Hungarian Heritage Review, 1990 (19. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1990-01-01 / 1. szám
Perhaps, all of this may have been in the mind of Bishop László Papp when he spoke as he did to his petitioning ministers.) “When I preach, I always try to find a connection between the extremely difficult situation we live in and the Scriptures. The passage for Palm Sunday, for example, I took from the Epistle to the Philippians which, between the lines, has reference to our present condition. When 1 spoke of the entrance of Christ into Jerusalem, as a contrast, I pointed out in my sermon that the world expects and considers the kings in a very different way. Both the Bible and history gives a lot of examples of how power turns the heads of kings and rulers. I also quoted the example of Nebuchadnessar from the Old Testament and from modern history - Napoleon and Hitler - who climbed up from low positions and, in whose cases, power was even more dangerous and corrupting. In the Ministers’ Meeting in September, I proposed that every minister in every congregation should pray for our villages and congregations in view of the village destruction plan of the Romanian authorities. But it was more important that my colleague, the Reverend János Molnár, who is now unfortunately in Hungary, made a written proposal that the Church Administration should not look on with folded arms the events around the village destruction called “systematization”, but that they should contact the other churches - Catholic, Orthodox, and others - to coordinate their stands, to make clear that the village destruction scheme means for churches, how many congregations are affected, and what the churches can expect. To this question, there is a perfect silence. It appears as though we were not all concerned about what happens to hundreds of congregations, to our churches, most of them several hundreds of years old. And, what about our ancient cemeteries? What the future holds to the churches and its members? We summarized in a few points what the Episcopates - those of Kolozsvár and Nagyvárad - should keep in mind in the course of negotiations with the state. There were such questions, or rather points, as: the Church should suffer no loss in consequence of the urbanization scheme, or the loss should be reduced to a minimum; and even if such losses are unavoidable, it should be made good. Thus, if a village should vanish and the congregation resettled, indemnity should be given in some form. In one word, what we wanted to say was that the Church cannot just sit and watch what is happening. First of all, they should get information of what is planned, for the entire mater is wrapped in mystery. Only general phrases are uttered. On the other hand, it is their task to take action, and to protect the fundamental rights of the Church. I feel that it was our duty in good conscience to express this, since everybody, and in the first place the hierarchy, is cloaked in silence. This question is burning my fellow-ministers and congregations too, but they do not dare to speak! We thought, therefore, to bring it up in a meeting. Where we are more people together, it is easier to take heart. So we organized this action in the whole Reformed Church in Romania - in every diocese, about thirteen of them. There was everywhere someone who took it upon himself to bring this issue up in the meeting of the dioceses. It is sadly typical that there was only one diocese out of the thirteen where people had the courage to speak up. This rate: thirteen to one, clearly shows how fear binds even the ministers, hand and foot, even though they are affected in their very existence in that they, too, will lose their congregations and they, too, will have to leave the places they live in. Village destruction, country planning, will not take place in the romantic way that outsiders imagine it - namely, that ten bulldozers come up and raze the village from one end to the other. This is a much more complex and sophisticated business. They are to create the conditions for the villages to vanish, they have to get accommodations for the inhabitants of the villages doomed to death. All the more so, as the wave of international protest has probably made them alter the original plans. (EDITOR’S NOTE: From what the “Hungarian Heritage Review’’ has learned about such a “wave of international protest’’, it was either done in sign-language or so low-keyed that it could not be heard. Polemical breast-beating,- continued next page 12 HUNGARIAN HERITAGE REVIEW JANUARY 1990
