Vatican II Behind the Iron Curtain

TWO VATICAN II AND HUNGARY • • Árpád von Klimó In most Western countries, the Second Vatican Council has been understood as a ...

VATICAN II AND HUNGARY 51 conservative minority, the Council was just another symptom of the social disease afflicting the Weste ...

52 ÁRPÁD VON KLIMÓ support of lay organizations and associations counting hundreds of thousands of members. And yet, by the earl ...

VATICAN II AND HUNGARY 53 tions by Hungarian bishops.7 In other words, the history of the Council, it seems, would not have to b ...

54 ÁRPÁD VON KLIMÓ used by journalists and scholars beginning in the 1970s to de- scribe West Germany’s policy of détente toward ...

VATICAN II AND HUNGARY 55 the Communist leaders wanted to use the world meeting to their advantage. This led to some surprising ...

56 ÁRPÁD VON KLIMÓ and films. For him, opening up to modern society was not an op- tion, given the difficult situation of the Ch ...

VATICAN II AND HUNGARY 57 cent) and African bishops (83 percent) were even more respon- sive to the Vatican’s call. All told, 77 ...

58 ÁRPÁD VON KLIMÓ him personally in Venice, but the Hungarian bishops were not al- lowed to leave the country for this purpose. ...

VATICAN II AND HUNGARY 59 and church in these years revolved around the question of which priests should decide in matters of Ch ...

60 ÁRPÁD VON KLIMÓ The Communist era prior to 1962 was characterized by two distinct periods of confessional policy: between 194 ...

VATICAN II AND HUNGARY 61 termed the state security forces of the Soviet Bloc “a system pro- ducing paper.”28 The Hungarian Conc ...

62 ÁRPÁD VON KLIMÓ the decision about who could travel to Rome also depended on the Hungarian State Office of Church Affairs, wh ...

VATICAN II AND HUNGARY 63 The Communist leadership distrusted this new, global ap- proach, which seemed so different from Pius X ...

64 ÁRPÁD VON KLIMÓ tive-integrist wing” of the Church; and (d) supporting Commu- nist-friendly “positive forces.” After the deci ...

VATICAN II AND HUNGARY 65 sent back to headquarters in Budapest. The operation of Hungar- ian state security during the First Se ...

66 ÁRPÁD VON KLIMÓ sprang into a new phase of vitality from the start of the Vatican Council. Many priests are back on the job a ...

VATICAN II AND HUNGARY 67 The Third Session started on September 14, 1964, the same day that the Vatican and the Hungarian Peopl ...

68 ÁRPÁD VON KLIMÓ who was the leader of the “Movement of Priests for Peace,” an organization created by the Communist secret po ...

the Catholic Church.52 The Communist state also made sure that most of the Council’s documents were not published in Hungar- ian ...