HIS-Press-Service, 1985 (8. évfolyam, 26-28. szám)

1985-02-01 / 28. szám

HIS Press Service No.28, February 1985

Page 2

The Relationship between the Church and the State

BEFORE THE PARTIAL AGREEMENT

In the Fifties the Church in Hungary was subjected to brutal persecutions and to a series of oppressive administrative measures imposed by the authorities. Church activity was considerably limited and was totally pushed back to behind the church walls. The relationship between Church and State could only be called totally one-sided: The Church was virtually completely at the mercy of the State. The running of the Church or rather, how the Church was allowed to be run, depended on the policy adopted by the State towards the Church, which alternated between arbitrary measures and unfair practices, and rulings and stetements of reasons which legalised the former. After the arrest of Cardinal Mindszenty (December 1948), the establishment and active engagement of the Priests' Movement for Peace (1949-50) - this was seen at the time as a kind of Fifth Column of the State in the Church -, the internment of members of religious orders (June 1950) and a series of other oppressive measures, the first important step on the way to the policy of agreement was made on the 30th of August 1950: An agreement - which was, admittedly, extremely disadvantageous for the Church - was made between the Hungarian Bishops Conference and the State. This agreement sealed the almost total dissolution of the religious orders, and demanded that, in future, every priest should swear an oath to the Constitution; disciplinary measures were also to be carried out on the part of the Church against members of the clergy guilty of violating the regulations laid down by the State.

In 1951 the State started its most violent wave of oppression against the Church:

A so-called State Office for Church Affairs was created (15th of May) which, working closely with the Ministry of the Interior, was to determine in future the national policy towards the Church; police arrests were made on a series of bishops, József Gró'sz, Archbishop of Kalocsa, who, as head of the Hungarian Bishops Conference, had signed the above-mentioned agreement in 1950, was arrested and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment (18th of May). Out of the 13 existing seminaries for priests, 7 were dissolved (9th of July), the bishops were forced to place priests from the Peace Movement in all the larger parishes (12th of July) and the bishops themselves were summoned to take the oath to the Constitution (21st of July). Officials of the State Office for Church Affairs, in their capacity of chancellors of the diocese ("bishops with moustaches") controled the official correspondence of the bishops as well as the entire activity of the diocesan centres.

With Stalin's death (March 1953) the oppressive administrative measures abated a little. The State began to seek a modus vivendi with the Church. The events