Catholic Research Articles

The Catholic Church in Hungary and Romania during the Communist Dictatorship: A Comparative Analysis

The structure and cultural characteristics of a society are, in the words of Joseph Schumpeter, “like metal” – they bend and melt but do not readily evaporate. My comparative analysis confirms the diagnosis that the everyday presence of dictatorship cannot be adequately described by the standard top-down models of ideologically driven communist power. The substantive differences in developments between Hungary and Romania suggest that external power is only part of the construct, however rigid the hegemonic structure. By looking at the reactions caused by similar effects in different contexts, it becomes clear what has an impact on what. The relationship of the churches to the state in the countries under study includes similarities and differences shaped by distinct historical trajectories that are partly structural and partly situational. In terms of circumstances, Romania’s Orthodox pattern regarding the relationship between the state and the church also determined the relationship with other denominations and sealed the fate of Greek Orthodox Catholics. The measures taken against Roman Catholics, although more or less the same as in Hungary, also tended more towards the state-church model. However, this feature was not the primary cause of the different impact in Romania compared to Hungary. This is because, just as the relationship between church and state differed from country to country, so did the relationship of the churches to their own “national” societies. Further, no matter how tempting it might be to consider the Catholic Church a closed entity, the comparison clarifies that neither the hierarchical division nor the same (Catholic) norm made behaviour uniform. The differences arising from local configurations of the single norm grew more and more evident in the 1950s. All this suggests that state and church strategies and actions were shaped more by the conflict of contexts and pressures to comply than by the tension between the scope of action and the constraints: the differences between Romania and Hungary are explained by the different contexts and the cross-generational ecclesiastical and social patterns A greater historical understanding explains how bishops in Hungary, in line with previous conditions and established practice, hoped for quasi-freedom in church operations through a “partnership” with the state while the Roman Catholic Church in Romania has been operating under exlex conditions for four decades. That does not mean that a rational-legal approach on its own is the key to understanding what has occurred. Under a dictatorship, we can identify deviance, excesses, abuses and arbitrary actions in relation to the law. However, these “models” can only be understood in the context of processes that transcend political history. The behaviour of the authorities in Bucharest towards the Catholic Church has been dramatic compared to other countries under Soviet influence. With the arrests of Áron Márton and Anton Durcovici, the public hierarchy appointed by the Holy See ceased to exist. The elimination of dioceses by the state was also a unique feature. The resistance organised by the Jesuits and Franciscans, with the support of the faithful, successfully paralysed the ecclesiastical administration, which had been put in place due to state intervention after the arrest of Áron Márton. This process was largely due to the church’s strengthened social embeddedness in previous years and its successful adaptation of strategies developed to cope with its minority status. Over the centuries, the Catholic Church in Transylvania has faced a series of challenges that have threatened its very existence. These pressures have also shaped the thinking of its clergy and its relationship with its faithful. The recoveries from crises have led to innovative and flexible adaptation strategies, making the local church “tough” and thus contributing to its management of the next crisis. The mentality of the church, which was minimally domesticated or determined by the secular power, showed fewer Josephine traits than in Hungary. The relationship between church and state tended towards the passive model, while the relationship between church and society tended towards the active model. The Catholic Church’s double minority status in Transylvania during the Communist years – minority as a Hungarian and minority as a Catholic – created an alternative society that did not allow it to abstain entirely from politics. Beyond individual choices, this also made its confrontational position more flexible and its submission more moderate.

A Realist and a Prophet: The Role of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński during Communist Rule in Poland

Largely thanks to the outstanding personality and leadership talents of Cardinal Wyszyński and his great authority, the Catholic Church in Poland did not fully submit to the Communist power; in contrast, it not only retained but also significantly increased its influence in society. The plan to break up the church and atheise Poles ended in defeat, and the primate of the millennium played a key role in this failure. Thanks to the pastoral programmes he prepared and carried out, the Catholic faith and attachment of Poles to the church deepened significantly. This movement can also be traced to an increase in independent and oppositional attitudes towards the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic, which significantly gained strength in the 1970s, the most important expression of which was the establishment in 1980 of the Solidarity social movement. It was this significant role of the church that distinguished Poland from other countries in the Soviet bloc, which did not have a leader of such stature as Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński.

“The Desert of Spoken Words”: Conversations of Bishop Márton Áron Recorded by the Securitate in 1956–1980

Márton Áron, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Alba Iulia (1938–1980), came to the attention of the Securitate from the founding of this repressive institution until the autumn of 1980, when he passed away. The reasons for his surveillance were his popularity among the faithful, his outspoken anti-communism, his loyalty to the Vatican and the fact that he came from the country’s largest national minority. The results of this extended surveillance are reflected today in the bishop’s files in the Archive of the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives in Bucharest. One of the main methods used by the Securitate in the surveillance process was the use of microphones. They were installed in the bishop’s office in 1956 and operated with short interruptions until the end of his life. The transcripts of the recorded conversations are today in the bishop’s files and represent a “gold mine” for historians interested in the Catholic Church in Romania during the Communist regime.

Condemned by Communists as the “Vatican’s spy”: the Biography of Catholic Priest Ștefan Tătaru

In Romania, the list of “enemies” of the Communist totalitarian regimes included church representatives, and those who had connections with the Vatican (thus belonging to the Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic Churches) held a special importance. Decree 358 of 1 December 1948 declared the official end of Greek Catholic “cult” activities, and many officials, clergy and simple believers drew the attention of the Communist authorities and the Securitate. Among them was the Greek Catholic priest Ștefan Tătaru. In 1950, he accepted the position of clandestine Greek Catholic vicar general in Bucharest for Oltenia, Muntenia, Moldova and Dobrudja. For this, on 30 January 1951, he was arrested and sentenced to hard labour for life for the “the crime of high treason”/ “high treason to the nation in favour of the Vatican”. He served his sentence in some of the toughest prisons in the Communist prison system and was released on 3 August 1964. After his release, he remained under the surveillance of the Securitate until the fall of the Communist regime.

Fighting for Memory: Clergy Repressed by the Soviet Union in the Transmission of the Sybir Memorial Museum

The Polish Catholic Church rebelled against Russia as early as the 19th century. After the establishment of the Soviet Union, hostility between the Moscow authorities and Polish clergy increased even more. Polish priests serving in the Soviet Union were repressed already in the 1920s and 1930s. When the Red Army invaded Poland, the clergy were also among those most at risk of repression. The Sybir Memorial Museum (Poland) tells about the story of tsarist and Soviet repressions against Poles and other nations. Among the presented figures there are many priests, such as Fr. Bishop Jan Cieplak sentenced to death by the Soviets and Fr. Władysław Bukowiński, who, whether in prison, labour camp or exile, always provided spiritual service. After serving all his sentences, he remained in Kazakhstan voluntarily. In the paper, I will also describe other stories of repressed priests, which can be known in the Museum. The activities of the clergy members and the repressions against them are presented in the Sybir Memorial Museum in various forms. They have been commemorated at the permanent exhibition open to visitors; they are mentioned in publications and magazines published by the museum and on the international Internet portal Świat Sybiru (www.swiatsybiru.pl).

A spiritual call: the courses of action taken by individuals influenced by religious soft power

Abstract The study of religion and international relations has achieved renewed attention in the last two decades. This study investigates a specific aspect of this field: religious soft power. It focuses on individuals who were affected by religious soft power and develop a typology of courses of action these individuals can take vis-à-vis their home state. I argue that individuals can take three different types of actions: disruptive, reformative, and transnational. Using the cases of the Catholic Church and its followers, ISIS and Sunni believers, and the relations between Israel and the Evangelicals, I assess how these alternative actions are being manifested by different groups of individuals. Lastly, I offer an answer to the question of when individuals would use disruptive action and when will they use reformative one.

Introduction

With the establishment of communism in Eastern Europe, the churches found themselves in a precarious situation after the traumatic experiences of the Second World War. The churches were challenged to coexist with autocratic regimes. Institutionally weakened by the attempts of political power to limit their autonomy, the churches were confronted with the overthrow of the socio-political order by the Soviet-backed installation of communist regimes. The Soviet model of the communisation of societies was also adopted by the regimes loyal to Moscow in terms of religious policy, which for most churches, it meant public and political marginalisation in exchange for limited autonomy. Thus, the regimes’ religious policies, which were not aimed at the total elimination of religious life and, implicitly, of the churches, included a range of practices and instruments that involved institutional control, informational surveillance and political repression. A special case was the Greek Catholic Church, which was abolished and its clergy and bishops repressed. These methodological premises served as the basis for organising the international conference “Churches and Political Power During Communism. Individual Biographies and Institutional Mechanisms”, which brought together leading scholars from Poland, Hungary, the Republic of Moldova and Romania in Alba Iulia from 21 to 23 September 2023. This academic meeting resulted in the publication of the present volume, which includes the most representative contributions. This volume is the result of a collaboration between the LIT publishing house and Annales Universitatis Apulensis (Alba Iulia), which publishes the volume as a special issue of this journal.

Skin Colour and Priesthood. Debating Bodily Differences in Early Modern Catholicism*

Can people of different skin colours become Catholic priests? What may seem self‐evident from today's perspective, Catholic theologians and canon lawyers controversially debated in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. While most authors agreed that colour per se was not a problematic factor, an increasing number argued that non‐white individuals should not serve as priests in white communities because of the negative reactions they would provoke there. This article argues that by taking this “perspectivist view” the Catholic Church could claim universality and flexibility in its admission policy whereas, in fact, it incorporated and reinforced anti‐Blackness. The article analyses the hitherto unexplored history of this debate, situates it within broader thinking about bodily differences in an increasingly global Catholic world and shows how it intersected with practical issues surrounding the establishment of an indigenous clergy throughout the Catholic empires and missionary zones.

The Duke of Olyka and the Saint: The Meeting between Mikołaj Krzysztof Radziwiłł and Pope Pius V (1566)

Abstract This article focuses on the meeting between Mikołaj Krzysztof Radziwiłł “the Orphan” (1549–1616), powerful magnate from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and Pope Pius V (1504–1572), its inclusion in the pope’s first biography, and its influence on his hagiography. The brief encounter in 1566 left an impression on the young duke, leading to his conversion to the Roman Catholic faith. The event was included in the first biography of Pius V, written by the Italian humanist Girolamo Catena. Following the pope’s beatification (1672) and canonisation (1712), the number of works devoted to Pius V significantly increased. Initially mentioned by only one of his titles, the “Duke of Olyka,” Radziwiłł’s identity was not always recognised by later authors, resulting in the abstraction and allegorisation of the event. The decontextualised mention of the Duke of Olyka appeared in various hagiographies of Pope Pius V as part of the narrative of his saintliness.

Public justifications in differentiated symbolic spheres: Czech restitution of church property

ABSTRACT This article analyses the media statements by Czech church representatives on the restitution of church property. It traces the debate from the fall of communism in 1990 until 2019 via two centre-left and centre-right newspapers and the official periodicals of the two largest Czech churches, the Roman Catholic Church and the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren. At the theoretical and methodological level, I show the advantages of combining pragmatic and cultural sociology approaches, specifically Boltanski and Thévenot’s modes of justification and Alexander and Smith’s civil and non-civil spheres. This analytical approach allows for a better understanding of the dynamics of symbolic discursive dominance in public disputes. The churches’ efforts to achieve public credibility have primarily relied on emphasising efficiency, expertise and transparency. Surprisingly, these attributes, typical of the Czech civil sphere, were also prevalent arguments within intra-church discourses.

Simplified Vulnerability Assessment of Historical Churches in Banat Seismic Region, Romania

ABSTRACT Romania, a mid-eastern European country, has a moderate seismicity and a large stock of historical buildings and churches. One of the most important seismic areas of the country is the Banat area, which ranks as the second most seismic area in Romania, with shallow earthquakes of crustal type. Many Orthodox and Catholic churches can be found in the area, the majority of them having a central nave. The churches are built in masonry, with vaults and wooden frameworks, and they present valuable architectural-artistic details, including paintings made by recognized painters. Various forms of structural damage appeared to the historical churches after past earthquakes, depending on the architectural configuration. This paper illustrates a study made on six historic churches in the Banat region, to investigate seismic vulnerability with simplified methods. The study highlights the most vulnerable points of the historic religious structures and the importance of investigating in a quick and simplified way the seismic behavior of such important buildings for the local community. Moreover, the main novelty of the paper is the highlighting of the importance of the sustainability aspect in the process of heritage preservation, as simplified assessment procedures are essential for more resilient risk reduction policies.

Pope Francis the Roman Catholic Church and citizen attitudes towards climate change in Latin America

Studies on the relationship between religious attitudes and attitudes towards climate change and other environmental issues have tended to focus on the United States. While there is good reason to expect such a relationship to exist, our understanding of it is limited first and foremost by the limited number of country-comparative studies. This study aims to reduce this gap by investigating how trust in the Church and evaluations of Pope Francis affect the views of Latin Americans on anthropogenic climate change. Our study is based on data from the 2017 Latinobarómetro with 13,472 respondents based in 18 Latin American countries. Our findings reveal that Roman Catholics are less likely to believe in manmade climate change as compared to evangelical Christians and respondents belonging to no or any other denomination. We obtain the same negative relationship between trust in the (Catholic) Church and belief in anthropogenic climate change. However, favourable assessments of Pope Francis have a positive effect, and this assessment also has a positive moderating effect on the impact of trust in the Church on the outcome variable. These findings have important implications for climate policies, as they suggest that the public demand for climate action might increase if the Roman Catholic Church in their regional dioceses, rather than mostly the Pope, were to take and communicate a more coherent, affirmative position on climate change.

English Baptists Confessing the Faith in the Twentieth Century: A Response to Christopher Crocker

ABSTRACT This article is a brief response to the claim by Christopher Crocker that English Baptists in the twentieth century were post-confessionalism. The article argues that the Baptist Union’s Declaration of Principle of 1904 (revised in 1906 and 1938) is a theological and confessional text, which will it is brief, is in alignment with catholic and evangelical faith. In addition to the Declaration of Principle, the article provides further evidence in reciting the creed, statements of belief, denominational documents, and resources for worship to claim that Baptists remained a confessing people.

Support for Engaged Couples in Preparation for a Catholic Marriage

Marriage can be solemnised in a non-religious setting, through a declaration given before a civil servant. Alternatively, it may incorporate a religious dimension and take place in a church, with an accompanying prayer, the presence of a priest, and a blessing. Quoting from the Old and New Testaments, the author highlights the fundamental aspects of marriage within the Catholic Church. The author also explores the tasks and characteristics of marriage, comparing the declaration made at the Registry Office for secular marriages with the vows exchanged during a church wedding. The article also draws attention to the premarital counselling offered by the Catholic Church, provided by priests and family life counsellors. This counselling is a valuable and necessary resource for engaged couples as they prepare for marriage and parenthood. It can help couples with two important tasks: expressing love and transmitting life.

Sanctuaries of the Lviv Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine: A Historical Overview

The research aims to collect historical information on the sanctuaries of the Lviv Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine that are dedicated to the Persons of the Holy Trinity (or the Divine mystery), the Blessed Virgin Mary, saints, and blesseds. The study applies a comprehensive approach using methods of scientific analysis, systematisation and generalisation, and a combination of historical, cultural and art historical methods to provide a broader understanding of the topic. This research considers twenty sanctuaries of the Lviv Archdiocese that were officially proclaimed from June 13, 1995, to June 10, 2020, as well as the ancient Sanctuary of the Mother of God Merciful and God of Mercy. It has been established that all sanctuaries of the Lviv Archdiocese are diocesan. The study analyzed more than fifty publications. The scientific novelty of the results obtained is a comprehensive analysis of historical information about the sanctuaries of the Lviv Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine. The sanctuaries of the Lviv Archdiocese in Ukraine require further historical, cultural, and art historical research that will complement previous publications.

Popular Catholicism Puerto Rican Style: The Virgin of Rincón, Human Agency, and Miracles

In the past, popular Catholicism in Latin America and the Caribbean was perceived with suspicion by liberation theologians and official Roman Catholicism for its eccentricities, lack of doctrinal coherence, and fears of syncretism with folk religions. Nowadays, popular Catholicism in Latin America and the Caribbean has been a source of theological reflection, ecumenism, and religious revitalization. The apparition of the Holy Mother in 1953 at barrio Rincón in Sabana Grande, Puerto Rico, is a case study in global Catholicism that exemplifies this turn to see popular Catholicism as a source of liberation, perseverance, and deep spiritual devotion by the faithful. Using cultural, social, and reception historiography, the article argues that the Puerto Rican faithful were not passive recipients of the literary narratives of journalists covering the events as narrated by the main protagonists, the children/seers, but rather themselves formulators of history through their reception and participation. This is demonstrated by the allegiances of the faithful to popular Catholicism and their rejection of the official mandates of the clergy to ignore the events taking place at barrio Rincón regarding the apparition of the Virgin.

The Role of Institutions in the Civilization Schism (the Case of Christianity)

The geopolitical transformations of recent decades have added to the topicality of the study оf civilizational differences between the East and the West relevant. Religion is often cited as a contributing factor to these differences. This can be confirmed by the example of the split of the Christian Church into the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches and, as a consequence, the emergence of the Western and the Eastern Christian civilizations. As a rule, the authors “isolate” religion from the social system, considering it independently of all other spheres, as the primary factor that triggers the emergence of civilization. In this work, the emergence of a new Western and Eastern Christian, is considered within the framework of the institutional approach, as a process of formation of a certain complex institutional structure that regulates the life of society and consists of a whole complex of interconnected and interdependent economic, political, and socio-cultural institutions, including religion. This process can begin in the bowels of the “mother” civilization, causing its crisis. The stages of development and resolution of such a crisis are analyzed using the example of a split in the united Christian world using a matrix approach. This approach assumes that civilization is characterized by a civilizational matrix formed by an institutional core that simultaneously contains market and redistributive institutions on the basis of dominance/complementarity, and a shell that includes cultural-religious and national-demographic characteristics, the naturalclimatic and material-technological environment. The necessity of both strengthening dominant institutions in the institutional core and creating balancers (complementary institutions) for the sustainable development of civilization is shown.

Reconquest, Reconstruction, Resumption: Churching Poland after the Second World War

Abstract This article examines how the Roman Catholic Church in Poland navigated the enormous increase in church buildings at its disposal at the end of the Second World War. This expansion was largely due to the mass acquisition of post-German churches in lands transferred from Germany to Poland. But rapid reconstruction of most of the churches destroyed during the war as well as the resumption of new construction also played a role. Although access to increased worship space might seem to have been a boon for Poland’s postwar Catholic Church, the appropriation, reconstruction and completion of thousands of church buildings presented the church with an array of challenges. Refounding local Polish religious life in post-German, and often post-Protestant, houses of worship raised difficult questions about how various constituencies in newly formed communities could be made to feel at home in their new surroundings. Trade-offs between the expectations and customs of divergent groups were exacerbated by the prominence within the postwar church of Catholics who were themselves post-German, having spent the war categorized as German before being recategorized as Polish after 1945. Close attention to how Polish Catholics encountered new sacred spaces and one another reveals the complex negotiations and balancing acts required to form an ostensibly homogeneous religious-national community.

Health communication in times of crises: Catholic Priests’ perspectives on Anointing of the Sick

ABSTRACT The present study examined the Anointing of the Sick (AOS), one of the Roman Catholic Church’s sacraments, administered when individuals are in poor health, facing a major medical procedure, and/or facing death. As recovery is unknown at the time tie of AOS, we studied AOS as a final conversation (FC; Keeley, 2004, 2007, Keeley & Generous, 2017). Based on surveys from US Priests, primarily located in the Northeast, we identified the FC topics discussed between Priests, families, and the sick/dying during AOS. Findings underscore the significance of studying EOL communication in the Catholic Church and its applicability in Priestly formation. This work informs Keeley’s FC theme of messages of religious faith/spiritual beliefs.

Ecclesiological Assessment of Some Recent Roman Catholic Fundamental Theology

Ecclesiological Assessment of Some Recent Roman Catholic Fundamental Theology