Introduction

József Zelnik: 
Why Does Man Build Churches?
Speech held at the re-consecration of the medieval church of Gercse on August 15, 1997. 
"Churches are the 'vesica piscis' of our soul. For those who have faith the church is the gateway, the Way, of ascension to God, of spiritual fulfillment. This is why we must build churches at all times, and if they are destroyed we must rebuild their walls as we have done here with the walls of the small Romanesque church of the destroyed village of Gercse." 

That Which Revives

Encyclopedia entry 
Encyclopedia entry in the Budapest Lexicon on the village of Gercse and the ruins of the church. 

Emese Nagy: 
The Church of the Medieval Community of Gercse
Exerts from the author's study published in 1958 on archaeological findings, the history and architectural history of the village and church of Gercse. 

Győző Bujdosó:
The Ruins of the Church of Gercse
The architectural history of the church including a drawing of archaeological findings and suggestions as to the future role of the church as a church and possibly an exhibition and concert hall for artists living in the area. 

Symbol

Church page
"As the church is the image of the cosmos, its dimensions cannot be defined. The ceiling of the church is built according to the starry sky: it depicts the night sky with its innumerable stars visible to the human eye. In the East a glowing Delta appears behind the place of the Grand Master: a triangle with an eye in the middle, the eye of God." (Source: Dictionaries Des Symboles /Dictionary of Symbols/ by Jean Chevalier-Alain Gheerbrant. Paris, 1973-74.) 

From the Church of the Soul to the Hell of the Flesh

Imre Márczi:
The Church of the Soul
 "The church, the sanctuary, the saint place expresses the relationship between humans and the trans-human in the form of a constructed ... environment. This space is separated from every day spaces: with its high aesthetic demands it suggests that this relationship must be deep, harmonious and organic. All great religions and prophets emphasize the unity between earth (man) and the skies (Gods). The church is the intermediate area where the two meet. Although it is in the material world, the soul, the spirit is present within it." 

Gotthard Fuchs:
Stigma 
The meaning of the word, its occurrences in the Bible and throughout the history of the Christian religion, its symbolism and theological explanation. 

Pál Zöldy:
Our Mother the Blessed Virgin. From The Madonna to Madonna and Beyond 
"Saint Stephen, our first king, committed his country to the Virgin Mary. Out of several holidays connected to the Virgin Mary the Festival of the Visitation, the Feast of Annunciation, the Feast of the Purification, and the Feast of the Assumption are the most well known in Hungary. What does the image of the Virgin Mary Mother of God mean to us today?" 
 

Paul Virilio:
The Aesthetics of Disappearance
"Satan, in the Bible seducer of the woman who in turn seduces man, initiates the history of humanity whose fate is that of disappearance rather than death, i.e. expulsion from the world in which it lived first experienced as a conscious phenomenon." 

David Abram:
The Flesh of the World
Exerpts from the author's works entitled Merleau-Ponty and The Voice of the Earth. 

Book review of Henryk Skolimowski's A Sacred Place to Dwell. Living With Reverence Upon the Earth.

Gyula (S) Sipos:
From the Freedom of the Soul to the Body's Hell
"Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians, poignantly raises one of the major questions of Christianity: Do you want to live according to the will of the flesh and be damned, or according to the soul and find salvation? Christians, naturally, chose the road of salvation, heaven instead of hell, and to this end even turned their life on earth into hell during certain eras of Christian history. Was this sensible?" 

Book review of Dave Hunt's A Woman Rides the Beast. The Roman Catholic Church and Recent Times. 

Mark Dery:
The Hell of the Flesh or: the Church of the Soul
"One of the most determinative elementary duality's of cyberculture is the contradiction between the lifeless, heavy, flesh-and-blood body (...) and the ethereal body, the bodiless self, of information. Among obsessed programmers, computer bandits and outlaws, addicted slaves of video games and Internet-adventurers surfing the jungle of the electronic library it is not difficult to find the conviction that the body is merely a rudimentary appendage for which the twentieth century Homo Sapiens - the Homo Cyber- has no use." 

Church and Society

The Juncture of the Earth and Sky
Conversation with the architect Imre Makovecz about the church he designed at Százhalombatta: "Petrified trees surround a round space. We could say that we are in  clearing, or in a saint grove. (...) Smaller branches made of wood create a transition between the petrified trees and the cupola. Therefore, growing things breaking forth from the earth meet things descending from above, and what is between the two? The transformation's "line of demarcation". Perhaps the most important thing is that the earth and the sky meet. And this is not only a Catholic concept, albeit a Christian one. This concept dates back thousands of years and existed even before Christianity. It is a fundamental and important problem. We can go back as far as Hermes Trismegistos who said that what exists above exists below too, and what exists below is what exists up above: what appears is the symbiosis of the two." 

Book review of Evidence. The Language of Recognition by Bodvar Schjelderup. 

György Szegő:
The Walls of the Fortress of Faith
Man, imitating his creator, repeats the act of creation through the rite of building a house. 

Book review of An Introduction to Environmental Aesthetics by Dénes József. 

Aurél Budai:
A Buried Church in Buda
The article is about a synagogue that itself had been buried, as have, on the dusty shelves of archives, all written documents pertaining to it. The building is a truly outstanding and representative work of medieval architecture which, if uncovered, would elicit the admiration of experts and outsiders alike. 

Book review of The Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft. 

Imre Lázár:
New-Carolingian Churches
"The scene: Padua and Amsterdam. (...) The former, Giotto's Venetian city, one of the most densely populated cities of the Roman Empire preserving tradition to this day, a bit of the North in the South. The latter, one of the citadels of one-time seaworthy middle class globalism and the post-industrial world of today, a little bit of the South in the world of the North; the Venice of the North." 

Book review of The Twelfth Planet and The Cities of the Gods, both by Zecharia Sitchin. 

Vilmos Tánczos:
Holy Week in Csíkszentdomokos
"Tradition and customs are what preserve the ancient, always unchanged single true order, which is itself the divine order. All changes and innovations can be merely errors which stray from the perfection of the initial stage." 

Book review of The Mayan Prophecies. Solved Secrets of a Lost Civilization by Adrian G. Gilbert and Maurice M. Cotterell. 

Church Bells Above the Homeland
Conversation with Dr. Felix Frajka, church and school director, Franciscan Father. 
"This nation should not be pauperized any further, because eventually it will be unable to raise a class of intellectuals which could help society reach at least the level it was at before the change of regime." 

Theo Maschke:
The "Small Road"
The introduction to the article reads: "The veneration of Heinrich Mai, the Franciscan friar who died in 1922 as brother Jordan, is no longer limited to Westfalia and Germany; people pray to him all over the world and ask for his intervention. Subsequent to his Episcopal and apostolic canonization lawsuit his followers await his beatification and canonization by the Saint Congregation of Rome. Following are exerpts from Theo Maschke's book entitled The Life and Significance of Brother Jordan." 

Book review of The Secret of Existence by Viktor Farkas. 

Church on Rákos Field 
In 1931 the Regnum Marianum -Mary's Country- movement built a church in Budapest on Dózsa György Street. The church stood for only twenty years: in 1951 it was demolished according to the orders of Rákosi (Hungary's dictator at the time) to make way for a monumental statue of Stalin. The statue was hurled down by the people in anger four years later, during the revolution of 1956. A grandstand was built in its place and a statue of Lenin, small compared to the dimensions of the Stalin statue, represented the spirit of the church demolishers. Today all this is only a bad memory. The movement has its own church once more. 

The End of the Millennium

Lajos Eff: 
If Only There was a University of Peace. Propositions to the Idea of a "World Peace" University
Professionals who earned there degree at the University of Peace would be researchers, designers, teachers, politicians, journalists, or even clergymen, who with their knownedge, connections and individual examples could serve the intellectual integration and humane civilization of an increasingly global society, and the continuity, freedom and security of life on earth. They would be foremen rather than ace workers. 

David. C. Korten: 
The Pathology of Money. Money Contra Prosperity
Our world of money, instead of creating prosperity, cheats us out of the fortune we already have: our communities, our ecological system, and our productive infrastructure. 

Csaba Vass: 
Happiness in the Crypt 
A review of Jean Baudrillard book America. 

We Are Heading Towards the Fall of Civil Society
Jerry Brown's radio interview with Noam Chomsky. 
 "If, let's say,  people decided that instead of owning more and more consumer goods they would like to have more free time, the market would not allow for that. The market induces ownership, since ownership boosts production. But is it really a human value if we own more and more things which we don't need? The business world knows that the answer is no, and that is why it spends billions on advertising." 

Philipp Bogdonoff: 
A Gift to the Future 
"Nearing the beginning of the third millennium we have to admit, that what is on the other side of the threshold does not seem too promising." 

Book review of The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch. 

Donella Meadows: 
Once in a Thousand Years 
"The more I think about it the more I realize that the possibility lies before all of us to choose our own millennium-moment. Not a volatile one that flies off with the beginning of the new year, but nice long ones during the years 2000-2001 which provide an opportunity to look back and learn, and to look ahead and plan." 
 

Ways and Ways Out 

Richard Hörcsik: 
The Economy of the Calvinist College of Sárospatak 1800-1919 
In the history of the college the 19-th century is the age of changes. The religious laws created by the parliament in 1790 provided the needed room for these developments. However, the survival and modernization of the school was made possible by a unique self-supporting economic model which was continuously able to conform changing situations. Among other things the college, as a unique financial institution, has its own place in the history of Hungarian credit. The example the College of Sárospatak provides the present day organizers of educational politics is one to be learned from; how an educational center was able to maintain its educational and economic autonomy against a centralizing state power. 

Organic Gardening in the Convent Garden
Exerpt from the book Organic Gardening at the Abbey of Fulda by Christa Weinrich. 

Witold Chmielewski: 
The Third Road Between the Sacred and the Profane 
During the 70's and 80's Poland was the birthplace of several artistic productions famous all over Europe, primarily in the area of theater and the fine arts. One of the main trends was one which drew upon traditional village culture lifting art out of its usual environment of the city elite. Several artist and intellectual groups left the city and began working in small Polish villages. This was an especially important gesture during 1981 when the government introduced martial law, and in the years that followed, when society as a whole suffered a serious crisis and turned inwards. One of these groups was the "Grupa Lucim". This group of artists began to work in a village in central Poland, the population of which was no more than a few hundred, during the beginning of the 1980's. This article is about their work and results, written by the leader of the group. 

The Scenes of Our Lives 

Heights 
Exerpts from the book Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander and others. 
"High mountains are also important because they provide a chance to look down." 

Chapels
From László Székely's book Devotion in Csík. The Religious Ethnography of the Székely's of Csík. 

Masters and Workshops 

"I Can Still Dive" 
Interview with Dr. Judit Vásárhelyi, managing director of the Independent Ecological Center, by László Hollós. 

Severity, Freedom, Alliance
Interview with Ferenc Bárdos, director of the Életfa (Tree of Life) Alliance for Environmental Protection, on the history, operation and objectives of the alliance. By László Hollós. 

Eco-Grumbling 

Great Intercity Henriett : 
News-Saint From News to News 
"Teddy Bear, whose name is pronounced Ted Turner throughout the world, is a great anti-Soviet bear. His heart, mind and liver are made of news, the rest of him of money, and his fur is worth gold." 

István Farkas: 
Letter to the Editor: How to Associate Ourselves With a Wild Boar 
("Dedicated to my dark green environmentalist friends.") 

EcoLibrary