Smite the Shepherd: Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty

In Hungary, conservatism was politically banned from the time of the coup of 1948 until the fall of communism in 1989. The only public places where some semblance of conservative thought could remain were churches, and, being the largest denomination, the Catholic Church played a principal role in providing a safe harbor for it.

Thus, if someone wants to understand conservatism in Hungary, one must understand how the Catholic Church shielded its flame. In turn, if one wants to understand the Catholic Church in Hungary, one must understand Cardinal Mindszenty, his faith and his fate.

The most vivid introduction to his life and his age is his memoir. In the mid-1980s, when liberal samizdat was already appearing in Kádár’s Hungary, texts like the Cardinal's memoirs remained very hard to come by. Thinking about a conservative world was unimaginable. Religion was constrained to homes and churches. The Party was not so keen on people reading the true story of the fifties, when the Catholic Church in Hungary was oppressed to the point of nearly being snuffed out. Right up through the 1980s, many religious orders faced difficulties operating freely in Communist Hungary.

József Mindszenty was born in 1892, when Hungary was a kingdom and was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire ruled by Franz Josef I. He was a hard-working priest: he baptized, educated the faithful and organized religious life.

In 1919, during the Hungarian Soviet Republic, the Communists interned him as a reactionary, foreshadowing the misfortune that would befall him later. But first, a more peaceful quarter century would pass in Zalaegerszeg.

On March 4, 1944, late in the Second World War, the pope appointed Mindszenty as bishop of Veszprém. Later that month German troops occupied the country. In June, the Sztójay government ordered the rounding up of Jews into ghettos. The episcopate expressed his clear objection: "If somebody, a single man or some group, or even the representatives of the state, undermine the natural rights of any person, namely, the right to life, the right to practice religion freely, the right to work, the right to pursue a decent living, the right to private property, etc. or rights obtained in a legal way, then the Hungarian bishops will raise their voices and will point out that these rights were neither given by a single man, nor a group of men, nor the representatives of the state, but by God himself. [T]hese cannot be taken away by any power on Earth, only God, or whom God has given right as a lawmaker, judge or governing person, because there is no power, only from God. But this power from God can be exercised only in a righteous way, along the ethical laws of God, because God has not given power to anybody for injustice and breaking of his own law."

In October 1944, Admiral Miklós Horthy failed in his attempt to tear Hungary from the Axis powers, and Ferenc Szálasi and his National Socialist Arrow Cross movement gained power. Soviet troops moved into some eastern regions of the country. At the end of October, Mindszenty and his fellow bishops from Transdanubia in western Hungary wrote a letter to the government asking for an end to the bloodshed and ruin of the country: "An individual can sacrifice himself for the nation, and tens of thousands have died heroically for our homeland. But the nation cannot be sacrificed as a suicide. Responsibility and conscience do not allow this..." Their voices were not heard: Hitler's order to fight to the last man was ultimately carried out.

When the Jews were deported from Veszprém despite the episcopate’s protests, an Arrow Cross lawyer ordered a Holy Mass to celebrate "getting rid of the Jews," then he made posters inviting the faithful to take part. Mindszenty forbade the Mass. In part because of this (as well as his opposition to the Arrow Cross government's plan to quarter soldiers in his official palace), he was arrested by this same lawyer in November 1944 and detained in Sopronkőhida until the collapse of the Arrow Cross regime in April 1945.

Mindszenty spoke in Pécs on October 20, 1946 on religion as a private matter. It is important to quote this because of the fresh perspective of the recently ended war.

How I comb my hair or whether we eat meat or are vegetarians – these can be private matters.. These things do not affect anyone else or society. It is not a private matter if I have more than 200 plants of tobacco, or if I distill grapes and plums at home, with or without the agreement of customs officers. I think that it is every bit as important to society if there is God and if there is an everlasting soul. Do these two have a connection? Do we have brothers, or are we just a horde of wolves? … Who wants to introduce this principle - with pushing religion away - into public life, those want to push their wretched private life into public life. There is a reason and an instigator for why it is not allowed to say outside the church that Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not defame!...

The message here from Cardinal Mindszenty is that life, both private and public, must have a moral foundation. Where religion is relegated to the private sphere, it removes the moral foundation from public life. When morality, the basic distinction between right and wrong, is erased from the public arena, public life then deteriorates into corruption, malice and mercilessness. History provides many examples, from those periods when religion was said to be a strictly private matter, of the dangers at stake. Hitler and his party made religion a private matter. Then came Dachau, Auschwitz, an empire of prisons, gas chambers, and the Gestapo. Nietzsche was the forerunner of all of this. He preached that we have overcome the old concept of good and evil. Now, as God has died, men are reborn! Wonderful, human life without God: the old, the ill, the crippled are killed by doctors on state order; the Jews thrown into gas chambers; 60 million soldiers perish on the fronts; 10 million buried; 20 million across Europe without homes. A whole world goes mad in this veil of tears. Then comes a small revolver, and Hitler shoots himself. Behold the result of banishing religion and morality from public life.

Some proponents of religion as a private matter remain with us today, though less powerful. But the bankruptcy they wrought is very much still with us. A diminished humankind must wonder: who will address this bankruptcy and what will be born of it?

This is the history of Mindszenty until the Communist takeover. This already shows his stance on so-called modern poltical thought, where religion is a relic from middle ages and has nothing to do with contemporary life and politics.

The next part will tell the story of his lawsuit and imprisonment and his freeing in the days of the revolution in 1956. The last part will be about his fleeing to the American embassy after the falling of the revolution, his 15 year long exile there, and his life after his emigration.