Czech Church not exactly pleased with new Pope
Written on 6:58 PM by Jack B.
Via a one paragraph summary in The Prague Post comes this little tidbit from the editorial pages of Pravo:
"Fifteen years of relative freedom have also left a mark on Czech Catholics: Not one Czech prelate would pretend in the media that he identified with the papal election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger or supported his theological and moral stances, Petr Uhl writes in Pravo April 22.
No religious officials outwardly criticized the new pope, but Bishop Vaclav Maly pushed the democratization of the church: Will the bishopric conferences be granted more authority? John Paul II did not devote much time to reform. The Czech church is more liberal than Slovakia's or Poland's but still not as liberal as in the West. Spokesman for the Czech Bishopric Conference Daniel Herman supports the idea of a modern church and worries over its possible conservative future. Frantisek Radkovsky, the bishop of Plzen, emphasizes compromise and was not pleased to say the new pope would continue traditional moral stands. The more Czechs will learn about this, the better. There will be less anti-Catholic prejudice, Uhl writes."
Considering that the Czech Republic is largely regarded as the most secular country in all of Europe (even more than France!) and the Church barely exists there post-Communism, I don't think the Czech bishops or the spokesmen should be saying anything at all. Obviously what they're doing is not exactly working.
