112 JAMES RAMON FELAK
From the Vatican’s perspective, Czechoslovakia now had a new set
of personnel with whom it was not yet familiar, including Kadle-
cová, who sought to improve the Church’s situation in Czechoslo-
vakia on her own initiative through work with the domestic Cath-
olic leadership. From the regime’s perspective, religious affairs
were not the highest priority at a time when a multitude of issues
were on the table and in flux. There was also the consideration that
renewing good relations with the Vatican might irritate the Soviet
Union and fuel suspicions of a “counter-revolution” in Czechoslo-
vakia. Finally, one should not forget the Vatican’s tradition of cau-
tion when dealing with an ambiguous and changing situation.22
The crushing of the Prague Spring by Warsaw Pact tanks and
troops in August 1968—followed by the transition into the period
of “normalization,” in which the hard-line regime was reinstated
under the leadership of one-time reformer Gustav Husák—ground
to a halt many of the reforms underway in church-state relations.
A number were, in fact, revoked over the next few months or years.
Very few of the ecclesiastical reforms of the Prague Spring period
were maintained.23 The personnel changes of spring 1968 were un-
done by summer 1969, with Miroslav Brůžek replacing Galuška as
minister of culture in July and Hrůza, the man Kadlecová had re-
placed in March 1968, getting his old job back from her in June.24
- These reasons, including the explanations given by Agostino Casaroli in his
memoirs, are discussed in František X. Halas, “Vztah státu a církve v československu
totalitního období ve sve ̆tle vzpomínek kardinála Casaroliho,” in Koncil a česká
společnost: Historické, politické a teologické aspekty přijímání II. Vatikánského koncilu
v Čechách a na Moravě, ed. Petr Fiala and Jiří Hanuš (Brno: Centrum pro studium
demokracie a kultury, 2000), 62–64. - One reform that was maintained was the relegalization of the Greek (or
Eastern Rite) Catholic Church. Forcibly incorporated into the Eastern Orthodox
Church in the spring of 1950 and surviving secretly, at least in spirit, into the 1960s,
it was legalized by a government resolution of June 13, 1968, and resumed operation
in the summer of 1968 as a religious institution based almost exclusively in eastern
Slovakia. For more on this issue, see Michal Barnovský, “Legalizácia Gréckokatolíck-
ej cirkvi v Československu roku 1968,” Historický Časopis 47, no. 3 (1979): 447–65. - Kaplan, Te ̆žká cesta, 54.