András Fejérdy. Pressed by a Double Loyalty

Only recently have the 1960s-era policy changes in the relationship between the Vatican and the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, which had been dubbed the Vatican Ostpolitik, become a field of studies for historians. Before that, they were a hotly contested topic among Cold War antagonists, who were fighting over the question of whether the Vatican had become “too soft” on Communism after Pope Pius XII passed away in 1958. The new research shows, however, that we can learn much more than just how efficient diplomatic strategies were. The new insights include the role of religion and religious institutions, theological, political, and ideological changes within the Catholic world and the Soviet bloc, the complexity of international relations, spy networks, and more during a time of détente. Hungary, as András Fejérdy shows in Pressed by a Double Loyalty: Hungarian Attendance at the Second Vatican Council, 1959–1965, had become a “testing ground” for new approaches and policies by both the Vatican and the Soviet bloc (366). Negotiations replaced (although not completely) the confrontations of the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the Communists arrested, tortured, and murdered priests and humiliated bishops in show trials, and when the Vatican retaliated by excommunicating priests loyal to the new regimes. Based on a variety of archival material, not only from the Hungarian archives of the Communist Party and state, the “Office of Church Affairs,” and the secret services, but also, to a much smaller extent, from church archives (for a brief period, the archives of Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the architect of Vatican Ostpolitik, were open for research), Fejérdy analyzed the various assessments, strategies, and protagonists on both sides, and how they reacted to changes and unforeseen challenges.

Bishops · Communism · Economic history · Holy See · Ideology · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies