This is a translation of the collection previously published in 1925 in Romania under the title Az Erdélyi katholicizmus múltja és jelene (The Past and Present of Transylvanian Catholicism). Why did it appear then and again now in the Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für deutsche Kultur und Geschichte Südosteuropas? The editors' introduction offers motives for the first and second publications. Many of the 25 authors, predominantly Catholic clergy but some lay politicians and journalists, took issue with the thesis the Romanian Orthodox writer Onisifor Ghibu expressed in various works—but especially one published in 1924—that Hungarian Catholic institutions pursued chauvinistic goals and that their property should be expropriated. The work's continuing usefulness, the editors argue, lies in its wealth of information and value as a Zeitdokument about debates on church and nationality policy.

Most chapters focus on the territory of the historic principality of Transylvania. The largest portion, more than half the book, comprises accounts of successive chronological periods from the Middle Ages to World War I. Smaller sections examine the postwar period, other dioceses, and the male and female religious orders. The geographical scope is broader than Transylvania proper, with five articles on the Catholic dioceses along the border with Hungary that ceded territories to Romania after 1918.

A recurrent theme is the role, possibly unique in Catholic Church history, of the diocesan institution in Transylvania known as the Status catholicus. A mixed clerical-lay body, the Status arose in the absence of a resident Catholic bishop after the Reformation to manage property and schools and to represent Catholic interests in the provincial diet. With the eastern Szekler region of Csík as its stronghold and with the support of the Catholic Báthory princes at the end of the sixteenth century, the church was able to avoid total exclusion from Transylvania. Both the rulers and the Holy See recognized the legality of the Status in this period. The Habsburgs restored the bishopric in 1711. Their strong patronage of the church and creation of a Catholic state commission called the existence of the Status into question, but it revived in the constitutional period after 1867. The chapters on this era highlight the large number of schools the Status established, some with Romanian as an elective subject, scholarships for Romanians, and up to 50 percent Romanian enrollment. The Roman Catholic high school in Braşov, although its languages were primarily Hungarian and German, even had a Romanian principal in the person of Iacob Mureşan. The orphanages and schools for indigent girls, it is argued, served their charitable purpose without regard for nationality.

Several of the book's authors were prolific church historians whose work is now available in a world language for the first time. The most notable are Vencel Biró, a priest and professor at the Piarist high school in Cluj who authored three articles in Transylvania in the early modern period; Fortunát Boros OFM who wrote another chapter on the early modern period and the chapter on the Franciscans; and Elemér Gyárfás, a lawyer who after 1920 served many years in the Romanian Senate and was lay president of the Status. The two chapters by Gyárfás on the Transylvanian Saxons and Catholicism and on the church union of the Romanians are balanced, insightful contributions, whereas his article on the Status is one of several that take on Ghibu's assertion that the Status was an alien “state within the state.” Minority communities and churches, the authors argue, can effectively pool resources to maintain their identity using the model that proved its value under the Calvinist princes of Transylvania and can once again under Romanian rule. There are also weaker articles. The treatment of the Middle Ages by János Karácsony contains outmoded speculations (the Szeklers spoke an “old Germanic language,” [31]), and the article on the seventeenth century by Árpád Bitay, a translator of Romanian literature into Hungarian, is anecdotal and disorganized.

The new edition augments and updates the original notes and bibliography and provides useful bio-bibliographies of the contributors, as well as indices of names and places (with linguistic cross-references), to make this work much more useful to modern scholars. The Catholic Church was an important institution in the history of this region and yet has received very inadequate attention in the major Romanian, Hungarian, and German surveys. The German translation is generally quite good, although the phrases Bischof griechischer and lateinischer Liturgie should properly be translated as Bischof des griechischen and lateinischen Ritus as in the English of the Greek or Latin rite. The attention of many authors to church property rights is strongly colored by contemporary disputes that are far less relevant today. Hungarian perspectives are evident throughout but only shade over into polemic in discussions of the events of 1918–1925. Indeed, more tolerant conditions in today's Romania may make it possible for the church to regain some of its lost properties.