Faith in Britain

him president and replaced him as General Secretary by the man who had purged the Prague Spring. It was to no avail and the writer, Vaclav Havel, led his Civic Forum to victory.

By June 1990 Havel was President and Civic Forum secured a majority of seats in the June 1990 elections (46.6 per cent). In addition, the Union of Christian Democrats secured a further twenty seats (12 per cent) and supported Havel in the formation of the new Government.

Throughout the long years of opposition and in the fashioning of the new democracy the Church played a pivotal role. The Church in Czechoslovakia is not as strong as in Poland. Historically, it has been divided between Catholics (associated with Habsburg counter-reformation and restoration) and Protestants (influenced particularly by Jan Huss and Jan Masaryk),14 while both Churches were ruthlessly suppressed during the Stalinist period, and again after 1969.

Dr Oto Madr, a Czech theologian present at the Ampleforth Conference, spent time in prison and labour camps for his beliefs. He listed the separate techniques which had been used by the State to try to kill the Church: ideological warfare; defamation; disinformation; gerontisation; isolation; discrimination; surveillance; intimidation; obstruction; atomisation; schismatisation; and secularisation. The Reverend Anton Hlinka, who now works with Pro Libertate Christianorum in Munich, gave further weight to Madr's description from the experience of the Church in Slovakia. Believers were eradicated from certain areas of society, a ban was placed on spiritual renewal movements, the Catholic press was almost entirely dissolved, all monasteries and convents were closed. Christianity was branded as the fifth column of capitalism and imperialism, and physical and psychological methods were used in an attempt to destroy zealous priests and lay people. The effect was to intensify the purity of the Church and increase its determination to survive.

Two of the key figures in the Czech revolution of 1989 were Vaclav Maly, a banned Catholic priest and Vaclav Benda, a Catholic intellectual, and one of the brains behind the original Charter 77 group of dissidents. Along with Havel and Dubcek, the third great symbol of the Czech movement for democracy was Cardinal Tomasek. At the crucial November 24th Wenceslas Square meeting Tomasek sent the following message: 'The Catholic Church stands entirely on the side of the people in their present struggle. I thank all those who are fighting for the good of us all and I trust completely the Civic Forum which has become a spokesman for the nation.' The following day Tomasek led the celebrations at Prague Cathedral to mark the canonisation of Agnes of Bohemia. The actual canonisation had occurred on November 12th in Rome, five days before the revolution began. An ancient Bohemian legend has it that wonders would occur when Agnes was canonised.