Învăţământul confesional romano-catolic în perioada interbelică
The Roman Catholic Confessional Educational System in Transylvania between the Two World Wars

Summary/Abstract: The evolution of the catholic educational system in Transylvania between the two World Wars was greatly influenced by the political changes, which have occurred in Romania after 1918. The union of Transylvania, formerly belonging to the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, with Romania implied major changes in the life of Hungarian communities, as well as the inclusion in a newly elaborated legislative system. Before 1918 the Roman Catholic Hungarians represented the majority of the Transylvanian population, but after this year they became an ethnical-religious minority in a predominantly Romanian Orthodox state. The status of the Transylvanian Roman Catholic scholar system was regulated by the international treatises and bilateral agreements signed by Romania (the Treatise between the Allied Forces and Romania, Paris, 1919, concerning the minority rights, the Concordat between Romania and the Vatican, signed in 1927, ratified by Romania in 1929), and by the laws elaborated by the Romanian governments. Romanian legislative initiatives tried to unify and integrate the educational system of the provinces. One of the first laws was the law of the primary education, which, beside its positive decisions (the compulsory character of the primary education, prolonged to 7 years), had regulations which affected minority schools (citizens of Romanian origin, who have lost their national identity were obliged to instruct their children in schools with Romanian language; the cultural zones, inhabited mostly by minorities, where teachers of Romanian origin, engaging themselves to teach there for four years benefited of materials advantages). The schools sustained by religious orders and congregations were obliged to teach in Romanian language. The law of the private instruction (1925) regarded the confessional schools as private schools, which couldn’t offer diplomas recognized by the state. The law regarding the high school degree (1925) obliged graduate students to pass the final exam in a state school, in Romanian language. Between the two World Wars the Churches representing the minorities (Roman Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran, Unitarian) founded several confessional schools, to insure the mother tongue education, but this fact represented a huge challenge, because the religious-ethnic minority communities confronted themselves with material difficulties, especially because of the loss of their possessions after the agrarian reform (1921). This is why statistics show a decrease of the number of confessional schools sustained by the Roman Catholic Church (with 23,1% in 1932/33 compared to 1913/14), with a meanwhile increasing number of schools sustained by the Reformed Church (44,6%), fact most likely explained by the poverty of Catholic communities. The Catholic confessional schools struggled for the maintenance of the religious and ethnical identity, the education of young generations, the formation of a Catholic intellectual elite.

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