Hungarian Spectrum

Political fundamentalism in Hungary

Not much is happening in this "silly season" in Hungary and therefore I have more time to read analyses. I received from a friend a copy of a very penetrating, still unpublished study about Viktor Orbán's notions regarding parliamentary democracy. In it there was a reference to an older interview with Péter Buda, an expert on politics and religion, in 168 Óra (November 30, 2006). Péter Buda has written fairly extensively about a phenomenon he calls "political fundamentalism." I decided to read the Buda interview again.

The interviewer, Ágnes Karácsony, was curious about Orbán's penchant for quoting the Bible. In the last months of 2006 alone he quoted St. John at least three or four times. He especially liked "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free " (St. John: 8:32). It is unlikely that Orbán found this passage himself because I doubt that he had ever had any kind of religious upbringing. I would be surprised if the family even had a Bible. Orbán claims that he is a member of the Hungarian Reformed Church (Magyar Református Egyház) which follows the teachings of Calvin. However, he and his wife (who is Catholic) didn't have a church wedding, and their first children weren't even baptized until Gábor Iványi, a Methodist minister and one of the founders of SZDSZ, convinced him to do it. Well, that was a long time ago and by now the five children have different religions, depending on their father's political orientation at the time. Most likely the inspiration for using Biblical quotations came from Zoltán Balog, a Fidesz MP who is a Hungarian Reformed minister. And, believe me, a good "Hungarian református" must know his Bible. Especially if he is a minister.

Going back to St. John and the "truth." After Viktor Orbán received the tape of Ferenc Gyurcsány's speech at Balatonőszöd and realized its political value he most likely discussed the matter with his closest collaborators, including Zoltán Balog. I'm almost certain that the St. John quotation immediately popped into Balog's head. But plucking quotations out of context for political purposes is distasteful to some, including Péter Buda. As he says in this 2006 interview: "It disgusts me when someone uses the Bible as a collection of aphorisms.... It is a typical fundamentalist 'explication de texte.'" After all, he continues, Jesus himself rejected the application of religious morality to politics. When the disciples asked him to go against the Romans and establish the Kingdom of Israel and be its king, Jesus made it clear that his "kingdom is not of this world..." (St. John 18:36) As for the quotation about the truth and freedom, the meaning of the original quotation placed in context is that following Jesus's teaching will lead man out of the captivity of sin. But, of course, coming out of a politician's mouth the original quotation becomes no more than a political ploy; it is applied to a situation that has nothing to do with the original meaning.

According to Buda there is nothing terribly new in Orbán's use of "political fundamentalism." It is spreading the world over. There is an attempt to replace secular democracy with something else. Some feel that countries need a political order that "comes from above and can refer to some absolute value." These people want to have solid guidance concerning good and evil in a chaotic world. Something they can easily identify. Viktor Orbán, according to Péter Buda, understood this desire and is mining it to its fullest. The people who promote this kind of "political fundamentalism" claim that "secular democracies" lack value because the modern, secular state is "ideologically neutral." That doesn't mean that it is valueless but that it lets the individual pick his own set of values. What is worrisome in "political fundamentalism" is that a central power wants to impose a set of values considered to be the norm on a whole society.

Buda tells a story, related by Zoltán Balog himself, that in 2002 after the lost elections Orbán called Balog and asked for advice: how could he explain the electoral defeat to his people. Balog apparently offered some appropriate political explanations but Orbán wasn't interested in them. He wanted a Biblical quotation that would be suitable for the occasion.

Courting the churches began early, and Orbán and Fidesz receive considerable help from the pulpit. Churchgoers often complain that instead of a religious sermon the priest or the minister delivers a political speech. In return Orbán attends prayer sessions and displays religious items in the background. High-ranking Catholic prelates often show up at Fidesz political rallies and support Fidesz candidates in national and local elections. Antal Spányi, a Catholic bishop, delivered political speeches that were gleefully received by Jobbik. See here: http://portal.jobbik.net/index.php?q=node/28 Another bishop, András Veres, was among those who demonstrated against the government at the end of 2006. The East European Catholic churches are very conservative, and Buda calls attention to the works of George Weigel, an American Catholic theologian who has close ties to the conservatives in the Vatican. According to Weigel, the European Union must realize that it needs the support of the Church. The Vatican should rely on the East European conservatives and with their help transform the Union. it should not be a secular Belgium but should become a Poland. Weigel, by the way, has a blog: http://georgeweigel.blogspot.com/

Every time I read about "political fundamentalism" I have to think of a book I read as a teenager. I had a classmate who lived with her aunt and her husband, a former widower with two teenage boys a great deal older than we. These boys had a library that today says a lot to me about their political education. Far right nationalistic stuff. I read some of their books and one especially made an impression on me. A negative one. Unfortunately I don't remember either the author's name or the title, but it had something to do with a "superman" type who was a genius capable of fantastic inventions. This super hero invented something that if laid down on the ground was capable of stopping any invader either on the ground or in the air. Our super hero with the help of like-minded young men went around and secretly laid down this wire-like miracle at the former borders of Greater Hungary. When finished, the super hero with the flick of a switch made it functional, and Hungary was cut off and safe. I think the non-Magyars were kicked out. In this enlarged Hungary a new regime was introduced and, although I don't remember all its features, one thing I never forgot. All the churches had pews marked with individual names and it was compulsory to go to mass. If someone was missing, the "church police" came, I guess. An absolutely frightening vision.

I'm not saying that things will ever get that far, but as Péter Buda puts it: "the politics of Viktor Orbán is the ideology of a party searching for a religious identity and planning to become a party with a mission to reeducate the nation." Buda summarizes the situation: what's going on in Hungary is not simply a political fight between two parties. It is Kulturkampf.

The Hungarian Secret Service and the Catholic Church

There are times of odd coincidences. In my life today is one of these times. Earlier I heard about a Christmas Eve midnight mass broadcast on MTV (public television). In it János Székely, auxiliary bishop of Esztergom, expressed his sorrow over the fact that there were more Gypsy than Hungarian babies born in 2008. First of all, I considered the reference to Roma versus Hungarian babies tasteless. My second thought was: How does he know this when there are no statistics available on the ethnic origins of newborn babies? My third thought was: this is impossible given the size of the Roma population in Hungary.

Well, it seems that György Bolgár also heard about this midnight mass and decided to ask Ferenc Tomka, a theologian and staunch apologist for the Catholic Church, to be part of his program today. Tomka, of course, vigorously defended the auxiliary bishop's unfortunate remark and tried to explain it away as being in fact most appropriate. After all, said Tomka, the bishop praised the Gypsies for their love of children and their high birthrate statistics. I have heard Tomka talk on Bolgár's program before, and therefore I wasn't expecting anything else.

And now comes the odd coincidence. This afternoon I kept reading Gábor Tabajdi and Krisztián Ungváry's book on the history of the Hungarian political police between 1956 and 1990. There is a whole chapter on the Catholic church. To be more precise, how the top hierarchy of the Hungarian Catholic Church served the Hungarian communist party and how they collaborated with the Hungarian secret service. And what do I see in one of the footnotes? Ferenc Tomka was working for the Hungarian secret service under the cover name of "Lukács." Well, well!

The position of the Hungarian Catholic Church today is that the connection between the Catholic hierarchy and the Ministry of Interior under whose aegis the secret service operated was not extensive and certainly not important. The above mentioned Tomka wrote a book entitled Halálra ítéltek, mégis élünk (They condemned us to death, yet we still live) published with the permission of the Council of Bishops that tries to vindicate the Church. The Council's former secretary, today a bishop, minimized the role the bishops and archbishops played by saying that they wrote only meaningless little essays that didn't hurt anyone. Moreover, by now most of these people are dead. Neither is true. In 1987 six new archbishops and bishops were appointed and three of them worked for the secret service, including József Mindszenty's successor, László Páskai, archbishop of Esztergom. Moreover, the leadership of the secret service had a very different opinion. According to a report for internal use only after 1970 the Catholic leadership gave "unfailing support to MSZMP."

One thing is sure, Hungarian bishops with very few exceptions were ready to cooperate. This cooperation is somewhat understandable because the Vatican's Ostpolitik pretty well demanded such cooperation. Within this Ostpolitik Hungary held a unique position. In 1964 there was an agreement between the Vatican and the Hungarian government by which Pope Paul VI agreed to the Hungarian demand that bishops can be appointed only with the permission of the Hungarian state. Unfortunately, historians of state and church relations are totally in the dark concerning the details of this agreement because the Vatican placed all pertinent documents under a seventy-year ban, and in 1998 the Vatican asked the Hungarian government to do the same--not for seventy but for seventy-five years. The Hungarian government (Gyula Horn was the prime minister), in the hope that the Catholic Church would not show outright antagonism to the socialist party and his government, promised whatever the Catholic Church asked. It was a big mistake: the Church openly supported and continues to support Fidesz and Viktor Orbán.

But let's go back to the 1964 agreement between the Vatican and the Hungarian state. Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the Vatican's Secretary of State at the time, was sure that without this 1964 agreement the Hungarian Catholic Church's "complete collapse would have been unavoidable." On the other hand, neither Romania nor East Germany signed such an agreement with the Vatican and yet the Catholic churches in those countries survived. Czechoslovakia refused to sign such an agreement in 1966 although there were thirteen bishoprics that were vacant. Eventually in 1973 the Vatican accepted four bishops nominated by the Czechoslovak government but the whole Czechoslovak Catholic hierarchy wasn't as subservient to the state as the Hungarian. Although the documentation is not complete, according to the authors of the 36 Hungarians appointed with the blessing of the Vatican 23 were informers. The documentation on the others doesn't give us clear answers. Apparently only five persons can be identified out of the 36 who were definitely not part of the informer network.

How did they manage to get all these people to cooperate? Of course, there was the clear understanding after a while that if you want to move ahead then you'd better behave. Sometimes the men of the secret service used blackmail. In one case it is clear that the basis of the blackmail was "inappropriate relationship with nuns." Some of those forced into cooperation were indeed fairly useless from the point of view of the state, but others were outright enthusiastic. A good example of the latter was Kornél Pataky, appointed bishop of Győr in 1976, who had been recruited in 1958. Another enthusiast was László Dankó, appointed bishop of Kalocsa (1983). István Bagi, appointed auxiliary bishop of Esztergom, was "so materialistic, so hungry, so demanding" that from the reports one can hear the agents' contempt between the lines. Then there was Árpád Fábián, the bishop of Szombathely (1975) with a working class background whose father was a party functionary in the Czechoslovak Communist Party. He was a true believer not just in the religious sense. The secret service man wanted to show some appreciation and wanted to give him some money but he wouldn't take it. "He told us that he does his work out of conviction." Thus he received some gifts: 10 cartons of cigarettes and some nice expensive bottles of wine. He had no problem accepting these.

All in all, this chapter on the Hungarian Catholic Church's connection with the secret service is depressing reading. The Catholic Church is trying its best to prevent the disclosure of the details but as we can see diligent historians do find bits and pieces of information that don't shed the best light on the Hungarian Catholic leadership. I should add that all other religious leaders did the same and that only the Lutherans were willing to tell the whole truth. The Catholic Church tries to prevent disclosure by appealing to the separation of church and state. A truly ridiculous argument. Apparently next month we may find out the future of the documents dealing with the role of the church hierarchy in the political police network.

Quite a story: the parish priest and the mailman

On the whole I'm eagle-eyed when it comes to Hungarian news, but I missed this juicy story although it happened last Friday. Most likely because Hungarian news sites divide news into several categories, and the crime blotter is a separate category. Usually I don't have time to read it.

There is a tiny village called Győrvár. Although one might think that it is somewhere near the city of Győr, it is in fact in Vas County, close to the Austrian border. Its name has nothing to do with Győr; rather, it honors a thirteenth-century gentleman whose given name was György (George). The village has only 700 inhabitants and from the map it has about three or four streets. The inhabitants are Catholic, and the only church is a neo-baroque church named after Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. The parish priest is Ferenc Dakó; from the video I saw he is a burly man who looks close to sixty. The village might be small, the parish priest's pay might be low, but it seems that our priest has a full-time housekeeper. The church also had a full-time sexton at one time by the name of Ferenc Tóth. However, about a year ago someone broke into the church, and the parish priest accused the sexton of having something to do with the crime. The sexton was fired. He subsequently got a job as a postal clerk delivering mail. The relationship between Dakó and Tóth has been very bad. The priest threatened Tóth several times and the postal worker even went to the bishopric of Szombathely to complain, but he was told to solve his problem alone.

Then came November 7, Friday. The mailman delivered mail at the parsonage, including the weekly Szabad Föld (Free Soil). As it turned out, the parish priest was expecting Keresztény Élet (Christian Life). He wasn't a subscriber to Szabad Föld. [Actually, according to the weekly's records he was a new subscriber, but he claims not to have any recollection of subscribing.] Once he realized the alleged mistake, he got into his car, housekeeper in tow, and went after the postal worker who by then was riding his bicycle a few blocks away. They got out of the car, the priest knocked the man off his bicycle into a ditch, and then with all his strength (which must be considerable in view of his physique) began to kick him repeatedly. All told seventeen times. Eventually, the housekeeper managed to stop the priest from doing further damage to the hapless man whose head was his attacker's main target although even his legs looked pretty bad to me. He sustained a mild concussion. By now he is recuperating at home.

The villagers are divided on the issue. There are some who try to defend their priest. He held mass yesterday during which he apologized and tried to explain himself away. Apparently the number of people in church was about the same as on any Sunday. Some of Dakó's words in connection with the incident were enigmatic. Or at least I can't make head nor tails of them. For instance: "Let's not play with each other because it is possible that things don't end the way we expect or the way we would like." Others, most likely not in church last Sunday, have a less charitable view of the whole thing. According to them, some of the villagers didn't quite approve of the priest slapping around their children in Sunday school.

The police chief of the Vasvár district where Győrvár belongs questioned Dakó not as an accused but as a witness. (Another interesting twist in Hungarian practice!) Apparently he can, and let's hope he will, change the charge. And if that is the case, because the mailman is considered to be a person who performs official duties, the maximum sentence can be three years in jail. Somehow I don't think that will happen. As for the bishop. Well, he hasn't made up his mind yet.