Katalin and Cecilia Simonyi, Hungary
Janus Pannonius University of Sciences, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Arts
Address: H-8000, Székesfehérvár, Jókai u. 18.
E-mail: kaci@jpic.zpok.hu, cilko@bush.zpok.hu

Introduction

Many people expect - and hope for - help from the Christian churches to eliminate nationality problems. This is understandable, since the Founder gathered his thirteen-membered community - what he called "My Church" - to practise universal love, which is intended to embrace different nations. We take for the motto of our lecture an incident written by a Hungarian novelist, Tömörkény, in 1911 entitled Race and Denomination.

Tömörkény is the director of a museum, leading an excavation close to a Hungarian-Serbian village. He is talking with the workers, among them the 82-year-old Uncle Vászó.

The founder of our movement, György Bulányi, is a Piarist monk. Like everyone in his generation, he was deeply influenced by the ideal of recovering our territories. After the First World War, 70% of Hungary was taken away from us and given to neighbouring countries. Between the two World Wars, people regarded this as something very painful. Pater Bulányi became a priest because he believed in violence, in a possible war for our lost territories. Then came the Second World War. We took part in it on Hitler's side. Actually we had no choice. With him we also lost the war. And we lost, in fact, more territory.

As the Soviet army crept in and settled down "temporarily" for the next 40 years, some monks also appeared. They came to teach the Catholic church in Hungary how to survive underground. One of these monks, a Croatian, met Pater Bulányi in Debrecen. They started to work together, forming groups with no more than twelve members for prayer and Bible study, for all the functions of the Church - but on a small scale, and in secret. After one month this Croatian priest left for the Soviet Union, to continue his mission. Pater Bulányi stayed in Debrecen and kept working with the already existing groups. Meanwhile he had converted. He compared Marxism with Christianity, finding many common values: sharing, taking care of the poor and excluded, possessing things together, equality. Then he discovered in the Gospel Jesus' unique teaching about love towards our enemies and he became aware of all its consequences: the impossibility of co-operating with any legal power. He examined what Jesus had taught about nationality and nonviolence. First, we would like to share some thoughts from his study.

The basic rule of our human life, in all cultures, is: "Do not do to others what you would not wish for yourself". The history of mankind, however, shows conflicts, one after the other, where this Golden Rule has been denied. Nationality is only one of the reasons why a group in power tries to gain advantages over weaker groups. To find out why human beings forming these competing groups act against the Golden Rule, we need to examine our own nature.

God wanted to create in us beings similar to himself, beings that have the freedom to choose love and service. Freedom of choice means we have, apart from our loving nature, also another one which impels us to take, to acquire. Any human being, given these natures, is free to follow or set himself against the Golden Rule, individually or as part of a group. The Kingdom of God preached by Jesus is the product of those who use their freedom according to the Golden Rule. It is a truism that the solution to problems of nationality depends on these people. In order to carry out God's vision, Jesus became a man and founded a thirteen-membered community, his own church.

Did Jesus have any other ideas about the nationality problem? It would have been strange if he had not. The society he lived in experienced the misery of national conflicts. Methods of tax collection brought about poverty. Their national culture, their religion was in danger, from hellenisation and through the collaboration of the rich with the Roman Empire. Each honest (i.e. zealous) Jew hid his sword in the ground of his garden so that when the hour of freedom arrived he could take revenge on the conquerors. Jesus belonged neither to the collaborators nor to the zealots. To whom did he belong? To those with strong national consciousness. Jesus, the Man, was a true-born Israelite; he, the Son of God, chose his own nationality. His Jewish consciousness was based on birth and choice. His aim to win the whole world was based in Jewish nationalism. He did not go to other nations: "I have been sent only to those lost sheep, the people of Israel" (Matthew15.24), he said to the non-Jewish (Canaanite) woman. He gathered his disciples only from the Jews. The primary heirs of his Kingdom of God belong to Israel; they constitute the "sons of the Kingdom" (Matthew 8.12). They are the ones to whom he explains, in the Sermon on the Mount, the notion of love as embracing all people. First they - the Jews- have to overcome the notion of love narrowed down to a group with the same interests. This is a love of which people of other nations and those collaborating with them (namely pagans and tax collectors) are capable too (Matthew 6.46-47). His national consciousness did not make Jesus blind towards either the sins of his own nation or the virtues of other nations. Only those who accept and practise his love qualify as beloved by God, only those who are perfect like the Heavenly Father, who doesn't exclude even sinners from his love (Luke 6.32-36; Matthew 5.48). He counted out any love which is restricted to some people only. This way even sinners are able to love: "Even sinners lend to sinners." (Luke 6.34). For Jesus being a Jew is not a privilege but a responsibility; a mission to other nations. To Jesus, that love which can open out only to one's own nation is merely collective egoism. The words of John the Baptist cannot be cancelled out by expressions of nationality ("Our father is - Abraham!"), because God is able to make descendants for Abraham even from stones (Matthew 3.9). Similarly Jesus could not be swayed by national consciousness: "If you really were Abraham's children, you would do the same things that he did." (John8.39). The God of Jesus cannot be possessed by a single group out of all mankind, not even the one Jesus chose and was born into. Only uniting with the thoughts and attitude of God can give any status. It is our personal performance that matters, and not the history of our nation. Jesus appreciates the non-Jewish officer from Capernaum more than the members of his own nation (Matthew 8.10). He talks about his Kingdom of God filled with non-Jews, causing great astonishment in Israel: "I assure you that many will come from the east and the west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the feast in the Kingdom of Heaven. But those who should be in the Kingdom will be thrown out into the darkness, where they will cry and grind their teeth." (Matthew 8.11-12) The praised officer from Capernaum belongs to the alien nation which had occupied the land of the Jews. Similar praises are given to the nations around Israel, which show greater sensitivity towards the words of the Lord than the Jews (Matthew 11,21-22; 12,41-42). Jesus goes further: even the inhabitants of Sodom will have a better fate than those of Israel (Matthew 11.24). Jesus does not have any illusions about the future; national war and mass murder are the same things for him: "Countries will fight each other, kingdoms will attack one another." (Matthew 24.7). He encourages his disciples to escape from the city - the place of mass murders: "Pray to God that you will not have to run away during the winter or on Sabbath!" (Matthew 24.20). Should the disciples of Jesus not be there where the country needs defence - even by sacrificing their lives - against the army of the enemy country? His notion of love includes love for enemies, therefore any kind of murder denies this love: "Love your enemies ... and you will be the sons of the Most High God. For he is good to the ungrateful and the wicked." (Luke 6.35). Nevertheless he did not change his nationality, although the formal representatives of his nation declared him to be blasphemous and delivered him to the occupying power, into the hands of a nation that was enemy to the Jews. Even after a three year study period and an extra course of 40 days the disciples still have in their hearts a notion foreign to Jesus's concept when they ask, "Lord, will you at this time give the kingdom back to Israel?" That was their last question to their Master, referring to an expected messianic war. Jesus however still relies on his own nation. His disciples should not worry about the national independence of Israel; they must be the witnesses to his vision, using the power of the Spirit of God. Where must they be witnesses? Let's look at the order of places: "In Jerusalem, in all Judaea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1.8) To sum up: Jesus, who has strong national consciousness, considers his own nation as primary material in the service of his concept of embracing all the nations in love. This does not exclude national consciousness' but it does exclude a national army. He sees this as the perdition of a nation. Its absence is considered the way to save the nation. Jesus, who eliminated murder from his resources, said: "Trust me, I have defeated the world". We can also trust in these statements of his vision.

The minds of the Twelve could hardly keep up with the way of seeing things that the Master wanted to teach. They had expected a Jewish hero, a potential leader in a messianic war. Their understanding could not be provided automatically even by the Holy Spirit at Whitsuntide. The early Christians tried to stick to what they thought Jesus had taught, but even their consciousness in the first three centuries was not unanimously the consciousness of Jesus, and this is true of the authors of the New Testament as well. Had this not been so, the Church would not have been able to accept the right hand of the Emperor Constantine. It happened, without any opposition from Christian thinkers and confessors. Eusebius celebrates the new Christian Roman Empire as the realisation of the prophets' hope. At the beginning of the next century, Augustine creates his theory about "just(ified)" war. Owing to his influence there appears in the liturgical doxology a God who "lives and rules", while at the same time Jesus is more and more forgotten, Jesus, who is lord while washing his disciples' feet, who does not keep servants, who came to serve and who will also serve us in the transcendence. (John 13.13-14; Mark10.45; Luke 12.37) As a result of this re-arrangement in thinking, those who loyally served the interest of the emperor became, by the emperor's will, bishops (or metropolitans) of the Church. In no time we reverted to the situation before Jesus, in which the prophets had to draw the attention of the Kings and High Priests of Israel to God's intentions. Furthermore, because in these centuries there were no prophets, we sank to the level of Jupiter's priests. We assured the emperors in their battles of God's help in the same way as they had done. Hence within Christendom comes about the alliance of throne and altar, as in many other cultures. As Francis Joseph, the "apostolic king" said: "Army, clergy, and nothing else!" If these two are on the side of the ruler, he does not need to fear. The concept of the "Christian monarch" developed in the spirit of Augustine's theology.

Hungarian history shows clearly how a nation led by a so-called Christian king integrates in Europe. The Magyar people came as nomads into the Karpathian basin. Our origins, culture and language are very different from those of the nations surrounding us. We stood between three mill-stones - the Slavic, the Western and the Balkan - and were too weak to survive alone. To become European we had to accept Christianity. It was our first king, Saint Stephen, who made us a Christian country, in a not quite nonviolent way -he had to massacre a considerable part of his nation to make the rest accept the new faith. He was our first "Christian" king, and after him came a succession of other Christian kings. Such rulers are apostolic, owning their country's church and leading its army. Church leaders are given army posts. Instead of building the Kingdom of God the Church becomes bound as assistant to a country or nation of this world. Instead of witnessing to the national consciousness of Jesus, Christians fulfil his prophecy: "Countries will fight each other" (Mark 13.8).We have reached our own day. During the Vietnam War an American priest, Cardinal Spelmann, exhorted soldiers in the name of God to protect the values of their Christian culture. Catholic and non-Catholic church leaders in the Eastern block did the same on the opposite side - to protect the values of socialist culture. After more than one and a half thousand years of Christian wars, in the second half of the nineteenth century European nations brought into force general military service. While previously only nobles and mercenaries had been involved in national conflicts, this had now become a patriotic obligation, codified in law. Acting against it was punished. Only the Orthodox Leo Tolstoy raised his voice against it; he was excommunicated. Our Church remained silent and collaborated. In the `last five minutes', historically speaking, the Second Vatican Council authorised "conscientious objection". But it did so in a way that still permitted church members to serve in the army (Gaudi et Spes 79). In the last fifteen years, for the first time in our nation's history, the "Bokor" community has challenged the teaching of our state Christianity. It questioned the legality of conscription. In opposition to both state and church, our members refused any kind of armed military service. Our men refused to join up, our women threw their army cards into the trash or sent them back, stating that they did not wish to be under military control. We did all this with reference to Jesus, and asked for the help and support of the Catholic church. However, the hierarchy distanced itself from us, saying that we represented a non-Catholic point of view, since it is the moral duty of every Catholic to defend the home country. Furthermore, by doing this we would break the balance created by NATO and the Warsaw Treaty. The civil courts endorsed the standpoint of our hierarchs, and conscientious objectors (Bokor members and Jehovah's Witnesses) were sent to prison for two or three years. The behaviour of Jesus was considered to be non-Catholic.

Questions of nationality, often under the guise of religion, have caused problems right up to the present. The long war and continuing conflicts in Eastern Europe show clearly that this problem is unsolved. The small states of the former Soviet Union have not yet found their identities. We might also mention the Hungarian minorities, which suffer from oppression because of nationalism. Neither has Western Europe dealt successfully with its nationality problem. In 1974 at a secret conference of nations in Trieste, all these nations/ethnic groups expressed their dissatisfaction with the status quo in their own countries: in Great Britain - Scots, Welsh, Irish, Cornish and those in the Isle of Man (pop. 49,000); in Spain - Catalans, Basques, Galicians; in France - Bretons, Basques, Corsicans, Alsatians; in Italy - Sicilians, Sardinians, Calabrians, people in Piedmont, Tyroleans, Slovenians; in The Netherlands - Frisians; in Belgium - Flemings; in Denmark -Norwegians on the Faroe Islands (pop. 35,000); in Greenland - Inuit; in Austria - Croatians, Slovenians; in Switzerland - French people in the Canton of Bern. Newspapers reveal from time to time how much the Third World countries liberated from colonisation are affected by nationality tensions; there are secret meetings and bloody wars. In the last 20 years the dream of globalism has turned into an illusion; even in the United States of America, once considered a melting-pot in which ethnic differences would vanish, national origin has proved to be more important than anywhere else. (Professor Novak: The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics) This is where the idea of the nation state has led us. In our century the two bloodiest wars of history have taken place. In Europe we have found that, due to technical improvement, war has become uncontrollable massacre. Human strength and abilities no longer matter. Because in countries at war most attacks are directed against civil society, 9O% of those killed and injured are civilian. Soldiers no longer suffer most; it is not their lives and existence that are at stake. War that is limited to the defence of a country, which affects only the participants in a conflict, and which leaves civilians and their supplies in peace, no longer exists. War and armed conflict have nothing to do with defending our homeland any more. And what does the Church have to say to all this? In the 2nd World War Hungarian army bishops blessed the efforts our country made to please Hitler, and threatened with hell those soldiers who tried to refuse or escape. The era of Constantine is already over. The "just war" theory of Augustine is now openly abandoned, even by the Church. The army chaplaincy has just been re-established in Hungary. Nowadays `retreats' are arranged for Hungarian conscripts, but the possibility of civilian service must not be mentioned, because the army bishop says "it would upset the conscience of the youngsters." Nowadays we do not even need a war for a nation to be destroyed. The fight for economic survival or the growth of population can be equally destructive.

The Hungarian partner in the World Court Project was the BOCS Foundation, one of the Bokor movement's present legal bodies. The work of BOCS focuses on peace and environmental issues. The World Court decided recently on the illegality of nuclear weapons. Their use and threat of use are now unjustifiable, according to international law. However, there is one eventuality on which the World Court cannot clearly decide: that of the very survival of a state. This is when a state needs to fight for its survival, or its borders are threatened, or it is occupied or made a part of another state. Clearly this can mean great suffering for the occupied people- but even so, can it be compared to the effects of a nuclear bomb? Think of the duration of any occupation in our history. The defence of such temporary things as borders seems not too sensible. We have still not grasped that the effectiveness of our own weapons is already far beyond our understanding and control. Our weapons, not only nuclear ones, are no longer simple, as they were for centuries; we took them up when war began and put them away as it ended. No, the effects of today's weapons go on and on; even if they are not used they cause suffering, starvation and death, because they absorb human resources. Whether produced, dismantled or stored, weapons constitute a potential danger.*

We must be careful in considering the importance of this question. At present our main problems are global. Views about money have changed dramatically. Up to the 18th century interest was forbidden: it is legal now. This has led to a world debt crisis. During the eighties, the Third World paid in interest almost twice as much as it owed. Yet their debt has doubled. This is also true of the 'debtor' countries of Eastern Europe. This new, more effective form of exploitation now endangers not only countries and their inhabitants, but also the Earth itself, and thus the existence of future generations.

Aristotle already knew about two kinds of economy, one that aimed to fulfil the needs of people, while the other was devised for profit, serving only the need and greed of those who could pay. He identified three activities dominated by this second type of economy: piracy, arms trading and importing luxury goods from long distances. He stated that once this economy takes over, it can mean the end of humankind. Today this is the kind of economy we are experiencing, and we can see how it leads to death for all those who cannot pay for the fulfilment of their needs.

80% ofthe common resources are consumed by one fifth of humankind, which then produces 80% of trash and pollution. The Earth is over-exploited; this lifestyle and consumption must end, or our fight for a better standard of life will be in vain. We need to understand that our resources are limited. The massmedia - one of our new `superpowers' - ignore the really burning issues. Instead of warning how crucial the questions we need to face are, they serve the interests of other superpowers, supporting consumption, misleading our attention, over-whelming us with unimportant information and producing noise.

The Old Testament has a marvellous idea for the way out of such a crisis. The year of Jubilee, every fiftieth year, was meant to re-establish a fair and sharing society: to cancel all debts, to let slaves go home, to share with those in need. Our Pope, who is very committed in social questions, now emphasises this teaching as the 2000th year comes closer. The Bible claims that the Earth is the property of God. We are only servants with the responsibility for handling this property as our Master wishes. We are not free to misuse or ruin what we call, according to Roman law, `our property'. The internationally known Hungarian author Szentgyörgyi wrote a book entitled The Crazy Ape. As a biologist, he examined the reasons behind the mad behaviour of today`s people. He found that our brain is not so far developed that it can keep up with the changes that take place nowadays. They are simply too fast for our brain. We cannot grasp them. We cannot control the consequences of our decisions, whether economic, financial or political. Our culture, which favours large-scale production, huge quantities, unlimited growth in every field, is doomed to death.

What was God`s plan, when he put unlimited longing in us, but placed us on to a limited planet? He probably thought of humankind as having stable consumption and population. He bestowed on us many non-material dimensions, where our possibilities are limitless. Spiritually, in intellect, in love, in human relations, in creativity and in many other ways there is no limit to our capacity for growth. The wishes engendered by this growth cannot be satisfied by material possessions. Jesus said: "Happy are the poor," but he spoke in a different way to the rich. Neither did he claim that those in misery were happy. If we want to be his followers, we have to accept the way he lived, and thought, and spoke. Today our very survival as human beings is at stake. Because of this it is clear that we Christians cannot allow ourselves to get stuck on the question of nationality. The Roman Catholic hierarchy has always been centuries behind what is actually happening in the world. We need to be taking the lead, seeking out the radical message of Jesus and responding to his wisdom. It is the church's job to oppose everything that is false in our world. The church must look into the future and warn against potential sins and tragedies. Christians have to lead, as Jesus did, to be controversial without compromises. He did not use legal enforcement, or army or police - none of these forms of control, which are supposed to be part of our make-up as a nation. So these cannot be our tools either. When there are national conflicts and problems, we have to solve them through the alternative ways of love.

Here are some examples from our Bokor movement in Hungary, which represent just a few of the many possible ways of reducing the hatred caused by a false interpretation of national feelings.

It has been very important to us to have contacts with the Hungarian minorities in neighbouring countries. Our strongest contacts are in Romania. As soon as we received passports it became possible for us to take books, clothes and medicines across the borders. Later on we began to take part in their activities - camps, youth events and programmes, - and we gave talks about environmental and peace issues. We tried and are still trying to help them start and develop their own groups, for instance by helping to set up an e-mail net in their countries. We considered it even more important to have contacts with the "opposition". Establishing an internal opposition - an `opposition within the opposition' - is much more effective in changing minds, in overcoming prejudice and in helping people to believe different things from those heard before. Thus, some six years ago our community invited 300 Romanian families to Hungary. They spent a week with our families, and later the Hungarian families visited Romania. Our aim was to improve contacts between Romanians and the Hungarian minority living in Transylvania.

Ever since the beginning of the 1970s we have been supporting the Third World by putting aside 10% of our income. We have a contact in India with a school system for village children organised by Jesuits. We send them about $60,000 per year. As Hungary is in the richest one-fifth of the Earth's population we think we do have something to share. The leader of this project, Cedric Prakash SJ, has visited us twice in Hungary and is now our good friend. When he first came the Iron Curtain still existed, so while he gained personal experience of our circumstances, living in a Communist country, we got a strong and lively picture of their lives and work in India. In March 1996 I was able to visit him and some of his 90 schools (together catering for about fifteen thousand children). It was moving to meet those children personally, whom we at home in Hungary consider part of our family. (My parents sometimes say, and we were brought up to believe that we have more brothers and sisters to care for in places like Transylvania and India.) The schools are administered by Catholic monks and nuns. The teachers are not necessarily Christians, but are chosen carefully: they need to be committed and well trained. Mostly they come from the same area as the children and provide a standard education. Each school with all its workers provides a context of wholeness and responsibility: the staff want the children to give again the help they have received, to return to their people as teachers, doctors, nurses, with the vision of a high quality but sustainable future. The presence of the school itself also represents an improvement for the villages around - local adult education, medical support and so on. I was able to visit them because I attended a conference held in Nepal of NGOs and base groups trying to work out a common self-help strategy. Delegates came mostly from South Asia. Although they came with their own national problems, they were aware of the need for cooperation to resist the policies of their common enemies. These are not individual nations: the World Bank, Europe or simply "the North" are supranational entities.

1945-1995: Kyoto Peace Summit. I was the only person from Eastern Europe to participate in the World University Student's Peace Summit in Kyoto in 1995. This was the closing event of several that took place for the 50th anniversary of the end of the WWII and of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing. There were 500 participants from about 40 countries. An important lesson for me was to discover how difficult it is to write a common statement including all points of view. I also found out how hard it is to talk about a problem when someone personally touched by it, suffering from it, is sitting next to you and you are the source of it yourself. We spoke much about how the past bloody wars of our countries touch us. Most of the young people there said that for them it was over, in the past. We do not feel the anger our parents feel when we are told what happened. We all agreed that it is important to forgive but that it is necessary not to forget. Not to forget the dreadfulness of the wars, not to forget the suffering they cause. We must not forget it, if we do not want to repeat it.

At Christmas 1990 we organised the sending of greetings cards to Slovakia, where many Hungarians live, and in 1991 to Yugoslavia when the war began. We wrote peace wishes and Christmas greetings on the cards. We had the text translated into their languages. The addresses we took from telephone books, tore the pages out and spread them between friends, schools etc. Both these actions resulted in contacts, responses and friendships which still exist. Over the last year we have been fund-raising for Bosnian refugees by selling hand-made postcards painted in the refugee camps. This is one kind of work they can do, until they are able to move back to their homes. This project is organised by The Bread of Life community.

One astonishing and beautiful example of resistance to war is that of Oromhegyes, a Hungarian village of a few hundred souls in Serbia, Vojvodina, which collectively refused military service in 1992. All the men gathered together in the Community Centre of the village and stayed there for 62 days.They left only to count the tanks surrounding the village - there were 94. The villagers organised cultural events, wrote a journal and collected documents and articles. They named themselves the "Zitzer Spiritual Republic", indicating that their Republic has no territorial claims and no borders, and that anyone who accepts the personal and the human right of civil disobedience, the right to think and to live, can be a member. Their shield contains a pizza in the middle and three pool-balls in the corners - reminders of the "Zitzer Club" where they spent those 62 days. "In a hopeless situation there are two possibilities," one of them said later, "either you go mad, or you try to have fun." Later they explained why they suffered no harm: they were seen as the shop-window for the West of the `new Serbian democracy.'

In Hungary itself there is one minority causing many problems: the gypsies. They now make up about 7% of our population, but 35% of people in prison. They are unable to continue with their nomadic culture, and this means a loss of identity. They behave accordingly: they cannot fit into society, cannot make use of the help they are provided with by local government, e.g. they ruin flats they are given to live in. Most gypsies are not well educated, many even illiterate, and are therefore unemployed. Also, within the general category of `gypsies' there are many small tribes or sub-groups, and there are conflicts between these `minorities within a minority.' Society responds with prejudice and hatred: gypsies are considered dirty, dangerous (because they steal, and because of their growing numbers while the Hungarian population is decreasing) and are branded as criminals. Because they do not know much about the gypsies' lost or existing culture, local governments do not know what help might be appropriate, or how to implement a peaceful way of living with them. It is also hard to get them to cooperate. We try to help them through personal contacts, for instance by negotiating for them with different legal authorities.

Experiences like these have helped us to discover the values of other nations and cultures. This aspect: loving and developing a culture - a cultural national consciousness - is a very important part of belonging to a nation. Each small group, each minority, each culture is precious. The phenomenon of bio-diversity provides us with a parallel. Extinction of species makes our biosphere unstable. A wildlife with millions of species is capable of surviving any catastrophe, because some hundred thousand species can adapt to changes. But with less biodiversity our living environment can easily be destroyed. Global society is becoming more and more uniform. The mad competition between nations, corporations, armies is destroying more and more. Languages, tribes, ancient arts, games, customs of simple joyful life, wisdom of love, education, family and community life, skills of living together with nature, traditions of country life, cultures of small nations - all are threatened by it. A humankind which is poor in diversity will be unable to survive the present global crisis. Two hundred nations is a very small number. If we think only in terms of nations we tend to forget about the many small entities within the nations. Each of these enriches mankind with its own special values. Each contributes to the survival of mankind, to a way out of our present dreadful situation.

The culture of survival can be summarised by the three concepts: Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation. The Conciliar Process begun by the WCC organised its Second European Ecumenical Assembly 1997. summer in Graz, the theme of which was Reconciliation. The Church does have a word when it comes to our common problems. It has an important role, not only in causing wars, but also in encouraging peace.

It would be great to read a new short story:

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* The decision of the World Court, apart from its uncertainty at some points, is a significant and hopeful step, especially because the world's civil society was involved in the project. The British media, fortunately, covered this issue according to its importance. In Hungary, regrettably, daily newspapers published only some short reports, which were lost among all the other printed material.