118 JAMES RAMON FELAK
a vindication, of past efforts to foster worship in Bohemia in a
Slavic language.
Vatican II led to further action on a liturgical issue whose
resonance in Czech history matched that of vernacular worship:
the reception of the Eucharist “in both kinds.” A defining feature
of the fifteenth-century Hussite movement was the demand for
the laity to receive during the Eucharist both bread and wine:
the Body and Blood of Christ.41 This so-called Utraquism was a
practice of the early Church, but by the Middle Ages, the wine/
Blood was reserved for the clergy alone in the Western Church, a
distinction challenged first by Hussites and then by Protestants
a century later. As with the promotion of vernacular worship, the
communion in both kinds for the laity, permitted thanks to Vati-
can II, could be perceived as a vindication of the Hussites. Argu-
ably, it also removed an obstacle standing between Czech patrio-
tism and Catholicism.
Perhaps no change in Czechoslovakia better represented both
the spirit of the Council and the spirit of the Prague Spring than
the development of dialogue both between Catholics and Prot-
estants and between Catholics and Marxists. Indeed, the DKO’s
action program criticized the Church of the past for “insufficient
efforts at ecumenical dialogue and dialogue with nonbelievers.”42
Czech Protestants took an interest in the reforms in the Catholic
Church, and several Czech Protestants attended the Council as
observers—most famously, the Czech Brethren’s Josef Hromád-
ka, who reported on the Council in the journal Křesťanská Revue.
As Czechoslovakia’s regime began to liberalize, ecumenical dia-
- The second part of the Four Articles of Prague issued by the Hussite lead-
ership in October 1420 read, “That the Holy Sacrament of the body and blood of
Christ under the two kinds of bread and wine shall be freely administered to all true
Christians who are not excluded from communion by mortal sin”; quoted in Jaro-
slav Krejčí, “A Culture of Ecumenical Convergence? Reflections on the Czech Experi-
ence,” Religion, State and Society 20, no. 2 (1992): 248. - Svoboda, Na strane ̆ národa, 67.