A truly loving father

Mr László Tőkés, former bishop of the reformed church and present vice president of the European Parliament for the European People's Party, for Romania and of course for the Hungarian minority of Romania, loves his son Máté very dearly (meanwhile his wife filed for divorce among others because of his extramarital affairs). So much that when a couple of weeks ago the city administration of Oradea imposed a fine of around 700 euros for opening a bar without the neccessary permits, Mr Tőkés took his phone (either in Brussels or in Oradea) and called the local authorities.
The younger Mr Tőkés is also interested in football, being player and head of the club called Partium SC, who plays in the fifth league of Romania (there is no sixth). In their interpretetion, the referees were keeping to discriminate against them, so the father took his EP vice president's stationery and hand wrote a letter to the Romanian Football Federation, telling them that: 'As the father of one of the players of Partium SC I am shocked about the incident at the match against Rév. As vice-president of the European Parliament, being responsible among others about sports affairs I consider the behaviour of the three referees that sealed the fate of the game unacceptable. In the European spirit of fair play I ask you to accept the complaint of the president of the Partium SC ragarding the repetition of the game.'
nol.hu/kulfold/igen_kinos_-_tokes_laszlo_kulonos_kozbenjarasai
http://nol.hu/kulfold/tokes_nem_kert_elonyt_fia_szamara__csak_apakent_cselekedett

Morals at the protestant university

Hungary has about 80 universities and colleges. Many of them are of course minor province institutions, including a lot of theological schools caring to the needs of one particular denomination for pastors  (needless to say that they receive their funds from the Hungarian state, too). Not so Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church (KRE), which, together with Pázmány Péter Catholic University is an institution with scientific ambitions, and has not only a theologial faculty, but also one for humanities and one for law. Until now, it also had three PhD schools. One of them, the law school, has now been closed down by the Accreditation Committee for continuos non-compliance with basic academic standards. One of these says that in order to run a PhD school, an institution needs to have a certain number of specialists in the field who already have students awarded a PhD degree, and not only the now closed down PhD school, but also the PhD school in literary history is unable to meet this criterion.
However, according to the weekly HVG, the latter seems to have also committed fraud.

Estates

Last year, a reformed bishop suggested that the churches receive back not only their buildings, but also the arable land that was taken away from them after WWII (the catholic church used to be one of the biggest land owners until them). The question is being discussed (not too vividly, however) in the intellectual weekly 'És' ('And'--its real name is 'Élet és irodalom', i.e. 'Life and Literature', but I have not once heard its whole name and it's referred to even in writing as 'És').
Csaba Fazekas and György Gábor argue that the churches did not own their estates but received them for use only by the kings, who paid them for their services to society through providing them with a revenue from these estates. I.e. they did not receive any property rights but only the rights to the net revenue drawn from the estates. Accodring to them, one of course could argue that the churches get back their land, but this would mean that all state funding would have to cease completely.

http://www.es.hu/index.php?view=doc;24710

Church recycling

Though the Vatican is very well informed, the head of Hungarian Catholics, Péter Erdő cardinal had to correct a statement by cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, according to whom in Hungary churches have been turned into brothels.
However, we do have more churches than necessary. In the village of Medgyesegyháza, the reformed church is selling one of its places of worship, since of the 200 inhabitants who declared themselves calvinist, only 1 or 2 attend the services held at the church once or twice a month. However, they plan to keep the churchbell, which was given to them by communist dictator Mátyás Rákosi in 1951.

http://www.nepszava.hu/articles/article.php?id=223049
http://index.hu/belfold/2009/11/17/elado_egy_reformatus_templom/