122 JAMES RAMON FELAK
Christian interpretations of his message and to the teaching of
the Church fathers. The White Book, the most theologically ad-
vanced, was geared toward graduate-level students of theology;
it discussed the Church’s situation in the Communist world. It
gave a positive appraisal of steps taken by John XXIII, Paul VI,
and the postconciliar Church to develop better relations with the
Communist world, noting how these developments had improved
the situation of Christians living under Communist rule. Though
they were translations of works published abroad, these text-
books were used by various study circles of Catholic activists and
at dozens of underground seminaries. They had a lasting impact
on Czech religious formation.
Samizdat material produced both at home and abroad by Czech
Catholic thinkers and activists reflected conciliar values. The émi-
gré theologian Skalický, for example, played a key role in one of the
most interesting and fruitful postconciliar initiatives for Czech Ca-
tholicism—the reinterpretation of the Czech Catholic past in ways
that reconciled Czech nationalism with Catholicism, thereby over-
coming traditional Czech prejudices against the Church. Though
living in exile in Rome, Skalický brought a Vatican II–inspired per-
spective on Czech history to the dissident community in his na-
tive land via smuggled publications and Vatican Radio broadcasts.
Working at the Christian Academy in Rome, Skalický produced an
important study of the “phenomenology of the Czech historical-
national consciousness” in September 1976.49 Through a kind of
“historical-cultural geology,” he identified six “strata” of Czech his-
tory, which he connected with experiences of freedom in Czech na-
tional memory. He cited the traditions of Cyril and Methodius, of
the medieval ruler St. Václav, of the Hussites and Bohemian Breth-
ren, of St. Jan Nepomucký and the Catholic Reformation, of the
national revival and Tomáš Masaryk, and even the Socialist tradi-
- Tomáš Halík, Víra a kultura: Pokoncilní vývoj českého katolicismu v reflexi
časopisu Studie (Prague: Zvon, 1995), 101–3; Balík and Hanuš, Katolická církev v
Československu, 294–96.