Greek Rite Catholicism in the United States, which began in the 1880s with large-scale emigration from Eastern Europe, was until 1914 administered by the American Roman Catholic hierarchy, which instituted a subtle campaign to Latinize its conduct.
The Holy See issued a second decree in 1929 entitled Cum Data Fuerit, which reiterated Rome's previous position that the Greek Catholic clergy in America must be celibate.
From 1930 to 1937 Varzaly served as editor-in-chief of Amerikansky Russky Viestnik (1892—1952), the longest-running Rusyn-American newspaper in America and the official publication of the Greek Catholic Union of Rusyn Brotherhoods, a fraternal benefit society based in Pennsylvania.
Many Carpatho-Rusyns, including Varzaly, believed clerical celibacy to be so inherently unnatural as to lead inevitably to promiscuity and sexual abuse.
He took his role seriously as guardian of the funds contributed by the largely impoverished faithful, refusing to sign checks for expenditures he believed inappropriate.
On the pages of his newsletter Vistnik ("The Messenger") and in diocesan councils he argued for the elimination of Latinizations in the liturgy and popular devotions that had become part of the Eastern Church's practice over the course of centuries living alongside Western Catholics.
Gradually, devotions of western origin disappeared from Orthodox practice; their standing remains the subject of debate among Byzantine Catholics to this day.
Varzaly's rivals in the church were not slow to capitalize on that and in short order, the FBI surveilled him as a pro-Russian and pro-Communist sympathizer during the Red Scare of the 1950s and he ultimately testified before Congress about his activities.
A review of two years' of his writings not only found nothing "subversive", even by the somewhat hysterical standards of the day, but prompted a letter of apology from the federal government for its being drawn into an internal and essentially religious dispute.