János Dobszay
The Churches, Religion, and Politics after 1989
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With the end of the Second World War, it became clear that fundamental changes in the position of the Churches were to be expected, specifically, the separation of Church and State and restrictions on the role of the Churches in education. The Churches were aware of the necessity for these changes and expressed their willingness to comply. The Communist regime, however, perceived the Churches as political enemies it must vanquish rather than as partners.
The first step, carried out as early as March 1945 as part of the land reform, was the expropriation of Church lands. This involved 90 per cent of the land owned by the Catholic Church and 60 per cent of that owned by the Protestant Churches. (Up to 1945, the Roman Catholic Church owned 35 per cent of all arable land.) The Churches complained that they were dispossessed, without compensation, of lands held in trust for the maintenance of schools, religious orders, churches, and other institutions. In Summer 1946, László Rajk, the Minister of the Interior, disbanded all Catholic voluntary organizations, with the exception of the expressly religious ones, without justifying his step. In early 1948, Mátyás Rákosi, the head of the Communist Party, proclaimed a plan to liquidate “clerical reactionary forces”. The Protestant Churches were the first victims, as their structure and democratic organization facilitated the replacement of leading clergy by Communist supported persons. This was easily accomplished in the Calvinist Church, where every bishop resigned, including the eminent bishop of Debrecen, László Ravasz. He was replaced by a person with leftist sympathies and loyal to the new regime. In the Lutheran Church, however, only two bishops were willing to resign. Bishop Lajos Ordass, who refused to surrender to the Communists, was set as an example demonstrating that they were prepared for this eventuality. The bishop was arrested and condemned for black marketeering in foreign currency. Thereafter both Protestant Churches signed the agreement violating the freedom of religion.
Twelve days after the Lutheran Church signed this agreement, the Primate Cardinal József Mindszenty was arrested (see the excerpt from Árpád Pünkösti’s book on pp. 86–98). Next came the persecution of the Catholic prelates. The Catholic hierarchy made this more difficult, since the Communists had no say in the appointment of bishops or priests. To overcome this problem, they tried to break the Church by arrests, internment, and even executions.
The question of schools was resolved in 1948, before the Mindszenty trial. Except for a few secondary schools, every Catholic school was nationalized. The ultimate goal was to suppress religious activity completely and to eradicate the Churches within a foreseeable future. Thence-forth, the state set out to destroy the social basis of Churches by means of administrative measures and intimidation. They sought to keep the young away from the Churches and from religious activity; religious instruction was closely supervised and severely restricted. Teachers were forbidden to attend church services, the personal data of every student attending religious instruction, of every one who underwent confirmation or who married in church, had to be reported to state agencies.
The Mindszenty trial was the prelude to the agreement with the intimidated Catholic Church revoking the license of religious orders, and prohibiting their members from joining the secular clergy. The agreement notwithstanding, the signatory Archbishop József Groýsz, similarly to Mindszenty, was given a long prison term in a show trial. However, the Catholic Church proved more difficult to control than the Protestants. Thus János Péter, who in the first half of the Fifties was the Calvinist Bishop in Debrecen, later appeared as an open member of the Communist Party, in time the Minister of Foreign Affairs and a member of the Central Committee during the Kádár era. Under state duress, the Catholics established the priests-for-peace movement which was intended to divide the clergy. Since it was expected to yield results only much later, most of the bishops were interned in the first half of the fifties and for a short time after 1956. Their dioceses were entrusted to reliable substitutes.
In 1956, 1945 conditions were restored in every Church and the former heads of the clergy resumed their work. But not for long. After the suppression of the revolution, the Prince–Primate Cardinal Mindszenty sought refuge in the American Legation in Budapest. The fact that he did not leave the country caused serious problems for the Communists. After 1956, collaborating bishops returned to head the Protestant Churches, and a new tactical approach was applied to the Catholic Church. Specifically, the state tried—usually successfully—to legitimize its Church policy through the clergy and thereby create long–term discord within a more or less unified Church. A case in 1961 illustrates the success of this tactic, when the episcopate issued a pastoral letter condemning its own priests and the laity awaiting trial even before the court pronounced sentence. In addition, the Hungarian state and the Vatican signed a concordat in 1964, which most of the laity resented. In effect it covered only the appointment of bishops to fill vacancies with the addition that the state had the right to veto any appointee. In response to the Church’s willingness to compromise, the state, as usual, took massive legal action against Catholic priests and laity in 1965. The last of the big trials took place in 1971–1972, as part of the effort to persuade the Pope to persuade Cardinal Mindszenty to resign from his position as Archbishop of Esztergom—the seat of the head of the Hungarian Catholic Church. Usually priests and laymen, who played an active role in Catholic communities and organized youth groups, were indicted. The charge was serious: generally, they were prosecuted for conspiracy against the state.
These community movements were a challenge to the hierarchy, too, since they indicated a loss of influence over a very active part of the laity and lower clergy. When Mindszenty was allowed to leave the country, the Pope persuaded him to retire and in 1976 appointed László Lékai the new Archbishop of Esztergom. The state immediately shunted the problem of small communities onto him, thereby making the conflict, which it had settled in courts up to then, a Church affair. The case of the base communities thus became a permanent source of conflict within the Catholic Church, further aggravating internal dissent. This time, however, anticipating state intentions, the clergy strove to keep tight control, over its recalcitrant priests by banishing them to remote parishes, frequently with the result that wherever they went religious life revived. Some of the priests, however, left the Church.
Before the 1989 political changes, the Protestant Churches were led by bishops working closely together with the state, some of whom even acquired international positions. By the eighties, the Catholic Church had a traditionalist clergy isolated from modern Catholic trends and a large passive laity. Meanwhile, there was a discernible religious renaissance among professional people and the young, who took a critical view of the big politics of prelates. A very active religious life was a feature of some of the parishes with increasing participation by laymen. The revival of councils and other initiatives promised to give a new life to the Catholic Church but has failed to do so as yet—perhaps because of its virtually unchanged clergy. In the summer of 1989, the transitional reform-Communist Németh government decided to change the basis of the relationship between the Churches and the state. The all-powerful State Religious Affairs Office—which had kept the Churches on a short leash since its foundation in 1951—was abolished.
István Riba
With the restoration of a multi-party system in Hungary in 1989, three kinds of parties came into being: Christian-National (Hungarian Democratic Forum, Christian-Democratic People’s Party, Independent Smallholders’ Party), liberal (Alliance of Free Democrats, Federation of Young Democrats), and Socialist/Social-Demo-cratic (Hungarian Socialist Party). One of the reasons for the increasing roughness of Hungarian political life was that arguments on facts and sober considerations were replaced by pledges of allegiance to various political flags, by motivation based on a belief that the party or fraction they stood for embodied the true faith. Those who vote for another party are enemies of my faith. As a result, during the parliamentary term 1990–1994 it was often impossible to resolve practical questions without debates on ideology.
The Churches, too, contributed their own ideological, moral, and religious imprint on party differences. Seemingly, they were above conflict among the parties—for instance, the Catholic Church, in line with Vatican instructions, forbade priests to participate in politics—but their activities in fact added considerably to the escalation of passions. Pastoral letters and exhortations from the pulpit during parliamentary and municipal elections in 1990 and 1994 did not, or only seldom, contain an overt call for support for any specific party; however, they did obliquely express that it was the duty of the faithful to vote for Christian parties. Church representatives frequently disregarded the fact that the reference to Christianity, or religious faith in party platforms usually meant no more than respect for European humanist values which all parties claimed to share. (Several leaders of the Christian parties openly admitted that they were not churchgoers and for them Christianity was not a faith but a set of humanist ideals rooted in the history of Christianity.)
Propaganda in churches even took the form of leaflets accidentally left in the pews, or the form of well-meaning though unwarranted guidance by priests appealing to the conscience of the uninformed faithful. Church members who did not sympathize with Christian parties were made to feel second-class Church members and not good Christians.
Collusion and its dangers
Parties claiming Christian ideological principles won the first free elections in 1990. This seemed to guarantee that politics would, in a manner of speaking, favour the much suffered Churches: it also signalled new types of dangers. The Jesuit theologian Francois Varillon describes one such danger in a book, also published in Hungarian, as follows:
Any regime in power—be it a monarchy, democracy, or dictatorship—endeavouring to survive and fearing changes, is incapable of subjugating the conscience of the people. It enacts a law but cannot itself as a political power use the force of conscience to compel obedience to the said law. Its power does not extend to what is known as the inner judgment, one’s conscience. Therefore, it turns to priests for help, who usually assist wil-lingly in order to protect stability in a given period, by making compliance with state legislation an obligation for conscience. Thus, priests become natural assistants in preserving the political status quo. This explains the perpetual temptation of every clerical body to revert to a kind of pagan priesthood. What religion demands in the name of God, the regime in power can only demand in the name of the law.
In a number of cases the Antall government turned for moral support to the three largest Hungarian Churches, the Catholic, the Calvinist, and the Lutheran.
In 1991, Act XXXII settling the legal position of Church property became a law. It did not stipulate total compensation, but promised the return of a number of properties within a period of ten years. (According to the law, the Churches could claim only those properties that were nationalized without compensation after 1948, and only if they were to be used for educational, cultural, health, or religious purposes.) At the same time, they regularly received state support for religious activity and maintenance of their infrastructure. (Four organizations, labelled as “destructive sects” by Parliament, were temporarily denied subsidies in 1993. These were Jehovah’s Witnesses, followers of Krishna, the Hungarian representatives of the Church of Unification—the “Moonies”—and Scientologists.)
Return of Church property came to a standstill while the Christian coalition government was still in office. Of the 7127 claims submitted, in only about 1500 cases was property actually transferred before 1994, when the Socialist government took office. Approximately the same number of claims were withdrawn by the Churches or rejected by competent government agencies as falling outside the law. Nor did budget subsidies keep pace with an annual inflation of over 20 per cent. Yet the policy towards the Churches of the government led by József Antall (and, after his death, by Péter Boross) was rated as favourable by the Churches and the government in general was only cautiously criticized. This is a possible—if not the main—explanation why this comprehensive analytical pastoral letter was issued only in 1996.
Self-examination omitted
According to public opinion polls, the reputation of the Churches did not diminish over the years, although many have urged them to undertake self-examination. The well-known political commentator, László Lengyel, for instance, was highly critical, and in 1990 reproached clerical dignitaries for accepting seats in the fraudulently elected parliaments of the Communist era, for voting in compliance with the expectations of the Communist government, for always agreeing or, if they did not, for not dissociating themselves by resigning.
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What Church leaders can really be accused of is passivity in their own affairs, a failure to carry out even their very own duties. The Bulányi affair exemplifies this situation in the Catholic Church. György Bulányi, a priest whom the Church did not readmit for political reasons after his release from prison, began to publish in the Seventies his critical works on the Church hierarchy and on Paul’s epistles. He organized his followers in so-called base communities which were condemned by the Vatican. He called the public’s attention to himself by encouraging conscientious objection to military service.
The episcopate did nothing to examine the compatibility of Bulányi’s views with the official teachings of the Church until the Piarist father happened to tread on the State’s toes by encouraging young men to refuse military service. Belatedly, the Church hierarchy took urgent steps to institute proceedings, which proved self-defeating due to Bulányi’s growing popularity as a well-known dissident. Hence the justified theological objections to his teachings lost credibility.
The way heresies are handled is not the sole criterion by which a Church is judged. The Bulányi affair is important primarily because it is symptomatic of the reciprocity between enervation and political conformism. This affair is, together with a number of similar unresolved ones, a burden the Catholic Church, like the other major denominations, carries over to the new era.
Another case was that of Géza Németh’s, a Calvinist pastor, who was stopped from ministering to his flock because his activity in support of Hungarians in Transylvania was regarded as contrary to official foreign policy .
With the political rehabilitation of clergymen who were persecuted and imprisoned, many of whom are no longer alive —they were acquitted by courts reviewing the show trials which decided that there was no case to answer—justice was served by a secular authority which seems to have satisfied Church leaders in many cases. A quiet rehabilitation took place within the Churches: they readmitted those clergy —some of whom are bishops today—who had been forced into taking secular jobs (in factories, for example) for long years, but the Churches never admitted their earlier errors to the public and seldom to themselves. Presumably, this is one of the reasons why many of the faithful choose to satisfy their transcendental needs outside the churches.
Much research in the sociology of religion in recent years fails to give an exact answer to the question whether people have become more religious since the changeover in 1989, whether more dare—or perhaps find it fashionable—to admit to a belief in the existence of some Superior Being, which would explain a result showing an increase in religiousness. According to the representative survey by the Educational Research Institute (1994), 62 per cent of the respondents claim to be religious in their own way as opposed to the 46.7 per cent in the 1990 survey of the Hungarian Public Opinion Research Institute. (In recent years the percentage of respondents claiming to be non-religious has declined from 32.9 to 18.) Indicative of the quality of religiousness is the only slight increase in the number of those who describe themselves as “religious according to church teaching”: 15 in 1992 and 19 in 1995 out of 100 respondents.
Collating the data of surveys conducted in the 1970s and 1980s with those conducted in the 1990s, which show the changes in the number of christenings and registrations in religious communities, we find a strengthening of earlier tendencies: the ratio of Roman Catholics among the denominations rose from two-thirds to nearly three-fourths, while that of the Calvinists and the Lutherans among the denominations remained close to one–fifth and one-third, respectively, and that of Jews declined from 1 to 0.5 per cent. The ratio of non-denominational respondents increased significantly (in 1972 every 20th, in 1992 every 16th respondent). The ratio of believers in other religions, statistically insignificant only two decades ago, is more than 1 per cent today. The explanation for this growth lies in the gaining of ground of newly created and imported faiths––mostly from the Orient.
The Free Churches (Baptist, Pentecostal, Adventist, Methodist) have about 30,000 members, newly founded Christian sects have nearly 35,000. (Adherents of the Faith Congregation and the reinstated Jehovah’s Witnesses constitute 80 per cent of the latter.) Non-Christians––which include five Buddhist communities, one Muslim and one Krishna community according to researchers––number fewer than 1500 members altogether. But, characteris-tically, these small sects attract three times as many sympathizers as the number of their registered membership. According to a 1993 survey by the Gallup Institute, religious communities—like the followers of Krishna and Jehovah’s Witnesses—in the cross fire of sectarian strife are better-known today than small old established churches, such as the Pentecostals, which also maintain educational institutions.
The trends suggested by recently published statistics covering the entire adult population may be misleading if the significant deviations in denominational structure according to age groups are disregarded. The younger a cohort, the higher the ratio of non-denominational individuals. In 1995, the ratio of non-denominational 18–24-year-olds equaled the ratio of members of the Calvinist Church, the second largest denomination, in the same age group. At the same time, the most religious section of the population, the elderly, declines the most rapidly. This means that the current ratio among the denominations can be expected to go through significant changes in the near future.
The various social strata show significant differences in religious practice. Professionals constitute the most heterogeneous group, most of whom belong to one of the two opposite poles––those who attend church regularly and the atheists. The ratio of Jews and Lutherans is highest among the highly educated, and the ratio of adherents of some other religion is also highest in this group. The overwhelming majority of Catholics have general or secondary school education, while the ratio of Calvinists is relatively high among those with unfinished general school education (less than eight grades) and somewhat higher than average among the highly educated.
Ascending
Church activity, restrained for decades, has become vigorous in recent years. Only about 300 churches were built in Hungary in the forty-five years between 1945 and 1990 and somewhat over 200 between 1990 and 1996. In many villages the rebuilding of churches destroyed during the Second World War did not start until more than forty years after the war. The social background of urban church construction shows a somewhat different picture. In recent years, church construction began in several former “socialist” cities (such as Duna-újváros, or Leninváros, called Tiszaújváros today) and new districts (the Avas housing project in Miskolc) where there were none before. A number of churches and auxiliary facilities also function as community houses with halls for worship, charity offices, religious instruction and play rooms, childcare centres, mothers’ clubs, and so on.
New basis
Contrary to some fears, the socialist- liberal Horn coalition government, which took office in 1994, did not play tit for tat with the churches for the 1990–1994 period, nor did it curry favour with any of the denominations. There is little to show that the government intends to take substantive steps, for instance, in changing the financing of Churches, in spite of the fact that the present system of subsidies in the form of an annual distribution of money sustains the harmful and unbalanced relationship between the state and the Church. Thus, every year the Budget Bill is the subject of renewed disputes about how much the state should allot to the Churches, and there are always some who consider the amount too high, others too little.
János Dobszay
is a sociologist and journalist on the staff of Heti Világgazdaság, a weekly of business and economics.
