The Eighth Tribe, 1979 (6. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1979-10-01 / 10. szám
of our Church,” to the Bucharest government “to abrogate the illegal measures by which it has kept the Rumanian-rite Catholic Church supressed,” and to the U.S. government urging them “to acquaint themselves more thoroughly with the actual situation in Rumania.” Vniate Survival What is the situation in Rumania today? “The problem does not exist,” Florea, an ex-Uniate member of President Ceausescu’s retinue, declared recently in answer to a specific question put to him in private, at the formal dinner party given by Ceausescu in New York in April last year. And he continued: “Apart from a few priests nobody wants the Uniate Church revived.” Yet, Orthodox sources, including the late Patriarch Justinian himself, indicate that compared with the 1,771 Uniate priests in 1948, some 700 function today. (The number has decreased considerably in the past year.—Ed.) There are no Uniate churches today. Yet, some 20 churches have always been considered “Uniate” by the parishioners throughout this period despite their being handed over to the Orthodox. The priest simply retained their confidence after his “conversion” and no one can tell what happened in the confessional. Stranger still these churches continue to be considered “Uniate” even after the death, or replacement of the original priest. Only very recently — perhaps during the last two years, or so — an intensified campaign has been started for the removal of the “Uniate” image from all churches. The old icons, portraits of original founders and benefactors, the praporii (religious banners), and so forth, are being replaced by new, standardized ones in the interest of embellishment and modernization! All six Uniate bishops in 1948 have since died in prison. But Archbishop Gerald P. O’Hara, the papal nuncio, before leaving Rumania consecrated five other bishops and they in turn continued the tradition as and when it was necessary. There are four bishops in Transylvania today — the fifth having died in mid- 1978 — and a vicar general for the old kingdom. They are well-known to the Communist authorities since they have repeatedly presented memoranda to the government and, since 1965, to Nicolae Ceausescu personally. I have held in my own hands an exquisitely produced volume, in the manner of a medieval book, minus the illuminations. It contains a collection of all the memoranda presented by Bishop Alexandra Todea, mostly to the Head of State, since 1953. In Pectore As I indicated, the Orthodox authorities estimate that some 700 Uniate priests functioned in 1978. These are known as in pectore priests. This terminology has gained currency since the Pope disclosed on Bishop Iuliu Hossu’s death that he had been a cardinal in pectore for many years past. They minister to the needs of the faithful in the privacy of their homes, each priest having a number of families he visits regularly. Important ceremonies, such as christenings, marriages and burials, are often performed twice over: by the Orthodox and by the Uniate priest with the collusion of the former. In fact, there is great admiration for the Uniate Church among the lower echelons of the Orthodox Church and for the Uniate priests in particular who can be anything from university lecturers, doctors, accountants, and so on, to simple, unskilled workers, pensioners or “out-ofwork” individuals who live well-nigh exclusively on the gifts they receive. The vast majority of the in pectore priests function in towns, their numbers increasing, so to speak, in step with the massive exodus from the villages brought about by the forced industrialization of the last 20 years. In the villages the death of the old Uniate priest usually spelled the death of the Uniate consciousness. But there are notable exceptions. Thus, the Church — priests and faithful — live like the original Christians. They want a restitutio in integrum; they want the Church recognized by the State even if none of the confiscated property is restored to them. If their right to worship openly is recognized, they will gladly start from scratch. And they point out that article 37 of the 1948 Law on Cults automatically allows a church, or a place of worship, to change denomination should more than half of the parishioners so wish. So the Uniate faithful in Rumania demand, more and more insistently, that the Church in exile should intensify the fight for recognition; to broadcast the facts far and wide and to appeal to the conscience of the civilized world. As they point out, no group of people are more persecuted and discriminated against in Rumania than the Uniate Church. SITUATION TENSE IN TRANSYLVANIA TWF. Helsinki: Reliable sources touring Transylvania in September report that compulsory military training has been extended to all female Rumanians of certain age groups. Male and female militia has been armed with combat weappons. Military concentrations could be observed along the Hungarian border. Any kind of book, printed matter in possessions of visitors, brought in by visitors from Hungary is being confiscated. Hungarians, male and female, called in to the compulsory military training are being put into labor-brigades, and used during the training period as construction workers, building roads and bridges, without pay, of course, as “patriotic duty” for the “unreliable elements of the country. THE TRANSYLVANIAN QUARTERLY V
