Catholic World News News Feature

CZECH CARDINAL SPEAKS OF "CLANDESTINE PRIESTS" May 29, 1996

VATICAN (CWN) -- "We have been silent too long," said Cardinal Miloslav Vlk of Prague, explaining his decision to speak openly, in an interview with the Italian magazine Il Regno, about the controversial topic of the "underground priests" ordained in Czechoslovakia during the years of Communist oppression.

Cardinal Vlk's interview marked the first time that the Czech prelate offered a detailed explanation of the situation involving the underground priests. The interview also offered a response to a previous interview, published in the same magazine, in which Bishop Jan Blaha said that "at least one" woman-- Ludmilla Javorova-- had been involved in an ordination ceremony.

Cardinal Vlk said that there had been several inaccuracies in Bishop Blaha's interview. The cardinal-- who himself was ordained during the period of the underground Church-- pointed out that there were actually two different stages of clandestine Catholic life. Between 1950 and 1968, he said, there were only "several clandestine bishops" serving in Czechoslovakia, and they regularly ordained priests in secret, "with the approval of the Holy See."

Beginning in 1968, however, Cardinal Vlk reported that Bishop Blaha and one episcopal college, Bishop Felix Davidek, began to go beyond the realm of ecclesiastical laws, and "abused" the special trust of the Vatican. These two bishops, Cardinal Vlk said, were responsible for the ordination of many married men, and the ceremony in which Ludmilla Javorova was allegedly "ordained"-- although that "ordination" was clearly invalid.

The Czech prelate recalled that the Holy See had allowed underground bishops to ordain priests and even other bishops, but only "in certain situations and according to certain conditions." Bishops Blaha and Davidek, he said, "did not respect those conditions."

"The Holy See had always sought to restrain the disastrous activity" of these two bishops, Cardinal Vlk said, and even today the Czech Church "bears the burden of the situation created by Blaha and Davidek." Most of the married priests have been incorporated into Byzantine Catholic communities which allow married priests. But several priests are reportedly still operating "underground," refusing to cooperate with the Czech hierarchy.