Iš sovietinės patirties į laisvės erdvę: vienuolijos Lietuvoje XX a. antroje pusėje

LTTrumpai apžvelgus tyrimo prielaidas, galima suformuluoti ir iš jų kylančius pagrindinius tyrimo uždavinius: 1) išanalizuoti vienuolijų adaptacijos pakitusiomis išorės sąlygomis eigą, remiantis naujais duomenimis, išsamiau atskleisti jų indėlį, amortizuojant sovietų režimo vykdytą nuoseklią visuomenės ateizavimo programą; 2) atskleisti pogrindyje veikusių vienuolijų vaidmenį išlaikant ryšį su visuotine Bažnyčia bei internalizuojant Lietuvoje Antrojo Vatikano susirinkimo patvirtintą Bažnyčios atsinaujinimo programą; 3) nustatyti aiškesnę pogrindyje veikusių vienuolijų vietą vėlyvojo sovietmečio visuomenės sandų - prisitaikiusios masės, savaimios visuomenės užuomazgų ir rezistencinio veikimo iniciatyvų - sankirtoje; 4) išnagrinėti sovietų režimo pastangas eliminuoti ar bent sumažinti vienuolijų įtaką Bažnyčios ir visuomenės gyvenime, atskleisti jo naudotus slaptus bei viešus kovos su vienuolijomis metodus, turėjusius ilgalaikį poveikį; 5) apibūdinti posovietinėje visuomenėje vienuolijoms kilusius iššūkius, apmąstyti sovietmečio patirties ir naujų išorės impulsų poveikį mėginant šiuos iššūkius įveikti. [Iš Įvado]

ENWith the help of sources of various genres - archival documents, epistolary legacy, abundant memoir literature and oral testimonies of history - the book attempts to reconstruct the complex period in the history of the mens and womens religious orders in Lithuania, which began with the loss of statehood in 1940 and is continuing to the present day. One can formulate the most important research tasks as follows: to analyze the course of the adaptation by the religious orders to the rules imposed by the Soviet regime, to disclose their contributions, to the amortization of the consistent program of the publics atheization carried out by the Soviet regime; to reveal the role of the religious orders operating underground in maintaining ties with the universal Church and in internalizing in Lithuania the Church’s renewal program confirmed by the Second Vatican Council; to describe the challenges that arose for the religious orders in post-Soviet society, to reflect on the impact of the experience of the Soviet period and of the new external impulses attempting to overcome these challenges. At the end of the 1940s the monastic orders ceased to exist officially in Lithuania annexed by the Soviets, although this was not regulated by any formal legal act. Such a decision was taken with the triumph of the attitude that monasteries are supporting points of the anti-Soviet resistance, also not expecting that the dispersed monks can survive as a community under the conditions of a totalitarian system. In the 1940s the institutes of consecrated life experienced heavy material losses (buildings and other real estate were taken away) and lost some of their members (the foreign nationals that departed, those that stayed in the West, the repressed, those leaving the religious orders).Nevertheless, the activities of the religious orders did not cease - after several years of turmoil, already in the second half of the 1950s, one can see the first manifestations of organized secret operation. From the mens religious orders since the mid-1950s only the Jesuits and the Marian Fathers were more active in the underground. The priests belonging to these religious orders worked in a relatively compact area, interacted with each other and with the leaders of their provinces. The Jesuits were the first to look for new candidates, they cared for the mobilization of the brothers, and carried out organized apostolic activity among the exiles. The Marian Fathers were more passive, so according to quantitative composition already at the end of the sixties they had to cede the position of the leader. Comparing the adaptation of the organizational structures of the men’s and womens religious orders to the new conditions, one may discern a fairly great contrast. Although being late in responding adequately to the rapid demographic change, all the women’s congregations operating in Lithuania before the occupation managed to more or less restore their activities, to attract a number of new candidates. The specific environment of the Soviet period, after eliminating the expression of the laity in the Church, created favorable conditions for both the establishment of new women’s congregations and the transition of earlier operating secular societies to forms of consecrated life. Nevertheless, the experience of the new women’s congregations in the Soviet era was quite contradictory.On the other hand, the majority of the new congregations were not noted for their organizational stability, because lacking canonical legitimacy and traditions, they were very vulnerable to external factors. Secretly continuing their activities, the religious orders filled many abandoned areas of religious life, that appeared due to the constraints of the Soviet regime. After analyzing the available sources, a few planes were determined, in which the contribution of the religious orders was extremely visible. In particular, the monastic orders remained one of the few environments, in which the life of Catholic intellectual thought could be supported, and the men and women members of the religious orders having higher education remaining in Lithuania were those scanty threads, thanks to which the Church retained even the minimum contact with the rapidly being secularized cultural elite. Representatives of the women’s religious orders in the Soviet era left a tangible mark also in the art world: sisters of 8 different congregations that had had the special training of an artist are known, with several sisters expressing themselves in the fields of religious poetry and music. Second, due to the relatively smaller attention of the regime to the ideological control of the medical and nursing sector many nuns persisted in the health care system. In the underground women’s orders there were more than ten sisters with higher medical education working as doctors. Nevertheless, during the Soviet period one of the fundamental missions of the majority of the women’s congregations was the testimony of akin love at the level of the medical and nursing staff. They acted both as an example of sacrificial service to their colleagues, and as a support for seriously sick patients and their relatives, not seeing the meaning of their suffering and depressed with the fear of death. [...]. [From the publication]