HIS-Press-Service, 1977 (2. évfolyam, 5-8. szám)
1977-12-01 / 8. szám
HIS Press Service No.8. December 1977 Page 6 ferent situations in church religious instruction began to develop within the country, a state of affairs which did not please the central political leadership at all. In the interest of promoting a unification of the norms, and in order to gain control over the religious instruction which in many cases had become all too successful, the state agencies demanded that the bishops agree to a regulation of church religious instruction. In return, the State would recognize the religious instruction as an officially authorized form of religious education. Despite the protests of some of the bishops, an agreement of this kind was signed on 15 November 1975 and became effective on 1 January 1976. Contrary to the expectation - as stressed by József Ijjas, Archbishop of Kalocsa at the Bishops Synod in 1975 - that this agreement could be considered a reason for rejoicing, it soon became evident that it had put the Church at a grave disadvantage. The local authorities considered the regulations stemming from the six points of the agreement as an extensive restriction upon the activity which had been taking place up to that time. According to the new regulations, by a certain time at the beginning of the school year the local authorities are to be given an exact schedule of the hours of church religious instruction which will be held. The participants can be divided into only two groups: the 6-10-year-olds, and those over 10 years. The formation of a second group within the same age category is only allowed when the number of participants in the group exceeds 35-40 participants. Each parish is allowed a maximum of 2x2 groups with 40 participants in each group, which therefore means that not more than 160 children are allowed to receive church religious instruction. An additional regulation states that a State representative - usually the school principal - is to control the visual aids used in the church. This control extends de facto both over the religious instruction itself and the pupils taking part in it. As far as the visual aids are concerned, the bishops themselves agreed to the examination of the material. This control function is nevertheless a decisively important point, since up to the time of the agreement the Church was able to carry out any kind of religious activity within the churches without any government controls at all. It should also be mentioned in passing that one of the two hours of religious instruction is to take place on Sunday directly after the end of the youth Mass. On the basis of these regulations, which were of definite disadvantage to the Church, it became obvious to all that the radical approach of the church political leadership - under the guise of "regulating" - was from the very beginning aimed at a drastic restriction of church religious instruction. This assumption is given even more weight by the fact that a leading official of the State Office for Church Affairs contrary to the officially propagated guidelines, secretly instructed that the
