Cardinals & Commissars

A NEW VATICAN LINE FOR SOCIALIST COUNTRIES? asked the Italian Communist weekly Rinascita (Rebirth) last week. Or a new Communist line for the Vatican? Currently, Pope Paul VI and his diplomats are busier than usual negotiating with East European regimes, taking advantage of small but subtle indications that satellite Communist governments might consent to give a bit more spiritual breathing room for a portion of the 65 million Roman Catholics behind the Iron Curtain.

Hungary has produced perhaps the most interesting sign of change. Last month, in the party journal Tarsadalmi Szemle (Social Review), Red Theoretician Josef Lukacs, editor of an atheist magazine, argued that "we do not get very far with the old-type atheism and anticlerical ism which tried to fight against religion in an abstract manner," and that Communism should cooperate with "well-intentioned religious people" in achieving common social goals.

Lukacs' article seemed to reflect the views of the Kadar government, which last September took a notable step toward normalization of church-state relations by signing an agreement with the Vatican allowing it to appoint bishops to a number of sees. Kadar now seems willing to move on from there and provide more freedom for the country's 6,000,000 Catholics. His condition is that Josef Cardinal Mindszenty, who still lives in the U.S. legation on Freedom Square in Budapest, will play no active role in the Hungarian church. The Vatican is reluctant to negotiate any settlement over Mindszenty's head, would like to find a way for the heroic old cardinal to leave the country with peace and honor. Thus negotiations in Hungary, in the words of Monsignor Agostino Casaroli, the Vatican diplomat who arranged the September agreement, "are at the beginning of the beginning." Meanwhile, churches are wellattended.

Yugoslavia (6,000,000 Catholics) offers considerably brighter prospects. The regime has abandoned its intransigent anti-Catholicism since the death in 1960 of Alojzije Cardinal Stepinac, churches are open and full of worshipers, a thriving religious press circulates freely. Yugoslav bishops easily gained travel permits to attend the Vatican Council or make their normal ad limina visits to the Pope. Last December, the Yugoslav Communist League Congress dropped its ban on religious practice by party members. A number of government officials formally congratulated Archbishop Franjo Seper of Zagreb after the announcement that he would be made a cardinal at Pope Paul's consistory next week. Monsignor Casaroli reported that he was "very satisfied" with the results of a recent ten-day visit to Belgrade, and Vatican officials hint that a formal agreement with Tito may be signed as early as March.

Poland has a church with considerable freedom of operation--thanks to the unshakable faith of the Poles, who are 96.5% Catholic, and the skillful diplomacy of Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski. But the Polish government has imposed heavy taxes on the church, and is trying to limit religious instruction in schools; Wyszynski responds with fiery sermons against Red harassment. Gomulka would like to bypass Wyszynski and establish diplomatic relations with the Vatican, but the cardinal got assurances from the Vatican that it would not negotiate with the Polish government without his consent. He also asked Pope Paul not to name a Pole among the 27 new cardinals; both of the most likely candidates were regarded as more "reformist" than Wyszynski. Church diplomats still seek a formula for discussing church affairs with the Communists without imposing a solution against the will of the most politically astute and successful archbishop in Eastern Europe.

Czechoslovakia (9,000,000 Catholics) has plenty of hard-line Stalinists in government and an old anticlerical tradition. Churches are empty and in poor repair; most of the dioceses are without bishops; priests are still arrested for anti-regime activities. But even here the church's prospects are improving. President Antonin Novotny is eager to touch up the Czech image in the West, and his government was clearly embarrassed when the Pope bestowed a red hat on Prague's Archbishop Josef Beran, now under house arrest. Czech exiles in Rome are preparing Beran's quarters for the consistory, and last week there were rumors that Casaroli had all but completed an agreement with the Reds. Beran would be called to the Curia; in return, the government might allow the Vatican to appoint new bishops and restore certain church properties. Whether the deal is completed seems to depend on how much the Czechs will concede.

Vatican officials see no improvement in countries where persecution of small Catholic minorities has been most severe--Albania, Bulgaria, Rumania, East Germany--and Vatican-Soviet relations are in cold storage. Moreover, the church is aware that any concessions offered represent tactical maneuvers, not any real reduction of Marxist hostility to religion. Thus, for the time being, Pope Paul hopes to obtain not a modus vivendi but a modus non moriendi (a way of not dying).

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