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The Inflation and Deflation of Thinking and Action in this World

1/29/2023

Christianity is a religion in the world, but it is not a worldly religion. With this in mind, it should be clear that our thinking and actions are not limited to the confines of this world but extend well beyond its temporal boundaries. Of course, this in no way reduces the temporal significance of our thinking and actions.

What we think and do during mortal life directly impacts the world and our mortal lives – yet our thinking and action must transcend these immediate limits and include eternal considerations. What we think and do in this world affects the world and eternity.

As Dr. Charlton has noted many times on his Notions blog, our mortal lives in this world are temporary, but the thinking and doing in which we engage in this temporary state is eternally significant. Moreover, it also affects and shapes eternity.

From this perspective, our thinking and actions in this world are inevitably inflated and amplified within the context of eternity. Contrary to popular belief, our thinking and actions in this world do not merely echo in eternity – they are “picked up” and amplified. But this only applies to thinking and action that aligns with God’s eternal creative purposes.

Thinking and action that does not align with these eternal purposes are not inflated or amplified in eternity. Instead, they are deflated and confined to the limits of this world, replete with its temporariness and its entropy. Within this “quarantine”, the forces of evil can harness these deflated thoughts and actions and amplify them to suit their objectives of ensuring individual and mass damnation. Thus, deflated thoughts and actions are also of eternal significance. They cannot diminish or weaken Heaven; however, they can render Heaven inaccessible.

Thinking and action in this world that aligns with God’s creative purposes usually appear weaker than thinking and action that oppose God’s creative purposes. From a purely worldly perspective, temporal thinking is far more powerful than spiritual thinking. Temporal thinking utilizes fear, force, and entropy to attack the temporal body that houses and generates spiritual thinking and action.

The aim is simple – assault the spirit through the body. Confine the spirit to this-worldly thinking. Poison the eternal significance of thoughts and actions. Provide eternity with nothing to inflate or amplify. Keep all thinking and action “deflated” in the temporary, entropic world.

In reality, thinking and action in this world that aligns with God’s creative purposes are always stronger because it has the potential to affect not only this world but eternity. Thought and action that aligns with God’s creative purposes provide the spiritual forces for Good with usable “material”. It beckons them toward co-create with the individual who generates such thoughts and actions. It inspires them to inflate and amplify the individual's thoughts and actions in ways the individual himself can barely imagine.

Evidence of this can be seen in the example of people like Vendel Enrédy, who escaped the communists in Hungary for a brief time after the Second World War but quickly chose to return to his native soil well aware that doing so would lead to his arrest, torture, imprisonment and, possibly, death.

From a purely temporal perspective, Endrédy’s thinking and actions make absolutely no sense whatsoever and appeared to have accomplished nothing. He was arrested shortly after his return, tortured, put on trial, found guilty, and imprisoned in the worst conditions imaginable.

After six years, he was liberated by freedom fighters participating in the short-lived Hungarian Revolution. Following the failed rebellion, the communists decided against re-imprisoning him and instead placed him in a seniors’ facility for aged and retired clergy, where he lived out the remainder of his days until he died in 1981.

Did Endrédy’s thinking and action have any positive effect on the world? Arguments can go either way. On the one hand, you could say his thinking and actions had no positive effect on the world at all, and that his thoughts and actions has nothing to do with positive developments like the rebellion against the communists or the dilution of hardline communism after 1956 or the eventual collapse of communism eight years after his death. On the other hand, you could also argue the opposite.

Either way, the eternal significance of Endrédy’s thinking and actions in the temporal world is real and undeniable, and I am certain that his thinking and actions in the temporal world have been amplified in eternity.

Furthermore, I firmly believe Endrédy's thoughts and actions in this world added something to eternity, something that God alone could not have added on his own.

This does not imply that only heroic thinking and action is amplified and inflated. On the contrary, I believe seemingly mundane thinking and action have the potential to be inflated and amplified in ways we cannot conceptualize -- as long as the thinking and action aligns with God and Creation.

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Regret and Repentance Are Not Synonymous; Or, I'm a Christian, So I Don't Need to Repent

1/28/2023

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Earlier this week, William Wildblood published an incisive post on the peck and regret. I highly recommend it.

The post started me thinking about regret and repentance. In particular, about the misguided notion that regret and repentance are essentially synonymous -- to the point that the mere feeling or expression of regret automatically qualifies as repentance.

Regret and repentance do shadow the same ground in many ways, but they are not necessarily the same. Not by a long shot.

Although repentance necessarily involves regret, regret does not necessarily need to involve repentance.

A good example of the latter is a restaurant patron who forgoes his trusted choice at his favorite restaurant in favor of sampling a new dish on the menu. After he tries it, he finds it bland and regrets not sticking to his usual menu choice.

The restaurant patron's regret may be authentic and deeply felt, but it does not require repentance because he has committed no wrongdoing. Nor has he engaged in sin. He simply made a bad personal choice. Though the choice certainly affected his enjoyment of the evening, it did not oppose or work against God and Creation.

The same applies to other mistakes and poor choices that lead to negative consequences. A married couple who purchase their first home at the peak of a housing bubble may regret their decision later when prices crater, but they do not need to repent it.

A man who chose to study law rather than medicine may regret his choice if he finds legal work unfulfilling. However, the regret he experiences regarding his choice of vocation requires no repentance (unless the work he engages in directly opposes God and Creation, but that’s a separate issue).

Simply put, feelings of disappointment or sadness over the unfavorable consequences of past decisions that did not oppose God and Creation require no repentance. Past decisions that opposed God and Creation do require repentance.

These feelings of disappointment or sadness should help us to distinguish when repentance is needed and when it is not. Unfortunately, regret often does more to hinder than aid repentance.

Things start to get tricky when decisions that oppose God and Creation instill no sense of regret, which is almost always a sign of deep spiritual disconnect.

Most individuals who feel no regret over their opposition to God and Creation are either willfully unaware of God or directly opposed to God. But what about individuals who profess to believe in God and claim to understand the reality of sin and the need for repentance?

This is where the birdemic and the peck become "problematic", especially for Christians.

Many Christians have begun expressing regret for their decision to take the peck. The vast majority of this regret stems from the apparent ineffectiveness of the peck and/or its reported adverse health effects, which leads me to wonder – would that regret exist if the peck had been “safe and effective” as advertised?

Would the Christians who now lament taking the peck show any sign of regret if the peck had protected them from transmission and not presented any potential side effects?

I hate to say this, but I don’t think many of them would.

Moreover, I firmly believe that most would feel immensely good about themselves and their decision.

Furthermore, I posit that few of them would be all that troubled about the totalitarian technocratic surveillance society the Ahramanic bureaucrats so passionately wanted – and still want -- to make permanent via a peck program or some similar demonic configuration.

I have encountered very few pecked Christians whose regret for having taken the peck extends beyond “safe and effective” concerns.

I have encountered very few pecked Christians who recognize and understand that the decision to take the peck, even under the sway of ruthless coercion, was in direct opposition to God and Creation.

I have encountered very few pecked Christians who have comprehended, let alone expressed, the need to repent the thoughts, actions, and behavior they exhibited during the birdemic and its peck campaign.

Barely any of the pecked Christians I know have regretted, let alone repented, their direct or indirect involvement in the peck program’s extended totalitarian atrocities, wicked coercion, dehumanizing measures, demonizing tactics, and degrading practices.

On the contrary, most are under the impression that their peck-related thoughts and actions require no repentance at all. Regret? Sure. But repentance? Nah!

As far as they are concerned, the peck-related decisions they made are akin to the example of the restaurant patron’s decision described above – a regrettable choice, but not wrong and certainly not against God and Creation; hence, no need to repent.

I ask the following of Christians who hold such views: Was anything related to the birdemic and its peck campaign even remotely True, Beautiful, Virtuous, or Good? I realize that all of it was vehemently promoted as such, even by most church authorities and leaders, but was it so?

The prerequisite for repentance is the acknowledgment of sin. Without the acknowledgment of sin, there can be no repentance – only regret -- maybe.

Although I sympathize with all the regret pecked Christians are feeling at the moment, I sincerely believe such regret to be insufficient, primarily because it works against the acknowledgment of sin and the very real need for repentance.

I say this not as some holier-than-thou authority on sin and repentance whose thoughts and actions are sinless and pure, but as a fellow sinner who understands that the problem for Christians is not sinning, so much as the refusal to repent.

The spiritual disconnect between birdemic/peck sin and the refusal to repent is too massive to ignore, refute, or dismiss. Christians who continue to ignore, refute, or dismiss the need for such repentance are inevitably on the wrong side and will remain there until the need for repentance is acknowledged.

Note added: This will likely be my last post on the birdemic/peck and repentance. Christians who still don't get it are intentionally refusing to "get it", and there's not much that can be done about that.

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No Cure For Stupidity, Save One

1/25/2023

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Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it.

The quote above is one of Stephen Vizinczey’s most memorable quips, and it rings more true today than it did decades ago. Vizinczey’s observation directly challenges the progressive sacred cow trumpeting education as the miracle solution for all idiocy, particularly for behavior lacking good sense or judgment. The insight requires no explanation or elaboration; its truth is on display everywhere. Positively fortified stupidity via education is the engine of the world’s modus operandi.

With that in mind, it is worth noting that Vizinczey was an even-tempered atheist. Thus, his perspective on stupidity and education is limited because it fails to consider the spiritual. He confines stupidity to the material realm, within which learning can offer no cure. A rather bleak prognosis, to say the least.

Stupidity takes on a different quality once the primacy of the spiritual is acknowledged. On the one hand, all sin is stupidity. On the other hand, not all stupidity is sin.

The Christian perspective includes possibilities and opportunities for spiritual learning and offers a cure for the stupidity that is sin.

Christ redeems sinners and forgives virtually every single stupid thought and action that opposes God and Creation, but only if sin -- the reality of that particular and curable form of stupidity -- is acknowledged and repented as sin and not merely as sinless stupidity.

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Latest New World Island Audio is Up

1/25/2023

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A Satanic Comedy: Vendel Endrédy's Prison Memoirs. Part Six: Retrospect

1/24/2023

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This is the final installment of Vendel Endrédy's Prison Memoirs, continuing from yesterdays's post (bold added):

I am not yet able to make a closure and move on. My thoughts repeatedly return to the prison; I relive each of its scenes time and again. I cannot help it.

Prison transforms a human being in some fundamental way. The first thing I tell myself in retrospect is that for no earthly treasure would I give away the sufferings of these six years.

I was given an immense amount of gifts. I finished an education, graduated and now I hold a diploma on which it stands written: an improved human being.

I would have been a bad student of physics if I had not seen in my prison-life a basic law of modern atomic physics proven: “All matter is ultimately light.”

Today even voice can be pictured. Even that is light. We pick up a few grams of dust from the ground, we may precisely measure and calculate the energy its atomic particles could release. It has been proven that a city like Budapest with more than a million inhabitants could be provided with light and heating from the energy contained in a small amount of matter.

Thus, the second conclusion I come to is this: every piece of trash, no matter how riff-raff and valueless it is, can become light, eternal light, if God’s Sun shines on it and releases it from the burden of the horror of evil.

This is why I am unable to feel hatred toward those who have hurt me, those who tormented me. I hate none of these evil men.

I like to pray for them from the bottom of my heart, asking that they may convert and become good human beings.

With this I think I can come to a closure and finish all that I was able to tell about my six years spent in prison.

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A Satanic Comedy: Vendel Endrédy's Prison Memoirs. Part Five: Liberation

1/23/2023

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Endrédy in 1957

Continued from yesterday's post (bold added):

On November 1, 1956, a guard opened my cell. Three men in civilian clothes entered with the greeting that sounded like a dream: “Praised be Jesus Christ! The Most Reverend Abbot of Zirc is free!”

It was about 6 PM as I exited from the Central Prison. I was the last prisoner to leave - the last one, because my name could not be found on any list of inmates.

I spent a total of six years in prison as a “secret prisoner,” kept in anonymity in uninterrupted loneliness, without any work or occupation. Of these six years, eight months were spent in custody of the secret police with on-going interrogations, twice with physical torture. By these methods, they “proved” me guilty of crimes I never committed: high treason, espionage, counterrevolutionary conspiracy, possession of foreign currency. The last one of these was true.

They would have pardoned my crimes if I had accepted the role of testifying as a chief witness, with a signed statement, to the immoral lives of the Hungarian bishops and religious superiors, including my own. Since I refused to accept my role as a witness in such a “satanic comedy,” they limited their “proofs” to my personal life.

After the mockery of a so-called trial, played out in detail in the presence of a five-member team under the presidency of judge Olti, I was sentenced to 14 years in prison. I have never seen the text of the sentence and, in spite of my repeated requests, I have never received it.

Until the trial I was kept in three locations, all three in Budapest: # 60 of Andrassy Street [today a museum called The House of Terror,], Main Street in Buda and Marko Street in Pest. My imprisonment continued in three more places: on Konti Street, Budapest, in the state Prison of Vác and in the “Gathering Prison” of Budapest.

Let me make my reader feel the weight of 6 years in exact numbers: 6 years and three days are equal to:

72 months and 3 days
or 315 weeks
or 2195 days
or 53,040 hours
or 3,682,400 minutes.

Each second of this time I was in an environment in which I felt overpowered in my whole being, by two rather different yet all-consuming ways:

The first method was that of the secret police, which in a thoroughly diabolical way tried to destroy me physically and morally. The apparatus of the juridical organization only added to it by choreographing a “satanic comedy,” as it had been determined by their bosses in Moscow.

The second method was my life in prison, where my personhood was simply abolished and I was handled as a mere physical object. An object is deaf, mute and blind. A prisoner is not supposed to see or hear or speak. The experience of prison weighed on me as if I was entombed alive. I felt almost physically that shackles kept in bondage all my physical senses. I was never allowed to be in contact with my natural family or my brothers in the Order. I received no letter or parcel for six entire years.

It was three days before my liberation [by the Revolution] that I was allowed to speak to my nephew. For three years I was not allowed to go for a walk. For almost two years I lived in an unheated prison cell in which my fingers and my toes and also my left ear suffered frostbite.

I encountered physical filth and dirt so incredibly bad that most human beings would not be able to imagine it. I lived in a prison cell in which, during one night, I killed hundreds of bed bugs as they invaded my body. Three times I was treated for life threatening infections of my legs and once for another skin disease, all caused by filth.

My only source of consolation and strength was the Eucharistic sacrifice which I offered in a prisoner’s uniform at those times when I was allowed to do so. No bell rang; only my heart was singing about the Lord’s mysterious presence on the table of the prison cell.

He became my companion—my mysterious and only cellmate—amidst the desert of my life in prison. He heard each one of my sighs and groanings, He wiped away every tear from my eyes, by which I expressed my desire for my dear Cistercian brethren and other loved ones: “Will I ever see them again? Will I ever again embrace those to whom I spiritually belong, those who are mine and whose father I am, as well as my many relatives?”

Yet unexpectedly, one day the door was opened and I was able to walk again on this Hungarian soil upon which the Freedom Fighters’ blood was shed, and I was again able to go home to my monastic family, all scattered but most of them still alive!

Ever since I started living with them again, the prayer we say every morning is so much more meaningful: “Make us worthy to be free…”

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A Satanic Comedy: Vendel Endrédy's Prison Memoirs. Part Four: Prison Years

1/22/2023

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Continuing from today's earlier post (bold added):

After sentencing they put me into a car with screened windows. They drove around for more than two hours while I was sitting between two armed prison guards. I thought I was transported to the city of Szeged, but as it turned out they carried me only to another prison in Budapest, about 10 minutes from the courthouse.

For almost three years I lived in this prison, the prison of Konti Street. I was in utter solitude, never meeting anyone. I was one of the so-called “secret prisoners.” As I learned later, there were two other such prisoners there: Msgr. Grösz, the archbishop of Kalocsa, and the former Socialist leader, Arpád Szakasits.

In this prison the guards made me suffer a great deal. Often they did not let me out to the restroom. For hours I was in extreme pain. My cell was filthy, my skin was infected in the dirty cell, three times my face was disfigured by such infections. They fed me with bread made of flour gone bad. But during the winter they heated rather well. Each pair of cells had a common stove.

The day after my arrest I petitioned that I be allowed to say mass. First at Christmas of 1950 then at Easter of 1951 I was given permission to celebrate mass. But only from May 3, 1951, Ascension Thursday, did I receive a chance to say mass daily. They brought to my cell a chalice broken at its handle (I had to fix it with a piece of string) and a Franciscan mass book. Through five and a half years I was able to celebrate mass each day. At Christmas and All Souls’ Day I said three masses. At the beginning they tried to mock me while I was saying mass. But when they saw that I was not paying attention to them, they stopped. From the beginning of my imprisonment I asked for an opportunity to go to confession. I sent letters to the Ministry of Justice with this request but never received an answer.

Otherwise, I did everything to stay busy, keep my mind occupied. Whatever was beautiful in my life, I tried to recall over and over. In this way God’s grace had been doubled in my soul and comforted me in my prison life.

On August 7, 1953, the feast of St. Cajetan, I had my first chance to go out for a walk. One round in the courtyard took 68 steps. I was allowed 12 rounds. Later, my walks were made longer. In the prison to which I was later transferred, I was allowed to walk twice a day. There I was able to stay in the sun, sometimes even to sit down. In 1954 or 1955, in the summer, I ventured to stop, admiring a little piece of weed. The guard urged me in a rude voice: keep on walking!

For the first eight months of my imprisonment I received no books, no paper and pencil or pen. After my sentencing I received numbered sheets of paper, the guards repeatedly checked what I was writing down. I was solving math problems and made notes of the books I was given to read. The prison library consisted mostly of Soviet authors. I read Gorky, Ilya Ehrenburg and others. The rest of the books were atheistic, hateful toward church and clergy and showing employers in the worst light.

A few days before my sentencing, I was offered a chance to request other books. I asked for a Bible, the book Canon Law for Religious Orders, and a book on math or physics. The first two titles were immediately rejected, a book on math and physics was delivered into my hands five years later, on November 1, 1956, the day of my liberation by the freedom fighters. But two months after my trial I received the four volumes of the Breviary. And right after sentencing they gave me a rosary, though not my own.

Throughout the prison years I had to get up at 5:30 AM. The routine consisted of washing, dressing and cleaning the cells. Breakfast was given at 8 AM. In the first years, for breakfast they gave us soup cooked with shortening and flower, later they switched to the black coffee used by the military.8 They gave each day 300 grams of bread (2/3 of a pound), in three allotments. Lunch was given at 12 noon; it consisted of soup (made of canned vegetables) and about half a liter of some cooked vegetables. Once a week 100 grams of boiled meat was offered; on Saturday and Sunday the dinner was cold cuts. At 9 PM we had to go to bed. But in the year of 1956 my food was identical with that of the prison personnel.

In my first prison (Konti Street) I was given a numbered metal bowl and a spoon with the same number on it. The number was 201. When they moved me to another prison, the bowl and the spoon accompanied me so that I would not attempt sending any message of my whereabouts in the way customary among political prisoners.

Right after my arrest there was no heating in the cells in which I stayed, only the hallways were kept warm and from there we received some heat. By the way, underground cells are usually not very cold, only extremely dirty and stinking. The Konti-Street prison was adequately warm. But in Vác, my next prison where I spent almost two years, there was no heating whatsoever. It was there that each finger on both my hands, three toes on my right foot and two on the left as well as my left ear were frozen.

I was otherwise never seriously sick, but I went through the usual prisoner illnesses. I struggled with infections of the digestive system, lack of vitamin C, my teeth became loose, many broke or fell out. I had problems with my sense of balance (inner ear), deficiencies of the heart and sleeplessness.

But my nerves did not give up and I preserved my sense of humor. I was able to rejoice seeing a small bunch of weeds pushing its leaves up in the prison court. I have put its leaves into my breviary; I still keep them.

When I was sick with those “prison illnesses,” doctors of the secret police came to take care of me; their behavior and treatment was impeccable. To such secret prisoners as me, the regular prison doctors were not allowed. The prison cells of the secret police and the restrooms were horribly dirty. They did not clean them, nor did they give cleaning instruments for us to clean them. It was only in the prison on Konti Street that I got for the first time a separate towel, a piece of soap, a wash bowl. There I could treat the floor with oil and keep it cleaner. In the prison of Vác there were countless bedbugs in my cell. On the first three days after my arrival, May 13, 1954, I killed 750 of them. Later I got some DDT in powder and I was able to get rid of them all. In other prisons I found no bugs.

It was like a blessing to get from Vác to my last prison, the Central Prison in Budapest. It happened on Good Friday, March 30, 1956. They placed me in the same cell in which, as I later learned, Cardinal Mindszenty had spent quite some time. Although I was still isolated from everyone, life became much more bearable. I was given paper, pencil and books to read.

About the attitude of my guards working for the secret police, I have already spoken. In the prison on Konti Street they at times turned on the lights 30 times during a single night so that the prisoner would not have a chance to sleep. It was most terrible to hear them blaspheme the name of God, the Lord Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the context of incredible obscenities. But I met some more humane guards even at the worst places.

I had a cellmate only during the first months of my imprisonment, while preparing for the trial. I thought, at first, that they were snitches working for the police. My first companion came in January of 1951, he was a former general of the Army. He greeted me with the words: “Please don’t tell a thing about yourself.” I thought from this that he cannot be an agent. Later a captain of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then another colonel of the Army, an engineer, were my companions. But for the next six years I was completely alone.

Throughout these years I had one single visit. Three months before being set free, my brother’s son was allowed to see me. We were allowed to speak to each other for half an hour. It was from him that I learned that on January 16, my mother had died. It was at that time that I also learned about the death of a member of our Abbey, Fr. Justin Baranyai. It hurt me so much to learn that in the prison he had lost his mind and never recovered, even after he had been set free.

When I was freed*, my original clothes in which I had been arrested could not be found. They only found my watch tied to shoelaces; they returned my abbatial ring and a clergy suite.

My life of six years in prison is an asset which I would not exchange for any earthly treasure. By all this, my life was enriched by an incredible extra value. I feel no anger against any person who tortured me.

*As noted earlier in the excerpt, Endrédy was freed by Hungarian freedom fighters during the short-lived 1956 Hungarian Revolution. He was re-arrested after the failed uprising and served out the remainder of his 14-year sentence in a care home for retired clergy.

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A Satanic Comedy: Vendel Endrédy's Prison Memoirs. Part Three: The Confession

1/22/2023

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Continued from yesterday's post.

After two sleepless weeks, when my knees were bruised and infected, they took me into a dirty little room. They called it the “writing room.” Here the prisoners had to write their biographies and confessions, admitting all the charges.

I was very tired, I just fell on a bed stained by blood and puss. A male nurse entered with a syringe in his hand. He said that the doctor sent him and I would get a shot more effective than any sleeping pill. He gave me two shots. In ten minutes I began to feel funny.

In this altered state of mind, which I cannot describe, I was led to another hearing that lasted for the whole night. These were the most painful hours of my life. I had to concentrate all my strength in order to keep my mind and will under control. Obviously, they injected into my system some mind-altering drug. But I was able to keep my mind in control. And yet, besides the horrors, up to this day I could not and cannot recall the details of that terrible night. I cannot recall what questions I was asked.

Six months later I was brought to confront Ervin Papp. As I realized that he was, indeed, organizing a conspiracy, I stated, “I was in no way part of this but, in case, by accepting some part of his guilt, I could help Papp and his fellow-defendants, I am willing to cooperate.” This remark was never included in the minutes of my process.

After eight months of such experiences, I was brought to court. Mr. Vilmos Olti was the judge, the prosecutor was Julius Alapi. The whole procedure was utter comedy. I received detailed instructions about what to say in court. I was warned that if an attorney asks me a question which is not in the script, I am not supposed to reply. I was accused of high treason, espionage, conspiracy and illegal handling of foreign currency.

My sentence was made public June 28, 1951. I was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

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A Satanic Comedy: Vendel Endrédy's Prison Memoirs. Part Two: Torture

1/21/2023

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Continuing from the previous post (bold added):

My first torture took place in an elegant room.

They stripped me naked. Then facing a young officer I was forced to begin deep knee bends. Every time I bent down, I was forced to kiss his boots. This went on till, exhausted, I collapsed. Meanwhile I was supposed to answer questions.

After I had passed out a few times, I was brought to a cell in the basement. I spent two weeks in a little prison cell that looked like a burial cave of 2 by 1.3 meters (7 ft by 5 ft). Above the bunk bed there was a leaking sewage line, constantly dripping on me. I was not allowed to lie down. However, while sitting I was still able to catch some sleep. I got no blanket. It was November. I was constantly cold.

In these terrible days I was constantly praying to God to make me die so that I would not hurt anyone by what I might say.

Two weeks later the interrogations continued. Behind a huge desk sat a colonel, probably the head of the Office of Investigation. They made me sit in front of him, while I was surrounded by five or six plainclothes policemen. To the side three people, two majors and a captain, sat on a leather couch.

The interrogation focused exclusively on the conspiracy of the university students. I told them again that I had participated in no such thing. (At that time I did not know as yet that, disregarding my advice, Ervin Papp had indeed started a subversive organization.) The detectives spat into my face. The colonel asked them, “Do you know any other way than torture to break a man’s resistance.” They all said, “No.”

They then dragged me to the other room where I had been tortured the first time. The same three people were waiting for me: a huge, muscular major, a captain and another man in civilian clothes. They stripped me again and made me do exercises till I collapsed.

Meanwhile with some flat object they dealt immense blows from behind on my shoulder. For three weeks after this I could not move my head. They also kept on kicking my lower back. The blows and kicks did not cause acute pain but time and again I was knocked unconscious.

Yet I do not think I ever remained unconscious for any longer period of time. I kept on concentrating on what to say and tried to answer all the questions which they were asking. For if I remained silent and did not deny any of their statements, they took my silence as an admission of guilt.

I had to undergo a large variety of physical trials. They made me face the wall and forced me to lean onto a pencil-like object set between my forehead and the wall. They put nails and needles under my heels. They pushed against my side the heated plates of electric ranges. When I collapsed they quickly pulled out the plank with the nails and needles and with a few kicks forced me to stand up again.

Another method was to make me squat time and again. They put into my hand weights of 20 to 30 pounds. I was supposed to squat with my heels over the nails until I collapsed. Then again with blows and kicks they brought me back to consciousness. I was also tortured with electric shocks. They conducted electricity to my lips, around my eyes, my nose, my ears, even to my penis.

The game of “Kiss the Cross” consisted in forcing me to kiss a metal cross and a metal plate, the latter being called the “gospel book.” The electric circuit was closed every time I held the plate and kissed it. They said if I told the truth no harm would be done, but if I lie the electric shock would kill me. My lips were burned and a wound as big as a quarter was left on my mouth. As I collapsed a sharp object lying on the floor seriously wounded my knee. This wound became infected and swelled up as large as my palm.

They brought two doctors who dressed and bandaged the wound with the greatest care. One of them asked: “What happened to you?” I softly answered, “It happened during the interrogation...” At that moment a policeman stepped out from behind a screen and harshly interrupted, “He fell down on the steps.”

During the tortures there was a point beyond which I ceased to feel that I was being hit. At times the prison guard would tell me to wipe the blood from my face. I did not realize that I was bleeding.

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A Satanic Comedy: Vendel Endrédy's Prison Memoirs. Part One: Interrogation

1/21/2023

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The following post follows up on my previous two posts (1,2) about Vendel Endrédy, the Abott of the Cistercian order who is a native son of the small Hungarian village I now call home. The following is an excerpt from Endrédy's prison memoirs.

They took me to the infamous secret police station at No. 60 Andrássy Street. The interrogation lasted eighteen hours with two short pauses. In the pauses they lit my face with highpowered lamps; two policemen saw to it that I would not close my eyes even for a minute.

The head of the Bureau of Investigation, whose name I never learned, told me that I had been under surveillance for two years and that they had followed every one of my steps. They had obtained irrefutable evidence about my criminal activities against the State. They told me that they intended to prove my crimes of organizing a conspiracy against the State, of espionage and of illegal dealings with foreign currency. They accused me of sending abroad twenty-four young members of the Order and of exhorting the Order to remain faithful to the Church even after Zirc had been suppressed. By doing this, they said, I wanted to weaken the power of the State and the new democratic regime. At the first interrogation they did not accuse me of conspiring to restore the Hapsburg monarchy, nor did they accuse me of anti-Semitism. These absurdities were invented later.

In the second hour of the interrogation, the colonel indignantly declared how insolent the hearsay was about the tortures done by the secret police. They would not even touch anybody. They had no intention of making a martyr of me. He gave his word “as a gentleman” to confirm all this. At this time, indeed, I could not even imagine that somebody of my age - I was 56 years old at the time - would be repeatedly beaten, kicked, tortured in all sorts of ways, and then given shots with chemicals that would deprive him of his free will.

They spent an awful lot of time telling me all sorts of slander about the personal lives of our bishops, the superiors of the religious orders and of other leading personalities of the Church. They declared who my lover was and made detailed statements about the sexual liaisons of the various bishops. That was followed by a long and detailed list of deviant sexual behavior attributed to these same persons. They, in fact, did not want to turn me into a martyr. To the contrary, they wanted to destroy my personality and turn me into a demoralized, humiliated non-person. They made no secret of their intent.

I was told how they planned to make the press in Hungary and abroad become a participant in this Satanic comedy. I received 72 hours to “think it over.” After that, if I would not cooperate, they would publish all those “facts” of which they had accused me. They would destroy not only my image but also the image of the Cistercian Order and the Church as a whole.

“I need not one minute of reflection,” I said. “There is nothing to think over.”

At the end of my first interrogation they accompanied me to the basement. On an ice-cold pavement floor, they stripped me naked: they wanted to see if I was hiding any items. They tore off the lining of my jacket, they broke off the sole of my shoe, they took off its heel. They took away my shirt buttons, my suspenders, even my eyeglasses.

In the prison cell there was only an incredibly dirty bunk bed. In the first two months I received no blanket. Later I got the kind of cover that one normally uses for horses. In the room the light was always on. Only the noise coming from the street enabled me to distinguish between night and day. I was expected to sit on the bunk bed without leaning back; only with permission was I allowed to lie down. I was expected to keep my hands outside the blanket. In my sleep I had to turn my head away from the wall, facing the light.

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