VATICAN II AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA 115pressed concern over the organization’s growth, initiative, and
“activization of the Church,” and it continued to postpone of-
ficial approval. That approval never came. By October 1968, the
Interior Ministry had rejected legalization, and on November 17
the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslova-
kia designated the organization as hostile to socialism. The DKO
lived on until 1970 without legal authorization and then contin-
ued on in the fantasies of the security police, who later created
the myth that the organization had been a radical, extremist,
militant force that opposed the regime and terrorized priests
sympathizing with the government.31
Another change resulting from the confluence of the Prague
Spring and Vatican II was the reopening of the seminary at Olo-
mouc.32 Shut down in 1950 by the Communists, who allowed only
the seminary in Litome ̆řice to remain in operation, calls for its res-
toration emerged as early as March 1968, as Catholics needed more
seminary seats in order to address a growing shortage of priests.33
The government took its time in authorizing the reopening, but
the Ministry of Culture finally gave its approval in early Septem-
ber 1968 in the wake of the Warsaw Pact invasion. Technically,
the seminary was not a new institution, or even the revival of an
older one, but rather, as its official name implied, “the Cyrillo-
Methodian Faculty in Prague with its seat in Litome ̆řice, branch
in Olomouc.” Though the seminary had inadequate space and
faced both the municipal government’s hostility and the Culture
- Ibid., 123.
- Miloslav Poisl, “Obnova Cyrilometodějské bohoslovecké fakulty v Olomouci
a vliv II. Vatikánského koncilu na teologické vzdělání,” in Koncil a česká společnost,
138–47; Balík and Hanuš, Katolická církev v Československu, 289. - In 1948, there were 2,934 priests in the Czech lands; this number had
dropped to 1,978 by 1968; Balík and Hanuš, Katolická církev v Československu, 122.
The numbers for Moravia-Silesia, where Olomouc is located, were 2,041 in 1948 and
1,011 in 1968. In 1968, 26 percent of the parishes in Moravia-Silesia were without
priests; Poisl, “Obnova Cyrilometodějské bohoslovecké fakulty v Olomouci a vliv II.
Vatikánského koncilu na teologické vzdělání,” 139.