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
Definition of religion dissociated from universal beliefs and moved closer to dogma in both meaning and practice. However, there was not yet the idea of dogma as a personal choice, only of established churches. With the Enlightenment religion lost its attachment to nationality, says Fitzgerald, but rather than becoming a universal social attitude, it now became a personal feeling or emotion. Talal Asad later refined this notion by showing that many assumptions about religion derive specifically from post-Enlightenment Christianity. Asad argues that before the word religion came into common usage, Christianity was a "disciplina", a rule just like that of the Roman Empire.