Land of Crosses : The Struggle for Religious Freedom in Lithuania, 1939-78

Chulmleigh: Augustine Publishing. Very Good. 1979. First Paperback Edition. Large Format Paperback. 8vo 0851727301 339pp, photo illustrations. The recent election of Pope John Paul II and his visit to Poland amid unprecedented scenes has focused the attention of the world on the Catholics of Eastern Europe. In Land of Crosses, the Reverend Michael Bourdeaux has produced a major and authoritative work of pioneering research, which highlights the plight of a Catholic enclave within the USSR itself and deservedly publicises the little-known dissident movement in Lithuania. For over thirty-five years, since their incorporation into the Soviet Union, Lithuanian Catholics have kept up a fight to secure the rights of religious believers. However, despite overwhelming support from the Lithuanian population, who have signed protest petitions by the thousand, their campaign has remained quite unknown until recently. One of the author's aims in this work is to enable the Catholics of Lithuania to present their case to the world in their own words, and the many original documents contained in Land of Crosses include numerous case histories drawn from a series of samizdat (underground) literature smuggled out to the West, the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church. The pages of these remarkable Chronicles shine with a spirit that refuses to be crushed, and young children are as much the heroes as their parents in this grim war against religion. At times the struggle is lit with touches of unconscious humour, as when a secondary school claimed that Christ's existence was just a story, to which one pupil replied that there were many stories, but no one counted the years from them, but only from Christ. Likewise, the rank unreasoning of atheism can do little to detach people from God, as in the case of the propaganda official sent to ensure the church clock was not working properly, because it would harm the cause of atheism if it showed the correct time. As Cardinal Konig remarks in his foreword, the persecution of religion is counter-productive. When she was sentenced in June 1975 to six years of exile and prison camps in Siberia for her part in producing the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church, Nijole Sadunaite told her judges: "It is not I but you who are the criminals, who infringe the most elementary of human rights guaranteed by law." Nevertheless, she forgave them, saying that she would not hesitate to give her life for any of them if they were in need. "Today you don't need my sacrifice, but you do need to hear the truth spoken to your faces", she declared. Land of Crosses is alive with instances such as theseo which testify to the unyielding spirit of the people, and to the wonderful dignity and perseverance with which they continue to petition the authorities for recognition and justice. The steadfast stand of the Lithuanian Catholics in defence of principles of personal liberty and freedom of conscience constitutes a standard which the freedom-loving democracies of the West would find it hard to emulate. More than that, it is a lesson to see that the Faith is not only surviving in its traditional expression, it is attracting the young in growing numbers, so that when the crosses are desecrated by the atheists, it is they who re-erect them on the hill. .