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The Underground Church in the Czech Lands
PART I
I’ve been in the Czech Republic for the past two weeks: Prague, Brno, and the tiny little village of Železnice. I’m here doing research and conducting interviews related to the underground church under Communism.
The Communists were particularly brutal toward the Catholic Church here (and churches in general) — perhaps more brutal than anywhere else, with the possible exception of Albania.
Nobody seems to have a decisive answer to the question: why? It is in some part, clearly, connected to an anticlerical tradition bound up with Czech nationalism, although not with Slovak identity.
After the 1948 coup, the Communists levelled severe blows against the churches. Monasteries and churches were seized and sometimes destroyed. Large numbers of priests and monks found themselves in labor camps. One needed a state license to perform a Mass, and a priest’s religious activity was restricted to the Sunday service. No youth education, Bible study, continuing catechism — nothing. State security kept a close eye on church attendance. The children of churchgoers were ridiculed at school and elsewhere.
The atmosphere improved somewhat in the late 1950s and 1960s. Many priests were let out of prison, and some received back their licenses to perform their office. There was always a chronic shortage of priests for parishes. The state never allowed more than two bishops in the Czech lands; it controlled the seminaries, restricted admission to a trickle, and even infiltrated them with many agents.
Despite all of this, a vibrant, secret religious life flourished. Many of the officially ordained priests who had lost their licenses continued to preach and teach underground. One group was an older generation, who had been imprisoned in the 1950s, and some were priests who signed Charter 77. Another group, who studied and prepared for the priesthood secretly, were ordained in East Germany or Poland, some by the Archbishop of Kraków (later John Paul II).
Then there is another group of priests whose story remains largely unknown. They were secretly ordained in Czechoslovakia by bishops who were themselves secretly ordained. Some were married, which of course enhanced their ability to operate under the gaze of the secret police.
There is much more to recount of this extraordinary story. In Part II, which I will write upon returning home, I will share more of what I discovered during this trip.
Published in General
I’m looking forward to the next installment of your essay.
This subject sounds fascinating. In the words of Michael Ledeen, “Faster, please”
By the way, I took that picture earlier this evening–we had quite a little storm here in Prague. Homeward tomorrow!
This does sound good, Flagg.
It’s still a puzzle why although all Communist governments were anti-clerical, not all of them went the full way of the Czechs and the Hungarians. Even the east Germans, as doctrinaire and harsh as can be, were (relatively) more lenient with churches. Same with the Poles; as tough as they had it, their rulers wanted to avoid creating the next Mindzenty.
Prague is a tie for my favorite city I’ve visited across the pond.
I am looking forward to learning more about this. Thank you.
This is fascinating, and I have many questions. My instinct says that surely the answer must lie — and reasonably decisively, by historians’ standards — in the Czech anti-clerical tradition. Doesn’t it seem to you that this period is in many ways a late-emerging spasm of the Hussite wars?
How did Protestant life compare during the communist era? Wikipedia (for what it’s worth) tells me that Protestant sects “fared better,” although obviously, Wikipedia wouldn’t be the first source I’d consult to understand this. If the persecution of Catholics was of a notably different order, then what other satisfying explanation could there be?
Some features of Czech repression might be chalked up to personal qualities of postwar dictator Klement Gottwald. The Hungarians are a different case because the churches, rightly or wrongly, were widely felt to be part of the prewar regime that allied itself with Germany.
Well, a Czech historian whom I interviewed (an expert on the underground church and the church history of the Czech lands) isn’t satisfied that this quite explains it. I asked him this question about what might explain the viciousness of Communist repression here. He said if he knew the answer he’d be a rich man living in Florida. And probably more important that the Hussite legacy is the more recent history of the Catholic Church seen as an element of Hapsburg domination. But Czech history seen through this lens isn’t a completely accurate picture of the reality of Czech national and religious identity. It became useful during the 19th century. So no doubt the Communists drew upon this tradition.
Unfortunately, I did not interview any Protestant pastors (there are some who played a significant role in the Charter movement). The first thing to say is that there are many more Catholics in the Czech lands than any other denomination–I will try to find some numbers on this. My sense is that the repression was much more brutal, initially, towards the Catholics. The Communists saw Catholicism as a kind of ideological competitor, with the Vatican controlling their puppets from Rome. This is why, I think, they acted so decisively early on–get rid of the influential Bishops, priests, and monks, and perhaps they could cut the head off the beast. But later on, post-68, during the normalization era, it seems to me that the regime was perhaps just as nasty toward the Protestants. I need to pursue this question in more detail though.
Hmm….Recall when Obama invoked the Crusades when he was struggling to manufacture a sham moral equivalency between Western Civilization and ISIS? Recall he did that so he could avoid granting that America was above the level of those conducing atrocities even as he was speaking?
If the Czech bulldozers of monasteries and churches weren’t Obama’s fellow Leftists then he would not have had to reach another 1000 years back into history to the Crusades when he was grasping for a pretext.
Part of the difference between treatment of Catholic clerics and Protestant clerics might be due to the fact that the Catholic Church had the unifying authority of one Pope. Another factor might be that The World Council of Churches was subject to KGB influence from Russian Orthodox clerics that were KGB approved and in fact were KGB agents. The Catholic Church never joined the World Council of Churches.
The sad irony is that later in the Americas some Catholic clerics succumbed to the siren song of Liberation Theology.
PM-ing you friends over there—so be on the lookout!
I don’t think it’s all that complicated. During WWII, the Czech resistance was to Hitler’s regime was mostly Catholic (partly because most Czechs were Catholic.) Hitler had such a hard time with them he went about exterminating them. In Lidice, his troops rounded up all the men and boys and shot them. My mother used to tell us about family members she lost over there. This happened in other towns as well.
When the Russians took over, they remembered how the Czech Catholics resisted Hitler. They weren’t going to let that happen again.
Flagg, just a quick comment to let you know that this post has already generated very, very interested discussion around the world. I had dinner last night here in Paris with Ricochet member iWC and two of his colleagues from the Czech Republic, devout Catholics both. Guess what we talked about?
I was very proud to be able to say that we had, on the Main Feed of Ricochet, a post written by a historian who was in the midst of doing new and original research on the subject.
This is a subject I have always found interesting but have never really gotten around to studying. Thank you for rekindling my desire to learn more.
Even if largely unknown, it would be good to learn more about this. It sounds like one of the ingredients for a new Donatist Controversy.
Thank you for doing this research-look forward to hearing the next installment. I learned so much (was ignorant) about the Church during the war – saw “A Witness to Hope” on our local public TV. Had NO idea. While Christianity has made many mistakes, to me it remains a wall, preventing all hell from breaking loose. I once heard a priest say the devil’s goal in a nutshell: “Take out Jews, take out Christians and clergy – the rest will be a walk in the park because they have no armor.”
I’m not Catholic, but it seems they are the ones not conceding to social trends on moral grounds-telling this administration they are not budging – defending life in all its forms, and standing up to “changing laws” in healthcare, etc. (and only ones training exorcists).
We’ve seen the debilitating vacuum, and eventually evil, that comes from societies trying to erase God and replace with man. I feel like the spiritual battle is ramping up and all hands on deck are needed. I believe that is why the former pope resigned – the first in 600 years…. I’ve seen evil infiltrate and destroy incredibly talented & loving clergy, marriages, teenagers, families. You are doing important work – Claire’s book “Menace in Europe” – important work. Interesting how certain “groups”” & governments fear Christians and Jews, fear freedom, and seek to silence at all costs. The world is distracted. The below are vigilant – click on resources:
http://www.blackrobereg.org/resources.html
Interesting. Looking forward to more. Thanks.
As a Christian and son of a czech émigré the intersection of these two subjects always interests me. At the moment I happen to be reading a book by Victor Verney on Jan Žižka. He notes of the present day “there can scarcely be a grater irony than the Czech Republic’s current status as one of the most irreligious countries in Europe”. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on the prospects of the church in the Czech Lands going forward.
For what it’s worth, I came across some UN census data for 2012 showing about 10% catholic. I’ve made the data a little more readable here.
The Velvet Revolution meant that it wasn’t necessary for a Czech generation to harden themselves to renew the ’68 struggle to change the Communist regime, surely a blessing in humanitarian terms.
One big difference compared to US standards of conservatism is the relatively smaller component of Czech rural, religious and/or business people involved in the leadership of the final, successful wave of anti-Communism; it wasn’t just Havel’s fondness for Frank Zappa and the Mother of Invention or Allan Ginsberg, or Prague’s libertarian winking at weed. It’s as if the American tea party movement drew the heart of its strength from Bill Maher and k.d.lang.
This resistance doesn’t differentiate the former Czechoslovakia from Poland, where the Communist repression of Catholics was much less severe. And the massacre in Lidice was a reprisal for the assassination of Heydrich–it wasn’t aimed at Catholics in particular.
This vastly overstates the relative magnitude of Plastic people/musical underground wing of the Charter movement. No doubt the trial of the Plastics was a precipitating event in the formation of the Charter. But the musical underground was just one element in a diverse coalition in the Charter. The strength of the religious community was reflected in the fact that 1 of the 3 Charter spokespersons was always from that community (whether priest or layperson). This religious community was able to mobilize people on a greater scale than any other part of the movement: over 150,000 for a pilgrimage to Velehrad in July 1985, around 400,000 signatures on a petition for religious freedom initiated in late 1986, and around 10,000 in a mass to celebrate St. Agnes of Bohemia in March 1988.
Have you seen the statue of Zizka on Vitkov Hill? It is GINORMOUS!