HIS-Press-Service, 1985 (8. évfolyam, 26-28. szám)
1985-03-01 / 26. szám
HIS PressService No.26, March 1985 Page 4 time of the Turkish Occupation when a group of licentiates, as they were known, were entrusted by their bishops to perform certain pastoral services in order to safeguard the maintenance of the Catholic Faith." In his episcopal circular of October 1982 Cardinal Lékai already referred to talks being under way which aimed at enlisting the services of those who, having completed the correspondence course in theology for laymen, had also received the necessary training for giving religious instruction; moreover, the training of laymen is also being considered so that they themselves can conduct religious services in the subparishes. The programme of the house of retreat is thus two-fold: religious training and spiritual intensification for the faithful. The chief editor of the newspaper, "Új Ember", formulated it in the following way: "The first priority is foreseen in taking in members of the faitful who would like to deepen their faith and who, as trained laymen, are ready to assist their priests in pastoral care, and to be true followers of Christ in family life, in the bringing up of children and additionally, in offering the necessary setting to young couples preparing for marriage." Practical Carrying-out of the Programme The individual dioceses take charge of the organising of the courses of the retreathouse. The sequence in which they can send their groups in the course of the year will be announced at the beginning of the previous year. Originally, a 5-day training course in theoretical and practical religious questions, incorporating a retreat, was planned, lasting from Monday midday until Saturday morning; however, this plan was not adhered to, due to the great rush so that now the groups are changed every 4 to 5 days. Occasionally, there are also 3-day and also 6-day, even 8-day retreats and courses. The training comprises the extending and deepening of the participants' religious knowledge, as well as pastoral care practice, and in each case is carried out by priests from the diocese that the participants come from. The retreats, i.e. the spiritual intensification, are run by Jesuit priests, which can be explained by the following fact: In the course of the visit made by the Father General of the Jesuits, Pedro Arrupe, in Hungary in 1978, an agreement was made with the state authorities responsible that the Jesuit Fathers should take charge of the running of the retreats in Leányfalu and that they should spend two years in Rome preparing for this. Up to now, six persons have been especially named for this. This concession on the part of the State does not at all mean that the Jesuit Order is from now on officially allowed again in Hungary, nor were there any agreements reached about the successor of the present leaders of the retreats who are already over 60.
