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November 9, 2008

Lithuanian prelate finds challenge in modern life

By Michelle Martin

ASSISTANT EDITOR

When Archbishop Sigitas Tamkevicius was in the seminary in Kaunas, Lithuania, in 1957, he was drafted into the Red Army for three years of compulsive military service.

It was a ploy, the archbishop said, to persuade him to give up his studies for the priesthood. It didn’t work, and he was ordained in 1962.

When he worked to catechize young people, he was repeatedly transferred from parish to parish and even between dioceses. When he helped create a petition demanding that more young men be admitted to the one seminary allowed in Lithuania under Soviet rule, he was banned from exercising his priestly ministry for a year.

Sent to Siberia

After he helped form the Catholic Committee for the Defense of Believers’ Rights, he was arrested and sentenced to six years of hard labor in Siberia and four more years of exile.

Archbishop Tamkevicius, a Jesuit since 1968, now serves as the archbishop of Kaunas and president of the Lithuanian Bishops’ Council. He visited Chicago in October to offer a pastoral presence to the Lithuanian community in Chicago and to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady of Siluva.

In an Oct. 28 interview, he said the persecution of the church under Soviet authorities never made him question his faith or his vocation.

“Truly, the conditions under the Soviet occupation were very severe. Their goal was to destroy the church,” Archbishop Tamkevicius said through a translator. The KGB sought to co-opt priests and members of the hierarchy — including Archbishop Tamkevicius, who turned them down. “There were some instances when members of the hierarchy kowtowed to the regime, but the majority remained strong and were loyal to the faith,” he said. “Those who openly practiced their faith realized they would not be able to succeed career-wise or educationwise. There was a price to pay.”

But the price of Western-style freedom might be higher, he said.

Price of freedom

“Maintaining the faith is almost more difficult now,” said Archbishop Tamkevicius, who was ordained an auxiliary bishop of Kaunas in 1991, shortly after Lithuania obtained independence from Soviet rule. He became archbishop in 1996, and president of the national bishops’ conference in 1999. “The conditions are improved in terms of ability to teach religion. Religion is taught now in all the schools. But the influence of general culture is taking its toll.”

The secular culture does not encourage young people to make a commitment to the traditional values of their faith, nor to make the sacrifices necessary to uphold those values, Archbishop Tamkevicius said. Many young people want to hear nothing about the past, he said, and are interested only in immediate gratification.

“Now one of the greatest challenges is to confront the culture of death, which is influencing families,” Archbishop Tamkevicius said, adding that it took a strong effort to defeat legislation that would have allowed same-sex marriage.

Under the Communists, Archbishop Tamkevicius said, the choice was clear: Remain faithful, at great personal cost, or give up the church.

Experiencing crucifixion

“The people and the church of Lithuania were able to experience the crucifixion of Christ in a real way,” said the archbishop. For his faith and for the church, he endured five years in the gulags, subsisting on a diet of porridge and occasionally soup while performing hard labor, celebrating the Eucharist in secret with wine made from raisins, limited to two outgoing letters a month and one visit a year from his three brothers. “All these difficulties may be viewed as a divine gift as well.”

Archbishop Tamkevicius, who was ordained a diocesan priest, joined the Jesuits precisely because they took the strongest line for the faith of any of the religious orders who remained in Lithuania, despite a government ban.

“I do not know of any Jesuits who were co-opted,” he said.

Perhaps because of that, while Jesuits generally do not become bishops, his province has four bishops in its ranks, two in Lithuania and two in Russia.

Learn from one another

Catholics in the United States and Lithuania have much to learn from one another, Archbishop Tamkevicius said. American Catholics have more experience in passing on the faith in context of societal freedom, he said. They also have a spirit of volunteerism and generosity that has not yet taken root among Lithuanians.

However, “there is an inclination to adopt what is less valuable from the West instead of integrating that which is good,” he said. “The shortcomings in family life in the West are now being reflected in Lithuania as well.”