70 ÁRPÁD VON KLIMÓ
ing the actual power of the state apparatus, and it rests on the
assumption that the documents released by the Council can be
understood in one sense only.
In the long run, the marginalization of most alternative ideas
and religious activities by the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party
and its repressive apparatus had unintended consequences. Be-
ginning in the 1960s, especially younger generations felt more
and more that the official ideology provided by communism did
not offer them any answers to the problems of everyday life, in-
stead proving to be empty slogans. In the 1980s, a Communist
party secretary complained about growing “materialism” among
workers and adolescents and about their lack of “idealism.”55 This
we can only call an irony of history, since the aim of Communist
education since 1948 had been the struggle against clerical “ide-
alism” in favor of the “materialist world view.”
It is true, however, that a fully engaged reception of the Coun-
cil, its deliberations, and the subsequent theological and pastoral
debates was very difficult in Communist Hungary.56 First of all,
the state censored all information about the Council. It allowed
publication in Hungary of John XXIII’s 1962 message to the Hun-
garian believers, but not Paul VI’s in 1964.57 It took until 1975 for
almost all documents of the Council to become available in Hun-
gary, translated in the Benedictine Abbey of Pannonhalma. On
the other hand, many priests and Catholic laymen could read the
documents in Latin or German.
Considering the difficult situation of Catholic believers in
York: Peter Lang, 1995); Gábor Adriányi, “Ungarn,” in Kirche und Katholizismus
seit 1945, vol. 2, Ostmittel-, Ost- und Südosteuropa., ed. Erwin Gratz (Paderborn:
Schöningh, 1999), 245–70.
- Eszter Bartha, Alienating Labor: Workers on the Road from Socialism to Capi-
talism in East Germany and Hungary (New York: Berghahn, 2013), 227. - The following summarizes the findings of Fejérdy, Magyarország és a II. Va-
tikáni Zsinat, 243–51. - Fejérdy, Magyarország és a II. Vatikáni Zsinat, 244.