Tárogató, 1949-1950 (12. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1949-07-01 / 1-2. szám

TÁROGATÓ

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ing the “political” activities of the Cardinal. Parents were also threatened if they did not denounce the Cardinal. Sine all these outbursts against him were made under duress, the Cardinal overlooked them and forgave the signers beforehand. The communist party’s official paper published satirical pictures in which the Cardinal was depicted in the most vulgar manner. All this indicates that the Hungarian exponents of Moscow were not behind their masters in methods of dealing with their opponents.

“Of all my predecessors”, says the Cardinal (in a statement dated November 16, 1948, which was seized by the police), “not a single one stood so bereft of means as I do. So many deliberately fabricated falsehoods, a hundred times refuted, yet continually and stubbornly spread, did not surge around any of my seventy-eight predecessors, as they do around me”.

In the same Statement he has this to say about the nationalization of the schools: “There is no agreement between Church and State; or better to say, between the parties. But everybody knows well enough that the Government’s promised invitation to negotiate was received by the Church, which had several times expressed her readiness to participate, only after a delay of three months. They declared their willingness to settle the questions involving Church interests through the channels of previous negotiations. But they settled precisely the most important question, that of the nationalization of the schools, in a one-sided manner. Naturally, the Church was made to play the scapegoat.” (The Catholic Mind, 1949, p. 188)

After the nationalization, the Cardinal forbade under penalty of excommunication any person belonging to a religious order or any secular priest to teach in the nationalized schools any subject but religion. This meant extreme poverty and misery to most of them, and many of them had to resort to humiliating work. Someone may remark that there is no such thing as “humiliating” work and perhaps there is not. But if you had studied all your life long, finished your university course and spent all your

time in shaping the life of a new generation in a religious-moral way, and now not only are you deprived of doing what is part of your personality but are forced to do laundry, as the nuns are, then you do feel humiliated and nobody can blame you for it. Yet you have chosen this in preference to the offers of the communist government, offers of money to help you over into your secular life, and increased salary, you have chosen it because you believe in God and you know that you would have been made obedient tools of a godless trend. And that is precisely what happened in the schools. The Cardinal correctly interpreted the spirit of Moscow’s agents and by his strict but almost inspired sanction prevented the greatest abuse of the servants of God; this becomes clear when we try to answer the question: Why was this nationalization of the schools not only necessary but so urgently necessary?

The Hungarian denominational schools (elementary, secondary schools, teachers’ colleges) were on a high level. The education of the teachers was the same as in the state-schools, but with something more. I may put this “something more” in this way: they cared more and worried more about their pupils. (I speak from experience, I was one of the denominational teachers.) If you do not have a wife and family, you live for those of your “children” whom you meet in the classroom. Your interest in them does not end with the ringing of bells after school-time; you take your impressions of them home to your common dining-room and recreation-room where you sit with your colleagues and discuss them. You get more information about your pupils, they start to live within you, they become part of your life. Of course, your influence on them will also increase, since they are aware of your warmth toward them. And if you are a man of religion, as no doubt you are by your vocation, religion and all that is implied in religion, will get strengthened in them also. You will not force your denomination on a boy who belongs to another denomination, but you will take great care that as regards his own denomination he does his duty most con-