Father Pkokop's Dilemma

by JOSEPH WECHSBERG

1

I MET Father Prokop (as he shall be called here) one night recently in a small farmhouse near the edge of a forest that marks the border between Czechoslovakia and the United States Zone of Germany. Our meeting had been arranged by a trusted friend. When I came in, Father Prokop was sitting by the window, reading his breviary. He was wearing civilian clothes and no clerical collar. He is a heavy-built, slow-moving man in his late fifties, with a round, friendly face, He comes from a Czech peasant family and has spent most of his life in a near-by Czech village, except the years when he went to school in the provincial capital where he was later ordained as priest.

“I’ve always understood the people in my village and they’ve understood me. They know that I belong there,”he said to me. “And now some of them no longer believe in me. That’s the worst part of it.” He turned toward the window. There was a deeply troubled look in his eyes. I asked him how it had all started.

“I had been afraid there would be changes over since ‘they’ took over our country in February, 1948,” said Father Prokop. “Personally, I was left alone until one afternoon in August when two members of the local National Committee came to see me. They were Kratochvil, the grammar-school teacher, who was the leading Communist theoretician in the village, and Pavlasek, the secretary of the agricultural cooperative.”

On that afternoon, Father Prokop was working in the field behind the old church in the sleepy border village in Western Bohemia which had been his parish for the past thirty-one years. Kratochvil shook hands with him and said they had good news. The National Committee had decided to have the roof of the church repaired. The money would come out of State funds.

Father Prokop was dumfounded. The baroque cupola of his ancient church had long been in need of repair; yet his first impulse was to turn Kratochvil down. He knew the offer didn’t come out of the goodness of the Communists’ heart. They would probably use it as a propaganda stunt; they might even ask him to thank “them” from the pulpit.

Father Prokop said he would have to discuss the matter with his immediate superior, the district priest. Kratochvil laughed. “Never mind the district priest. We’ll gel the materials and the workers and the job will be finished in no time.” When the two men left, Father Prokop was so troubled that he had to walk over to his church and pray for a long time.

The district priest was reluctant to make a decision himself and passed the matter on to the bishop’s office but Father Prokop never heard from them. Too much was happening in that fall of 1948. The government began to collect signatures from priests supposedly “demanding” that they become State-salaried, civil servants “on the condition that their services be rendered to the State.”Priests who refused to sign were arrested by the SNB, the National Security Police. In Slovakia, an old stronghold of the Roman Catholic Church, many peasants tried to shield their priests, fighting against the police with scythes and pitchforks. There were rumors that priests would no longer be permitted to read their bishops’ pastoral letters from the pulpit, that Archbishop Dr. Josef Beran was “ in trouble.”

It was all very bewildering for Father Prokop, the village priest. He’d never cared for Church politics, or the involved details of the relations between State and Church. He had turned toward priesthood because he wanted to serve God and his parishioners; rarely had he traveled farther than to the district town.

His personal life had been a regular, peaceful routine. Saying early Mass at six in the morning. Then over to the school house where he was teaching religion and geography. There was paper work to be done and a sermon to be prepared for Sunday. In the afternoon he would work in his garden and in the field belonging to the church. Throughout the day his parishioners would call on him constantly. Even people like Kratochvil, the teacher, who often criticized the Church, would come over to ask Father Prokop’s advice in personal matters. There were sick people who needed his assistance and occasionally there was a wedding, a christening, or a funeral, and once a week he went to the district town to report to his old superior. Sometimes Father Bednarek would come over from the neighboring village for a cup of coffee and a chat.

There were small rewards for his quiet, constant work. Once a year Father Prokop would take his villagers on a pilgrimage to Svatá Hora (Holy Mountain). A few gifts at Christmas time and throughout the year but never enough money to have the roof fixed or to buy a new altar carpet. An occasional glass of wine in the village inn after dinner, perhaps a game of cards with the mayor, the doctor, and Kratoehvil, the teacher. There would always be a lot of arguing and good-natured kidding.

It was a good life and on Sundays the church was always crowded. Most of them were older people — the younger ones would gossip in front of the church — but Father Prokop knew that they too would come when they were having trouble.

Then the Germans occupied the country. All of a sudden Father Prokop’s church became a spiritual refuge for the frightened people of the village and a symbol and center of national life. In those days Father Prokop would never dismiss his parishioners after a service without giving them hope for the future and for national survival. The Nazis didn’t like him but they never got tough with him. They arrested a number of leading Church dignitaries for “treason” — the Czechs had another word for it, “patriotism” — and for hiding political prisoners. Some of the bishops, among them Archbishop Beran, were thrown into the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps, but the rank and file of the clergy were not much bothered. When refugees asked Father Prokop to help them, because the Gestapo was after them, he would give ihem sanctuary until they were able to continue their way.

“It was nothing to brag about,” he says now. “Every cleric would do it, Catholics, Protestants, Greek Orthodox, the Czechoslovak Church. On the day of the Liberation, I was up on the platform in the village square with Kratochvil and the other members of the newly formed Action Committee. Everybody was crying and laughing at the same time. Crying because we remembered our people who had been taken away by the Nazis, and laughing when we thought of the future. It was a happy day.”

2

WHEN the Communists look over, less than three years later, Father Prokop was trying to say to himself, “They won’t be worse than the Nazis.”

Hadn’t Archbishop Beran himself held a To Deum for the newly elected president Klement Gottwald on June 14, 1948, giving him his blessing in Prague’s St. Vitus Cathedral? Even some villagers who had joined the Communist Party remained regular churchgoers. Kratoehvil would never miss Holy Mass. Father Bednárek had come from Prague and told Father Prokop that most Communists were still faithful Christians.

A few weeks later Father Prokop read in the papers that Monsignore Dr. Jan Srámek, the former Prime Minisler, and Antonin Hála, a former member of the government, both of them highranking officials of the (Catholic) People’s Party, had been arrested in Rakovnik as they tried to leave the country in a small French plane. Thereupon almost every day brought disquieting news. The Church was forced to give up its orphanages, kindergartens, grammar schools, and second-grade schools. The new land-reform laws stated that no man could keep more than fifty hectares of land, and the Church was not exempted. The law didn’t concern Father Prokop’s Church holdings, which were less than thirty hectares; but all in all 317,000 hectares of Church properties, fields and forests, were expropriated by the State.

In the spring of 1949, a Ministry of Church Affairs was set up in Prague under Dr. Alexej Čepička, the fast-rising siar demagogue of Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party and the son-in-law of President Gottwald. Cepicka was born a Roman Catholic, a fact which he has long forgotten. He is an extremely nervous, ruthless, and able organizer who became the militant leader of his government’s anti-Church drive. Soon his Ministry suppressed all religious newspapers, declared itself the sole arbiter for all Church matters, passed laws regulating “the new administration” of the Church, censored all internal Church instructions, and began to make appointments of Church functionaries. The annual Corpus Christ i processions and pilgrimages were abolished and the clergy were advised to take the faithful to “peace rallies” instead.

A special department of the Church Ministry was assigned to select Bible quotations—quoted often out of context —that could be applied to Communism. All quotes were tied in skillfully with Moscow’s “peace campaign.” They would almost give the impression that the Bible had been written by Marxist theoreticians.

“I was deeply worried,” Father Prokop was saying to me. “All the time I was asking myself what should I do, what could I do. Then our country’s fourteen bishops met and denounced the Communist regime; several bishops wrote sharply condemning pastoral letters. I received two pastoral letters from my bishop which I duly read from the pulpit. After I’d read the second letter, Kratochvil came to see me. If this happened once more, he said, he would have me arrested. I told him to mind his own business. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘If you want to play the martyr, go ahead, read the letters!’ The newspapers reported that ‘traitors in priests’ clothes’ throughout the country were being arrested. At one time over a thousand priests were in prison, one out of seven.

“One evening in May, 1949, Father Bednárek came to see me. He wore civilian clothes and seemed very upset. He had been traveling all over the diocese for the past three days, distributing a new pastoral letter among the village priests. Twice the SNB had almost caught him. He gave me my copy and said, ‘You’re going to read it on Sunday in church, aren’t you?’”

Father Prokop turned toward me. His face had become drawn and there were deep lines which the long, silent suffering had engraved. “You’re trying to get other people’s advice but sooner or later there comes a moment when you are all alone with your conscience,” he said softly, as if speaking to himself. “You pray. There is no one who can tell you what to do except God. You pray that He may let you do the right thing but you never know, really, and there are always doubts. What is the righl thing? Loyalty to your Church or loyalty to your parishioners? To resist, be arrested, and leave your people alone, or to give in and stay with them? If I read a Communist newspaper, I’m liable to be excommunicated. Yet every newspaper in my country is edited by Communists, even the new Church papers. That means, I shouldn’t read anything. But on the other hand, the police may arrest me for not reading the Church Ministry’s publications. No matter where you look, you have to face your conscience. There is no way out. It is a perpetual, insolvable dilemma.”

He leaned back in his chair. He seemed very tired. “Did you read the pastoral letter?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. I didn’t. But Father Bednárek did and they arrested him, right after Mass. He has been sentenced to five years’ hard labor. Now I am going to his parish twice a week to take care of their most important needs. Since last winter I also have two other parishes whose priests have been arrested. One is nine kilometers up in the mountains. In wintertime the snow is pretty deep there, but I try to celebrate Mass at least once a week. Four parishes isn’t so much. There is one district in Prague where one priest takes care of eight churches.” He looked at his hands for a while and said, “When Father Bednárek was arrested, I prayed to God and asked Him to give me strength. You see, today I’m not afraid to join Father Bednárek. But all the time I have been asking myself whether my arrest and confinement would help my faithful ones who are now more in need of spiritual guidance than ever. One day shortly after Father Bednárek was taken away, old Holub came to see me. He was crying. His older son had become a member of the Communist workers’ militia and was guarding the frontier. And the younger boy, twelve, told his folks that he wasn’t going to church any longer. ‘Don’t leave us now,’ the old man said to me. ‘We’ve never needed you more than today. Without you, we’re lost.’

“Somehow I thought I was seeing a light. Perhaps, I said to myself, the old man is right. Suppose I should pretend coÖperation so they would let me remain at freedom? At least I could still lead my parishioners and save many from a direct departure from God. Naturally, it can’t be done from the pulpit since they are always watching me. But there are ways and means. I can visit the people and talk to them and pray with them.” He held his head cocked as if he were listening to the sound of his own voice. “Sometimes I’m surprised about myself,” he said. “ I was never a leader. I was content to follow others, to be a simple soldier of God and leave the planning to the generals. And now—” He didn’t finish the sentence.

3

NO LONGER could Father Prokop get guidance from his superiors though he too needed it more than ever. He had to have special permission from the State authorities if he wanted to travel to the district town. He rarely had a chance to talk to the district priest alone. They were always being watched. No one could see the bishop, who was under house arrest at his residence, unable to communicate with members of his diocese. And Archbishop Beran had not been outside his Prague baroque palace since dune 19, 1949, and was said to be “briefed” for a gigantic anti-Church show trial that would dwarf the Mindszenty trial and the former trials against bishops, abbots, and canons. Beran has always been extremely popular with the population at large for his patriotic behavior during the Nazi occupation.

Early in 1950 the State assumed the right to keep the registers of newly-wed couples and of newborn children, a right that for centuries had belonged to the Church. No citizen is now allowed to have a Church wedding without first being married by a representative of the local National Committee, under the pictures of Stalin and Gottwald. All Church collections were abolished. Father Prokop has become a civil servant with a monthly salary. He was told that his services in the village school were no longer needed.

The Church Ministry began to appoint vicars general in all fourteen dioceses although none of the former vicars had died. The problem was solved, with characteristic straightforwardness, by the arrest of the old vicars general. The State-appointed vicars formed a new body, somewhat like the bishops’ conference, and took over all functions of the police-controlled bishops. At their recommendation the Church Ministry appointed “progressive” or “patriotic” (meaning pro-Communist) canons, clergymen, and laymen as heads of many schismatic Church organizations which kept their old names but worked for the Communists, thus further confusing the faithful. It so happened that the new leaders of the State-dominated Church had all been excommunicated by the Vatican, months and years ago.

Every week Father Prokop, and every ot her priest throughout the country, receives an avalanche of instructions from the Church Ministry which must be read from the pulpit. He must neither add nor delete anything. Kratochvil, the new “church secretary,” sees to that. For the Church Ministry has appointed “church secretaries” in each of Czechoslovakia’s fifteen thousand communities. They are to act as “mediators between the Church Ministry and the clergy,” and would be “responsible for the religious life of the community.”

Kratochvil took charge of his new office with great enthusiasm. “I’m a good Christian myself and I’m going to church every Sunday, but that doesn’t mean that I have to fight against my nation.” he said to Father Prokop.

“I am not lighting against my nation,” said (he priest.

“Yes, you are, if you follow your bishops, who are lackeys of the Vatican. The isolation of the Church must be broken. The Church must go among the working people in factories and on farms in seeking the truth. You must teach your parishioners to work for the paradise on earth instead of telling them to wait for the paradise in Heaven.” Apparently getting tired of this Party gibberish, Kratochvil added tersely, “There will be monthly meetings in the district town between clergy, local officials, and representatives of the Catholic Action. Attendance is compulsory. We church secretaries will inform the clergy of the topical needs of the Church. We will help you to reach political maturity. If I were you, I would cooperate. What’s the use of going to a labor camp for fifteen years?”

4

IT WAS almost a relief when Father Prokop was ordered by the Church Ministry to go to Prague to attend a fortnight course in political education. He was told to wear his priest’s robe on his (rip so that the State Police could watch him at all times. In Prague he had to live at a new priests’ home in Ječná Street, which had been set up by the Movement of the Progressive Clergy. He had to read the Catholic Shepherd, a new monthly magazine edited by Church Ministry officials, and to listen to lectures at the theological faculty of Prague University. Last year the Catholic universities were abolished and the theological faculties were placed under the supervision of the Church Ministry. Dean of Prague’s faculty is Dr. šanda, who was excommunicated before World War II. The faculty specializes in awarding honorary degrees to suspended, excommunicated Catholic priests.

“I thought I had become pretty shockproof, but the things I heard at the so-called theological faculty!” Father Prokop said, shaking his head. Several officials of the Church Ministry had enlightened ihc students and Father Prokop on what they calk’d “the true mission of the Church.”

I asked Father Prokop what that meant. He gave a slow, painful shrug. “Their reasoning goes like this: ‘Christ gave his life to give us peace. Our country, like the other people’s democracies and the Soviet Union, wants peace. In all these countries the Communist Parties are the driving power.’ Thus, it is reasoned, the Communist Party has the same aims as Christ. Who is against Communism is against peace, and also against God. Peace, peace, peace!” Father Prokop shook his head in despair. “You people in the Western world are hardly able to appraise the full, devilish impact of the so-called peace campaign on our population. Naturally, everybody wants peace! The campaign helped the Communists to wrestle many people away from us. When everybody in our village was urged to sign t he Stockholm resolution, Kratochvil and his gang came after me too. They figured that my signature would convince many parishioners who didn’t know where to turn. I put them off and went to consult my superior.”

The old district priest looked sick and haggard. “I’m glad you managed to come,”he said to Father Prokop. “I’ve got to talk to you and I won’t be here much longer. They are preparing a trial against me.”

Father Prokop was shocked. He had been very devoted to his superior. “But why?”

“Oh, the usual charges. Espionage. Treason. Crimes against the republic. I’m afraid this is our last meeting. Now about this Stockholm peace resolution. I hope you will sign it. No matter how you may feel personally, you must try 1o stay on your job. You are now taking care of four parishes. We can’t just give up all those people. They need us.” He added, “I was able to see the bishop this past week fora few minutes. This was his express wish.”

Father Prokop covered his face with his hands. “Today it is the peace resolution. Tomorrow it. may be a telegram denouncing the Holy Father. Then the church secretary will make me publicly admit that the Communists are right. And thereafter—”

“I know how you feel. But the individual’s feelings are no longer important. We can’t put up organized resistance against the State Security Police. We cannot wage the fight on an open front. The Communists make a great point of being seen in church. Everything is done to convince the people that ‘to be a good Communist is to be a good Christian.’ They’re smart. They are fighting 1o get you now. They want yon, the small clergyman, on their side because people like you will lend authority to their designs. They will try to persuade you. They have an explanation for everything. They don’t just break up our monasteries. Instead they will tell you that there is a sev ere building shortage and why should twelve monks live in that large Strahov Monastery? And they want ‘to make available the monastery libraries to the workers.’ So they merge the religious orders and send hundreds of Franciscans, Dominicans, Benedictines, Premonstratensians, to a special camp on a river island in Slovakia for ‘reeducation.’ The property of the religious orders is ‘consecrated to truer purpose.’ Convicted priests are sent to a special camp because in one of the eighteen ordinary labor camps ‘they might exert a dangerous influence upon the inmates.’ ”

Father Prokop had been listening quietly to his superior. Now he spoke up. “There was a time when I was terrified at the mere thought of being arrested,” he said. “I suppose we are all human, But lately I have often wished I were where Father Bednárek is. My own parishioners are beginning to doubt me. I have noticed their reproachful looks. Yesterday old Holub turned the other way when he saw me. They think I have sold out to the Communists and became a ‘progressive’ priest.”

“People are often ignorant,” said the old priest. “ But in the end they will understand your motivations. They will realize that it was for their own sake that you have wrestled with your conscience and decided to stay. It is easier to give in and be arrested. It saves you the doubts, the pains, the spiritual torture. But you mustn’t do it. You will have to play two different parts: one for the public record and one for your Church. See what happened in Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, where the Church put up an open fight. Today the faithful there are afraid to be seen in church. In Rumania and Bulgaria our Church has practically ceased to exist. We must gain time. In one or in five or in fifty years the Communist nightmare will be over. A few decades mean nothing to our two-thousandyear-old history.”

Father Prokop left his superior and never talked to him again. Three weeks laler the district priest was arrested. Father Prokop and other priests throughout the diocese were ordered to attend the trial. “It was a well-rehearsed performance,” Father Prokop now says, with just a slight undertone of bit terness. “He had been forced to learn the indictment by heart. He had to plead guilty to all charges. If he had refused they would have confiscated all Church property in the diocese, He was sent to a camp for twelve years. God was good to him. He died a few months ago of pneumonia.”

Father Prokop got up, pointing at the window and the faraway line of trees that marked the border. “I must get back before daybreak. I suppose you know why I came here across the border?”

I said I had a good idea.

“Yes,” he said. “I helped two of our people to get into the American Zone. When one has lived here all his life, one knows every path and tree. . . . If somebody had told me two years ago that I was going to break the laws of our country and help people cross the border! Well, this is my last trip, I suppose. I have been transferred to a parish in Central Bohemia where I have no friends and can trust no one. They have transferred many priests to keep us under closer surveillance. But I have made up my mind and I will try to hang on as long as I can. Two weeks ago I even read a pastoral letter from our new vicar general which said, ‘The highest religious task is to fight for world peace. . . . The resolutions of the Warsaw Peace Congress must be observed by the faithful. . . .’ Afterwards, I told some of my people in private conversations what I really thought of this letter.”

“And if somebody should denounce you?”

Father Prokop didn’t exclude this possibility. “I suppose one has to follow one’s instinct about people,” he said. “In a neighboring parish a man recently came to confession and told the priest he had received information of some anti-State activities. According to our new security laws, every citizen must denounce even his next of kin who have committed or have knowledge of anti-State acts. Failure to do so is considered sabotage, and means heavy prison terms. The priest knew instinctively that the man was probably an agent provocateur, trying to set a trap for him. He exhorted him to gather his strength through prayer and to report to the security police. Only a few days ago I heard that in Hungary a secret clause has already been added to the Church laws which compels all priests to reveal to security organs information received from the faithful through confession. Several priests were arrested because of their failure to do so. Soon people no longer will be able to talk freely during confession.”

He took his breviary and his overcoat and shook hands with me. “There will be more arrests and show trials, and new organizations of schismatic, so-called ‘progressive’ institutions. About one fifth of our clergy have gone over to the Communists. Others, delicately terrorized, will join the ranks of the ‘progressives,’ The Communists are playing a clever game. Always using persuasion where force can be avoided. But they won’t win in the end.” He shook his head, with smiling conviction, and the worried look was no longer in his eyes. He looked confident, almost cheerful now. “You see, you just can’t stop millions of people from believing in God.”