VATICAN II AND HUNGARY 73groups, there was a great demand for religious communal life, as
well as a large number of offerings, since thousands of monks and
nuns had been driven from their cloisters and now had to earn
their keep as humble workers. Many of them continued to live
communally or gathered small groups of the faithful around them,
sharing religious ideas and practices.
Because these new groupings were isolated from the outside
world and had scant access to religious literature, they developed
a degree of autonomy and independence that soon alienated them
from a Church hierarchy that placed a premium on obedience and
control.65 That was, among others, a reason that both the Hungar-
ian Church and the Vatican censured Bulányi during the 1980s—
and why he had to exchange letters with Joseph Ratzinger, the
prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Despite the sometimes hostile stance adopted by the Church
hierarchy toward Bokor and its harassment and persecution by
state authorities, the movement grew in the 1960s and 1970s to
encompass several thousand members who met in small groups
of twelve. Bulányi continually reinterpreted his philosophy of
mission in light of Council documents. When Cardinal Ratzinger
asked him to sign a document, he signed it. But he added the sen-
tence that no one should “be forced to act in a manner contrary to
his conscience,” citing Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Free-
dom, Dignitatis humanae. 66
What made life in these groups particularly attractive was
the fact that their members—priests and laymen, men and wom-
en—were all on an equal footing, speaking critically and openly
with one another. They were able to lead, in their view, lives that
were informed by Christian values such as the dignity of the hu-
man person, praying, and reflecting on the Bible together.67 At
- This is the interpretation from Máté-Tóth, Bulányi und die Bokor Bewegung.
- Renata Ehrlich, “Die real existierende Kirche in Ungarn,” Orientierung , no. 56
(1992): 13–14. - András Jobbágy, Religious Policy and Dissent in Socialist Hungary, 1974–1989: