Fortunately, the local communist authorities didn’t. And that was the whole point. During the dark days of the cold war, the former Czechoslovakia’s communist regime relentlessly persecuted Catholics, carefully vetting who could be ordained and jailing anyone who spoke out against the government. It wasn’t long after the Soviet invasion in 1968 that an underground church took root. Bishop Felix Davidek of Brno, a priest who’d spent 14 years in communist prisons, began secretly ordaining priests because so many parishes were shorthanded. They needed a cover, though, and so many of the priests ordained by Davidek were not only engineers, librarians and musicians, but married men. By day, they worked their jobs and raised their families. By night, they conducted secret masses in private homes.
The plan worked, and the Catholic Church survived. But now the Vatican, which has always insisted on strict rules of celibacy for Catholic priests, finds itself in a tight spot. Though Davidek hedged his bets by ordaining the married men as Eastern-rite priests–a special Ukrainian branch of the Catholic Church that allows for married priests–the men performed traditional Roman Catholic ceremonies as well as Eastern-rite ceremonies. They still do, and their congregations have gotten comfortable with the notion of married men saying mass. This, along with the dwindling number of men becoming traditional Catholic priests, raises an interesting theological question. Should the church rethink its position on celibacy?
In the years immediately following the collapse of communism, the Vatican seemed determined to keep its priests chaste. Czech church leaders quietly ordered the married priests to stop saying mass. The Vatican began questioning whether Davidek had even been properly ordained as a bishop. According to married priest Vaclac Ventura, who now teaches theology in the northeastern city of Olomouc, the years spent in limbo were particularly frustrating. “It was a time when priests who had collaborated with the secret police were given the green light, and we were given the red light,” he says. The church had been willing to support Ventura and his peers when its survival was in danger. Now that it seemed it wasn’t, the church couldn’t decide how to deal with its married priests.
The Vatican knew it owed the priests something for supporting Catholicism during troubled times. It also knew the Czech Republic was still suffering from a priest shortage. So two years ago church leaders came up with a compromise. They established an Eastern-rite diocese in the Czech Republic, and 20 of the married priests were admitted into it. “This was created for them because the Roman Catholic Church didn’t want to accept them directly,” concedes one church official in Prague. The priests took the job, but not without noting the ironies. “We’re Eastern-rite Catholic priests, but we have no parishioners,” says Josef Javora, a married priest and father of three sons who keeps a framed picture of the pope in his Brno apartment. “It’s absurd.” The married priests can say Eastern-rite mass for Roman Catholics, but they’re only allowed to say Roman Catholic mass in the company of a celibate Roman Catholic priest.
Most of the parishioners couldn’t care less about the priests’ marital status. Ivana, a woman who worships at Brno’s St. Mary Magdalene, where three married priests serve, says, “I’m not dogmatic. If their consciences are clear, they can stand on their heads.” The priests contend that marriage can actually make them better servants of God. “Marriage means to live in love, which is what Christianity is all about,” says Ventura, who was a librarian in the old days. “You can have very deep experiences in marriage. It allows you to understand the problems of the people better.”
The people want the priests they know and trust–whether they’re married or not. Already, pressure from local parishioners has forced the Vatican to consider restoring the married priests’ right to perform Roman Catholic ceremonies alone. Until they do, Josef Javora will have no problem finding a partner for his Sunday mass. Inspired by his father’s dedication, the unmarried Marcel Javora was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1995. Together, the father and the son continue to keep the holy spirit alive in Brno.
