HIS-Press-Service, 1985 (8. évfolyam, 26-28. szám)

1985-03-01 / 26. szám

HIS Press Service No.26, March 1985

Page 3

are 11-12 persons (the head of the house, two retreat leaders, one or two course leaders, a cook, three housemaids, a caretaker, a warden and an administrator) looking after the spiritual and physical well-being of the approximately 30 participants, as the case may be. In exceptional cases, those who cannot afford the contribution can still take part in a retreat. The costs incurred by these participants are generally settled by the treasury of the parish in question. It is being contemplated whether to distribute proportionately the costs incurred among the individual deaneries of the dioceses.

The Task of the Retreat-house

The task which the retreat-house has to accomplish was formulated by Cardinal Lékai in March 1979 in the following words: "Our faithful is longing for spiritual

intensification___However, many of them would also like to acquire a deeper

knowledge of their Catholic faith. Most of them cannot afford as much time as those participating in the correspondence course in theology for lay people run by the Academy of Theology. But they would gladly offer up a week of their time from Monday to Saturday to seek God in the quiet of the retreat-house from evening until morning and during the day to turn to Him with their mind, examining their faith: notât a level which is too demanding nor in a form which is too abstract, but rather in a form which is close to life. This is the spiritualization that the retreat-house will offer."

Later this plan was extended and put in concrete form: quite a few of those people who had completed the 3-year correspondence course for laymen would gladly offer their knowledge for the service of the Church. On the other hand, the Church urgently requires members of the faithful with the necessary training to take the place of priests, who are steadily decreasing in number. The pastoral care is not only deprived of the several thousand members of religious orders whose permission to carry out their work was withdrawn in 1950 through the abolition of the orders, but the clergy in Hungary is already so superannuated that through the great many deaths of the old priests, every year they are drastically reduced on average by 50 priests. This fact, sooner or later, will have catastrophic effects on the pastoral care of the faithful. Cardinal Lékai, on the occasion of the Ad-Limina-Visit of the Hungarian Bishops to the Pope in 1982, expressly referred to the training of the faithful for pastoral care as being one of most important tasks of the retreat-house: "In the retreat-house the faithful could also acquire a deeper sense of their Catholic faith by being trained for pastoral care and then, once back in their native town or village, they could help their priest at mass, in giving the chiIdren religious instruction, in distributing Holy Communion etc. Thus the lack of priests could be evened out to a certain extent through the engagement of the trained members of the faithful, just like at the