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

1949-07-01 / 1-2. szám

TÁROGATÓ

13

ly against the Cardinal as an enemy of the people and of democracy. The Cardinal’s figure increased to superhuman stature and became the symbol of freedom, of religion, of Hungarian culture, of the dignity of man, of Christian character and of decency in general. But he certainly stood alone: his fellowbishops who agreed with him in matters of religion and morals and of relationship to the state, were as helpless as himself; fellow religious leaders who, though they were leaders of other denominations, understood him and cooperated with him for the sake of religion and morals, disappeared from public life: the well-known Reformed bishop, Ladislaus Ravasz, yielded to pressure and withdrew from his office; the Evangelical bishop, Ordass, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment on a flimsy pretext; their successors, who were put in their place by official pressure, were willing to serve the government by abusing the Cardinal (Bereczky) and by stirring up quarrels with Catholicism (Révész); the religious intelligentsia were removed from the schools and could not make their voices heard; priests all over the country were threatened by local communist agitators and even beaten up.

Force, calumny, swindle, misleading propaganda, put the communists firmly in the saddle. They even had their own president for the Republic and their own courts of justice, the People’s Courts, organized entirely for the party’s purposes. They achieved everything as far as political power was concerned. At least, it appeared so. But they themselves knew that they had not achieved their most important goal. We are compelled to say “most important” considering all the effort they put into the realization of this task, the task of making religion and the Church subservient to Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist dogmatics. This they did not achieve because the Cardinal stood in their way. Yet they had to achieve it: Marx and Stalin demanded it. Therefore they decided that the Cardinal must be removed from Hungarian public life and from any public life.

They arrested him on the 26th of December, 1948.

IV

The Cardinal knew what was in store for him. This is evidenced by his last Pastoral Letter issued six days before his arrest. If his first pastoral letter lacked devotional character, the last is hardly more than quotations from the New Testament. In these quotations he speaks as if he were on his way, tells his people how they should behave in order to remain faithful to Christ, and talks to them about himself, how he himself faces reality. Two of his quotations are very illuminating. One is from Tertullian: “The charge of certain accusers means glory to us. Everything happens for the freedom of our Church, for the preservation of our suffering people and youth, for more peace, hence for spiritual, higher interests, and not for the reason they may impute to us.” And the other: “In the possession of grace we may ascend to the height of the Apostles who could even rejoice that for the name of Jesus they were allowed to suffer ignominy and flagellation”. And he goes on: “We are already in the world of the Sermon on the Mount: ‘Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are ye when they shall revile you and persecute you and speak all that is evil against you, untruely, for my sake’ ”. (Matt. 5, 10-11). “Have confidence, I shall overcome the world” (John 16, 33).

The Cardinal knew two things for sure: one, that his accusers, whenever they laid hands on him, would not come out with the real issue, which is their enmity to religion and to higher spiritual values, but with something else which would serve their purpose and at the same time prevent them from being blamed for it; the second, that his accusation would not be a legal procedure which might end in his acquittal, but an annihilation of his person. It is the dying man before whose eyes “the hope of eternal light shineth.” He felt that his earthly end was near, and in neither of these convictions was he mistaken.

He was under arrest from December 26th, 1948 until his trial on February 8th, 1949. The far greater part of his