VATICAN II AND HUNGARY 71general under any Communist dictatorship, access to these docu-
ments was surely not the main obstacle to a lively debate about
Vatican II. Rather, it was everyday discrimination against reli-
gion in schools, workplaces, and the public sphere. Despite these
difficult conditions, a debate on the Council documents did in-
deed take place in Hungary. Mihály Kránitz described in an ar-
ticle how Hungarian theologians discussed ideas of the Domini-
can- and Jesuit-driven so-called nouvelle théologie and how Karl
Rahner, who visited Hungary several times after 1968, contrib-
uted to a better knowledge of themes discussed during the Coun-
cil.58 The priest Tamás Nyíri, a Catholic philosopher who taught
at the University of Budapest beginning in 1968, was very active
in spreading news about the Council and its teachings in Hunga-
ry, as was József Cserháti, the bishop of Pécs who had attended
the last three sessions of the Council.59
Only by the end of the 1970s had the Hungarian Church finally
applied most of the administrative and liturgical changes that
the Council had initiated. Some changes—like new administra-
tive structures and the renewal of the liturgy—could be imple-
mented more easily than others. The Hungarian bishops’ confer-
ence established, among others, a National Liturgical Council
(Országos Liturgikus Tanács) in 1964, and the renewal of liturgi-
cal forms was put into effect during the 1970s.60 More problemat-
ic because of the difficult political circumstances was the imple-
mentation of other decisions taken at Vatican II. In a meeting on
December 10, 1970, the Hungarian bishops concluded that “the
pastoral instructions regarding means of mass communication
cannot, because of the conditions of our country, be realized.”61
- Mihály Kránitz, “La teologia cattolica ungherese dopo il Concilio Vaticano II,”
Gregorianum 91, no. 3 (2010): 510–25. - Gábor Zsille, “A párbeszéd embere: Nyíri Tamás halálának évfordulójára,” Új
Ember, no. 60 (2004). - Fejérdy, Magyarország és a II. Vatikáni Zsinat, 246.
- Quoted in Fejérdy, Magyarország és a II. Vatikáni Zsinat, 246. This refers to the