Hungarian Dance

Since the Communist takeover of Eastern Europe after World War II, the Vatican has sought -- largely in vain -- to anchor the rights of Roman Catholics in Iron Curtain countries through protocol and concordat. Only lately has the realization seeped in that written agreements with Communist countries are the start, not the finish, of diplomacy -- and that painful compromises are part of a tough bargain. Four years ago, the Holy See announced an elaborate formal agreement with Hungary that was supposed to mark the beginning of toleration for the country's 7,000,000 Catholics. But priests remained jailed, and episcopal appointments remained obstructed. Only last week, as a result of months of quiet negotiating (and Hungary's embarrassment over its support of the Czech invasion), did the agreement begin to bear some small fruit.

The evidence of progress -- it could hardly be called a breakthrough -- was the appointment by the Vatican of five new bishops and five new apostolic administrators to Hungarian sees. Under terms of the 1964 agreement, the Hungarian government must approve such appointments, and the matter had long been stalled in frustrating discussions between the Vatican and the regime of Party Chief Janos Kadar. In the style of such negotiations, the outcome was no clear-cut victory for anyone, but more of an elaborate Hungarian folk dance, in which at least one prominent step must be to the left.

Price to Pay. The leftward step seemed to be the naming of Father Gyorgy Zemplen, 63, as auxiliary bishop to the apostolic administrator of Eszter-gom. Esztergom, which includes part of Budapest, is the old metropolitan see of Jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty, now largely ignored in his self-imposed exile at the U.S. embassy -- and Zemplen is known to have friendly relations with the Kadar government.

Obviously, the Vatican felt that the Zemplen appointment was part of the price it had to pay for a greater episcopal presence in Hungary. What this presence means is a more visible church, hopeful of inspiring confidence, in a Communist country where other signs of the faith are rigidly limited. Religious education remains severely circumscribed, and even the appointment of parish priests is still subject to the ap proval of the government.

The inch of progress is an accurate measure of what the Vatican has tried to accomplish in other areas of Eastern Europe. It is the sort of modus vivendi that has been the aim of Monsignor Agostino Casaroli, a veteran church dip omat, who over the past few years has been in charge of negotiations with the Communists. Not all of Casaroli's Vatican colleagues feel that his pursuit of compromise has won more than it has given away, though there is little question that liberalization in Czechoslovakia and recognition in Hungary have improved Catholic status.

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