VATICAN II AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA 111relegalized; a new organization called the Dílo Koncilové Obno-
va (Work of Conciliar Renewal), or DKO, was founded; and the
Church allowed freer interaction with theological and cultural de-
velopments in the West.20 While most of these demands and their
fulfillment would also have suited a pre–Vatican II Church, several
were particularly appropriate for the Church as it emerged from
the Council.
Despite these accommodations, significant differences re-
mained between church and state. The system of Church secre-
taries stayed in effect, maintaining the government’s capacity to
meddle in Church affairs; male religious orders continued to be
suppressed; and the problem of filling vacant dioceses with can-
didates acceptable to both the Church and the regime was left
unsolved. The Prague Spring did not see a resumption of nego-
tiations between the government and Rome, though there were
some stirrings in this direction from March 1968 onward.21 It
may seem surprising that the Vatican did not try to seize the mo-
ment and pursue an agreement with the reformist regime, espe-
cially given that it had negotiated regularly with the hardliners
previously in power throughout the 1960s.
In the end, the resumption of talks did not take place until
1971, by which time most of what the Prague Spring had accom-
plished had been rescinded. Agostino Casaroli, the later cardinal
and secretary of state of the Holy See who, as a Vatican diplomat
in the 1960s, had negotiated with the Czechoslovak government
over the Beran case, ascribed the lack of Vatican-Czechoslovak
negotiations during the Prague Spring to several considerations.
- Balík and Hanuš, Katolická církev v Československu, 44–45; for example, the
Prague archdiocese established a lecture series called Living Theology, which ac-
quainted the younger generation with the theological thinking and developments
in the Church outside Czechoslovakia. A similar series was then established in Brno;
Svoboda, Na strane ̆ národa, 73. - Karel Kaplan, Te ̆žká cesta: Spor Československa s Vatikánem 1963–1973 (Brno:
Centrum pro studium demokracia a kultury, 2001), 53