Scouting movement

Members of both the Hungarian and of the cross-border Scout Associations are going to participate in great numbers in the International Eucharistic Congress to be held in autumn in Budapest. We are talking with Márton Tóth, the scout volunteers’ Head of Communication.

- You are going to be present as volunteers in the International Eucharistic Congress. As far as I noted, the scout movement takes such kind of an engagement rather as a life model than a single occasion.

Scouts are committed citizens and volunteering is of high value for them. This is also the base of our movement activity, since every and each of our leaders are serving as volunteers. The service itself, as the evangelical value means the pillar of our activity. The scout movement is a global voluntary association with 63 million active members worldwide, the organizational structure of which comprises a president and a world committee. Committee members have regular meetings, while are actively working beyond their normal daily job. Districts are headed by presidencies, teams by team commanders, squads by squad leaders while divisions are led by patrols, all of them are working on a voluntary basis. It is a special adventure to be at work in community, while offering our helping hands. We very often have the feeling that we have received more than that of we had put in.

- The first part of the scouts’ registration into the Congress has been already closed. Is there any opportunity for further registrations?

During 1.5 month more than three hundred registrations have been done, which we are extremely happy of. At the same time it is also true, that many locations still haven’t received proper news on the Congress participation opportunity, since our call for registration had been spread to more than 16 thousands scouts living around the globe. So far, many registrations have been already recognised from the Carpathian basin. A mere 100 registrations was recorded from Transylvania, Vojvodina, Trans-Carpathia and from the Highlands.

- Do you already have experience in organizing such a huge group?

The scout association has some experience back to the 1938 Eucharistic World Congress. Though the world has changed a great deal since, the preparedness of the scouts remained likely the same. All those principles, rules, mechanism which are well known –even in their sleep- by all the scout members, are going to work perfectly.

- In 1938 five thousands scouts were attending the Congress in Budapest. What goals have you set up in relation to the present world event?

In our opinion it is not the headcount that would be the primary measure of success, though it is also important for sure. Between the two world wars the scouting was taken as a significant youth movement and was present all around our country. In many ways and places it served as a gap filter in the youth education. When the scout association was allowed to restart its activity in 1989, we started our work in a scarred country, bearing all the wounds from the decades of socialism. These facts still have impacts on our present life. In our days it is much more difficult to operate as a religious organisation than it was at the time. Nevertheless, we are delighted to see a steady expansion. According to the latest data, in Hungary the membership exceeded 13 thousands, while in other countries around it enumerates an overall of some three thousands scouters. In many places around the diaspora this is one of the sustainability bond of the Hungarians. Today our chances are more limited, comparing to that of 1938, still the International Eucharistic Congress means a key role for the Hungarian Scout Association. Our Presidency, along with the cross border associations are unanimously standing beside the Congress. In addition, I have to mention that our present Country President is a Protestant priest. All in all, the International Eucharistic Congress is the greatest event of the year not only for the Hungarian Catholic Church, but for the Hungarian scouting movement as well. We encourage all our scouter brothers and sisters to come and attend the event, even if for some reason they are not able to do any volunteering.

- Ecumenism is of high importance for yourselves.

Fundamentally scouting is a religious, voluntary, non-political, non-governmental youth educational movement. It is vital, that its moral ground which we commit ourselves to, is the Christian spirituality. Therefore the movement is able and ready all around the globe to embrace people of other religions, giving a multi-confessional character to it. I strongly believe that along with Christ’s thoughts we will always be able to experience our true brotherhood even with our scout brothers and sisters from other religions. At the same time I would like to emphasize that the Hungarian scouters have paid special attention as from the beginning to the needs of the different religions. Since, beside the catholic members, the protestant denominations represent a considerable share in the association. The different groups have not been united, but a rather homogenous Protestant, Evangelic and Catholic groups have been formed instead. Before the war there had been a Jewish scout team, nowadays we are proud of having Adventist and Methodist teams as well. Basically the groups are coherent by religions, so that the young generation may better live out their faith, but each of the groups are very much pleased to accept other religious members as well. Furthermore, we do have many mutual programs, but we do our best not to mix the issues up, so we organise separate mass, services or worshipping. Yet, we all know that we do have more which connects than that of what separates us.

Source: IEC Secretariat

Photo: Patrícia Bodnár

Printed version of above has been published in the 15 March 2020 issue of Új Ember.