Faith in Britain

By December 28th the Communist regime had collapsed and on December 29th, with Dubcek in the chair, the Federal Assembly elected Vaclav Havel as the new President. To underline his gratitude for the uncompromising and unflinching response to successive Communist regimes by the ninety-year-old Primate, Cardinal Frantisek Tomasek, Havel made his first official duty as newly-elected President a visit to Prague Cathedral. Havel also paid tribute to the fierce and staunch defence by the Church of liberty in his country and to the importance of Christian tradition and thinking. He said: 'The greatest book is the Bible, and the greatest book in the Bible is St John's Gospel.'

In his first New Year's address as President, Havel said the worst aspect of the wasted years was the 'devastated moral environment. We are all morally sick because we all got used to saying one thing and thinking another ... All of us have become accustomed to the totalitarian system, accepted it as an unalterable fact and therefore kept it running ... None of us is merely a victim of it, because all of us helped to create it together.' Cain and Abel again.

On November 28th, 1989, in the midst of these quickly moving events, the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak People's Party - the Christian Democrats - adopted their first post-socialist programme. They solemnly pledged their 'unswerving determination' to imbue their party 'with features and aspects fully reflecting the political and religious convictions of the Christians of our state'.

'Our contribution to the political life we are now entering resides in the great ancestral heritage of Christian values, which are an irreplaceable groundwork for the creation of a new democratic society in this country. Our ideological premises unambiguously accept the Christian grasp of reality, society and man's position in society. In this we proceed from the inviolable and inalienable human and civil rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.'

Like its Western counterparts, the Czech People's Party is non-denominational and supportive of democratic pluralism. It strongly contends that a society is impoverished when it loses sight of its spiritual values: 'We reject the thesis that religion is simply the citizen's private affair. We regard religion as an integral part of the spiritual culture of society, a component of irreplaceable import and influence in the process of shaping the identity of a nation. Our faith gave the world men and women of the stature of St Wenceslas, St Agnes of Bohemia, John Huss, John Amos Comenius15 and other men and women of great moral purpose and integrity.'

Czech Christian Democrats also believe that active engagement in political life is an obligation for Christians, not an option: 'It is the duty of Christians to participate in public life. We are convinced that the lasting and genuine good of individuals, nations and states can never be attained through evil, violence and the repression of the rights of other people.'