Some might see it as a paradox: The Czech Republic, a country where more than 50 percent of people claim to be atheists, has no formal separation of church and state.In a system with roots deep in the communist regime, the clergy are de facto state employees whose salaries are subsidized by the government.
Taxpayers, regardless of whether they subscribe to any religion, pick up the tab.
Now, nearly 18 years after the fall of the regime that had stripped the Catholic Church of its material assets and placed it under state control, the government is prepared to discuss change.
On May 30, Culture Minister Václav Jehlička, a Christian Democrat, established a six-member commission for church-state relations.
Besides the culture minister, the commission will include the foreign affairs minister, the finance minister and the agriculture minister, as well as the minister without portfolio in charge of human rights issues and the deputy chairman of the Chamber of Deputies.
The commission’s aim is to help right wrongs committed by the communists, namely to find a way to compensate churches for confiscated property and to formalize the relationship between church and state. Emerging after years of wrangling between entities, the new discussions may finally clarify the terms of the notoriously tense relationship.
Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, archbishop of Prague and a key player in the almost 15-year ownership dispute over St. Vitus Cathedral, says he welcomes this development. “It’s a certain sign of the current government’s good will to try to resolve these issues,” he told The Prague Post.
“We are now waiting for the commission to find a way to also communicate directly with the Czech Bishops’ Conference,” an association of bishops established by the Holy See.
Restitution & Resolution
Compensation for property confiscated by the communists has been at the heart of the conflict between the Catholic Church and the state. Matters are further complicated by the decay of many former church properties.
When the communists confiscated church property in 1948 and began paying priests’ salaries, officials said it was to rid the church of the burden of having to administer property, said Karel Štícha, an economist at the Archbishopric of Prague.
Priests would be free of earthly responsibilities and could focus all their energies on the spiritual.
The real reason, of course, was that under the new system the state gained complete control over the church.
In the first few years following the 1989 revolution, the government made several attempts to return the property. About 200 buildings were returned, according to Culture Ministry spokeswoman Marcela Žižková.
Church property restitution was halted in the early 1990s, however, following legal complications that had accompanied many of the restitution cases.
Church property that has yet to be returned — worth in total anywhere between 75 billion and 100 billion Kč, according to the Culture Ministry — has wasted away over the years and is in dire need of costly repairs.
This is why financial compensation would be far more practical than trying to change laws so those properties can be returned, Štícha said.
Aside from state compensation, the Catholic Church also wants the new commission to address the issue of the Vatican Agreement, a document that would spell out the role of the church.
The Czech Republic is currently the only European Union country that has yet to sign such a treaty with the Holy See. Though such an agreement was drafted in the late 1990s, it was struck down by Parliament in 2003.
According to Roman Zaoral, a professor of medieval history at Charles University, politicians have been reluctant to sign the agreement because it would allegedly give the Catholic Church a special position outside the reach of political leaders.
“No other church [denomination] has its highest seat outside the country,” Zaoral said. “And some politicians, including President [Václav] Klaus, don’t like that.”
Long Road
According to Jiří Koníček, a judge with the Diocesan Court in Olomouc, the commission is a big step forward, something unthinkable under the previous Social Democratic-led government. “At the very least, it has paved the way for constructive dialogue,” he said.
Koníček helped draft a memorandum earlier this year that called on the government to mend the relationship between church and state. The government’s response was to set up the commission.
After years of failed attempts to address the issue, why the sudden change?
At least part of the reason is that the Christian Democratic Party, a member of the three-party ruling coalition, has a much bigger role in the government following last year’s general election.
“I think the pressure to help improve the position of the church and to compensate it for confiscated property will only grow during this election term,” Zaoaral said.
With this latest development, church leaders are cautiously optimistic about becoming more economically independent from the state.
“The church needs to be privatized,” Koníček said. “In a sense, it’s the last communist institution in this country.”
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