108 JAMES RAMON FELAK
man Rights in its treatment of religious believers and called for
“a genuine dialogue with Marxists, which is happening already
abroad. Paul VI, the Council, modern theologians, and a series
of progressive Marxist theoreticians invite us to this. We regard
the dialogue of an open Christianity with an open Marxism and
with other humanistic systems as a hope for humanity and for
the future of our Republic. We must indeed speak only as inde-
pendent Christians, and we need conditions for the spreading of
a modern postconciliar Catholicism among believers.”
On the same day on which this letter appeared in the press,
a petition signed by masses of Czechoslovak citizens was deliv-
ered to the Communist Party’s Central Committee, categorizing
the numerous crimes perpetrated by the regime against Catho-
lics since the 1950s and calling for a number of changes and re-
forms.14 The grievances included the internment or imprison-
ment of bishops and priests; restrictions placed on episcopal
authority; show trials against Church leaders and members of re-
ligious orders; the liquidation of all religious orders in April 1950;
the break in ties with the Holy See; the imposition on dioceses
of “Church secretaries” who were openly hostile to the Church
and interfered with its operations; severe limitations on religious
education in the schools; and the placing of obstacles in the path
of young men seeking a priestly vocation. At this point, eight of
the country’s thirteen dioceses were without a bishop.
The letter called for a number of changes. These included
the appointment of bishops to vacant sees; the abolition of the
institution of Church secretaries; an amnesty for clergy and la-
ity imprisoned for carrying out their religious obligations; per-
mission for priests to take up their priestly offices; abolition of
the numerus clausus for admission of candidates to seminaries;
- For the text of the letter, see Svoboda, Na straně národa, 61–63. Svoboda
puts the number of signatures at 300,000, Cuhra and others at 100,000; see Jaro-
slav Cuhra, Církevní politika KSČ a státu v letech 1969–1972 (Prague: Ústav pro sou-
dobé de ̆jiny AV ČR, 1999).