Official harassment, growing solidarity
Leftwich, Jane
THE CHURCH IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA Official harassment, ^growing solidarity JANE LEFTWICH Despite THE Czechoslovak government's refusal to make any mention of the event in the state-controlled media,...
...He must work, however, without a staff since the government will not approve anyone to help him...
...Methodius, recognized with his brother St...
...In a report on "the state and religion" done in 1984 by VONS (Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted) on repression of Catholics since 1979, sixty other specific cases were listed as well as a number of cases of harassment of underground religious orders and harassment of those believers who form significant groups among the signatories of Charter 77...
...These movements bring religiously motivated Czechs into close contact with similar activists in Eastern Europe and the West...
...Ten young Catholics convicted of "performing a play without official authorization...
...Cardinals Basil Hume of London, Jean-Marie Lustiger of Paris, and Franz Koenig of Vienna were all denied visas when they applied to come to the ceremony...
...For believers who are not ordained, the risks of involvement, as opposed to merely occasional church attendance, are also great...
...With the pope's 1982 condemnation of state-controlled church groups, nearly half of the Catholic priests have left the quisling Pacem in Terns organization which takes a pro-regime line and dominates most state-run Catholic publications...
...One can tick off dozens of similar cases in recent years: Three young people jailed for spreading religious materials...
...Religion survives, but only under the constant threat that members and clergy will be prosecuted for some small deed — praying together, talking about religion in their homes, sharing religious books and magazines, teaching religion to children — based on Act 178 of the Penal Code which prohibits anyone from "obstructing the state's right to supervise religious activity...
...The news blackout and the massive attendance together reflected two aspects of the church's situation in today's Czechoslovakia...
...Over the years, some priests elected to join Pacem in Terris, a Catholic organization organized by and loyal to the government...
...Those few admitted — far fewer than the number of priests and ministers needed — "have to be loyal to the state and they must have other qualifications necessary for admission to state service...
...The secret police colonel who conducted the search and interrogation informed the father that, "It would have been better if the Germans had killed you for helping Jews in the war...
...If they belong, it is only to give themselves some peace and security...
...To be too outspoken and too popular — especially with young people — is to risk losing one's license to preach, to have a driver's license revoked, or to be summarily given early retirement...
...There is a growing interest in spite of the postwar repression and the atmosphere of demoralization since the Prague Spring...
...His public walk from the Prague cathedral to his residence after Sunday Mass, during which untold numbers of people gather around him in Prague's main square, is a weekly demonstration of the church's power...
...At eighty-five Cardinal Tomasek himself is an unbending and outspoken critic of official policy toward religion and the churches, and a defender of religious freedom and the rights of believers...
...In spite of this harassment, some 60 percent of the population is estimated to be Roman Catholic and 15 percent Protestant...
...What is it that causes this reaction by the political authorities to organized religion...
...A church organist arrested for "holding religious services in his home and discussing religious subjects...
...Churches in heavily Catholic Slovakia and the less traditionally religious and more Commonweal: 528 Protestant Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia have been systematically threatened with emasculation since the Communist takeover in 1948...
...Admission to the two state-sanctioned theological schools is controlled by the government...
...Many practicing Catholics and Protestants have important roles in the growing unofficial movements opposing the stationing of Soviet nuclear weapons in Czechoslovakia and supporting nuclear disarmament...
...And what do they want, these Protestants and Catholics fighting for the right to be rejigious...
...9 two young men were sentenced to prison terms for bringing ("smuggling") religious literature into Czechoslovakia...
...A parish priest detained and stripped of his license for showing religious slides to children on the church premises...
...and I fell from prostration under the cross...
...A church underground flourishes, complete with services, religion classes, and religious discussions held in private homes, often by ordained but unlicensed clergy...
...Although Cardinal Casaroli, the Vatican representative, was invited to attend the celebration and met with Communist party and state officials, Czechoslovak leaders made no further jane LEFTWICH works as a consultant for the Helsinki Watch Committee...
...two young men were sentenced to prison terms for bringing ("smuggling") religious literature into Czechoslovakia...
...Pacem in Terris is only one part of the government's effort to insure docility to the regime...
...More and more of these believers have had to resort to quasi-legal or illegal religious activities just to keep up a more than nominal teaching and ministering of their faiths...
...In June and July of this year alone: • seven Catholic activists had their offices searched and were arrested in Prague, Olomouc, and other Czech towns...
...concessions...
...First, whether above-ground or underground, the church is alive and growing...
...Local parishes disappear rapidly in the govenment's legal shuffle — any post not filled in three months is dropped and government approval for appointments is virtually never given in time...
...I bore the cross...
...Although 17,000 Czechoslovaks signed a petition requesting that Pope John Paul II be invited to attend, Czech authorities ignored the fact that Prague's Cardinal Frantisek Tomasek had invited the pope...
...because the government has refused to sanction Vatican candidates and the Vatican has refused to accept the government's men, ten of Czechoslovakia's thirteen dioceses have no bishop to head them...
...The options for the official church are limited and its present and future prospects are bleak...
...For the five hundred priests and Protestant ministers who are without licenses to work, the options are tough: some choose to work as manual laborers or survive at some "above-ground" job while working in the underground church...
...house searches were done of those involved with the Franciscan order (banned along with all religious orders in the fifties) in several towns...
...Yet in spite of the limits and obstacles erected by the Czech regime, the July celebration, the largest popular demonstration in Czechoslovakia in years, was a moment of relative ease for both Protestant and Catholic churches...
...Second, it confronts an official, systematic, and often vitriolic campaign of anti-religious repression, one that has intensified as a result of the election of a Polish pope and the crisis of Polish society...
...A government license is required to work in a church, even as an ordained minister or priest, and the license is hard to get and even easier to lose...
...An evangelical minister arrested for leading a group of young people in prayers, Bible readings, and hymns...
...An expanding series of underground religious publications includes books ranging from a children's story of Jesus to volumes on Buddhism...
...Even his hierarchy is troubled...
...But as one dissident told a Western journalist, "We only want what they have in East Germany, Hungary, and Poland...
...For those who get and keep licenses, demoralization and accommodation are temptations difficult to resist...
...People still cherish the dreams and proposals of 1968 which called for church life independent of state control and freedom of belief as a basic freedom, and an ecumenical movement drawing together once divided groups of Protestants and Catholics...
...As Czechoslovakia's primate reported in his letter on the "priestly mission," the obituary for one priest holds true for many of his now elderly fellow clergy: "I preached the cross...
...With the defeat of the Prague Spring reforms in 1968, bureaucratic restrictions and harassment of religion became increasingly severe...
...Religious books, friars' habits, and hosts were confiscated, and one member of the order was jailed for illegal practice of religion...
...Czechoslovak authorities also fear any contagion from Poland's Solidarity and its ideas, many of which have religious overtones...
...To further minimize the event, Western broadcasters, like BBC, were also barred...
...Cyril as Christianizers of the Slavs...
...Ultimately, he was given a transit visa days after the celebration that allowed him to spend twenty-four hours in Czechoslovakia meeting with church officials...
...The pope received no government invitation...
...THE CHURCH IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA Official harassment, ^growing solidarity JANE LEFTWICH Despite THE Czechoslovak government's refusal to make any mention of the event in the state-controlled media, more than 100,000 people flooded the tiny village of Velehrad, Slovakia, last July to take part in the 1,100 anniversary celebration of the death of St...
...Nothing as "radical" as they sought in 1968 or as they see fellow Christians enjoying in the West...
...Franciscans, arrested and imprisoned, and hundreds of those they served subject to house searches and interrogations...
...One estimate is that 60 percent of all practicing Catholics are under thirty-five, and another that in Catholic Slovakia, 70 percent of children are baptized...
...Jan Carnogursky, a lawyer and his seventy-seven-year-old historian father had their house in Bratislava searched and all their Czechoslovak and foreign religious books and articles confiscated...
...The authorities fear the influence of John Paul II, who even as a cardinal from Poland could draw huge crowds when he visited Czechoslovakia...
...Cardinal Tomasek and others have exhibited an increasing unwillingness to let religion die or be subjugated to the authorities' whims...
...In the face of the state's various repressive devices, even these above-ground priests (many of whom were ordained secretly in the Stalinist period) have turned increasingly to the underground church for life and sustenance...
...4 October 1985: 529 These are but a small and inadequate example of the pressures and sanctions used against those involved with religion in Czechoslovakia...
...The result is a clergy (most of whom have to serve three or more congregations at the same time) who know that visible commitment and vigorous leadership are often rewarded with the loss of a license...
...For most, though, the fact that the pope and their cardinal have condemned the organization makes it a less than proud affiliation...
...A lay minister jailed for two years for his work with deprived and abandoned children, mostly Gypsies...
...Even the pope's letter to his "Slavic Brothers" on the occasion was consigned to the underground press...
...The Catholic paper that he should, by rights, control is edited by activists in the Pacem in Terris group so it serves the government and often blocks the cardinal's own messages...
...Commonweal: 530...
...Poland's Cardinal Jozef Glemp was in Yugoslavia when his application for a visa to Czechoslovakia was refused...
Vol. 112 • October 1985 • No. 17
