HIS-Press-Service, 1982 (7. évfolyam, 22-24. szám)
1982-01-01 / 22. szám
HIS Press Service No. 22, January 1982 Page 11 or the oratórium." Cardinal Lékai also accepted an invitation to attend the meeting of the base groups in 1981, at which he tried to persuade the priests who concelebrated with him to sign a statement distancing themselves from some of the guiding priciples of the base groups. Since the priests involved refused, the Cardinal let the matter fall. Since the summer of 1980, official Church statements have made a clear distinction between the main directions to which most of the small Church groups adhere. The Regnumist groups, whose members were still the main defendants in the large Church political trials in 1961, were also the groups from which the Bishops Conference had distanced themselves since they "had also done harm to the Catholic Church through their sinful activity." Today these groups are officially recognized as the small Church groups which are active in a praiseworthy manner. The "Bulányians," on the other hand, are reaping more and more criticism, and administrative measures are being taken against them. "The base groups still gather around an authority figure which they blindly follow, and they are interested in forming a Church within the Church," said Cardinal Lékai in a speech concerning these groups on 8 July 1981. A bishop refused to ordain one of his seminarians who was involved with a base group unless the seminarian promised to distance himself from the group and was willing to sign a statement to that effect. The reason for the suspension from their priestly duties of the two priests mentioned earlier is due not only to criticism publicly directed at Cardinal Lékai, but even moreso to the fact that these priests were proponents of the ideas held by the base groups. In an interview with a journalist of the "Kathpress" (Catholic Press Service of Austria) on 24 September 1981, Cardinal Lékai also made known his views on base groups which are not interested in working together with the hierarchy. There exists the danger, he said, that "Protestant thought" has been spread within Hungary's Catholic Church... These groups are characterized by a pronounced rigorism. "They expect us bishops and priests all to be saints. Some of these people think the Church should enter the catacombs, since this is the only way to maintain its truly Christian character within an atheistic State...." Instead of renovating churches and then holding religious services in these churches for hundreds and thousands of persons, the priests - according to the views of the base group involved - should "go into the families" and gather groups of Christians about them in private houses. Such an approach would mean, however, that the priests would concern themselves with only a small percentage of Hun
