Ghosts in Prague
Kaplan, Robert D.
THE CHURCH. LIKE THE DISSIDENTS. FACES REPRESSION Ghosts in Prague ROBERT D. KAPLAN PRAGUE, THE FORMER capital of the Holy Roman Empire, is stalked by many ghosts these nights. On account of...
...It's more worthwhile to think only about your own difficulties, since even if the government is wrong there is nothing you can do about it...
...The most resigned and cynical people in the world populate Czechoslovakia...
...Others, like the one of St...
...church does not become the next vehicle for expressing anti-state sentiments...
...The streets of Prague - even on sunny days - are more silent and empty than any in Soviet East Europe...
...And as the economy crumbles, repression will intensify...
...Sometimes, when the squares are empty and the few people on the streets wear the expressions of sleepwalkers, only the multitude of saints' statues atop the buildings and lining Karlovy Most seem alive...
...The statue of Bohemian reformer Jan Hus, burned at the stake as a heretic in 1415, seems to brood over the vast expanse...
...And with the organized dissident movement inside Czechoslovakia nearly wiped out, the eyes of the state police are focusing more and more on religious communities...
...Mr...
...One activist said his daughter was actually slugged in the face in a police station here in December...
...But, you see, it cannot work...
...In the words of one diplomat here: "If the 80,000 Soviet troops were to leave, the Husak, government couldn't buy its way out of Prague...
...Hruza spoke warmly of one Catholic organization, Paceminteris ("Priests of Peace"), whose members, he said, "served both their God and their country...
...They claimed the "underground church" movement was small and not necessarily anti-government...
...About the Germans and Russians you can do nothing...
...The latter include former Communist party members, mostly older people, who have ceased active resistance to the government and in return are left alone by the authorities...
...Hruza's words, the country has had a "bad historical experience with the Vatican...
...One dissident here said, "Prague is a surreal place, even compared to East Berlin and Sofia...
...IN THIS AND OTHER like matters, the Czech regime is the most pyschologically insecure in Eastern Europe...
...No, you should see how good some of these priests live...
...Only because Czech law makes prayer gatherings illegal outside of a government-recognized chapel are such activities considered "underground...
...In one dissident home in Prague, a woman was seen teaching her daughter, who was not allowed to attend school...
...Hruza concluded with characteristic bluntness...
...Wilfried Daim, in his book, The Vatican and Eastern Europe (Frederick Ungar, 1970), maintains that had Archbishop Beran's more conciliatory approach toward the Communists been adopted, the church would be in a stronger position today...
...In fact, after repeated visits to this central European city, the process almost begins to seem natural...
...The government-controlled media constantly rails against the church in Rome...
...Pope Pius XII believed, naively, that the Western powers would never tolerate a completely Communist government in Prague...
...NEGOTIATIONS with the Vatican were to resume in December, 1981, but didn't...
...A diplomat joked, "It's a great city to commit a murder in, a body could lie in the street for days before someone would come along and notice...
...But the current enmity between Czechoslovakian Communists and the Catholic church has more recent historical roots...
...Seventy-five percent of Czechoslovakia is Catholic, and to use Mr...
...Religious peace was never a characteristic of Prague...
...Better to concentrate on your own job and family...
...Gustav Husak wants to make certain that the ROBERT D. KAPLAN is a freelance journalist recently returned from a seven-year stay in Europe...
...We don't want to control the church, but we will not allow the appointment of clergy who are not loyal citizens of the state...
...This prospect emerged from talks with Prague-based dissidents, ordinary Czechs, resident Western diplomats and members of the Czech government...
...But the present hour evokes the dark years of the fifteenth century, as well as those following the Communist coup d' etat of 1948 which sent thousands of Catholics on the path to prison...
...As even the bravest dissidents will admit, the overwhelming majority of Czechs and Slovaks know this...
...The talks center around the country's twelve bishoprics, seven of which remain unfilled, as the two sides have yet to agree on suitable candidates...
...In the Old Town Square - the center of political life from medieval times through the 1968 "Prague Spring" - only the beer halls stay open...
...The Czechs did not replace their old capital equipment in the 1970s, and the result is an economy that expends more fuel per production-unit than any in Eastern Europe...
...But VONS consists of the same persons belonging to Charter 77...
...Negotations with the Vatican - going on since 1964 - have still not resulted in any basic understanding...
...The government has staked its existence on the assumption that a slow, steady rise in the living standard would keep the lid on dissent...
...That one seems angry: angry over a church that refuses to do penance for his martyrdom...
...The Party daily, Rude Pravo, said Pope John Paul II "does not miss a single opportunity" to support "counterrevolutionary" forces in Poland: in fact, the paper has used the Polish crisis as an excuse for periodic, long-winded attacks on the Vatican...
...In that period, the country was ruled by a coalition of Communists and anti-Communists...
...Hruza said, "Priests are no judges, and if they have anti-state attitudes they are just common lawbreakers...
...The bishops of Moravia and Slovakia support Paceminteris...
...Some statues appear to be screaming in agony...
...The organization recently received official praise from Deputy Prime Minister Matej Lucan...
...Significantly, the country's lone cardinal, Prague Primate Frantisek Tomasek, has gone on record against the organization...
...but surely more angry at an atheistic government that falsely uses his name, in order to wipe out the Christian faith in the land of his birth...
...So when Gottwald's cadres crushed the anti-Communist elements, an era of persecution commenced for Catholics here...
...One diplomat here explained: "By no means is there even the hint of a religious renaissance in Czechoslovakia - underground or whatever - but this government is paranoid about everything...
...On a flight from Budapest to Prague, over a glass of Pilsner beer, a Czech sales representative said: "In Poland, they tried to do what we tried in 1968...
...He bridled at the assumption that there might not be full religious freedom in his country...
...And the statue of Jan Hus looking out over a square that used to fill up with joyous students...
...But all those outside the government claim Paceminteris is merely a tool of the regime to split the clergy...
...To judge from the government's posture toward the Vatican, one could almost believe that the Communist authorities were bent on exacting full vengeance for the martyr's death...
...Religion is a public activity in Czechoslovakia, so we cannot tolerate those clergy who seek to change our socialist sytem...
...Employing the Hussite tradition for their own ends...
...However one interprets those events, it is fact that history and Marxist theory have determined that the concept of the church as a spiritual authority goes completely over the heads of government people here...
...He only represents Bohemia...
...Food supplies are also at a critical juncture...
...Even today, Hus is considered a national hero who defended local rights against the alleged abuses of the Vatican...
...Hruza gave the impression that the "underground church" had a considerable following...
...Like the baroque and Gothic monuments of medieval Prague, the Czech economy and way-of-life is slowly decaying...
...The population is withdrawing further into itself...
...A wide-ranging interview with the highest-ranking government bureaucrat dealing with church-state relations underscored the deep suspicion in which Christian communities are held...
...It has been argued that the Vatican is now paying the price - a heavy price indeed - for not heeding the advice of its Prague-based clergy in the critical period between the end of World War II and the Communist power grab of February 25,1948...
...The next two-to-three years will be slow and difficult," admitted Zbynek Zima, Advisor to the Vice Chairman of the State Planning Commission...
...Communist authorities refer to Hus as a "great revolutionary...
...Church people would undoubtedly concur, as tension has existed between Bohemia and the Vatican since Hus died at the stake in Constance after refusing to revoke his opinions...
...On account of Draconic fuel conservation measures, streets are nearly empty of pedestrians and automobiles...
...Mr...
...One must be honest and admit there are few of us left, and the conditions under which we operate get worse and worse," said one of some twenty or thirty dissidents still active on a daily basis inside Czechoslovakia...
...The Vatican is interested in occupying these bishoprics, so are we," Mr...
...Beatings are common...
...Denying charges of official harassment against priests, Karel Hruza, head of the Presidium Secretariat for Church Matters, said "Only eight priests have been arrested, not on account of their beliefs, but because they had certain anti-state problems...
...There is also VONS (The Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted...
...There is more religious freedom here than in the United States.For example, I could never be president of your country, because a president must swear an oath on the Bible, and I do not follow this Bible of yours...
...Church repression in Czechoslovakia is worse than in any other satellite state...
...It is impossible, because the economic situation is getting worse.'' But the bare statistics disprove that assertion: they prove, that as in the past in Czechoslovakia, naked brutality succeeds quite well...
...To be sure, in the 1970s national income rose sixty percent and daily meat consumption rivaled that of North America...
...To the party, the Vatican is just another secular power interest, trying to gain a foothold in Czechoslovakia...
...According to the United States Helsinki Commission, over four-hundred Catholic priests and lay people have been arrested or interrogated here since 1978...
...And children of dissident families encounter enormous difficulties getting admitted to secondary schools...
...Talking in a bare, unlit office of the Presidium building in the presence of an official translator and another government official, Mr...
...His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Toronto Globe and Mail, among others...
...But dissidents and Prague-based Western diplomats indicated to a man that "unfortunately," such was not the case...
...Neither is the younger generation any less pessimistic...
...In an eighth-grade Prague classroom, a girl student remarked: "It is not wise to consider if the government has any faults or problems...
...Those still active get no respite from the police...
...Though the Czech human rights movement Charter 77 has over a thousand signatories, most have left the country or have been pressured into silence...
...A 10-20 percent cut in oil supplies from the Soviet Union has necessitated a 17 percent reduction in home heating use, according to a plan approved late last year at a Central Committee meeting...
...Nicholas by the Old Town Square facing Parizska Street, seem to be remonstrating...
...All, however, have lost their jobs...
...We respect Tomasek, but his title of "cardinal" is a Vatican one only, he is no authority for this country...
...The twin spires of the Tyn Church in the Old Town Square - the center of Hussite teachings in the Middle Ages - are now being renovated by the Czech government...
...Hruza noted that "a very serious problem exists with the underground church movement, which we are determined to finish off, since there is only one legal church system in Czechoslovakia...
...Defiantly, a Charter 77 member stated: "If they close down an underground newspaper, we open something else...
...Said one dissident: "People just push ahead with their daily lives, their heads downward, motivated by a combination of fear and primitive materialism...
...It is unique in the Soviet bloc, as a government completely imposed from outside...
...Hruza said, "They have been postponed until 1982...
...Hruza played down the primate's dissent: "Tomasek is not the head of the church in Czechoslovakia...
...How can they stamp us out...
...Adult members of dissident families are regularly taken into custody for several days at a time...
...All indications are that the present high level of meat consumption cannot be maintained and that it will fall significantly...
...Torture is used on occasion...
...He therefore instructed Prague Archbishop (later Cardinal) Josef Beran not to seek any accommodation with Klement Gottwald's Communists...
...The regime of Dr...
...THE systematic destruction of the dissident movement keeps pace with the process of general decay...
...There is nothing dramatic about this decay...
...Husak's government apes the Russians in all aspects of policy, and strict adherence to central planning and other Soviet economic practices precludes the kind of flexibility and imagination necessary to deal with the economic challenges...
...But the Czech economy now threatens to unravel...
Vol. 109 • May 1982 • No. 9
