church rite is displayed for mockery by the Latin rite.»¹²⁶

Toth’s arguments must have resonated deeply with the common Carpatho-Rusyn peasant-immigrant, for whom he wrote. Toth’s commitment to his parishioners and the common Carpatho-Rusyn is not difficult to demonstrate. His people were largely impoverished miners working dangerous jobs for very little pay¹²⁷ Toth ministered to them regardless of the conditions and on at least one occasion had himself lowered into a mine in order to hear a dying miner's final confession.¹²⁸ His desire to address the average Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant can be found in both his publication efforts and in his personal interaction with immigrant groups seeking to establish an Orthodox parish.

With regard to his publications, Toth sought to present arguments in a manner that not only might appeal to the common Rusyn sentiments, but would be readily accessible. The important pamphlet, Where to Seek the Truth?, already analyzed, is probably the most obvious example, given that it went through many editions over the years and was distributed to large groups of people. Some of the changes to the editions are also notable. One of the prominent Russophile exponents during Toth’s lifetime in Subcarpathia was Ievhennii Fentsyk (1844–1903), who published the journal Listok.¹²⁹ The journal included a supplement intended for the less educated simply entitled Dadotok. In the later 1907 edition of Where to Seek the Truth?, Toth likewise added two supplement sections (also entitled Dadotok), which addressed the sorts of concerns one might expect from a Carpatho-Rusyn peasant, such as why Eastern clergy had beards while the Roman Catholic clergy were clean-shaven.¹³⁰ He also added a section that discussed the various types of crosses, including the Slavic three-barred cross.¹³¹ For the average Carpatho-Rusyn, such things were the marks of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, of which they felt a part.

Toth also founded the paper Svit because he believed that the Russian Orthodox Mission needed a paper written for the average Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant, akin to the Eastern Catholic paper Amerikanskiĭ Russkiĭ Viestnik. He belabored this concern many times in his letters to Bishop Nicholas. For example, in the letter to Bishop Nicholas, wherein he argued that Bishop Nicholas should not have written the letter to Svoboda or Amerikanskiĭ Russkiĭ Viestnik, Toth claimed that having their own newspaper could serve as a means of responding to the Eastern Catholic voices.¹³² At one point, by way of a passing remark, he even wrote, «I would have liked to enclose several more letters from people in which they are constantly asking about a newspaper.»¹³³ In a later letter, Toth noted that the Amerikanskiĭ Pravoslavnyĭ Viestnik (the Russian Missions paper, which was also known as the Russian Orthodox American Messenger) «would be a magazine in which only learned people would find pleasure, but our uneducated people will not understand anything and because of that – I am convinced – venia sit verb! – that the best would be not to get occupied with grandiloquent questions in the magazine, and with more easy questions for example with the intemperate behavior of the local Russian people.»¹³⁴ In another letter still, he wrote, «Your Eminence! Our magazine somehow is writing only for educated persons. Wouldn't it be possible that in it would also be written something for the people?»¹³⁵

Toth's concern for the average Carpatho-Rusyn was well founded. For as convincing as Toth's arguments on behalf of the Orthodox tradition were to thousands, many also waivered and sometimes reversed course on him. In fact, this happened within the Wilkes-Barre parish that had called him from Minneapolis. Despite Toth's care to ensure that all the parishioners knew what they were doing, the parish soon split, with some members claiming that Toth and a faction within the congregation stole the parish from the Eastern Catholics. A lawsuit ensued, which was not finally settled until the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Eastern Catholic party. The court did not reach this ruling because it thought that the property had not been deeded correctly to the Orthodox Church. Nor did the court think that the parishioners had not become Orthodox. Instead, it based itself on a case involving a Lutheran parish, wherein the court had decided the property should go to the group representing tenets of the original, founding members, and so ruled in favor of the party that could claim to be Eastern Catholic, the faith of the parish before it converted to Orthodoxy.¹³⁶ The length of the trial and the church-political machinations and expense it required exacted a toll on Toth.¹³⁷

It is interesting to note that the court treated the parish as a Protestant institution rather than either Roman Catholic or Orthodox. At one point, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania even claimed, «We think there is no evidence that would warrant us to placing this church under control of the Roman Catholic bishops.»¹³⁸ This is a bold statement given that the ruling itself placed the parish under the control of «the Roman Catholic bishops.» The court was either unable or unwilling to treat this situation other than how they would treat warring factions in a Protestant parish. Almost certainly, this is because the case went to court during a time of transition. The court in the Watson v. Jones case of 1871 had invoked the principle of church autonomy, which meant that in cases involving hierarchical structures, the court was to follow the decision of church hierarchy.¹³⁹ This was a change from the prior English-law approach, known as the Lord Eldon's Rule, which sought to determine the doctrinal position of the religious body in question and then rule in favor of the group that most closely held to correct doctrine.¹⁴⁰ As Toth's case demonstrates, it took time for the implications of Watson v. Jones to be fully appreciated and implemented within the American court system.¹⁴¹ From the ruling of Watson v. Jones, Toth and his Orthodox parishioners should have won the case, since the parish had been properly deeded to the Orthodox hierarchy, but Lord Eldon’s Rule influenced the court's thinking and so the court prioritized the founding, Eastern Catholic doctrinal position.

The Supreme Court did not even discount the general outline of events, as presented by Toth's party. This should dissuade us from making the sort of speculative judgment offered by Konstantin Simon, who insinuated that during the trial, Toth must have mitigated «the amount of persuasion and prompting, as well as the use of half-truths» he had supposedly used to convert the parish.¹⁴² The court at the time certainly did not insinuate any such thing and even if one grants Simon's claim for sake of argument, an honest reading of the sources themselves makes it very difficult to understand why only one party in this suit could be blamed for such behavior. Neither side was pulling any punches. Furthermore, Toth's rendition, which the Supreme Court accepted as true, was in complete accordance with how he interacted with other parish groups seeking to enter Orthodoxy. Toth's approach was always to make an apology for the Orthodox tradition as the faith of the Carpatho-Rusyns» ancestors and the church to which they should return.

Toth's troubles during his tenure as an Orthodox priest were not limited to Eastern Catholic Carpatho-Rusyns. From the beginning of Bishop Nicholas» episcopal oversight, Toth also had to struggle against Russian Orthodox prejudices, all the while furthering the faith of the Russian Orthodox Church. In many ways, the source of this tension was Russian prejudice against Carpatho-Rusyn liturgical practices and culture. In parishes that converted, the Carpatho-Rusyn plainchant was replaced by the Russian liturgical, musical tradition. Even Toth had made passing remarks how he knew the parishioners in Bridgeport «would like their children to go to a Russian school and learn to sing, read, and write as their delegates heard and saw it during the conference at Wilkes-Barre.»¹⁴³

Toth himself personally suffered from the Russification efforts of the Russian Mission. In Minneapolis, an assistant was assigned to Toth in order that the parish would have the services of a priest when he needed to be absent to pursue evangelistic ventures among Eastern Catholic Carpatho-Rusyns.¹⁴⁴ For this purpose, Bishop Nicholas assigned Fr. Sebastian Dabovich. According to Toth, Dabovich immediately began instituting changes in order to adhere more strictly to Russian practice, changes Toth noted ought to have occurred slowly over time. Toth claimed Dabovich then proceeded to instigate ill-feelings toward Toth, only to pull back from the fray later and feign innocence.¹⁴⁵

In addition, the Russian Mission's periodical, the Russian Orthodox American Messenger, included essays that contained negative assessments of Toth’s Eastern Catholic background and of Eastern Catholics more generally, written by two prominent clergymen, Alexander Hotovitsky and Benedict Turkevich.¹⁴⁶ Hotovitsky criticized liturgical differences between the Carpatho-Rusyns and the Russians, argued against longer sermons (which at least one converted priest, Fr. Hrihoryi Hrushka, suggested fit the American context better), and even went so far as to claim that a newspaper recently started by Toth (Svit) had no right to exist. Turkevich, for his part, had a different view than Toth regarding the Carpatho-Rusyns place in America. Although Toth argued that it was possible to be fully American and maintain one's culture and ethnicity Turkevich believed the only nationality that mattered was that of the Russians and in an article in Toth's Svit, suggested that the Carpatho-Rusyns should not be going to America, but to Russia, their homeland.¹⁴⁷

It must be noted, here, that the Turkevich-Toth tension is not one of whether the Carpatho-Rusyns were wanted in the Orthodox Church. Turkevich was not saying «get out of Orthodoxy.» Rather, there was an intra-Russophile division at work. For Toth, looking to the Orthodox faith of Russia did not preclude embracing the American situation. Indeed, the American context allowed Carpatho-Rusyns to restore Orthodoxy as their faith. For Turkevich, the Russian Orthodox mission in America was primarily to Russians and a new, large group of peasant converts should further Russia's ambitions. At the time, one of Russia's major endeavors was the settling, or colonization, of Siberia.¹⁴⁸ When Turkevich suggested colonization in Siberia, he was simply making a suggestion that would have fit with Russia's goals and would not have seemed unduly out of place, however much it might have contrasted with Toth's own vision and pastoral sensibilities (not to mention those of the immigrant-converts themselves).

The difficulties existed not only with fellow Russian Orthodox priests, who disliked aspects of the Carpatho-Rusyns religious life, but also with Bishop Nicholas himself. On February 24, 1896, Bishop Nicholas accused Toth of producing «an unpleasant feeling of irritation and dissatisfaction against you in all those, who have to deal with you.»¹⁴⁹ Toth even claimed that Fr. Ambrosii Vretta, then the priest at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Church in Chicago, told Toth that Bishop Nicholas suspected Toth of being nothing more than a Jesuit who joined Orthodoxy in the hopes of attaining some material gain and Vretta was to watch Toth.¹⁵⁰ About a year and a half later, Toth would also write, «Your Eminence, in the same letter you deign to ask me, "Why does nothing happen like that, where the priests are Moscovites?... Naturally, because they always act more legally»¹⁵¹ Despite these ongoing tensions, Toth continued to act as an apologist for the Orthodox Church among his fellow Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants.

Although Toth endured these tensions, every single other Eastern Catholic priest who had joined Toth, including his own brother, Victor, later returned to the Eastern Catholic Church. Likely, their reasons included tiring of the lay-dominated parishes, the related issue of poor clergy compensation, and tensions with the Russian Orthodox clergy. For Alexander Dzubay, the tensions with the Russian Orthodox clergy certainly proved to be too much. Dzubay attended the clergy meeting on October 29, 1890, which Toth chaired, and later followed Toth into the Orthodox Church. Alexander Dzubay would even be consecrated the bishop of Pittsburgh in 1916, but in 1923, he returned to the Catholic Church with the expectation of being made a bishop to serve Carpatho-Rusyn Eastern Catholics. His expectations remained unfulfilled and he died defrocked in a monastery rest home in 1933.¹⁵²

In the case of Victor Toth, he left because he refused to change his alcoholic ways. Alexis Toth, who occasionally provided statements that demonstrate an aversion to hard liquor and heavy drinking, drew a hard line with his brother. On the one hand, Alexis Toth reacted negatively to the embarrassing write-up his brother received in the Amerikanskiĭ Pravoslavnyĭ Viestnik, which described Victor Toth's necessary removal from priestly service.

Why does the entire world have to know, that he is a drunk, it is sorrowful to admit, that we have people like him?... Meanwhile we have had even worse matters happen... their "sicknesses» were also not described as tragically as my brother's was!... Fr. Hotovitsky [the editor] is a nice young man, but he does not have experience – not for a cent!¹⁵³

On the other hand, Alexis Toth refused to provide communion to his censured brother (apparently because Victor continued living a reprobate life even after being removed from ministry). However, Alexis Toth still loved his brother and paid his fare back to Europe. «To my great regret I have to admit that my brother has thrown himself in with Uniate priests; the real reason was that I myself refused to communicate with him. However, in the end, I had to send him back to Europe at my own cost.»¹⁵⁴

Despite all this, one must note that Toth's relations with Bishop Nicholas and his fellow Russian Orthodox priests were not characterized only by tensions, misunderstandings, and mistrust. Alexander Hotovitsky did concelebrate (serve in the same altar) with Toth at times and Bishop Nicholas once wrote to the Amerikanskiĭ Russkiĭ Viestnik (American Russian Messenger, an Eastern Catholic paper) defending the Russian Orthodox Mission and its work among Eastern Catholics.¹⁵⁵ Bishop Nicholas sought to refute the two-pronged attack of the Eastern Catholics at the time (that the Russian Orthodox Mission used «itinerant disciples» and offered promises of material improvement). At the outset, he claimed:

The Orthodox Mission in America under my supervision has never employed, nor does it employ, unfair means for the conversion of Rusin Uniates – and never has dealings with «itinerant disciples» – and never gives »promises» She accepted them into the bosom of the Orthodox Church since after repeated ordeals they were desiring to join the Orthodox Church – and only through persuasion, by a sincere offering of a confession of faith, did she join them to her Church.¹⁵⁶

Toth responded to Nicholas with a mixed review, on the one hand cautioning that only «trouble» arises from engaging Amerikanskiĭ Russkiĭ Viestnik and/or Svoboda (Freedom), the two papers in which the letter appeared, while on the other hand noting that what Bishop Nicholas wrote was «the truth.»¹⁵⁷ Two ways in which Toth believed Nicholas may have caused trouble was by bringing himself down to the level of those who were directly involved in the disputes and by encouraging Eastern Catholic Gallicians and Polish Roman Catholics to unite around a common enemy (Bishop Nicholas and the Orthodox). Toth claimed that the editor of Amerikanskiĭ Russkiĭ Viestnik, Zhatkovych, originally had decided not to publish it until he saw it in Svoboda, at which point he published it, adding some comments of his own in response. Whatever the personal suspicions and tensions between the two men, Bishop Nicholas proved capable of acknowledging Toth’s importance with respect to the mission of the Russian Orthodox Church in America. In addition to this letter defending the mission (and, indirectly, Alexis Toth) Bishop Nicholas also awarded Toth for his efforts with a pectoral cross.¹⁵⁸

Toth continued to receive the support of his bishops and fellow Russian Orthodox clergy throughout the remainder of his life, regardless of the tensions and cultural suspicions that existed. Bishop (Saint) Tikhon awarded him with various Russian imperial orders of distinction and a palitsa, or epigonation, and made him a mitred archpriest.¹⁵⁹ Bishop Platon (later Metropolitan Platon) also supported Toth by writing a eulogy¹⁶⁰ Fr. (St.) Alexander Hotovitsky wrote a moving memorial for Toth, printed in the Russian Orthodox American Messenger.¹⁶¹ The brother of Benedict Turkevich, Fr. Leonid Turkevich, a future Metropolitan, also wrote a tribute.¹⁶² Toth's arguments on behalf of the Orthodox tradition among Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants were too effective to ignore.

Carpatho-Rusyn conversions to Orthodoxy Christianity did not end with Toth's efforts. The Roman Catholic Church would continue to struggle with the concern over Eastern Catholic immigrants in America even beyond Toth's lifetime. Valyi argued against Rome's ruling that married priests should not emigrate to America by claiming that until an apostolic vicariate was assigned (if not a bishop), the Carpatho-Rusyns should be subject to their bishops in Europe rather than the Latin Rite bishops in America. Following Toth's conversion and the beginnings of a movement toward Orthodoxy, Rev. Nicephorus Chanath worked as a liaison between the American Roman Catholic bishops and the Eastern Catholic clergy, though the bishops paid him relatively little attention. Back in Hungary, the bishop of Mukačevo (Firczák) considered the American situation as one «caught between the Scylla of poverty and the Charybdis of schism [Orthodoxy].»¹⁶³

Eventually, the Right Reverend Andrew Hodobay was assigned as the Apostolic Visitor but after a few years (from 1902–1906) he was recalled due to in-fighting among the various Eastern Rite Catholic groups. In 1907, Rome consecrated Stephen Ortinsky to be an Eastern Catholic bishop in America but he was given no real jurisdiction, being nothing more than a vicar of Rome and an auxiliary to the American, Latin Rite bishops. He was given full jurisdiction in 1913, but died unexpectedly in 1916, before he could fully initiate needed changes and pastoral oversight. Upon his death, the Eastern Catholics in America split between a Carpatho-Rusyn camp and a Ukrainian camp. The Carpatho-Rusyns did receive Bishop Basil Takach in 1924, but Fr. Orestes Chornock led a group of Carpatho-Rusyns – much as Toth had earlier – to join the Orthodox Church. They chose to enter as an autonomous Church under the Ecumenical Patriarch due to concerns of Russification (e.g. establishing Russian language schools in Carpatho-Rusyn parishes, replacing Carpatho-Rusyn chant and liturgical practices with Russian ones, and telling the faithful they are really part of the Russian people).¹⁶⁴

Nonetheless, Toth's own personal efforts effected the intra-Christian conversions of tens of thousands of his fellow Carpatho-Rusyns. Throughout his dedicated career of service to the Russian Orthodox Mission in America, Alexis Toth consistently argued that Orthodoxy was both the apostolic faith and the traditional religion of the Carpatho-Rusyn people. He joined this argument to the belief that the Carpatho-Rusyns were part of the Russian people, whose lives were furthered by the Tsar and the Russian Orthodox Church. In this way, Toth looked to restore the pre-unia Orthodox Church of the Carpatho-Rusyns. In many ways, the Carpatho-Rusyn resistance against Hungarian and Latin Catholics was a matter of preserving their culture and their Eastern Rite tradition. Here, the point expressed by Mlinar was important. The Carpatho-Rusyns knew themselves only as Orthodox, which enabled Toth to argue successfully that to be a Carpatho-Rusyn Eastern Christian meant they needed to turn to the Orthodox tradition of their ancestors.

Toth believed that the Orthodox faith was given to the Slavs and had her defenders in the Tsar and the Russian Orthodox Church. What needed to be done was not defend Eastern Catholic prerogatives, but to join the Russian Orthodox Church, where the Carpatho-Rusyns could see the Slavic Orthodox life continuing to exist. To further this end, Toth's tactics centered upon the Carpatho-Rusyn peasant immigrant rather than intellectuals, as evidenced by his responses to his Eastern Catholic critics, the manner in which he engaged prospective convert parishes, and his use and understanding of the role of church publications.

It could be tempting to claim Toth became Orthodox simply because he was a Russophile, but this would not do justice to the theological aspects of his conversion, aspects he himself highlighted as important. He could have lived as a pan-Slavist and remained an Eastern Catholic, but the ecclesiological imperative was too great. He believed Eastern Catholicism was a schism from the Orthodox Church and if the Carpatho-Rusyns returned to Orthodoxy, their conversion would end that schism. It was not enough simply to preserve their Eastern Rite. For Toth, there were four main groups: the Orthodox Church, the Eastern Catholics, the Roman Catholics, and the Protestants. Three of the four were in schism. Only the Orthodox Church preserved the Orthodox tradition fully intact.

The American context proved to be important for both Toth and the Carpatho-Rusyn conversions to that Orthodox tradition in two ways. First, from a Roman Catholic ecclesiastical perspective, the American situation was too reminiscent of the Old World situation. In Hungary, Magyarization had created a difficult situation for the Eastern Catholic Carpatho-Rusyns. In America, Toth and his fellow Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants encountered a combination of factors at play in the Roman Catholic Church that created a situation no less tolerable. On the one hand, Americanists like Ireland desired to create a Catholic Church that would be more accommodating to American society. It is not difficult to find motivations for this. A Protestant centric perspective affected public perceptions and even immigration laws.¹⁶⁵ Non-Western rites and languages and cultures were too un-American in character for many in the Catholic Church in America at that time. Additionally, Roman Catholic clergy in America did not wish to accept a married priesthood. Given that opposition to Eastern Catholics included even the bishops and priests who opposed Americanism, one should also allow for cultural and ethnic prejudice as a factor.

Second, the American context provided for the freedom necessary for Eastern Catholic immigrants to safely enter the Russian Orthodox Church as a way of preserving their Eastern Christian tradition. In America, church and state were much more independent than the situation within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Moreover, as noted in the introduction, American Christianity has an anti-traditional tradition of restoration, of looking back to an idealized period of church history and attempting to restore that same church. Although Toth was not operating out of an American Protestant restorationist movement, he did utilize his religious freedom in America to prioritize the Eastern Christian church of the first nine centuries and argued that that was the same church that had Christianized the Slavs and therefore was the same church to which the Carpatho-Rusyns should return. While some Protestant restorationists might look to America as the biblical city on a hill, Toth looked to the Russian Orthodox Church as the entity that was to promote and defend all Slavs and, ultimately, all Orthodox Christians worldwide, thus becoming a beacon even to the non-Orthodox.

In this way, the Toth Movement anticipates the conversions that follow in the later chapters but with one key difference. The Toth Movement was addressing an Old World dilemma in a New World (American) context. The conversions of Morgan, Berry, Gillquist, and those who followed them, however, will directly enter into the American Christian restoration anti-traditional tradition itself as a way to reestablish their theological bearings and then formally turn to tradition itself.