Slovakia's Catholic Resurgence
HENSLEY, J.P.
A WARNING FOR PRAGUE Slovakia's Catholic Resurgence by^ey Velehrad Upward of 100,000 cheering, singing Slovaks, and a sprinkling of Czechs, assembled at a monastery in this small Moravian...
...Ostensibly to emphasize the national aspect of the event, entry visas were denied Franz Cardinal Konig, the Archbishop of Vienna...
...and Cardinal Casaroli...
...In fact, with the exception of Poland and Slovakia, the position of Catholicism is by no means strong anywhere inside the Soviet domain...
...and other leading foreign churchmen...
...The crowd openly jeered a local bureaucrat's failure to mention the religious titles of Saints Cyril and Methodius, and his attempt to give the impression that this was a peace meeting...
...As an extra touch, the security service reportedly canceled many charter buses at the last minute to reduce attendance...
...The defeat inaugurated nearly three centuries of repression directed at religious nonconformity, as well as the Czech language and culture in general...
...Philaret, the Orthodox Metropolitan of Minsk...
...Pope Paul's emphasis on Christianity' s role in shaping the collective heritage of Europe, notwithstanding its current political divisions, was not a new one for him...
...From young trade school students to old women in elaborately embroidered folk costumes, the faithful streamed into the pilgrimage site during the afternoon and evening of July 6, mostly on foot...
...In Hungary the Church and the Janos Kadar government have apparently reached an accommodation, at least for the time being...
...Chairman Husak, however, kept his composure sufficiently to leave the same day for his annual holiday in the Soviet Union...
...Such developments, plus Bratislava's emergence as the country' s second-largest city—and a petrochemical center to boot—have altered forever the region's formerly peasant-dominated society...
...East Germany's Catholics are few and relatively unmolested...
...It is understandable that a Polish Pope should seek to pursue a " national" policy in countries whose ethnic and sectarian identities are closely fused...
...Indeed, Velehrad made clear that official maneuvers to isolate the clergy and believers have failed...
...In Poland, for example, the phrase "patriotic priest," harnessed by General Jaruzelski and company, is now used solely as a term of derision...
...For PartybossGustavHusak, himselfaSlo-vak, the gathering also was further evidence of the growing cohesiveness now emerging within this long-submerged group, which accounts for a little less than a third of the country's total population...
...If the Party leadership in Prague and Bratislava, Slovakia's capital, bothered to notice, they may have been chagrined to see that the throng consisted overwhelmingly of those they claim to represent: workers and peasants...
...and "Long live our beloved Cardinal...
...Hensley, a new contributor, is a journalist based in Western Europe who often covers Soviet-bloc affairs...
...Further, the size and spirit of the assemblage underlined the considerable vitality of t he Slovaks, who have required several generations to come into their own after escaping Hungarian domination at the end of World War I. Today, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic's 4.6 million Slovaks are the fastest-growing, most robust segment of the country's population: Their numbers increased by over 11 per cent from 1970 to the early 1980s, and more than 34 per cent of all 1980 investment throughout the entire nation took place in Slovakia...
...Moreover, despite the Slovaks' display of great fervor, most of their neighbors in Bohemia and Moravia are indifferent toward the faith...
...But a good deal at Velehrad was new—notably the remarkable public display of enthusiasm for John Paul II and for the Roman Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia, a nation that has been thoroughly repressed by its Communist rulers...
...Tomko, who has served the Church in Rome since 1949, is secretary-general of the Vatican Synod of Bishops...
...The Czechoslovak Party and state leadership, hoping to counter him on both levels, sought in vain to co-opt the memorial...
...But its Catholicism has survived the transformation intact, and the Velehrad affair is not likely to be the last time the Party will have to reckon with popular expressions of religiosity...
...Judging from the number and joy of the men, women and children gathered at Velehrad on July 7, here at least he is succeeding...
...After having boosted the status of the Slovakian Church last May by naming the first Slovak cardinal, the Pope used the Velehrad festivities to issue an encyclical, SlavorumApostoli, praising the works of the "Brother Saints" as "an outstanding example of the com-monEuropean roots" binding together all the Continent's peoples...
...The Soviet Union, historically a center of Eastern Orthodoxy, remains remote from Catholicism's influence...
...And the themeof the next regular Synod in 1986, "The Vocation and Mission of t he Laity in the Church and the World," is very relevant to Czechoslovakia, given the way the activities of its priests are systematically restricted...
...Bohemia has therefore long been largely unchurched, and the Pope wields no great moral influence in it...
...Whatever the prospects for this strategy elsewhere, John Paul has applied it vigorously in Slovakia...
...Rumania and Bulgaria contain virtually no adherents of Rome...
...Nonetheless, Pope John Paul has several times expressed his desire to go there—especially to the Baltic republics, including Catholic Lithuania, once united politically with his native Poland...
...Many attended services in the baroque monastery before bedding down companionably on its grounds...
...Nor is it surprising in the circumstances that the elevation to the cardinalate of Archbishop Jozef Tomko, 61, was seen by his fellow Slovakians as perhaps a reward for their steadfastness...
...The Czechs have an extremely complex ecclesiastical history that includes Jan Hus, a 15th-century forerunner of the Reformation, and the tragic Battle of the White Mountain, where in 1620 the forces of Haps-burg Catholicism crushed their Protestant opponents...
...Officials of the Slovakian legislature, the so-called National CounJ.P...
...A WARNING FOR PRAGUE Slovakia's Catholic Resurgence by^ey Velehrad Upward of 100,000 cheering, singing Slovaks, and a sprinkling of Czechs, assembled at a monastery in this small Moravian village on July 7. They came to commemorate the 1,100th anniversary of the death of Saint Methodius—thought to be buried here—who with his brother Saint Cyril planted Christianity among the Slavs...
...Along with praise for the Pope and for Cardinal Tomasek, the pilgrims chanted denunciations of the pro-regime clerical organization, Pacem in Terris, which like its counterparts elsewhere in Eastern Europe is widely recognized as a government tool...
...The Czechs make up over two thirds...
...But in Eastern Europe, a part of the globe that is dotted with numerous nationalities, he will have to sow many seeds and tend many separate gardens to have a wider impact...
...Through the two steps he effectively appealed to his local and to his international audience...
...Although the Czech Republic's cultural commissar fared a little better, he and his colleagues had to endure over an hour of sermons and religious ritual, punctuated by cries of "We want the Pope...
...They took great pains to portray the venerated Greek monks as figures of purely secular importance, and to depict the pilgrimage to Velehrad as a "peace assembly" in the conventional Soviet-bloc sense...
...cil, and of the Czech Ministry of Culture were present on the dais with Fran-tisek Cardinal Tomasek, the Archbishop of Prague...
...Give us religious freedom...
...They expeditiously packed themselves into the limited area, leaving the police to merely direct traffic and sort out the kind of logistical problems that always arise when 100,000-plus human beings crowd into a very small space...
...Basil Cardinal Hume, the Archbishop of Westminster...
...The next day Vatican Secretary of State Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, Pope John Paul II's representative, received an ecstatic reception—a graphic signal to the Communist authorities in Prague and Moscow that the influence of the first Slavic Supreme Pontiff is spreading in another part of their empire...
...a majority of believers there are Evangelicals...
Vol. 68 • July 1985 • No. 9
