120 JAMES RAMON FELAK
in theory and practice, to develop a better understanding of the
situation in which Czechoslovakia found itself.
By the early 1970s, so-called normalization had undone nearly
all of the reforms of the Prague Spring, including the ones connect-
ed with religion. The Catholic Church once again faced repression
and harassment akin to what it had encountered in the pre–Prague
Spring period. Only some Czech Catholics embraced the teaching
of the Council with enthusiasm. Many pastors and laity, it seems,
saw the reforms as a luxury for churches operating in free societ-
ies, not pertinent to a situation in which the Church was fighting
to survive and thus needed to rely on older tried and tested val-
ues.45 This reluctance was aided by the regime’s refusal to allow the
collected conciliar documents to be made available in Czech until
the early 1980s (apart from a small run in an ecclesiastical journal
of the clergy).46 Contacts with Catholics and other Christians out-
side the Soviet Bloc were also impeded. Finally, there was the cau-
tion of clergy simply not wanting to draw to themselves the atten-
tion of the regime. However, despite these formidable obstacles,
Vatican II continued to exercise at least some influence on Catho-
lics in the Czech lands during the final two decades of Communist
rule in Czechoslovakia.
Reconciling Postconciliar Life with “Normalization”
Even after the Prague Spring’s suppression, Council-inspired cat-
echetical materials were both published legally and smuggled
into Czechoslovakia from the West, chiefly from West Germany.
Czechs adopted and adapted Western theological works for use
in clerical and catechetical formation.47 In 1974, Caritas officially
- Ibid., 301.
- Petr Fiala and Jiří Hanuš, “Průběh a význam koncilních změn v katolické
církvi v českém a moravském prostředí,” in Koncil a česká společnost, 176. - For a discussion of the influence of Western—mostly German—publica-