War on Faith

POLICIES & PRINCIPLES

In the wake of Cardinal Mindszenty's sentence, the Communists last week stepped up their drive against religion everywhere behind the Iron Curtain. Protestant as well as Roman Catholic churches suffered persecution.

Hungary continued its persecution of the Lutheran Church. Last year, Lutheran Bishop Lajos Ordass had been imprisoned on charges of black-market dealings, conspiracy against the government--very like the charges against Cardinal Mindszenty. While Bishop Ordass was in jail, the Communists had repeatedly tried to make him resign his office. He refused. Recently, Lutheran Bishop Zoltan Thuroczy--who wants to play along with the Reds--visited Ordass in his cell and delivered a Communist ultimatum: either Ordass resigns, or Communist Boss Rakosi puts the Lutheran Church under complete state control, with a government commissioner in charge. Last week Ordass still held out.

Bulgaria has only 8,300 Protestants. The predominant sect (84%) is the Moscow-stooge Greek Orthodox Church. Communist Premier Georgi Dimitrov comes from one of the country's few Congregationalist families. Last week, a U.S. Balkan expert noted that Dimitrov's first "revolutionary act" was refusal to go to Sunday school, his most recent was to jail 15 of Bulgaria's leading Protestant churchmen.

Actually, the 15 have been in prison since last December. The government kept mum until everything had been properly arranged. Then the Deputy Foreign Minister Topencharov announced that all of the accused had "fully confessed" to the old familiar charges: treason, black-marketeer-ing and espionage for the U.S.

The trial is expected to take place the end of this month in Sofia's massive grey stone Palace of Justice on the Boulevard Stalin. Remarked one observer of Communist methods: "The confessions will be read and each witness will be asked if he said that. The movies will be there. They will make this thing a big spectacle."

Rumania announced sweeping new decrees empowering the government to control all religious groups; the funds and properties of all churches; and the establishment of new parishes. All five bishops of Rumania's Greek Catholic (Uniate) Church (which is affiliated with Rome) have been jailed. About 600 Uniate priests have been imprisoned.

Poland, where Catholics (91% of the population) have fared relatively better, has confiscated all church property. Some church schools are already run by the state; religious instruction in others is being severely curtailed. Last week, Bishop Stanislaw Adamski of Katowice wrote a pastoral letter in which he urged parents to "oppose by all peaceful methods all attempts to deprive your children of religious instruction." Six priests who read the letter to their congregations were imprisoned; they joined 400 Catholic priests jailed in Poland during the past three months.

Czechoslovakia was stepping up its anti-church propaganda. In a recent pastoral letter, a Czech Catholic bishop declared: "Your loyalty to the church [may] be subjected to a new test. Your way of life and your eternal salvation will depend on whether you withstand it. . ."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.