Before I turn to my main topic of the day, I would like to add a few pieces of information to my coverage of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s visit to the White House on May 13. In the comment section of this blog, a lively debate has been going on about Orbán’s future relationship with the United States. Will he be a more accommodating ally? Will he be less reckless when it comes to his far too close association with Russia’s Vladimir Putin? Will he be less willing to allow Hungary to be the transit route for Chinese goods entering Europe? Anyone who answers any of these questions in the affirmative will most likely be wrong.
Today Gergely Gulyás, head of the Prime Minister’s Office, gave one of his weekly press conferences. He announced that the meeting between Trump and Orbán was considered to be a success but that “Hungary has excellent and balanced relationships with all the leading powers,” including China and Russia. When asked whether Orbán had invited Donald Trump to Hungary, Gulyás answered in the negative, adding that he knows nothing about any meetings of the two leaders in the future.
I was curious when attacks on Péter Márki-Zay and Zoltán Kész would begin. The two members of Mindenki Magyarországa (Everybody’s Hungary) were invited to meet with representatives of the U.S. State Department and the German Marshall Fund, where they were peppered with questions about the nature and foreign policy of the Orbán regime. From an article that appeared in Origo it seems that the Hungarian government is anxious about this unexpected invitation. Origo expressed its doubt that the invitation actually came from the State Department and found it suspicious that Márki-Zay and Kész were unwilling to disclose the source of the funding for their trip as well as the names of their contacts. Magyar Nemzet went even further, summarizing an article from a blog published by “Tűzfal Csoport” (Firewall Group), whose sole task seems to be the abuse and denigration of George Soros. The title of their latest article is “The Márki-Zay-Kész duo was kowtowing before Soros and his people” — among them, former Hungarian ambassador to Washington, András Simonyi, and Charles Gati, who talked with the Hungarian visitors.
Now we can move on to an entirely different topic, which gave rise to well-deserved uproar in anti-Orbán circles and in the independent media. László Kövér, speaker of the house, just like all leading Fidesz politicians, is campaigning. Yesterday he was in Zugló, where he was asked: “How can Christian culture be upheld in a world in which liberalism is creeping into all areas of human activity?” That question sent Kövér into dangerous territory, when he insisted that liberalism isn’t slinking into our daily lives but is forcing its way with full gusto into European reality. As an example, he brought up gender studies and made stupid, crude jokes (for instance, about three kinds of restrooms) that the audience loudly appreciated.
Kövér was in his element, and in no time he was giving a lecture on the difference between pedophilia committed by priests and and that committed by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the Green party politician. The former have to reckon with God, while the latter doesn’t even know about Him, he joked. In Kövér’s eyes there is no moral difference between the behavior of a pedophile and the sanctioning of homosexual marriage and the adoption of children by same sex couples. Because “in both cases, the child is just an object, a luxury item, consummation, instrument of self-fulfillment.” Or, a bit later, “A normal homosexual knows the order of the world; he knows that he was born that way or became that way. He is trying to adapt by not considering himself to be necessarily the equal” of heterosexuals. Although there has been general condemnation of these ill-informed and unacceptable comments, the best answer came from IKEA’s Hungarian Facebook page:
“We believe in equality”
Every time a high-ranking Fidesz official shows his party’s true colors people call for his immediate resignation. The sad fact is that Fidesz, as a party committed to a far-right ideology, is steeped in a homophobic culture, which it shares with other like-minded parties in Russia and Poland. It was only a couple of months ago that Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of the Polish Law & Justice party, said that the homosexual lobby isn’t fighting for tolerance but is seeking to change the Polish way of life. “Hands off our children,” he fulminated. The Polish government “is tightening the Catholic church’s control of sex education and is unleashing open hostility against the gay lobby.” Kaczyński actually made sex education a key issue of his party’s EP campaign.
In the midst of the Polish EP campaign a two-hour film, “Just don’t tell anyone,” was uploaded onto YouTube. The film is about victims of sexual harassment by Polish Catholic priests. Within a few days 15 million people had watched the two-hour documentary. Given the position of the Catholic church in Polish society, the film was a moral as well as a political blow to Law & Justice’s standing. In view of the fact that a group of opposition parties, the European Coalition, was already doing well against the ultra-conservative government party, this film might divert more votes from Kaczyński’s party in the EP election, which in turn might have an effect on the national election in the fall. Initially, Kaczyński stood by the church, saying that “Anyone who attacks the church attacks Poland. There is no Poland without the church.” After the release of the film, however, he changed his tune and now promises harsher sentences for pedophilic crimes. I should add that László Kövér felt compelled to say something about pedophilia by Polish priests, which, according to him, “was made a campaign issue by the liberals.” Of course, he quickly added that he profoundly condemns such behavior, which is “one of the most disgusting of crimes.”
As for pedophilia in the Hungarian Catholic church, documenting it is a more difficult undertaking than in Poland. Péter Urfi of 444 published a couple of articles in April and May of this year but managed to find only relatively few cases, as I pointed out. One reason is the reluctance of church leaders to reveal past or present cases. The other reason might be that the Catholic church’s position in Hungary cannot be compared to its place in Polish society. While the Orbán government has shown incredible generosity to Hungarian Catholic churches, the Hungarian Catholic culture is weak. For instance, Catholic churches have had to import priests from abroad. So far 200 have arrived from Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria, Kenya, and Congo. Perhaps, among its many sins, liberalism is also to blame for low church attendance in Hungary and the reluctance of young Catholic men to enter the priesthood.
