Fraternity-Testvériség, 1961 (39. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1961-09-01 / 9. szám
6 FRATERNITY child, was in turn frequently disobeyed. Then in 1890 another ministerial order was issued absolutely requiring this information to be given under pain of severe punishment, and allowing the period of eight days from the date of baptism in which protest might be made about the legality of a christening. But in 1894 the whole matter of reversal was finalized in a new law of the land. This new law made it clear that a couple before marriage could make a decision about the religion in which their children were to be brought up, so that the children could follow the faith of either the father or the mother; the couple had only to signify their wishes before a responsible authority. If there were no agreement, then the 1868 law was the one effective in their case, which states that in mixed marriages the boy was to follow his father, the girl her mother, in matters of religion. Yet if one parent converted after marriage, the children had still to remain in the faith agreed upon, unless they were under seven years of age; otherwise, they had to wait till their eighteenth birthday, when they could choose for themselves what faith they wished to follow. The Roman Catholic Church was furious at the promulgation of this new law, and invited its clergy to look upon fulfilling its requirements as collusion with heretics. The result was that again many priests were hailed before the courts for breaking the law, and the whole country was once again in an uproar. But the government seems to have felt that the position was now too much for it to handle, and it seems that it virtually agreed to wink at the Roman Church’s breaking of the law. Anyway, “reversal” continued in Hungary as if there were no government in the land at all to make the laws of the people. The Church’s Inner Life What of the inner life of the Church throughout all this period of renewed strife? Remember that both the State and the Roman Catholic
