Lessons from the Church of Silence

Lessons from the Church of Silence Speaking to a crowd of 43,000 in a Cleveland stadium in 1935, Father — later Archbishop — Fulton Sheen, already on his way to becoming one of the best known religious figures in the country, said this: “In the future there will be only two great capitals in the world, Rome and Moscow; only two temples, the Kremlin and St. Peter’s … but there will be only one victory — if Christ wins, we win, and Christ cannot lose.” And at a date unknown, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, reminded of the need to take the pope’s views into consideration, is said to have sneered: “How many divisions has the pope got?” Taken together, the two quotations reflect the seething gulf of hostility and suspicion between Catholicism and communism before, during and after World War II. Especially after. Especially concerning the Church of Silence. The birth of the Church of Silence To a great extent, the Church of Silence — a name often applied to the Catholic Church in communist-ruled postwar Eastern Europe — had its birth just over 75 years ago. The reality it signified had its origins at a top-level conference in early 1945 at the Crimean city of Yalta. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin met at Yalta in February 1945 to discuss their joint occupation of Germany and plans for postwar Europe. Public domain Taking place while the war still raged but victory by the Allies had become certain, the Yalta conference brought together President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Stalin to discuss, among other things, the postwar configuration of Europe. At that time, the Red Army was ploughing into Germany from the north and south, moving into Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and threatening Vienna. Largely in recognition of the facts on the ground, the negotiators at Yalta agreed that the Soviet Union would enjoy postwar hegemony in eastern and central Europe. Stalin promised free elections in the countries involved — a promise easily given and quickly broken. A year later, with the war over and the postwar landscape settling into place, the consequences were summed up by Churchill in a memorable phrase that was part of a memorable speech delivered at Westminster College in Missouri. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,” he declared, “an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe … subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in many cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.” And behind that Iron Curtain, the Church of Silence had been born and was now struggling to survive. Remnants of the Berlin Wall, which divided the city into democratic East and communist West Berlin, now stand as a memorial. Adobe Stock Another persecution begins According to Cambridge University historian John Pollard, Eastern Europe’s new communist masters at first dealt with the Catholic Church with a relatively light hand. But under pressure from Moscow, where stepped-up Stalinist repression of religion had begun, the screws were tightened starting in 1948. “The Church came under attack in the Baltic States, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia,” Pollard writes in his exhaustive study “The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism.” “Very similar policies were applied in all these countries, based on the ideology of atheistic materialism and the Soviet experience of three decades of the ‘Godless campaigns.'” Elements of the new anti-Church program included nationalizing Church schools, ending religious instruction in state schools and sometimes in private ones, creating new, secular youth programs in competition with or in place of those of the Church, confiscating monasteries and convents, forbidding clergy and religious to wear distinctive garb, and cancelling existing concordats between local governments and the Holy See. In several countries, too, the communists sought — with some success — to divide the Church by setting up organizations of collaborationist clergy and so-called “peace priests,” who received promotions and other favors in exchange for supporting the regime. Especially notable features of the anti-Church campaign were the show trials of those years in which Church leaders in several countries were tried and convicted for allegedly treasonous acts or collaboration with Nazi or fascist rulers during the war. Cardinal Stepinac Among those so targeted were Archbishop, later Cardinal, Aloysius Stepinac of Zagreb in Yugoslavia, whom Pope John Paul II declared a martyr and beatified, and Cardinal Josef Beran of Prague, Czechoslovakia, who had spent three years in Dachau and other concentration camps for opposing the Nazis, and whom the communists then sentenced to another 16 years in prison. His beatification process began in 1998. The case of Archbishop, later Cardinal, Jozsef Mindszenty of Esztergom, primate of Hungary, is particularly notable. Although his anti-Fascist record was, in Pollard’s words, “impeccable,” and as bishop of Veszprem during the war he had protested the confinement of Jews in ghettos and their deportation from the country, he nonetheless was imprisoned by the communists and accused of spying, treason and currency manipulation. Historian Michael Burleigh in his book “Sacred Causes” writes that the attack on the churchman “was not simply designed to destroy the primate or to intimidate the Catholic Church, but to show ordinary Hungarians that if a cardinal was not safe, nor were they.” Cardinal Mindszenty “Denied proper sleep for nearly 40 days,” Burleigh writes, “Mindszenty was interrogated through the nights, an experience interspersed with extended torture sessions in which a police major assaulted him with a rubber truncheon. Mysterious doctors were on hand to administer drugs, which Mindszenty was certain were also being mixed with his food. … “After a month of this mistreatment, Mindszenty was prepared to sign documents, the contents of which he was scarcely cognizant of, and whose dates and facts were altered to suit the case the communists were preparing. He also wrote to the minister of justice, confessing his illicit involvements with the British and Americans in order to bring about a federal monarchy in central Europe under the Habsburgs, and offering to resign to pre-empt the need for a trial.” Following a three-day trial during which the Cardinal appeared dazed — in his own words, “a man broken in mind and in body” — and his guilt was taken for granted from the start, he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Church’s position In response to the communist onslaught against the Church of Silence, Pope Pius XII (r. 1939-58) and the Vatican fought back as best they could. There was little to be done directly on behalf of persecuted Catholics behind the Iron Curtain, but Rome could — and did — labor mightily to prevent further expansion of communism westward. Pope Pius XII gives a blessing at the end of a radio message Sept. 1, 1943. The pontiff made several calls for peace over the radio during World War II. (CNS file photo) This was especially the case in Italy, where Pope Pius’s efforts were credited with contributing significantly to communist defeats in the 1948 and 1950 general elections that they were widely thought to have a good chance of winning. In the face of that threat, which would have been disastrous not only for the Church but for Western democracy, the pope called on Catholics to turn out and vote while threatening those who supported communist candidates with excommunication. The pope’s tough stance was mirrored in a decree dated June 28, 1949, issued by the Holy Office, predecessor of today’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. To the question of whether it was allowable to join the communist party or support it, the answer was no, with this explanation: “communism, in fact, is materialistic and anti-Christian; the leaders of communism, though they sometimes declare in words that they do not fight against religion, nevertheless, in reality, whether in action or in doctrine, show themselves to be hostile to God, to the true religion, and to the Church of Christ.” In time, communist repression had its predictable result, though one apparently unforeseen by the communists themselves. People who for years had been intimidated into knuckling under to their oppressors finally rose up, said “Enough!” and rebelled. The first largescale uprising took place in Hungary in 1956. At first it seemed as if the Hungarian revolution were, marvel of marvels, a great success. But that lasted only until Russian tanks came rumbling through the streets of Budapest, crushing the revolution and the revolutionaries with brutal force. Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty gives a speech in 1956 at the time of the Hungarian revolution. Wikimedia Creative Commons/Jack Metzger Cardinal Mindszenty, freed from prison at the start of the revolution, now fled for safety to the American embassy. And there he remained for the next 15 years. In 1971, a deal was negotiated allowing him to leave the embassy and go to Vienna. Although he stepped down as primate of Hungary, the Holy See left the position unfilled until after his death in 1975. By now, though, times had changed. The Vatican was no longer the Vatican of Pius XII. Pope John XXIII, who succeeded him, had granted an audience to the atheist son-in-law of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and published an encyclical, Pacem in Terris, calling for peace. The Second Vatican Council had met and, to the dismay of some participants, nowhere in its documents so much as mentioned communism, much less condemned it. And now Pope Paul VI and his secretary of state, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, were pursuing a policy ofOstpolitik (Eastern policy) that called for coming to terms with the communist regimes of Eastern Europe.

Load more