CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Drive Against the Church

For centuries both friends & enemies of the Vatican have stood in awe of its facilities for collecting information from the remotest corners of the world. Although this reputation often exceeded the facts, Vatican intelligence about church affairs has rarely lagged as far behind events as its information on the Iron Curtain countries does today. It is a measure of the effectiveness of Communist secrecy that Vatican diplomatists have had to rely heavily on the newspapers to get the facts about the Communist campaign against the church in Eastern Europe. And most of what they read in the newspapers is what the Communists choose to release.

Two years ago, the Vatican was in the dark about events leading up to the trial of Cardinal Mindszenty in Hungary. Last year Vatican officials at first refused to believe that Polish bishops had signed an agreement, highly disadvantageous to the church, with the Communist government of Poland. Without Vatican approval, Hungarian bishops last year signed a similar agreement. In recent weeks, Rome has been trying to find out what is happening to the church in Czechoslovakia.

Excommunication. In the absence of precise knowledge, the Vatican has leaned over backward to avoid alarmist or inflammatory statements. In February, Zdenek Fierlinger, Czech Vice Premier, published an article in the weekly Parallèle 50 (named for Prague’s latitude) in which he boasted that two Czech bishops, “loyal” to the government, had ordained as priests the first group produced by Catholic seminaries since control of these institutions was taken over by the Communist government. At the time, Rome refrained from any suggestion that the officiating bishops acted improperly.

Last week, however, the Vatican reacted vigorously to Communist announcements that Prague’s Archbishop Josef Beran had been expelled from his archdiocese and that his authority had been taken over by Antonin Stehlik, until recently an obscure parish priest in a Prague suburb. The Sacred Consistorial Congregation, headed by the Pope, issued a declaration restating the laws on excommunication and asserting that “all those who have contributed . . . physically or morally” to the banishment of Beran and to the subversion of the Czech church have incurred excommunication “in accordance with canon law . . . and will remain subjected to excommunication until they obtain absolution directly from the Holy Apostolic See.”

Excommunication, the Vatican pointed out, is a spiritual sanction. Therefore, the Vatican could issue no list of persons to whom excommunication applied. Each Czech Catholic would have to consult his own conscience.

“National” Churches. A Vatican spokesman said that Antonin Stehlik was under “the strongest and most painful suspicion” of having incurred excommunication. But even in his case, the Vatican’s information about what is going on in Prague is so incomplete that he has not been excommunicated by name. In discussing Stehlik’s case, one Vaticaner said: “We can’t be certain because of the scandalous closing down of all channels of communication between the Apostolic See and Czechoslovakia.”

Rome believed reports that the Communists used Beran’s absence from his duties as an excuse for election of a new diocesan administrator. The Reds packed the chapter with docile priests and Stehlik was elected capitular Vicar of Prague. Presiding at the election was Bishop Antonin Eltschkner, auxiliary to Beran. A year ago, Eltschkner was the first bishop to swear loyalty to the Prague regime. Although the Vatican did not forbid such oaths, the fact was that Eltschkner gave the Communists a tremendous boost.

Last week’s excommunication marked a stage in the reluctant recognition by Rome that the Communists were probably making considerable headway in their drive to split parts of the Catholic hierarchy away from Rome. Cleverly, the Reds have avoided an all-out assault on religion as such. They are trying to create “national” churches. While several national Christian churches have flourished for centuries, there is no record (and no probability) of a national church lasting long under an anti-Christian government.