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Orthodoxy Ascendant. The government's new tolerance of religion extends surprisingly far, at least where Orthodoxy is concerned. The official Communist press, which only lately was ranting against believers, is now under orders to avoid antireligious propaganda. The Orthodox hierarchy is allowed to publish nine magazines. Last year, 100,000 Bibles were printed by a state press, on paper donated by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Although religious education is prohibited in the state schools, 1,900 students attend Orthodox seminaries and theological institutes. Many of the younger Orthodox nuns and monks, who were forced in 1967 to abandon their vocations for "socially useful" work, have been quietly permitted to return to the serenity and beauty of their monasteries.
Rumania's minorities, Hungarians and German-Saxons, are Roman-rite Catholics or Protestants. They, too, have benefited from this liberalization, though to a far lesser degree. Two theological institutes are training 171 would-be pastors of several denominations, who will serve 935,000 Hungarian and 187,000 Saxon Protestants. Rumania's 1,200,000 Catholics of the Roman rite, mainly Hungarians, peacefully attend Mass in their churches. There exists, however, an acute shortage of Bibles and prayer books for Protestants and Catholics.
But the status of Catholics in Rumania varies sharply according to their nationality and the rite they practice. The illegal Uniates, Rumanian Catholics of the Byzantine rite, have long been mistrusted by the Orthodox clergy and by superpatriots because of the Uniate breakaway from Orthodoxy to Catholicism in 1698. Some Uniates have joined the Orthodox Church, but the majority still have to worship clandestinely. All Catholic religious orders are banned.
The first sign of improvement in the lot of Catholics came in 1967, when the immensely revered Hungarian bishop, Aron Marton, was released after enduring 18 years of prison and house arrest. Shortly thereafter, Rumanian Premier Ion Gheorghe Maurer paid a visit to the Vatican. Last March, Bishop Marton himself was finally allowed to visit Rome. Major, state-subsidized restoration has begun on the 13th century Catholic Cathedral of Alba Iulia. Here, the tiny, white-haired bishop, now 84, celebrates Mass every Sunday, as martyr and witness to the vagaries of Rumanian religious policy.
Rumania's treatment of Jews has been exceptionally decent under Communism. Before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the government permitted some 300,000 Jews to leave the country, mainly for Israel. The remaining 100,000 suffer no official antiSemitism, but many long to join their relatives in Israel. But power politics have forced a reversal in Ceauşescu's emigration policies. Having already incurred the displeasure of the U.S.S.R. by maintaining good relations with Israel, he is apparently unwilling to provoke Russia further by allowing large-scale Jewish emigration.