Спогади парафіяльних священників як джерело до вивчення національно-політичних дилем греко-католицького духовенства в Галичині кінця ХІХ – напочатку ХХ століття: приклади Олекси Пристая та Филимона Тарнавського

The article attempts to analyze the national and political dilemmas faced by Greek Catholic parish priests in Galicia at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. When studying such a large social group, it is important to pay attention to those sources that allow tracing the vision of problems and ways to solve them among the members of this group. Therefore, this article uses the memoirs of two Greek-Catholic parish priests whose activities in Galicia fell on the last decade of the 19th and the first decade of the 20th centuries – Oleksa Prystai and Fylymon Tarnavskyi. Due to the fact that they belonged to the same generation and were active participants in the narodovtsi movement, it was traced how representatives of this category of parish priests reacted to certain national and political dilemmas. It was revealed that their rejection of the russophile worldview, which was still widespread among the clergy of the Greek Catholic Church at that time, was particularly characteristic for them. It was established that the main challenge for the clergy of that time was to find a balance between pastoral activity and social and political activity. According to the traditional role of parish priests as «leaders of the people», they were expected not only to provide purely religious, but also political, cultural, and economic education of parishioners. Additional difficulties were created by the fact that many priests – including Prystai and Tarnavskyi – were active members of the Narodovtsi party (later – the Ukrainian National Democratic Party). On the example of stories from the lives of the studied priests, it was found that political activity often had a higher priority for them than purely religious functions in the community. This led to both positive and negative consequences, and also created significant differences between different generations of Greek Catholic priests in Galicia at that time.