Komunistická církevní politika na periferii a v centru
The Communist church policy at the periphery and in the centre

Summary/Abstract: Kafka, Jan: V hodině velké zkoušky: Církevní politika státu v severovýchodních Čechách v letech 1948–1960. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2017, 399 pp., ISBN 978-80-7465-260-8. In the reviewer’s opinion, Kafka’s monograph "In the Hour of a Major Ordeal: The Church Policy of the State in North-Eastern Bohemia between 1948 and 1960" represents a valuable contribution to research of the Czech church history in the 20th century. It provides not only well-arranged information, but also methodological stimuli for research of the local situation in relation to the middle and central levels in the context of the policy of the Communist Party and the state authorities in the1950s. It deserves credit for its comprehensive coverage which includes, inter alia, non-Catholic churches and communities of monastic orders (while male orders were banned, female ones were permitted to go on, albeit on a limited scale),a well-done analysis of the functioning of church secretaries, or the history of the Hradec Králové diocese as a complex church administration organism during the period under research. The author does not avoid the topic of the cooperation of priests with the State Security, and proposes to add a new category to the commonly used classification of their attitudes to the Communist regime. The exploitation of sources, among which state archives clearly prevail, while church sources are more or less absent, is rather one-sided.

• Details
• Contents