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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 31-2-171
TITLE:             MTI Quotes Bench OP Bishops' Statement
BY:                Urban
DATE:              1961-3-24
COUNTRY:           Hungary
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  Hungarian Evaluation and Analysis
THEMATIC SUBJECTS: Hungary--1956-1965, Church and State, Political Persecution

--- Begin ---

F183

1961


CURT **- MTI QUOTES BENCH Off BISHOPS' STATEMENT (w/w 80, M14)

Munich, mar 24. (Hungarian Evaluation and Analysis Note - (Urban) --
Early in March Archbishop Grosz, head of the Hungarian Roman Catholic
Church, was reliably reported to have written to the Prime Minister,
Mr. Muennich offering to go back to prison if the priests recently
arrested were not released and the Government's campaign against
the Church halted (of. "Archbishop Grosz Responds to Arrests"
Evaluation and Analysis News Background, March 10).

News of the Archbishop's letter, given as it has been
international publicity, must have caused the Government acute embarrassment.

Since the 1956 Revolution the Catholic Church has been
forced to put a good face on what in fact amounted to a slow
erosion of its position, lending or appearing to lend support to
Communist policies thus compromising itself in the eyes of the
faithful. Since the Moscow conference the Hungarian Communist
Party has intensified its campaign on the ideological front, waxing
especially militant in its relations with the Catholic Church.
The arrest of the eight priests and clerical persons reported on
7 February 1961 has been followed by a wave of detentions,
questionings and police searches, involving several hundred priests and
members of the dissolved religious orders. Prom the kind of evidence
the police were trying to produce it was not difficult to surmise
that they were out to construct a conspiracy case of some magnitude,
widening the net to include large sections of the lower clergy.
They were looking for proof that a subversive Church, led and
financed by the Vatican, is active underground, making it possible
for seminarists, expelled from their schools for their refusal to
cooperate with the renegade "peace priests", to continue their
studies and even to be secretly ordained by Bishops appointed by the
Holy See behind the backs of the official hierarchy.

The regime's purpose is to apply a sophisticated version
of Rakosi's salami tactics, cutting off, first, the "peace priests", then
chopping off further slices from the truncated body of the Church.
The move was a shrewd one: if the hierarchy resisted, as it obviously
did, it would lay itself open to accusations of violating the
Church-State agreement of 1950 and would suffer financially and
joepardise its remaining teaching rights. If, on the other hand
-- and this would appear to be the case now -- the hierarchy could
be pushed into dissociating itself from the arrested clergymen,
the Bishops would unwittingly come close to sharing a platform
with the excommunicated "peace priests", lending prestige support
to the Government and alienating themselves from the Vatican.

Having gone as far in cooperating with the Communists
as a Christian Church can possibly go (and some would say further),
Archbishop Grosz must have come to the conclusion when he wrote
his letter to Mr. Muennich that a point has been reached in
Church-State relations where the Episcopate could make no further
concessions without betraying its trust.

[page 2]

Hungarian Note,

The present announcement ought to be treated with utmost
caution. It was published simultaneously in the Espicopate's
semi-official "Magyar Kurir" and by MTI, the Hungarian Telegraph
Agency. The arrested persons have so far not been officially
charged and no date has been set for their trial. It would be
unprecendented for a college of the prelates of the Church to
condemn people whose case is sub judice and who may, for all we
know, be completely innocent. The announcement betrays the Communist
hands it prejudges the issue by assuming that the accused are
"irresponsible elements of the Catholic Church", that they have
plotted against "the security of the State" and committed "crimes
against the Hungarian people ("Magyar Kurir) -- in short, that
they are guilty.

It would appear quite likely that the Bench of Bishops
has not made the statement which is now attributed to them, or
possibly made it in a formas innocuous as were some of their
pronouncements on peace and collectivization. The hierarchy has no
means of refuting statements printed in their name short of
disowning them from the pulpit. This may yet happen.

Nor would such tactics be without precedent. On 1 January
1960 Archbishop Grosz was reported by the Communist press to have
given Church support to the collectivization of agriculture. Later
an unofficial Church publication, although unable to issue a denial,
printed the full text of what the Archbishop had actually said,
There was nothing in it that could have possibly been misinterpreted
as support given to the collectivization drive.

What is abundantly clear from the present announcement
is that the Church has come under critical pressure and that
breaking point may soon be reached. The Bishops' response may be
decisive for the whole cause of Church-State relations in Hungary.

End

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