SIR – I fear my friend Matthew Schmitz has taken a sledgehammer to crush an egg (Comment, February 21). He is certainly correct that IVF treatment is against Catholic teaching, and thus the failure of the Orbán government to implement a part of Catholic teaching, albeit a very significant part, belies the belief of many in the liberal West that he is a theocrat. The Hungarian constitution states that the nation of Hungary is a Christian nation, built on the heritage of its first Christian king, St Stephen. At the very centre of the magnificent Hungarian parliament building in Budapest sits the crown of St Stephen, placed there by Viktor Orbán to symbolise both where true authority lies and from where it comes. Hungary is the first (and still the only) nation on earth that has a specific governmental ministry, now elevated to a position within the PM’s office, dedicated to assisting persecuted Christians throughout the world. Within weeks of meeting various patriarchs from Iraq and Syria in 2016, Orbán formed the State Secretariat for Persecuted Christians. Through its “Hungary Helps” programme, the small nation of Hungary has done more than almost all larger governments per capita to aid Christians in Iraq, Syria, Nigeria and other countries where they are facing persecution. Hungary’s policy on migration specifically aims to help people stay in their own countries through  this aid programme. The right of a sovereign nation not only to control its own borders, but also to preserve its national character and culture, which is most certainly a Christian culture, is not antithetical to Christianity. When criticising the decisions of some of the governments of the former Soviet bloc it is necessary to have a certain humility, especially when that criticism concerns places where Christian democracy is a half-remembered dream. Orbán’s authentic, yet imperfect, attempt to rebuild a Christian democracy on the ruins of a demonic and atheistic communist system will never meet the standards of a perfect Christian state; such a thing does not exist. But given the spiritual wasteland that is much of Western Europe, an imperfect Christianity is still Christianity. Fr Benedict Kiely Faversham, Kent