Szabolcs Vigh

* 1934

  • I had a motto, since the time I had been a student. It reflected more or less the same idea about which I spoke yesterday, namely the slogan „Instaurare omnia in Christo”, that is to say „Regenerate everything in Christ”. These words mean approximately that the gospel and the message hidden in it is the best for the mankind. And I was aware of the fact that it failed to be realized in one or more aspects, so I had the idea to dedicate myself to it. I didn’t have exagerated and ambitious aims by thinking that „I’m going to do everything better”, but I was decided to modernize the dusty and old-fashioned Church. I wanted to regenerate the parochial life, especially in the practice. I tried to explain this during my first masses. Certainly, it wasn’t up to much compared to the present situation. I think my main idea was that I tried however organize the masses in a way that the participants, instead of taking part in usual rituals where everything has its well-defined place and everybody knows what have to do, would understand more or less the meaning of the ceremony. That is to say I wanted to bring them closer in verbal and mental way to the ceremony, to the liturgy and to the rituals. This was my principal idea.

  • I was born in a well-established middle-class bourgeois family idiomatically saying. My grandfather had had a timber factory in Szolnok but he lost his property. I was told that he had grown poor, he had been bankrupted in the course of World War I because as a great patriot he had underwritten a great amount of war loan. He had five sons, my father was the youngest. It may be an interesting detail, if we are willing to thresh out my life, that my father wanted to become an artist. He wrote plays in the secondary school in a so called self-training course. His father however was much more practical and told him „comedians have no bread, my son. You must study.” So he studied law and he became attorney.

  • One of the officers who had taken part in the operation which brought Mindszenty out of captivity, lived in Piliscsaba. He had been in prison for that. Q: Who was he? A: József Tóth. And in one occasion we talked, he mentioned that „How on earth is it possible that the episcopal board called for the joining of the cooperatives by a circular letter and the Church in the same time considers the private property to be normal. It is a contradiction. The episcopal board became a servant of this system and we ran the risk for this Church. I can’t understand it.” I fully agreed with this criticism and I, as a priest, didn’t want to adhere to this two-timer attitude afterwards. I tried to act clearly or if I couldn’t, I tried to be silent at least. Since I was convinced that it was impossible to speak against the political system, I decided what I could do was not to read out or say things which hurt basic human interests.

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Budapest, Hungary, 02.07.2012

    ()
    délka: 
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Oral History Archive - Budapest
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

We planned a more open-hearted and tolerant Church of solidarity

Szabolcs Vgh in 1935
Szabolcs Vgh in 1935
zdroj: Pamět Národa - Archiv

He was born on November 19, 1934 in Budapest in a middle-class family of intellectuals. His father was a lawyer, was counsellor of the Hungarian Shipping PLC among others. His mother after graduation was housewife. Szabolcs Vigh was the oldest of the five children who were brought up in catholic spirit. He began his secondary school studies at the Secondary School of the Order of Poor Clerics but after the secularization of the education he studied first at Fazekas Secondary School, later at Eötvös Secondary School. He graduated in 1953. He studied at the Budapest Theological Faculty. He was ordained in 1958. After the outbreak of the 1956 Revolution he trod the city with his fellows from the seminary and they helped those who needed it. On November 3 he took part in the confiscation of the files of the State Office of Ecclesiastical Affairs in order to keep the away from the unwarranted. Pulled down the revolution, his family left for the Netherlands, but he remained in Hungary. He was arrested in February 1957. He was originally the fourth defendant in the legal action against Egon Turchányi which began in December 1957, but - probably on the international pressure - he was discharged from remand at the beginning of that month. On January 10, 1958 the proceedings against him was closed. Then he worked as chaplain in Endrefalva, Tát and Tokod. He served in various parishes of Budapest. He didn‘t join the peace priests‘ movement and he refused to be enrolled among the agents of the secret police on different occasions. For the first time he was given a passport to the ‚Western‘ states in 1968. His PhD thesis written on birth control was awarded summa cum laude grade in 1971. He wrote a number of papers on this topic for the periodicals Vigília and  Teológia. His request on studies abroad was declined by the competent ecclesiastical authority in 1973. In the same year he criticized the practice of the official ecclesiastical doctrine on contraception at the autumn conference of church deans and he was rebuked in the public by his bishop‘s rescript, he was shorty transferred to a new place of service on punishment. In 1975 he applied for a passport of emigration. In February 1976 he settled in the Netherlands. He left the ecclesiastical service in the same year and he was married. He divorced in 1981. He was remarried in some years, his son Peter was born in 1987. He worked for the University of Tilburg since 1976, he was assistant to the documentation since 1979 in the same place. He has been a volunteer at an SOS call service since 2003.