Magyar Egyház, 1976 (55. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1976-05-01 / 5. szám

10

MAGYAR EGYHÁZ

years old) “created by State organs, organizations or persons exercising responsible functions or mission in the life of the State or who played some important role in the political life of the country’s history, its political, economic, cultural or social progress” are -‘whoever their possessor is” the property, and fall under the protection of the National Archives Foundation.” (Article 1).

Thus, the Law provides at least for a de jure nationalization of all historical documents as even for those documents not directly transferred to the State administration duties are established and guidelines set, bounding the owners. So much for Bishop Papp’s argument that the law does not use the term nationalization.

The objectionable features of the Law are, however, not the “preservation and protection of historical documents,” a practice generally used in east and west alike. They include rather the scope and particular the manner of implementation of the law.

It must be mentioned that the Law has a sweeping scope. It includes “all official and private correspondence, memoirs, manuscripts, maps, films, tape recordings, diaries, posters, drawings, engravings, rubber stamps, signet rings, etc. The Law also covers devotional church objects like ikons, chalices, albs, etc.

The scope of the Law and its implications will become clearer if we realize the close interrelationship between the history of Transylvanian churches and the history of the province during the past millennium and the prevalent freedom of religion in the province since its first enactment at the Diet of Torda in 1557 a promulgation preceding the Edict of Nantes by about forty years.

The churches were the depositories for many of the historical documents over the centuries and therefore the parishes not only possess baptismal records and local memorabilia, but historically irreplacable archieves and libraries reaching back many generations. Some of the best known documents include the Founding Letter of the church (now a Hungarian Reformed Church) at Cluj (Kolozsvár) in 1464 and the archival material amassed ever since by that parish, the Papal Certificate to the St. Michael Church to grant indulgences, dated 1440, the Letter of King Mathias Corvinus of Hungary to the Chief Judge of Cluj (Kolozsvár), etc.

As we mentioned in our original Memorandum even if the aims of the Law were laudatory, the unavailability of competent personnel speaking or reading Hungarian, Latin and Classical Greek would be a tremendous handicap in cataloguing the confiscated documents. Bishop Papp hints that few of these documents are actually transferred to State and county archives. Unfortunately, he should know better. The Swiss German paper, Neue Zürcher Zeitung known worldwide for its factual reporting and objectivity, published on February 6, 1975 an article “Bürokratische Schikanen gegen die Kirchen Rumäniens,” (Bureaucratic Chicaneries against the Churches of Rumania) which relates that in 200 parishes of the Diocese in the counties of Oradea, Satu Mare, Bania Mare and Zalau state archival officials had appeared during the summer of 1974 in the company of the representatives of the Ministry of Cults and of the Diocesan Office and confiscated the church archives. “The material was put on trucks, often without a receipt, and was transported away. The historical order of the documents was completely upset, and this manner of “preserving the documents” will make historical research on these documents impossible

for decades.” The paper adds: “The Rumanian Government has obviously begun a more intensive struggle against the Hungarian Reformed Church and against the Hungarian nationality.” Bishop Papp remains silent about these events despite our reference to the same in our original Memorandum. Rather he emphasizes that the objective of the Decree Law is to “assure the optimum conditions for scientific research.”

It is true that not all church archives have yet been confiscated and that in some instances the parishes were allowed to retain some or all the documents in certain areas. However, he events of the summer of 1974 were not an isolated incident. According to people who had returned from Transylvania as late as October 1975 transfer into State property continues in the Diocese of Cluj (Kolozsvár), the other citadel of Hungarian Reformed Protestants.

Therefore, it is important to determine who, under the Law, can and will make the decision of confiscation or retaining the documents and devotional objects.

The original decision on confiscation is made by a three member commission, consisting of representation of the State Archives, the Ministry of Cults and of the Diocese. The second one is eo ipso a political representative of the Rumanian Government, the first one is a professional State official and the third one represents the church. The spirit of these representatives may be gauged by the article of their spiritual leader, the Bishop of Oradea. Thus, nothing, except perhaps the professional opinion of the archivist, stands in the way of confiscation of important documents by the State under the Law. If no agreement is reached by the commission, the Appeals Board consists of 11 members, selected from government ministries, the Rumanian National Academy and is chaired by the presentative of the Rumanian Ministry of the Interior which runs the police functions of the state. Its decision is final.

We believe hat if the Rumanian Government is serious about that “preservation” of the historical documents, and about centralizing the archives, it could do so simply by leaving the originals of the archival materials with the collections of the parishes and provide for the acquisition of a copy of the same by the State and county archives. This approach has not been followed in the past.

May we end by repeating the probable impact of the Decree Law 63 of December 10, 1974 for the history of the Hungarian Reformed Church, the Unitarian Church, the Lutheran Church and the Roman Catholic Church in Transylvania. The Law provides for absolute control of the historical documents and is increasingly used to transfer directly into State property the written relics of the Hungarian church and political history of Transylvania.

Even where local goodwill might exist, the lack of qualified archival personnel will prevent cataloguization and thereby render inaccessible to scholastic researchers the rich materials. Even Louis Takacs, a member of the CC of the Rumanian Communist Party pointed this out in the Grand National Assembly in Bucarest during the debate of the law in October 1974. The real purposes of the Rumanian Government becomes, therefore, obvious, it is not to “protect and preserve” the documents of the Hungarian history of Transylvania but to “render them inaccessible to readers, and especially to researchers” in order to facilitate the continuing policy of denationalization of the 2.5 million Hungarians in Rumania.