Hour of Trial

From church pulpits throughout Czechoslovakia, Roman Catholic priests last Sunday read a defiant, 4,000-word pastoral letter, delivered to them by couriers sent out from a secret meeting of the country's bishops. They read it despite nocturnal visits from the police, despite the warning of Communist Premier Zapotocky that further "antistate" activity would be met with arrests and trials. They were fortified with the words of their archbishop, Josef Beran, who remained in his Prague palace surrounded by armed plainclothesmen. "Do not allow yourselves to be intimidated by threats," he had written. "In these difficult times all priests are conscience-bound to inform the faithful of the true state of affairs." Beran and the bishops added that priests who refused to read their letter would be "subject to ecclesiastical discipline."

Bill of Particulars. The letter constituted a detailed bill of particulars indicting the state's campaign to "completely exterminate the church of Christ." It accused the government of all manner of persecution, of deceit, fraud, kidnapings and robbery. "All the ecclesiastical press . .. has been suppressed ... Every Catholic book which is to be published, even prayer books, is subjected to preliminary state censorship. State plenipotentiaries are planted in Catholic publishing houses . . . The church is deprived of the last remnants of its property . . . Almost all church schools have been wiped out, and those which remain are painfully insecure . . . Teachers of religion are tested ideologically and are given directives on how to teach religion in the materialist spirit.

"In Slovakia, monasteries were forcibly cleared out and the priests and nuns taken away in trucks . . . The meeting of bishops at Dolny Smokovec [last March], which was to have taken a stand on the demands of the government, was broken up when listening devices were discovered in the conference room . . . The latest conference of bishops in Prague was disrupted by security police . . .

"In reality, the church was deprived of all possibilities of successful negotiations and given just one choice: submission to dictatorship or persecution ... With gladness would we render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, but we will not sacrifice to him that which is God's . . .

"The nation looks upon you, how you will fare in this historic hour of trial. Remain loyal to your bishops, who suffer with you and do not waver even if their voice does not reach you. The church is indestructible and to suffer for Christ is the greatest glory."

"Hang Them!" For the most part, Czech congregations listened to the pastoral letter in silence and in sorrow. But at Prague's Church of the Crusaders, Communist hecklers interrupted the reading with shouts of "Hang them and hang their chief!"

Next day, Communist action groups and police swept the country. They seized all church administrative offices, installing officials of the government-sponsored Catholic Action, which Archbishop Beran has denounced as "schismatic." Priests who resisted were immediately arrested. The Communist Caesar recognized no things which were God's.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.