Hungarian Church Research Articles

The Role of Churches in Hungary in Providing Pastoral Care and Humanitarian Help for Migrants

The author is a Lutheran pastor with a Master’s Degree in International Relations. He is a Doctor of Military Science (PhD) and a senior staff member at the National University of Public Service, also holding the position of General Secretary of the Ecumenical Council of Churches in Hungary. The publication tackles the problem of how Protestant Churches have been involved in the migratory processes. The aim of this paper is to explore the core function of the humanitarian service provided by Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church in Hungary, with special regard to the ethnic and religious aspects of the refugee problem.

The Romanian Orthodox Church in Hungary and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the Interwar Period

Aim. The Romanian Orthodox Church in Hungary and Yugoslavia encountered a series of shortcomings between the two world wars.
 Conclusion. Regardless of the political realities of the times, the Romanians coalesced around the Romanian Orthodox Church. That is why, not by chance, the great poet Mihai Eminescu identifies the Romanian Orthodox Church with the institution that preserved the Latin element near the Danube. The activity of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Hungary and Yugoslavia in the interwar period was mainly performed by priests.

A katolikus egyház viszonya a jozefinista reformokhoz. Kihívások és válaszok

The present study focuses on the 18th-century Catholic Church in Hungary through its crisis of identity. Its aim is to examine the action of the Church from the 1770s and demonstrate the challenges posed by the enlightened absolutist state to the secular clergy and the monastic orders. In our investigation we apply the points of view of the research project of the University of Tubingen called Bedrohte Ordnungen (Th reatened Orders). This program examines such social and cultural orders which were disturbed by certain power factors, fi nally resulting in considerable losses.

Pressed by a Double Loyalty: Hungarian Attendance at the Second Vatican Council, 1959–1965 by András Fejérdy

Reviewed by: Pressed by a Double Loyalty: Hungarian Attendance at the Second Vatican Council, 1959–1965 by András Fejérdy Krisztina Tóth Pressed by a Double Loyalty: Hungarian Attendance at the Second Vatican Council, 1959–1965. By András Fejérdy. (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press. 2017. Pp. 440. €52.00; $60.00. ISBN 978-963-386-142-4.) Rarely are results of Hungarian historiography published in a foreign language.1 Thus, András Fejérdy's volume, which examines the attendance of the Hungarian bishops at the Second Vatican Council, is particularly worthy of notice as it examines their participation in the light of the Ostpolitik, relying heavily, as it does on Hungarian government archives. The volume is a slightly amplified version of Dr. Fejérdy's doctoral dissertation, which was published in 2011 in Hungarian. It can be rightly stated that this comprehensive overview is presented by an expert familiar with several aspects of this subject. The title of the book itself is revealing. The Hungarian bishops allowed to travel to Rome had to satisfy two expectations. On the one hand, a positive report of the state of the Hungarian Church had to be relayed. In their Council interventions, subjects of special importance to the government had to be presented positively, as, for example, during the fourth period, the social and economic conditions in Hungary as well as the efforts of the Hungarian government toward progress and peace had to be especially stressed. This was also the case during the bishops' meetings at the Vatican. The Holy See above all awaited authentic and objective information on the restricted freedom of the Catholic Church in general and of the various dioceses in particular. Such accurate information and valid advice were to provide the basis for future negotiations. At home, the bishops were expected to suggest effective means to carry out the conciliar teachings. [End Page 153] It is clear from the above few lines that the author did not strictly limit himself to the narration of the bishops' participation in the Council, but broadened his examination to the expectations of both the Holy See and the Hungarian Government for future contacts and negotiations. The presence of these members of the Hungarian hierarchy is particularly emphasized as Hungary was the first member of the socialist bloc to conclude in 1964 a secret agreement with the Holy See. However, it should not be forgotten, as the author points out, that the Vatican was holding parallel consultations with Czechoslovak bishops and Lithuanian priests. The structure of the book is rational, being logically framed and easy to follow. On the one hand, it follows a chronological, on the other, a thematic thread. A separate section is dedicated to the preparatory phase of the Council, then to the Council itself, and finally to the reception of the Council's pronouncements. Each section is divided into three larger chapters, each presenting the opinions and the purposes of the Holy See, the Hungarian government, and the Hungarian Council Fathers. Hereinafter, I would like to enumerate the main viewpoints of these three groups. By abandoning the policies of his predecessor, Pope St. John XXIII opened the dialogue with the Eastern Block. The ideological basis for this step can be found, among other places, in his Pacem in terris encyclical: "It is always perfectly justifiable to distinguish between error as such and the person who falls into error. …"2 He considered the attendance of the hierarchies from the Iron Curtain countries of primary importance so that firsthand information concerning the conditions of these Churches might be obtained. Hungary was among these, as contact was maintained only through the nunciature in Vienna, the Budapest embassies of other countries with Catholic traditions, and the 1959 Roman visit of Miklós Esty, former gentiluomo of Cardinal-Primates János Csernoch, Jusztinian Serédi, and József Mindszenty, as Nuncio Angelo Rotta had been expelled in April, 1945, by the temporary government at the command of the Soviet president of the Allied Control Committee. The Holy See was ready even to compromise in order to re-establish contact with the Hungarian Church. The main items to be...

Protestant Space-Continuity

Intensive efforts started in the last decades to get to know the Central and Eastern European and the Hungarian church architecture. In this historically depressed period (1920/1945/1989), church buildings were important identity forming potencies in the life of the Protestant communities newly emerged by the rearrangement of country's borders. The modern architectural principles, the structural and liturgical questions gave opportunity for continuous experimentations in the examined period, which resulted a centralizing tendency between the two world wars. Analysing the Protestant space organization, it is verifiable that these centralizing tendencies with identification character did not pull out from the de-emphasizing church architecture in spite of the historical–political events of World War II. The primary importance of the study is the holistic examination of the Protestant church architecture of the 20th century. The study shows the Protestant Church activity of the period through the two most significant denominations —the Calvinist and the Lutheran church architecture—, thereby providing a typological approach.

Enumeratio és ékesség Árkay Bertalan 1945 utáni (usque) 12 temploma

The paper presents Bertalan Árkay’s post-1945 smaller churches and through them the architect’s formal solutions and working method on the basis of plans in the estate, archival sources and his own list of works. After a source critical collation of the listed sources, the author takes stock of the elements of the oeuvre and identifying the buildings attributed to Árkay she clarifies the size of the oeuvre. She has found that between 1945 and 1953 he planned three churches (Cegléd, Gerjen, Kömpöc) but the construction of the Cegléd church was interrupted by the historical circumstances. Between 1957 and ’60 he made plans for nine churches (Győr-Kisbácsa, Szalkszentmárton, Vecsés Andrássy-telep, Hernád, Inárcs, Móricgát, Tiszalök, Újtikos, Vecsés-Óplébánia) seven of which were constructed on his plans. In 1961–65 he planned and built the churches of Pátroha, Parádsasvár and Tiszaeszlár. After the identification of restoration work and the contributions of other architects, it could be concluded that in addition to the churches of Hort and Taksony Bertalan Árkay saw 12 of his planned churches built up. The examination of the buildings and the plan drawings confirmed that Árkay had some favourite formal solutions that he was wont to resort to. Regarding the façade design, three versions can be differentiated: one with a façade tower, one with a gable wall, and one with a pediment. As for window types, he had a penchant for windows with circular head, windows/French windows designed upon the arms of the cross and rosettes subdivided with a cross. Comparing them to the material in the estate one finds that Árkay often reused his motifs designed 20–25 years earlier. Behind the repeated forms of details (portals, choir) collaboration with the same craftsmen can be discerned. By correcting some facts of the biography the author clarifies that apart from his work in state planning offices, Bertalan Árkay accepted several ecclesiastical commissions. It also came to light that in addition to planning new buildings he often undertook the restoration of buildings and the designing of objects of furnishing in any style. The final conclusion is that after 1945 Bertalan Árkay was not able to repeat the architecture historical bravura he achieved with the Városmajor church, the prelude to modern Hungarian church architecture, designed with his father Aladár Árkay. In aesthetic terms his smaller churches satisfy the standards of ecclesiastic art and the expectations of the users, but their historicizing elements remove them from the contemporary trends of architecture, and their repetition shows routine rather than architectural invention.

Supreme Pastor of the Church Cares for the Hungarian Church: Church Architecture of the Hungarian Church During the First Decade of John Paul II’s Papacy

One of the first longer letters of Pope John Paul II was addressed to the Hungarian Episcopacy and the Hungarian Catholics. Besides the traditional Polish-Hungarian friendship, he highlighted the person of Saint Stephen and the role of Hungary in the history of the Christian religion. “ […] the Catholic Church, which had such a significant role in the history of Hungary, can still pervade the spiritual image of your country, and can make the lightness of Jesus Christ’s gospel, that gave light to the sons of the Hungarian people during so many centuries, shine for your sons and daughters.”- wrote in his letter.

Die Diskriminierung der ungarischen Kirchen in Rumänien

After the First World War Transylvania became part of Romania. Soon the state authorities begun a forced Romanization, and as part of that process a substantial part of the properties of the traditional Hungarian Churches was confiscated. The process was as unclear as possible, beginning with laws listing properties that were taken in the property of the state and ending with forced “donations”. After 1989, Romania committed herself to restitute all the properties taken away abusively, but that process in the case of the Hungarian Churches is slow and ambiguous. Even more, if we take a closer look we can observe that while most of those properties are still not restituted, the state makes substantial donations to the Orthodox Church, which is a clear act of discrimination. That is clearly bad news for the Hungarian Churches (and also to the whole Hungarian community of the country), but the situation is turning even worse, as there are already two cases of re-nationalization: two buildings that were returned to their previous and legal owner were taken back in public property, despite all the evidences proving that there were confiscated from the Churches.

Bauhaus? Modern barokk? Árkay Bertalan Horton (1954) és Taksonyban (1958) épült templomainak építéstörténetei és tervei

Bertalan Arkay’s church in Budapest-Varosmajor is the advent of modern Hungarian church architecture. He designed several churches after 1945, which are far less known or their evaluation is somewhat one-sided. This paper discusses the building history and surviving plan documentation of two of the fifteen churches built between 1945 and 1970. These churches are known to some extent from special literature. To learn the building history of the churches of Hort and Taksony I studied the documents of the parishes and the State Office for Church Affairs, as well as the relevant articles in the ecclesiastic media of the time. I examined the Arkay estate in the Architectural Collection of the Kiscell Museum of the Budapest History Museum to find the plans. 27 plans of the Hort church – of them 11 of the furnishing – and 35 of Taksony (only the building) survive. The historical inquiry reveals that while literature on ecclesiastic art registers both churches, art history only keeps tabs on the Taksony church. E...

Der Europäische Master für Lexikographie im Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree Programm

Abstract The following report reflects on the activities and changes of EMLex concerning the implementation of the programme as an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree and gives a short overview over the international summer term which took place 2016 at the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary (Budapest).

Religious Policy and Dissent in Socialist Hungary: The Case of the Bokor Movement

In 1976 a rumor spread among Hungarian Catholic priests that Lékai László, the newly inaugurated archbishop of Esztergom and official head of the Catholic Church in Hungary, had handed over to the bishops a list with the names of those priests who had to be suspended or displaced from their parishes because of pressure from the state. One thing was common to these priests: they were presumed to be members of the so-called Bokor (“Bush”) movement. From the late 1960s onward, a new challenge arose within the Catholic Church against the religious policy of the Kádárist regime that endorsed strict control over the churches and did everything to keep the religion and religious practice out of the public sphere. A new semi-institutionalized form of religious organization was crystalizing in the form of base communities. Small but active local communities formed loose networks, which, with their few thousand members, became a sort of unofficial church within the official church and often functioned more or less independently from the supervision of the bishops. The new form attracted young people and intellectuals in great numbers. One of these networks, the Bokor movement, with its charismatic leader Pater Bulányi,1 who, based on his theological ideas, encouraged his followers to live a radically uncompromising Christianity—“to live the Gospels”—stood out. The base communities in general, but especially the Bokor, soon provoked the antagonism of the socialist state.

« Églises privilégiées » et églises royales en Hongrie médiévale

The theme of this article is not a topical subject in current historiography either in France or Hungary. Scholars have not looked globally at a recognized category of ecclesiastical foundation attested in medieval sources, namely churches that enjoyed a privileged legal status. Scholarly literature has treated them too restrictively, limiting itself to the canonical point of view, the special case of the « Saintes Chapelles », and the historia domus in the monastic tradition (for religious orders). The article presents the corpus of Hungarian sources consulted and the earliest signs of the phenomenon of « privileged churches » in the Hungarian kingdom. The grounds underpinning the legal status of certain churches are examined (the prerogatives of the Archbishop of Esztergom and litigation over the affirmation of his pre-eminence within the Hungarian Church), and the genesis of the specific group of « royal churches ». A comparison is made with exempt churches, which are similar to privileged churches in their formation and functioning, yet nonetheless different.

Abrahám Kovács, The History of the Free Church of Scotland's Mission to the Jews in Budapest and its Impact on the Reformed Church of Hungary, 1841–1914, Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity, 140 (Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 2006), pp. xviii+442. £67.10; €74.60 (pbk).

Abrahám Kovács, The History of the Free Church of Scotland's Mission to the Jews in Budapest and its Impact on the Reformed Church of Hungary, 1841–1914, Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity, 140 (Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 2006), pp. xviii+442. £67.10; €74.60 (pbk).

Lessons on Access to Legal Entity Status for Religious Communities for Europe: Hungary’s New Religion Law Faces Repeated Challenges

Abstract This article summarizes the most important features of the new Hungarian church recognition regime, its constitutional basis and legislative history, and the fundamental rights-oriented challenges mounted against it.

Centralized Spaces in Hungarian Church Architecture between the World Wars – Historical and Structural Survey of the Dome of Ottokár Prohászka Memorial Church

Architectural research, focusing on Hungarian architecture in the inter-war period so far, have mainly analysed buildings and architects regarding the international modern architecture and the path leading to development of modern Hungarian architecture. The present article undertakes complex research on an emblematic, but less discussed building of the era with the related competition, the sacral buildings with similar structure and space arrangement. The social and art historical research is supplemented with the analysis of the behaviour of the structure and the circumstances of the construction. Besides investigating the era of the construction of the church, a brief description of the planning competition is presented with archetypes of the architectural history and the structures, also showing the construction process. The description is complemented with the results of the examination on the spot and the reconstruction of the presumable original statics calculation.

Church as a home - sacral and profane functions in modern Hungarian Churches

Contemporary church architecture in Hungary is one of the most monumental and representative architectural topics of the period after the political change; following forty years of communist dictatorship it became possible for congregations to freely raise new church buildings, asserting at the same time their social rights. It is remarkable that among the newly built churches the majority appear through the uniting of diverse functions such as congregation centres. The sacral church spaces of these architectural complexes are flexible and thus often extended with the community´s educational or other functional units used for non-sacral social gatherings, as a result the church may really become the home of a community. The article tries to encompass this phenomenon by analysing in the context of historical antecedents a typical contemporary Catholic and Protestant Hungarian church.

An der Grenze des Erlaubten. Ungarische Kontakte der Aktion Sühnezeichen in den 1980er Jahren

On the Border of Acceptability. Hungarian Contacts of the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (Aktion Sühnezeichen) in the 1980s Comparing the history of oppositional movements in the GDR and Hungary during the 1980s, their different social backgrounds are especially striking: While the Protestant Church in the GDR became in many cases a refuge for oppositional groups, these acted almost invariably outside of Church in Hungary. The history of the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (Aktion Sühnezeichen, German Abbreviation: ASZ) is especially interesting in this regard, as its international contacts alone constantly explored the limits of what was allowed. It exploited the advantages of an informal as possible mode of operations and thus also formed a testing ground for internalizing the code of conduct in a grass-roots democratic setting. The 1980s brought internal polarization to the ASZ. Above all, relations to the independent peace movement proved to be crucial. While on the one hand the wish to secure state recognition grew within the leadership, a smaller group tried on the other hand to expand the agenda of the ASZ from resting solely within German history and to rebrand it as critical of the system. The political importance of the Hungarian contacts becomes especially apparent, if one views them in context of the ramified connections between oppositional circles in both countries.

Kovács, Ábrahám. 2006. The History of the Free Church of Scotland's Mission to the Jews in Budapest and its Impact on the Reformed Church of Hungary 1841–1914. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, pp. xviii & 435, Pb, £54.50. ISBN-13: 9783631553671.

Kovács, Ábrahám. 2006. <i>The History of the Free Church of Scotland's Mission to the Jews in Budapest and its Impact on the Reformed Church of Hungary 1841–1914</i>. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, pp. xviii &amp; 435, Pb, £54.50. ISBN-13: 9783631553671.

The history of the Free Church of Scotland's mission to the Jews in Budapest and its impact on the Reformed Church of Hungary, 1841–1914. By Ábrahám Kovács. (Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity, 140.) Pp. xviii+442. Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 2006. £48.70 (paper). 3 631 55367 6; 0 8204 9926 9; 0170 9240

The history of the Free Church of Scotland's mission to the Jews in Budapest and its impact on the Reformed Church of Hungary, 1841–1914. By Ábrahám Kovács. (Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity, 140.) Pp. xviii+442. Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 2006. £48.70 (paper). 3 631 55367 6; 0 8204 9926 9; 0170 9240

Imre Joseph Pál Loefler

Surgeon, controversial writer, and polymath The death of Imre Loefler, at the age of 77 will be mourned in many quarters. He was a polymath, well versed in philosophy, history,...