Fodor György - Török József - Tusor Péter (szerk.): Felekezetek az Igazság szolgálatában: történelem, teológia, önazonosság (1500-2000) - Studia Theologica Budapestinensia 34. (2009)
I. Catholic-Orthodox symbiosis in Transylvania (Katolikus-ortodox együttélés Erdélyben) - József Marton: The relationship between the Roman catholic and the Greek catholic church between 1940-1950
public authorities. The real nature of the rite polemy was misunderstood by Rome. The reason of this misunderstanding was that the local Greek catholic churches were speaking about a question of rite in their mediation to Rome, but in reality it was a national question.1’ After 1940, the disagreements related to the rite polemy, had reborn as an ecclesial (canon) problem affecting even the concrete pastoral practice, having another character in South and in North Transilvania. In North Transilvania, (being a part of Hungary) those who had been forced to converte to the Greek rite (only considering their names), decided to reconverte to their original confession, following the dispositions of the canon law. It’s important to mention, that while the reconversion to the former latin rite met no difficulty from the part of the public (state) law, - the Hungarian governement had temporally left the valadity of the decree, emitted by the Cult legislation in 1928, regarding the rite change - but it raised difficulties from the part of the canon law. On the autumn of 1940,6 7 8 the Congregation for Oriental Churches, revoked the “Nemini licere” decree, “which entrusted the apostolic nuncio delegated to each country with the permission of the rite-change. On 23 November 1940 on the occasion of the audience at Rome, Eugenio Tisserant (1884-1941), the Secretary of the Congregation for Oriental Churches - with the motivation of maintaining a more rigurous discipline (quod firviior tenetur disciplina) — had succeeded in attaining the revocation of the decree emitted by the Holy Seat in 1928, so that the right to permit the rite-change was repealed, remaining in the competence of the Congregation for Oriental churches.9 So, all that had been arranged at the Residency of the Nuncio in Bukarest, was not possible at the Residency in Budapest.10 The situation had become 6 Gábor SA LAC/, The Hungarian Raman catholic church under the oppressive domination of the neighbour stales (Dissertationes Hungaricae ex historia Ecclesiae 3), Eel. Auróra, München 1975, 89-98. 7 S. Congregatio pro Ecclesia Orientali, die 23 mensis Novemberis anno 1940. 8 Acta Apostolicae Sedis (A.A.S.), 1928, p. 416. 9 A.A.S. (1941) 2. pg. 28. , published in the Journal of the Episcopal Office of Kolozsvár, Nr. 984-1941 10 SALAD/, The Hungarian Roman catholic church under the oppressive domination of the neighbour stales, 99-100. 38
