Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the USSR regarding the Millennium of Ukraine's Christianity, scheduled to be commemorated in 1988. In his letter, John Paul II underscored the importance of preserving the Union of Brest, by expressing his respect for the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic episcopate, clergy, and faithful who bore witness to injustice and persecution in the name of Christ and professed their faith in God and their Church. Simultaneously directing his address at the Soviet government, the pope invoked the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by appealing to the authorities to allow each believer to profess his/her own faith and to participate in the communal life of the
Dogma in the Catholic Church intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, [...] of individuals [...] as well of [...] the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning." Vincent commented on the First Epistle to Timothy () that Timothy, for Vincent, represented "either generally the Universal Church, or in particular, the whole body of The Prelacy", whose obligation is "to possess or to communicate to others a complete knowledge of religion"