52 ÁRPÁD VON KLIMÓ
support of lay organizations and associations counting hundreds
of thousands of members.
And yet, by the early 1960s, only a decade later, the Church
represented but a small, marginalized minority—discriminated
against, continuously defamed in public media, and, although on
a much smaller scale than during the Stalinist terror of the late
1940s and early 1950s, still threatened by laws prohibiting the free
exercise of religious teaching and practice. The Communist party-
state, in the words of Hungarian theologian András Máté-Tóth,
“strictly controlled and limited the movements and public com-
munication of the Hungarian Church in a number of ways.”6 The
State Office of Church Affairs restricted religious ceremonies and
education to the space within churches, censored all religious
publications, and observed all branches of the administration of
the Church with the help of informants tied to the state secu-
rity apparatus. Neither prelates nor regular priests could travel
abroad without having first secured the permission of the State
Office.
Because of this difficult situation, the Hungarian Catholic
Church was unable to engage intensively in the activities and dis-
cussions around Vatican II, let alone lead a passionate public de-
bate about the renewal of Catholicism. Even the fact that a hand-
ful of representatives of the Hungarian Church were allowed to
take part in the sessions in Rome, which came as a pleasant sur-
prise after tough negotiations between the Holy See and the Com-
munist government, does not change an overall negative picture.
The Hungarian delegation left virtually no visible trace at the
Council. If we consult, for example, the monumental History of
Vatican II edited by Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph Komonchak, a
five-volume compendium of door-stopping girth, we find that it
mentions, in a text of more than 3,000 pages, only two contribu-
- András Máté-Tóth, “A II. Vatikani Zsinat és a magyar elhárítás,” at http://
internetlap.blogspot.com/2009/12/ii.html; accessed May 2, 2014.