Publikace

Catholic Churches Built between 1948-1989 in the Area of the Czech Republic - Inattention or Appeasement of the Communist Party

Ing. arch. Eva Svinteková

The Czech Republic was under the communist regime between the years 1948-1989. It wasn't favorable era for the educated society much less for the Catholic church, which was one of its biggest enemies of the Communist Party. The numbers speak for themselves. There were over seven thousand Catholic priests, almost three thousand monks and over twelve thousand nuns in the Czechoslovakia in the moment of takeover by the Communist Party in February 1948. Until the end of 1950s, 400 Czech and 300 Slovak priests were arrested, 3 priests were executed and over 50 priests, monks and nuns were tortured to death. Almost 2 500 monks were interned during the operation "K" and 4 000 nuns were deported to the concentrated centers under the operation "Ř". On the background of these events, this paper follows effort and desire of the ordinary believers to build in their villages and towns new churches, places for gathering, despite numerous attempts of the Communist regime to break their faith and resolution. The study emerged from the preliminary research phase of the grant project called "Forms of Catholic Churches Made of Reinforced Concrete in the Czech Republic", where the list of Catholic Churches of the 20th and 21st Century was done. This revealed the discrepancy in the bibliography in the number of the Catholic churches built in the Communist era after the Second Vatican Council in the area of the Czech lands. Firstly, this paper presents the corrected list of the churches built between 1965 - 1989. Secondly, it briefly introduces five Catholic churches built in the Czech lands between years 1965 - 1989 and informs about the historical connections and events (e. g. church of Nicolaus in Ticha) and happy combination of circumstances (e. g. church of St. Joseph in Senetarov, 1969-1971), why these churches could be built. Was this an inattention or an appeasement of the Communist Party?

Za obsah této stránky zodpovídá: prof. Ing. arch. Petr Vorlík, Ph.D.