HIS-Press-Service, 1977 (2. évfolyam, 5-8. szám)
1977-06-01 / 7. szám
HIS Press Service, June 1977 Page 5 The Secretary of State and President of the State Office for Church Affairs, Imre Miklós,used a meeting of the Catholic Committee of the National Freedom Council on 10 March 1977 to make the observation that the Hungarian experiences in regulating Church-State relations are being examined by the churches in other countries. In Miklós's opinion, the most important thing learned from these experiences is that there exists only one viable path both for the socialist state and the churches - namely the creation, securement, and further development of lasting, regulated, and correct relations capable of uniting Communists, non-believers, and believers in such a way that through their mutual efforts they will be capable of solving the fundamental questions facing the nation and humanity. In other words, it is not necessary that the Marxist Party and the churches live in an atmosphere of constant confrontation; rather, it is both possible and necessary that a state of relations can be brought into being between the churches and the socialist state which does not insist that certain principles be relinquished but rather presupposed a climate of open intellectual exchange of ideas characterized by a mutual respect for the differing life philosophies. In the existing situation, Hungary is a good subject for experimentation. Here more than anywhere else one finds a grouping of prerequisites amenable to the State: unreserved solidarity with Moscow in foreign policy, a significant Catholic population, a hierarchy genuinely concerned with cooperating with the government in a spirit of partnership and a government church-political activity approved by Moscow and already functioning for over ten years - an activity which demanded no essential concessions and yet both proved successful and led, according to the Party interpretation, to a normalization of Church-State relations. The Soviet Union has apparently taken notice of the course of church politics promoted by Hungary. Unless the Soviet Union had relinquished the claim held by it without deviation up to that time, namely that in church matters the governments of the so-called peoples democracies were allowed to negotiate only with the Bishops Conferences of the given countries and that the Soviet Union retained for itself the right to carry on negotiations with the Vatican, there could not have come into existence the partial agreement reached between the Vatican and the Hungarian Peoples Republic in 1964 which served as the starting point for the "Hungarian way"in church politics. If Moscow had withheld its consent, it would not have been possible to carry on in Hungary the Marxian studies made in the theory and philosophy of religions.
