HIS-Press-Service, 1985 (8. évfolyam, 26-28. szám)
1985-02-01 / 28. szám
HIS Press Service No.28, February 1985. Page 8 The regulation which came into effect on the 15th of January 1975 concerning "Religious Instruction in Churches"-which was forced on the Bishops Conference against the v/ill of the clergy - can be considered similarly contrived as far as its limitations are concerned: According to this ruling, out of the two permitted weekly religion instructions, one can be held on Sundays only, i.e., on the very day that the priest has most to do; the pupils attending the religious instruction classes may only be divided into two age-groups, at the most, two groups of 35-40 children under 10 and in one or two groups of the same size for children over 10. The pupils' achievements may not be graded and the pupils are not obliged to excuse their absence from the lesson. Time and place of the lesson (in practice mostly in the church) as well as the number pupils enrolled for it have to be announced to the local council before the 15th of October. - A further regulation, viz. the control of visual aids used during the lesson, is manipulated by state officials to keep a check on the religious instruction itself, i.e. an exclusively internal church activity. When it became evident that this matter was a source of conflict, the right of control was temporarily entrusted to the Bishops Conference. And after some time, strict adherence to some of the other regulations was also relaxed. It is clear that such a regulation of religious instruction can only be termed "ideal" as far as the State is concerned; for religious instruction, already reduced to 5-5%, it only poses artificially created obstacles. The Church has to struggle against similar obstacles as far as church buildings are concerned. All the "new churches" which state and clerical personalities are apt to refer to, are, almost without exception, new buildings erected in the place of churches which had formerly existed but which had been destroyed or demolished for security reasons or had been abandoned. In most cases the new buildings - which are actually more chapels than churches - are the same size as the churches which they replace. The building permission for the erection of new churches is very seldom given. A priest belonging to the Peace Movement received as a birthday present such a building permission for his special merits, so too did Cardinal Lékai on the occasion of his Golden Jubilee as a priest and Bishop Pataky from Győr also was granted permission to build a church on a new housingestate. The faithful have to present actual proof for the need of a new church - a demand which is very difficult to meet in practice. Internal Difficulties in Church Leadership The problems facing the Church throughout the world after the War such as secularization, uprooting, temptations of affluence, etc., were not spared the Church in Hungary either. Only in the case of Hungary, problems which were specifically
