From First Things
To visit the tomb of Servant of God József Cardinal Mindszenty, in Esztergom, Hungary, is, in a sense, to venerate the suffering of the Hungarian people throughout the twentieth century. The fight for freedom and human dignity against both the Nazis and the communists is personified in the cardinal.
Mindszenty was Primate of Hungary from 1945 to 1973, when Pope Paul VI tragically decided to strip him of his title due to the failed Vatican policy of “Ostpolitik”—accommodating communist regimes in the vain hope they would make life easier for the Church. In 1948, Mindszenty was arrested by the communist authorities and endured eight years in prison before he was released during the revolution of 1956. Rather than leave his people, the cardinal sought asylum in the U.S. Embassy until he was exiled to Vienna fifteen years later, again the fruit of the Ostpolitik betrayal.
In the current European Union disputes with both Hungary’s government and the nation of Poland, it is worth keeping the life and legacy of József Mindszenty—still a hero to the Hungarian people—at the center of discussion. This year, on September 12, the EU parliament voted to apply what is called an “Article 7” resolution against the nation of Hungary. This means that sanctions can be applied against Hungary, a member of the EU, by the other countries in the Union. According to EU bureaucrats, Hungary was violating “human dignity and freedom,” especially regarding “asylum seekers and refugees.” This draconian resolution could suppress some of Hungary’s membership rights in the EU. For a nation that experienced foreign diktat and control for decades, the EU’s actions have a certain “1956” feel for Hungarians.
Viktor Orbán, the pugnacious prime minister of Hungary and bête noire of the liberal elites at the heart of the EU machine, swiftly identified the real reason for the EU’s hostility to Hungary: “concerns over asylum seekers and refugees.” Hungary, Poland, and the other nations of the Visegrád Four—Slovakia and the Czech Republic—have refused to accept the EU’s disastrous immigration policies that allow millions of migrants into Europe, changing the culture and causing manifold social problems. Orbán said the EU took action simply because Hungary is choosing “not to be a country of migrants.”
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