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Introduction

This volume is the second part of Lithuanian biblical scholar Anthony Rubšys's landmark Lithuanian-language introduction to the New Testament, focusing on the Church as an organization. Published in 1979 by the diaspora press Krikščionis Gyvenime in Putnam, Connecticut, it provided Lithuanian Catholics in exile with rigorous, scholarly Scripture study in their native language at a time when such materials were suppressed in Soviet-occupied Lithuania. The work bears an imprimatur from Bishop Vincentas Brizgys, the senior Catholic authority serving Lithuanians outside Europe, underscoring its ecclesiastical importance to the diaspora community.

Context and significance

Significance

Anthony Rubšys's Raktas į Naująjį Testamentą represents one of the most ambitious works of Lithuanian Catholic biblical scholarship produced in the diaspora. Written and published entirely outside Soviet-occupied Lithuania, where religious scholarship was suppressed and Lithuanian-language Catholic publishing was essentially impossible, the series served a dual function: it provided Lithuanian-speaking Catholics worldwide with a rigorous, modern introduction to Scripture in their mother tongue, and it demonstrated the vitality and intellectual depth of Lithuanian Catholic culture in exile. The editorial board—spanning Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois, Ontario, and West Germany—reflects the transnational scope of the Lithuanian diaspora intellectual network that sustained this project.

The volume's imprimatur from Bishop Vincentas Brizgys, who served as the de facto senior Catholic bishop for Lithuanians outside Europe throughout the Soviet occupation period, signals the work's status as an authoritative resource for the community. The involvement of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception press in Putnam, Connecticut—a cornerstone institution of Lithuanian Catholic diaspora publishing—further anchors the book within the organized effort to preserve Lithuanian religious and cultural life across generations of exile. For Lithuanian heritage schools and diaspora communities, this work exemplifies the high standard of Lithuanian-language intellectual production that flourished outside the homeland when it could not flourish within it.

How this record carried memory

Diaspora scholarly publishing: production of high-level Catholic theological and biblical scholarship in Lithuanian for the exile community, maintaining intellectual and religious life outside Soviet-occupied Lithuania and countering the suppression of such works within Lithuania.

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