Interview with Balazs Babel

© Túry Gergely

Following the first round of the elections, it looks like the Socialist-Liberal government will continue in power. What is your view of the result?

The affairs of Christ are not dependent on elections. The question of who takes power every four years is just the blink of an eye compared to the history of the church. For us it would be best if we did not have to concern ourselves with the parties and if our institutions would receive the state support we need - not a penny more - just like equivalent secular institutions. It would be good if governments would follow Jesus's advice: "Render unto Ceasar what it Caesar's, render unto God what is God's."

Are you encouraging your congregation to vote, and are you taking sides?

First, it is a civic duty to vote, and thus a Christian duty too. It is even more important for ones conscience to vote for the party that is closest to the Church's teachings. There is no party which perfectly reflects the Church's teachings - just look at our opposition to abortion or our attitude towards divorce. A Fidesz victory would not represent the arrival of Canaan, but we hope the wounds inflicted on our social institutions and on our schools would slowly heal.

The catholic weekly Uj Ember last year wrote of the 2002 elections that "many had voted for those who promised cheap bread and rejected those who might have reflected the light of Christ." Karoly Eperjes, a Catholic actor, recently said: "Christian liberal? There is no such thing. Nor are there Christian Socialists." Do you agree with them?

In Hungary, the Left is different from in Italy, for example, where Communists often carry the statue of the resurrected Christ in religious parades. Here, left-wing thinking was once linked with materialism and atheism, and the Left has still not grown out of this. And you cannot vote for a party that opposes Christian values. If someone who thinks himself a good Catholic votes for the Left, then it is called in theological language ignorantia invincibilis, or unconquerable ignorance.

Do you ever feel the need to distance yourself from Zsolt Semjen, the third person on the Fidesz list and president of the Christian Democratic People's Party, who recently said: "Where religion is a private affair, life sinks into corruption, sin and cruelty."

We do not need to distance ourselves from an adult Catholic and MP. Yet neither the Papal Nuncio, nor our archbishop, nor even the Pope himself can rein in Zsolt Semjen. He was in any case quoting Cardinal Mindszenty, who was referring to his experiences of Nazism when he said religion should not be a private affair. For one thing, it is clear that religion is a private matter as far as my faith in God and my prayers are concerned, and this is why the Catholic Church has no official representatives in Parliament or in the parties. But the Church does have a role to play in the common good. In this sense, then, religion cannot be a private matter, because there are schools, care homes, hospitals and public collections. Anyone can come, because they serve the common good. It is dangerous when a party's leadership wants the faithful to support their church. Why, in that case, do a party's members' support a party out of their donations?

You said earlier that you think Viktor Orban's conversion to the Christian world view is genuine, and you were glad to see that the Fidesz leader was taking notes on your sermon. Is it possible that some of the ideas he presents to the public come form those notes, from you yourself?

It is possible that our we were thinking along the same lines. I am not in any case right wing. You can no longer talk of the Left and the Right in classical terms anyway. Katalin Szili, the leader of Parliament, has also visited me, and we agreed on certain things.

It is interesting that you did not mention Gabor Kuncze, who was a classmate of yours at the Piarist School in Kecskemet. Do you not speak to him any more?

Of course I talk to him. He regularly attends class reunions - one should never reject your relationships with your classmates. He visits me sometimes, though during the campaign he has not come. Everyone has their own path in life, and you have to square things with your own conscience in your own way. He is very proud of having gone to the Piarist School.

The bishops' election-time open letter states that people should vote for parties that "promise fair support for church schools and social institutions." Priests had to read this letter aloud at mass. Is the Church not abusing its position by trying to influence the congregation in this way?

I do not understand why the parties want to restrict our freedom. Why can we not say what we want to, as dictated to us by our consciences?

Unreligious people have often been shocked by the content and tone of the bishops' open letters. Tell us: how are these letters written? Does one bishop draft them, and then the others sign it out of solidarity, or are they the result of joint work and a consensus view?

One of us writes a draft, then several of us discuss it, polish it. Sometimes we argue about every sentence. We do not vote on the open letters, and normally everyone agrees on the final text. I am proud that I persuaded the bishops to protest against the Iraq war, six months before it broke out. But I am offended by those who claim are letters are badly written: they are the work of 25 Hungarian university graduates.

It is only now, 16 years after the regime change, that the Catholic Church has established the Odon Lenard Public Foundation, which will examine the history of the Church after 1945, looking also at the sometimes tarnished role of the Church alongside a repressive regime. Why only now?

In historical terms, 16 years is not a long time. We are not worried about what may emerge. We are simply saying that it is now impossible to establish precisely what happened, since so many documents have been destroyed. Until we get full access to the archives, it will be impossible to paint an objective picture. We are also saying that everyone has to square things with God.

Recently, three intellectuals - Peter Buda, Csaba Fazekas and Gyorgy Gabor, accused you in the literary weekly Elet es Irodalom of opposing freedom, because you praised Bihsop Ottokar Prohaszka at a commemoration, who at the beginning of the 20th century talked of the Jews as "a rats' army," and an "immoral, infiltrating minority."

The writers know neither me nor Ottokar Prohaszka, and I did not say any of the things they accuse me off. Furthermore, I emphasised that Prohaszka opposed the representatives of the feudal Church of the time. Further, the antisemitism of the early 20th century is not comparable to that of the 1940s. Criticising the Slovaks, the Vlahs, the Jews and the Hungarians was part of the public discourse of the times. I know Prohaszka well from his books, and he would have opposed the inhumanity committed against the Jews during World War II. So it is ahistorical and false for the Holocaust Museum to present Prohaszka as an ideologist of fascism.

We are very fortunate, since you do not normally speak to secular newspapers, saying that certain matters are only worth discussing if the the questioner is also familiar with certain fundamental theological assumptions. What is the significance of Easter to someone without this knowledge?

Since Christ's resurrection, Easter has meant the same thing to the religious. That was when Pesach, the Jewish Easter, ended, or, as Hegel wrote, was ended and preserved to live on. The essence of Pesach is that the Jewish nation was freed from its Egyptian imprisonment. This liberation became transcendent in Christianity. The greatest prison for humans is death, and by his resurrection Jesus Christ freed us from this. This is good news for many, unbelievable for others, and just nonsense for yet others. But this is the foundation on which Christianity is built.

NORBERT IZSÁK