Hungarian Church Press, 1957 (9. évfolyam, 14-15. szám)

1957-11-30 / 14. szám

162

HCHP XI.30,1957, Vol.IX/14- 6 ~

in the narrow path of our church as revealed in our faith?

Then I recognised as our second task that we start negotiations with the state authorities in order to clarify, in a satisfactory manner and with a sincerity that is only worthy of the church, the actual situation of our church.

My companion and yoke-fellow in all details of these negotiations was the then Ministerial Notary General of the Church District. (.Apart from László Pap no other person took part in these negotiations, and he was and still is the only person initiated into all the intimate questions which our negotiations involved). The negotiations proved completely satisfactory and were conducted by both partners in the spirit of utmost candour. We stated together that the leadership of the Reformed Church in Hungary was heterogeneous, and we were told - very properly - that the church cannot claim the state's assistance in her interior affairsand the only attitude the state can take towards these matters, which are the church's own concern, is that of a benevolent neutrality. It became also clear that the state, with full right, insisted that all members, lesser or senior functionaries of the ohurch, observe their loyalty, as Hungarian citizens, to the state, and, in their performance of their church work, adhere to the terms of the Agreement which was concluded between the state and our church. We were also told that it was a fault of ours that the church - partly because of our unduly intense occupation with the international side of our work - had failed to accord the proper attention to her interior affairs - a failure obviously militating against her own interests.

Negotiations of this nature were carried on from the spring of 1956 both with our own people and outside factors. In the meantime I had to perform the following duties:

Between the 29th of May and the 17th of July I travelled in four countries, attending various conferences and meetings. Prom the 29th of May to the 6th of June I was in Switzerland where I attended the meeting of the Commission an Inter-Church-Aid in Les Rasses and had negotiations in the headquarters of the World Council of Churches in Geneva on the preparations of the Central Committee's Meeting in Hungary, During these 8 days I travelled twice to Zurich and once to Basle where I had a conversation of several hours with professor Karl Barth, Permit me to report here on a very subjective but deeply important experience of mine. During the four hours of travel by express train from Geneva to Basle it occured to me that it was exactly forty years ago that I lived as student in Basle, and so now God permitted me to celebrate this anniversary. I did that by listening to the performance of Mozart's Mass in G Minor, in the Münster, then, on the next day, by attending here the divine service, with Eduard Thumeysen preaching, and calling on Karl Barth in the afternoon. Soon after my return from Switzerland I travelled with a Hungarian delegation to the fine retreat of the Slovakian Lutheran Church near Pozsony where we attended a conference on June 17-20« At this conference Czechs, Slovaks, Silesians, Hungarians, Lutherans, Reformed Church members and Methodists discussed, in an atmosphere of sincere brotherliness, the tasks that awaited us in the 7/orld Council of Churches and especially at the coming meeting of the Central Committee. On my return we made, with my wife, our first visit to the Reformed Church District of Nagyvárad and Trnnsylvania. I was there between the 24th of June and the 3rd of July, and these were the most crowded days of my life. The three main stations of our tour were Nagyvárad, Kolozsvár and Nagyszeben, as I had in my plan to visit, beside the two Reformed Church Districts, the church centre and bishop of the §axonian Lutheran Church as wellc I cannot report now on the very crowded days of ny ministrations which comprised church services, pastors' conferences, a closing session of the theological acadeny, calls on friends, fraternal discussions. But I must note that I everywhere visited the resident bishops, respectively the metropolitan of the Orthodox Church, Not the