This is a story I’d never heard before. I’m also reading a wonderful bio of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Andrei Sheptyts’kyi (1865–1944) the Ukrainian metropolitan of the Greek Catholic Church, did all of these things. (Greek Catholics accept the authority of the pope, but practice a liturgy much like that of the Orthodox.) He wrote a letter to Himmler asking him to stop using Ukrainian policemen to murder Jews. He issued pastoral letters urging his people, the Greek Catholics of western Ukraine, to love their Jewish neighbors rather than serve in the police formations that were killing them.
Yet he also “welcomed the German invasion of the Soviet Union. In 1943, he sent Greek Catholic chaplains to accompany the Ukrainian soldiers of the Waffen-SS Division Galizien.” The blog article goes on to make clear that these decisions aren’t so difficult to explain given the historical context before WWII. Still, reading this entry alongside a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is eye opening. There are reasons behind our choices (not all the time, but a lot of the time). How do we weigh the options we have? What if those “options” are barely options at all?