Word: church
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...church was trying to reduce the ignorance and the pressure that had led millions into a double allegiance to Communism and Catholicism. It wanted to sharpen the issue in the consciences of men. Confusion over this issue had created dangers for the church on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In the West the confusion arose mainly out of ignorance; in the East, out of the efforts of individuals to come to terms with the police state...
...Understand?" Beside the Anzio beachhead, war-ruined Genzano calls itself "Little Stalingrad," takes pride in supplying table wines to Italian Communist Boss Palmiro Togliatti. Over half its 10,000 people (many of them unemployed, some dwelling in caves) support the Communists. Yet they are married in the church, have their children baptized, and are buried with a priest blessing the grave and a banner-bearing Communist official paying pompous graveside respects. Last Sunday an old woman peddling the Communist paper L'Unitá was surprised when asked what she and her fellow Communists would do about the church...
...lives in two-room shacks and walks the dirty, unpaved streets, young Father Giovanni Orlandi confronted the problem raised by the decree. "Many have told me," he said, "that they'd like to break away [from the Communists] but don't dare. The men who come to church are taunted and jeered by young hoodlums. Some of the women are even more fanatical than the men. It's poverty that makes them so, I guess...
...Sunday, Father Giovanni read the excommunication decree from the pulpit. "What this means," he explained, "is that if you approve of Communism, you'll be banned from the church. We cannot give you the sacraments. This is only a religious measure . . . We are defending our church. Only that. Do you understand...
...these countries, Communist pressure on the church has been mounting. Its immediate goal is not to root out Catholicism but to reduce it to helpless captivity. The Kremlin succeeded in that policy with the once great Russian Orthodox Church, and it is trying to repeat the formula. The trial of Cardinal Mindszenty was part of the operation. The persecution in Hungary was followed by efforts to split the Church in Czechoslovakia away from Rome...