Cardinal, Communists and Church
By civilised standards, two things were required of the trial of Cardinal Mindszenty before a Hungarian court on charges of treason, espionage and illegal currency dealings. The first was that justice should be -done. The second was that it should be seen to be done. Neither requirement was met. Justice is only secured by accident in "people's courts," in which the explicit Communist doctrine that law is subordinate to politics is openly applied. Any real chance that the accident might occur was ruled out by the need of the Hungarian Government to remove the leader of a political movement which would have stood in the way of its attempt to take over Church schools and extend its influence over the peasantry. Haste in the public proceedings, the restriction of public access to the court, and a curiously perfunctory conduct of the Cardinal's defence made assur- ance doubly sure. Yet Cardinal Mindszenty confessed a certain
measure of guilt. The question whether justice was done therefore depends in part on the authenticity of that confession. To that there can be no final answer, unless the Cardinal is ever restored to freedom in his right mind, in which case he can announce which was true—his declaration before the trial that "confessions " might be extorted from him and should not be believed, or his statement during the trial that his confession was genuine. It is surely clear to all reasonable men that the first statement is consistent with his life-long character as a militant defender of the rights of the Church, and the second statement inconsistent with that character. The world has to decide for itself which was the true Cardinal Mindszenty, the politician and popular preacher who went into prison thirty-five days before his trial and the subdued and unhappy priest who came out. The questions are obscured by the deliberately fostered confusion of a political trial, and they have not been clarified by the policy of the Vatican. But there is little doubt about the right answer, and the condemnation of the Hungarian Government which it carries with it. In the meantime every effort must be directed to alleviating the lot of the Hungarian Catholics, who now face a grave threat without their Primate.
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