HIS-Press-Service, 1977 (2. évfolyam, 5-8. szám)
1977-12-01 / 8. szám
HIS Press Service No.8. December 1977 Page 5 private religious instructions. Since this was forbidden by law - and therefore illegal and thus prosecuted by the authorities - it proved to be no solution to the problem. The first step toward religious instruction held in the churches (referred to as church religious instruction) came in 1950. In the course of an agreement between Church and State, the latter gave the Church the right to hold so-called Christian instruction in the churches, as is called for in the Codex Iuris Canonici.This concession encouraged both clergy and parents to make religious instruction available in the churches for the children who were not receiving it in school. At the time, such religious instruction in the church had been confined to First Communion classes (a total of 16 hours over a two-month period) and Confirmation classes (a total of 8 hours during a period of one month). The expanded church religious instruction was now also visited by youth interested in becoming acquainted with the truths of the faith, since no opportunity for this had existed up to that time due to the lack of religious instruction in the schools. The State, for its part, was interested in setting up certain compulsory norms for the so-called Christian instructions: It could only take place as a type of sermon in monologue form. The children could not be divided into groups, nor was it allowed to ask questions of the children or to use visual aids. Since these restrictions were not anchored in law, the more courageous members of the clergy simply ignored them. In fact, they pointed to the modern pedagogical demands and methods as support for their actions, and found ways and means of making religious instruction in the churches quite attractive. The bishops themselves had no common stand on church religious instruction. Some of the bishops were all for the initiatives of the clergy and gave them their full support. There were other bishops, however, who were not disappointed to see the development of evangelization in this form, but who did nothing to protect their priests, mostly assistants, from the chicanery of the local government agencies. Instead, these bishops were more prone to direct their efforts at dampening the enthusiasm of the persons in their dioceses who were most actively involved in the instructions - since, they said, one must work toward promoting good relations between Church and State - or they gave in to the pressure from the authorities and transferred successful religion teachers to other parishes. Christian instruction in the churches, therefore, was dependent not only upon the activeness of the religion teachers, but also upon the attitude of the local government authorities. Those priests who succeeded in reaching a modus vivendi with the local authorities in other areas experienced no problems with church religious instruction either. What this meant was that, in the end, completely dif
