Arkivyskupo Mečislovo Reinio pozicija bolševizmo ir tikėjimo klausimais (spauda ir dokumentika)

Abstract

Archbishop Mečislovas Reinys (1884 02 05 - 1953 11 08), a distinguished scholar, politician and social activist, completed his difficult and glorious road as Lithuania's pastor in the prison camp of Vladimir. The current paper outlines the Lithuanian pastor's life road which led him to his death in the prison camp of Vladimir. It is based on Archbishop M. Reinys' unpublished documents addressed to the Soviet government and the Commissioner for Religions Affairs which are deposited in the Manuscript Department of the Academy of Sciences Library (F. 318-1623; F. 318- 11333) and his articles published in the daily "Naujoji Lietuva" (The New Lithuania) in 1941-1943. M. Reinys was well acquainted with Bolschevik ideas and works of their ideologists. He was familiar with the literature supporting and criticizing Bolschevik ideas which was published in different languages in other countries. Thus, on the ground of that literature and his own bitter life experience (e.g. in 1919 M. Reinys, a priest at that time, was arrested and taken hostage by the Bolsheviks when they were retreating from Vilnius; before the exchange of hostages he was kept imprisoned in numerous Soviet prison camps), M. Reinys used the attractive communist ideas to produce quite the opposite compromising facts dominant in the Soviet life. In a cycle of ten articles the author scientifically and popularly disclosed the essence of the Bolshevik state system as a system leading to poverty and dehumanization. M. Reinys' articles distinguish him as a keen politician and a flexible journalist, revealing and testifying the hopeless and miserable position of the people estranged from God due to the enforced atheism and the impoverished country's state. The Archbishop was not scared by the second Soviet occupation; nor it made him change his standpoint on communism. However, his criticism of Bolshevism and his struggle for religion changed. This change is evident in the documents first published in the current paper. These documents were prepared by the Archbishop and directly led him into the hands of the KGB. They revealed M. Reinys a solicitous Lithuanian pastor who was deeply concerned about the future of the country and the church. The presented documents show that Archbishop M. Reinys did his utmost to protect the believers against the scheme of the Soviets aiming to undermine the church from inside and outside. The propagators of communist ideology regarded Archbishop M. Reinys as an undesirable person: he was unreliable and, moreover, dangerous. Having failed to subdue Archbishop M. Reinys' uncompromising faithfulness to the Catholic Church and make him their collaborator, they decided to remove him and, in this way, to stop his pastoral activities in Lithuania. On June 12, 1947, he was arrested. The interrogation went on for more than half a year, but Archbishop M. Reinys remained firm in his anti-Bolshevik standpoint: "As the Soviet power persecutes the Church, no person can be well disposed toward it". Archbishop M. Reinys was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment. He had served six years of his sentence in the prison camp of Vladimir, when he died there emaciated by long sufferings. He was buried in the common burial ground of Vladimiras prison camp.