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strengthened religious toleration and freedom of conscience and formed the legal basis of all religious activities in Bohemia and Moravia until 1949.

After the creation of the republic in 1918, the Roman Catholic Church lost many members and much of its strong influence in national affairs in the popular reaction against its close relations with the former Hapsburg rulers. Between 1918 and 1921 the Church lost an estimated 1,400,000 of its members in Bohemia and Moravia, about half of them joining the newly established Czechoslovak National Church or other Protestant churches and the other half remaining without any religious affiliation. Through a modus vivendi finally concluded between the government and the Vatican in 1928, whereby ecclesiastical jurisdictions were changed and the Vatican agreed to submit its appointments to certain Church positions to prior approval of the government, the Catholic Church once again became an influential force in national life. Its power was not confined to the religious sphere; it was also exercised through the Catholic political parties, labor unions, sports clubs, and charitable and educational institutions.

Despite the departure after World War II of some 3 million Germans, 90% of whom were Catholic according to the 1930 census (the latest official information on religious affiliation), and of almost 100,000 Hungarians, 63% of whom were Catholic in 1930, most estimates currently place the Roman Catholic population at about 10 million, or about 70% of the total population. The Catholic Church is divided until two archdioceses and 12 dioceses. There is no archdiocese in Slovakia; Slovak bishops are still technically subordinate to the Hungarian archdiocese of Esztergom.

Following the Communist takeover in 1948, the regime launched a massive campaign to bring the churches under complete state control. This campaign was directed mainly against the Catholic Church, which the regime sought to shape into a pliable instrument of domestic and foreign policy. The Communists viewed the church as an obstacle to the development of socialism and regarded the Vatican as virtually a foreign enemy—the headquarters and espionage center of "world clergy" in the service of the capitalist powers.

From 1948 until the fall of Novotny in January 1968, the regime was dedicated to the eventual dissolution of all organized religion and all vestiges of religious feeling. For political expediency, the regime at first was content merely to weaken the church's authority and maintained a relatively conciliatory attitude calculated to elicit compliance and cooperation. The bishops resisted regime tactics, however, and the Communists responded by launching an all-out offensive against all religious communities but mainly against the predominant Catholic Church. Legislation was enacted giving the state financial control and power of appointment over the clergy. Those clergymen refusing to bow were expelled from church activities, deported, or jailed, including the Archbishop of Prague, Jesef Beran, who was to spend 14 years in prison. The regime recruited its own group of "patriotic priests" to fill the vacancies and set up the Catholic Clergy for Peace as a front. Religious orders were liquidated, monasteries were closed, citizens were pressured into leaving the church, and atheism was introduced as a formal subject in the schools. Although forced into submission, the church remained for many people a symbol of resistance to communism.

Throughout the 1950's the regime conducted an antireligious propaganda campaign designed to accelerate their "cultural revolution" and the development of the "Socialist man." As a result of their conversion into state-supervised organizations, the churches became economically dependent on the state and were governed by officials loyal to the regime. In addition, the churches were forced to propagate and support various policies such as collectivization of agriculture and the "peace campaigns." At the same time they were not permitted to propagate or defend religion outside the churches or to contest the antireligious propaganda and activities of the regime.

As the demands for liberalization and change swept across Czechoslovakia in the early 1960's, the regime appeared to be seeking a new accommodation with the Catholic Church. This development stemmed in part from the general easing of tensions between the Vatican and the Communist countries of Eastern Europe, fostered by the late Pope John XXIII, and the confidence of the Prague regime that the church posed no great threat to stability. Moreover, the regime wanted to improve its image internally and abroad. In addition to toning down antireligious propaganda, the regime permitted a Czechoslovak Catholic delegation to attend the Second Vatican Council beginning in 1962 and facilitated the transfer of Archbishop Beran to Rome in 1963 after his 14 years of detention.

The sociopolitical reformation of the mid-1960's and the promise of a new era in relations between church and state aroused optimism among church officials who hoped for an atmosphere under which religion and communism could coexist. In addition to replacing conservative government officials respon-

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