VATICAN II AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA 119logue grew, and it became a regular part of Church life in the sec-
ond half of the 1960s.43
The apogee came in the ecumenical seminars held from 1967
to 1969 at the Protestant seminary in Prague-Jircháře. These
were initially sponsored by Protestants, but Catholics soon be-
gan to participate avidly, helping to organize the events. Instruc-
tors from the Catholic seminary at Litome ̆řice sometimes took
part. These periodic meetings, some lasting as long as two weeks,
attracted on average between fifty and a hundred participants—
both Catholic and Protestant—and produced a core group of
around three hundred Czech Christians interested in theological
reform. The program consisted of a short prayer, followed by a
lecture and then a discussion. Topics included the thought of im-
portant foreign Catholic theologians such as Yves Congar, Hans
Küng, and Karl Rahner. Growing out of the networks established
at Litome ̆řice were joint efforts at the translation of important
texts, reading groups centered on patristic writings, and work
with youth.
Dialogue with Marxists also proceeded in the years immedi-
ately following the Council, which overlapped with those lead-
ing up to the Prague Spring.44 Both reform movements fed off
of each other. Some reform-minded Marxists began to take an
interest in both the Council and in the Jircháře seminars. One of
them was the sociologist Erika Kadlecová, who established ties
with the younger Catholic generation—and, soon thereafter, be-
came the Prague Spring’s head of the Secretariat for Church Af-
fairs at the Ministry of Culture. For their part, some Catholics,
too, experienced a growing interest in Marxism. For example,
the émigré theologian Karel Skalický explained that the Prague
Spring prompted him to take a deeper interest in Marxism both
- On this ecumenical dialogue, see Balík and Hanuš, Katolická církev v
Československu, 286–88. - On Catholic-Marxist dialogue, see ibid., 288.