Anti-Semitic Mass Reveals Problems in Hungarian Church

Last updated on: January 29, 2018 at 10:57 am by Cameron Doody

Anti-Semitic Mass Reveals Problems in Hungarian Church 2018-01-29T10:57:52+01:00 Cameron Doody

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Does the Hungarian Catholic Church have a problem with anti-Semitism? The question returned to the headlines last week with news of the controversy surrounding a Mass in remembrance of the Nazi sympathizer Miklós Horthy which was scheduled for last Saturday – International Holocaust Remembrance Day – but was cancelled at the last minute thanks to protests from Jewish groups.

As Haaretz reported, the president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald S. Lauder, wrote to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán objecting in no uncertain terms to the scheduling of the Mass in a downtown Budapest church, in which Sándor Lezsák, Deputy Speaker of the Hungarian Parliament and a member of the ruling Fidesz party, was also slated to speak.

“The terror that Admiral Horthy, an unabashed anti-Semite, inflicted on the Jewish community of Hungary by allowing them to be stripped of their rights and their humanity, and his role in the deportation and murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews, must never be forgotten and can never be excused”, Lauder wrote.

Above and beyond the political connection to this honoring of a noted Nazi sympathizer, however, there is also the question of why the Church allowed the Mass to go ahead in the first place. Parish priest Zoltán Osztie said in remarks to the Hungarian website szemlelek.blog.hu: “We didn’t really notice the international day in remembrance of Auschwitz was on the same day… This weekend was the closest [convenient date] to the death of Miklós Horthy, which we have been commemorating for the past few years”. The Jewish Hungarian weekly Szombat blasted the planned Mass as “provocative”, historically “insensitive”, “tasteless”, an example of “scandalous insanity”, and a blatant attempt to skew the national elections scheduled for April this year: but to what extent is the Catholic Church implicit in the growing tide of anti-Semitism that Szombat noted is quickly turning into an “international scandal”?

Last Friday the Népszava Online website revealed that Cardinal Péter Erdő, the Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, personally requested Osztie to cancel the Horthy memorial Mass. Hungarian Spectrum speculates, however, that Erdő, in his request to Osztie, was merely acting on orders from Prime Minister Orbán, who was apparently moved not so much by the appeals of Lauder or Szombat but by the protests of his “favourite” Jewish personality, the anti-Muslim rabbi Slomó Köves. This alignment of the Hungarian Church behind Orbán is something that has been well-documented by Hungarian Spectrum, which in an article just last month denounced that:

The Orbán governmment “is pouring money and influence in to the Church, giving it schools and institutions which it cannot operate on its own. One cannot escape from the government’s embrace, especially since it declares ‘Christian’ everything that is important [to it]”.

However reluctantly and lightly he may have done so, Cardinal Erdő seems to have reprimanded Osztie for the Horthy memorial Mass. But he must reprimand the Keresztény Értelmiségiek Szövestsége (KÉSZ; Association of Christian Professionals) as well, Osztie’s partner in crime in scheduling the memorial. The problem, in the end, is Orbán, who will do anything for Hungary to avoid taking in (Muslim) refugees: even enlisting the help of a xenophobic rabbi. And KÉSZ provides all sorts of monetary and logistical support for the Fidesz party, not to mention the offense it has caused with its involvement in the Horthy Mass.

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