The confrontation between communism and the Vatican went on at several levels. After 1945, the new communist governments in Central and Eastern Europe attacked the Church from both the outside, by political persecution, discriminative social practices and atheistic propaganda, and within, by fomenting conflicts among the clergy. The difficulties in finding the right response to the internal attacks show up well in the documents concerning ‘progressive’ or ‘patriotic’ priests and the movements and associations they led, in which a recurring question was: Quid faciendum? Should the Holy See react to this challenge by excommunication, bans or warnings (monita), or should the greater evil be avoided by patience and restraint?
There is a substantial literature on the decades-long history of the filo-communist Catholic movements in East Central Europe, which operated under different labels in different countries but frequently described themselves as ‘progressive Catholics’Footnote 1 and were most often referred to under this collective designation in Vatican documents. However, most research has remained within national settings, drawing on local state sources and, to a lesser extent, church sources, and paying less attention to the question of how these movements of ‘patriotic’ priests were viewed in Rome.Footnote 2
Rather than attempting a comprehensive comparative analysis of the pro-communist Catholic movements on the other side of the iron curtain and the Vatican’s response to them, this paper outlines the emergence and aims of these movements in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland from existing literature and concentrates on a Vatican investigation that led to the banning of their newspapers in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1955. It examines the consequences of this investigation and its further development, using sources in the archives of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.Footnote 3 In an analysis of the expert reports, plans and proposals produced for the investigation, the article explores why the Holy See came to see these movements as doctrinally dangerous; the means by which it attempted to act against their members and publications; and the effectiveness of its actions. It argues that although Pius XII undoubtedly regarded communism as the greatest danger to the Catholic Church and to Christian civilisation following the Second World War and strove to defend the doctrines and rights of the Church, condemnations of ‘progressive’ Catholics behind the iron curtain were neither automatic nor purely reactive. Rather, they were often initiated by émigré priests and emerged from a prolonged process of assessment in which the Holy Office weighed doctrinal integrity, ecclesiastical discipline and the concrete vulnerability of churches operating under communist rule. While the Holy Office functioned as an analytical preparatory body, ultimate authority rested with Pius XII, whose decisions repeatedly reshaped, delayed or curtailed dicasterial initiatives in light of broader pastoral and geopolitical considerations.
The Emergence and Aims of ‘Progressive’ Catholic Movements and Organisations
Organisations of ‘progressive’, ‘patriotic’ and ‘peace’ priests were set up in countries behind the iron curtain at the initiative of the new communist regimes there. The key impetus behind their creation originated in the Soviet Union, which – as Stalin said to the US ambassador to Moscow, Averell Harriman, in the winter of 1943–4Footnote 4 – saw the Catholic Church, regardless of ideological differences, as a potential threat to its security. This explains why Moscow set out to loosen or even close off relations with the Holy See after the war rather than seek an agreement. From then on, the primary aim concerning the Catholic Church after 1945 was to force a transformation into national churches. The Greek Catholics were required to break with Rome and ‘return’ to the Orthodox Church, a process that started in spring 1945 with the Greek Catholic Church of Ukraine, which was closest to the Soviet Union,Footnote 5 and extended to RomaniaFootnote 6 and SubcarpathiaFootnote 7 in 1948–9 and to Czechoslovakia in 1950.Footnote 8 At the same time, Catholics of the Latin rite were subject to repeated attempts to transform them into schismatic national churches. For example, Josif Broz Tito attempted to sell the idea to Alojsie Stepinac, archbishop of Zagreb, in early June 1945,Footnote 9 and Enver Hoxha did the same with the archbishop of Shkodra, Gasper Ghaci, and the archbishop of Durrës, Vincenc Prennushi.Footnote 10 In early summer 1949, the schismatic Catholic Action was set up in Czechoslovakia to serve the same purpose.Footnote 11 Proposals along similar lines were put forward in Hungary.Footnote 12
After these attempts to set up schismatic national churches were frustrated by resistance from the local hierarchy and – in the case of Czechoslovakia – effective Vatican intervention,Footnote 13 the communist states began to turn to tactics other than forcing an open schism to bring the Church under full state control in accordance with Stalin’s post-war strategic aim. The spiritual leadership of the pope could remain, but the Church was to become completely independent of the Vatican in political and practical matters. One of the means employed was to set up organisations aimed at securing active loyalty, rather than merely passive acquiescence, of members of the clergy who were not expressly ‘reactionary’.
In Hungary, a mass movement of the clergy was launched in the name of ‘peace’. Following Cardinal József Mindszenty’s arrest in December 1948, the Hungarian Catholic bishops’ conference held out against government pressure for an ‘accord’ between the Church and the state but was eventually forced to the negotiating table by the deportation of monks and nuns that began in June 1950. This was the background to the – ostensibly grassroots – initiative for a national assembly of Catholic priests held on 1 August 1950. The initiative’s immediate purpose was to persuade the bishops to sign an agreement that – although preceded by negotiation – lacked any essential guarantees for the Church.Footnote 14 The National Peace Committee of Catholic Priests, operating within the framework of the National Peace Council, was also set up at the assembly, and between autumn 1950 and summer 1951 the ‘priests’ peace movement’ was built up into a national organisation to serve the government’s plans for the Church.Footnote 15
A similar series of events leading up to the establishment of clerical organisations serving the government’s plans for the Church took place in Czechoslovakia at about the same time, but in a different order. A conference of priests in Velehrad between 4 and 6 July 1950 failed to come up with the desired solid organisational framework for a patriotic priests’ movement. This movement was launched only in late spring the next year. Setting up a church organisation that would provide a counterweight to the bishops, whose loyalty was suspect, the authorities attempted to exploit the looming internal split within the Church after several bishops took an oath on 12 March 1951 and persuade the majority of the lower clergy to cooperate with the system. The initial plan was for a professional association, but the experience of a peace assembly in Bratislava on 23 May 1951 prompted the decision to form an organisation composed of regional and central priests’ peace committees, as in Hungary. The choice of the word ‘peace’, which resonated with Christian doctrine, was particularly aimed at winning over the majority of the clergy, of whom only a relatively small proportion held expressly ‘progressive’ – filo-communist – views. On 21 June 1951, the national committee of the Peace Movement of Catholic Clergy (Mírové hnutí katolického duchovenstva; MHKD) was established under the leadership of priest Josef Plojhar, and the national organisation consisting of the system of lower-level clerical committees was unveiled at a grandiose national priests’ peace conference on 27 September 1951.Footnote 16
In Poland, there was at first no unified, purely clerical patriotic movement of the kind created in Hungary and Czechoslovakia: priests loyal to the system were recruited into two separate major organisations that eventually merged in autumn 1953. On 12 January 1950, the Alliance of Fighters for Democracy (Związku Bojowników o Wolność i Demokrację; ZboWiD) established an autonomous Priests’ Committee made up of priests who were veterans of the war, had a background in the resistance or had been in concentration camps. The committee was opened up in March 1950 to every priest who took a positive view of the People’s Poland. The other main grouping of ‘progressive’ Catholics and of priests who cooperated with the communist authorities was the Committee of Intellectuals and Catholic Activists (Komisja Intelektualistów i Działaczy Katolickich; KIiDK) set up by the Polish Committee of Defenders of the Peace (Polski Komitet Obrońców Pokoju; PKOP) on 4 November 1950 at the initiative of the lay political–intellectual Bolesław Piasecki, leader of the PAX Association, which had formed in 1947. The leaders of KIiDK were mainly lay Catholic intellectuals, although its members also included priests, as its name implied. Piasecki’s aim in setting up the new organisation was to position the PAX Association as the sole mediator between the communist authorities of the Polish People’s Republic and the Church. After the arrest of the primate, Stefan Wyszyński, the party leadership decided to unite the two committees of ‘progressive’ priests and set up the Committee of Catholic Priests and Lay Activists within the Polish People’s Front on 12 October 1953, although the organisational dualism remained in the new set-up until they were merged – as a reaction to the decision of the Holy Office – in July 1955.Footnote 17
Having been planned by the government as a true mass movement, the organisations of loyal priests were joined by only about 10 per cent of the priesthood. Their leaders, a few dozen priests of socially progressive outlook, saw the communists as the longed-for harbingers of social justice and from the inception pressed for the Church to be integrated into the newly forming social system. This led to most of them receiving some kind of punishment by the Church. Faced with the absence of real mass support, the authorities employed two main stratagems to furnish the ‘patriotic’ priests with influence in the Church and society: committed members of the priests’ peace movement were systematically placed in key positions of church governance, and they were provided with their own press organs.
In Poland, a Catholic intellectual group formed up around the Catholic weekly Today and Tomorrow (Dzis i Jutro), launched on 18 August 1945 by Bolesław Piasecki, who had just been released by the NKVD, and (from 1952) via the PAX Association. The Dzis i Jutro group became a prime mover of the Catholic peace movement.Footnote 18 The Prague-based weekly Catholic Newspaper (Katolické Noviny), after the communist takeover in 1948, was the only Catholic periodical allowed to continue publishing in the part of Czechoslovakia that is now Czechia. Despite being an official publication of the Catholic Church rather than of the MHKD,Footnote 19 it was under tight state control and largely operated as the mouthpiece of the communist-conformant clergy. (It should not be confused the Slovakian-language Catholic weekly of the same name that was founded in Pozsony/Bratislava in 1849, which also ran under state control between 1951 and 1989.) In 1945, the immediate post-war regime in Hungary also permitted the publication of only one official Catholic weekly, New Man (Új Ember), but the priests’ peace movement founded in 1950 was allowed to set up its own bi-weekly, The Cross (A Kereszt).Footnote 20 Linked with this was a French-language monthly magazine, Hungarian Catholic Bulletin (Bulletin Catholique Hongrois), launched in January 1954, which transmitted to foreign readers the affairs of the Hungarian church in a way that served the interests of the system.
‘Progressive’ Catholic Newspapers on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum
The Holy Office turned its attention to the Polish and Hungarian Catholic periodicals in spring 1955, and to the Czechoslovakian publications in summer. Various dicasteries of the Holy See had previously taken action of several different kinds against churchmen who collaborated with the communists behind the iron curtain.Footnote 21 The Consistorial Congregation mostly acted in specific matters: on 28 December 1948, for example, it excommunicated those involved in Mindszenty’s arrest,Footnote 22 and on 18 February 1950 it excommunicated the Czechoslovakian priest Jan Dechet for accepting an appointment as apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Banská Bystrica from the state authorities.Footnote 23 The Congregation of the Council also acted in specific cases. On 12 April 1949, for example, it issued a Declaration prohibiting Catholics from reading the Slovene periodical Bulletin (Bilten) on the grounds that it published false doctrines and thus endangered church discipline,Footnote 24 and on 29 June 1950 it issued a general decree on the proper occupation of church offices and benefices. This document prescribed latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See for all those who worked against the legal church authorities and aimed to undermine their authority, or accepted church offices or benefices in a way contrary to canon law, or took part in these unlawful acts in any way.Footnote 25
The Holy See regarded communism as a danger not only because its policies and practices infringed upon ecclesiastical discipline, but above all because its doctrinal system was considered ‘intrinsically wrong’Footnote 26 and irreconcilable with Catholic teaching. In this context, the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office – holding a privileged position among the Roman congregations since 1588 due to its essential role in preserving the integrity of Catholic faith and moralsFootnote 27 – was charged with defending the Church’s internal doctrinal unity against communism.
The Holy Office started work before February 1949 on the text of an instruction or encyclical banning any collaboration with communism. The document was finally accepted in the form of a decree on 28 June and issued on 1 July.Footnote 28 The decree was intended – at least as regards Central and Eastern Europe – to isolate the priests’ (peace) movements that, with state support, were involved in creating schismatic national churches in line with communist policy. It reminded the faithful of the incompatibility of Catholic doctrines with communist ideology and of the need to remain loyal to the Church. It was issued hardly more than a week after the decree of 20 June banning Catholic Action, the organisation created by the Czechoslovakian government to coerce a schism in the Church. The effects of these two documents were markedly different: the decree issued on 20 June 1949 turned out to provide effective assistance to the Czechoslovakian hierarchy;Footnote 29 that of 1 July 1949 did not live up to expectations. Since the document stated that excommunication applied to those who ‘consciously and freely’ collaborated with the communists, its applicability to Catholics living behind the iron curtain was ambiguous, as their capacity to choose the form or degree of their support for the new regime could not be presumed to be exercised in freedom.
The stereotypical view that the Holy Office, headed by the intransigent Giuseppe Pizzardo and Alfredo Ottaviani and charged since 1917 with the responsibilities of the former Index Congregation, passed judgement automatically in every suspicious case does not seem to be borne out. An investigation launched in autumn 1950 concerning New Path (Nova Pot), the periodical of the Slovenian patriotic priests’ association Cyril-Methodius Society (CMD), formed the previous year, did not result in a censorious decision. The votum prepared by Pierre Charles SJ noted that the association that published the journal promoted acceptance of the system and that there was a question as to whether the bishops maintained authority over its members, but he did not find any articles in Nova Pot worthy of reproach on doctrinal or moral grounds. The matter was therefore taken off the agenda of the Holy Office for the time being. The only decision taken was to instruct Silvio Oddi, the regent of the Belgrade nunciature, to monitor developments.Footnote 30
By contrast, in 1955, the weekly magazines of the Polish, Hungarian and – subsequently – Czechoslovakian peace priests’ movements were placed on the Index very quickly. The investigation formed part of a broader process in which the Holy See sought to counter theological and pastoral movements pursuing new directions and frequently suspected of collaborating with Marxism. In the West – particularly in France – this effort led during the 1950s to the condemnation of nouvelle théologie, the removal of its leading figures from teaching positions, the suppression of the worker–priest initiative from 1953 onward and, ultimately, to the prohibition in February 1955 of La Quinzaine,Footnote 31 a journal that had become a refuge for those espousing ‘persecuted’ views. By contrast, for a long time the Holy See paid little attention to the intellectual circles and journals in Central and Eastern Europe that advanced comparable ideas. Following the Holy Office’s 1949 decree – and in part because of the aforementioned uncertainties regarding the genuinely voluntary nature of collaboration with communist regimes in these countries – Rome concentrated primarily on concrete, observable situations that violated ecclesiastical discipline.Footnote 32
The Holy Office’s comparatively late scrutiny of pro-communist journals in Central and Eastern Europe was eventually prompted by a move of Bolesław Piasecki that later proved to be unfortunate. The leader of the PAX Association in Poland sent his book Essential Questions (Zagadnienia istotne)Footnote 33 – a collection of his earlier writings framed by an introduction offering theological justification for cooperation between Catholics and the communist regime – to Józef Maria Bocheński, an émigré Dominican professor at the University of Fribourg. Bocheński was so alarmed by the work that he immediately contacted archbishop Józef Feliks Gawlina, former military ordinary who was in charge of pastoral care for the Polish diaspora as ‘Protector of Polish Emigrants’, in order to secure the Holy Office’s condemnation of Piasecki’s heretical ‘theology’.Footnote 34
In his submissions to the Holy Office in February 1955 concerning the PAX Association-linked periodical Dzis i Jutro, Gawlina criticised both the journal and the erroneous views expressed in Piasecki’s Essential Questions, arguing that the staff of Dzis i Jutro had started to spread propaganda in Western Europe through personal contacts and (particularly French) periodicals aimed at justifying collaboration with the People’s Republic of Poland.Footnote 35 Although Archbishop Stefan Wyszyński and his then private aide and chaplain, the soon to be auxiliary bishop Antoni Baraniak, had on their visit to Rome in April 1951 taken the view that Piasecki’s circle posed a danger only to Western public opinion because almost nobody in Poland regarded the members of the movement as true Catholics, Gawlina made another submission on 2 March that held the effects to be dangerous even in Poland. He argued that an advertising campaign for the newly published Essential Questions was designed as an aggressive means of spreading the views of ‘progressive’ Catholics in parishes and among the faithful. Given the absence of any Catholic media in Poland that was independent of the PAX Association, there was no means of warning the faithful, and so he urged again that the Holy See condemn the book and the periodical.Footnote 36
The investigation launched in the Holy Office following Gawlina’s letters may have spurred a similar Hungarian initiative. In early March, the emigrant Hungarian priest Sándor Csertő, who was working as an archivist in the Holy Office, proposed that the periodicals of the Hungarian peace priests’ movement should be condemned on grounds similar to those proposed by Gawlina.Footnote 37 In his – undated – submission, Csertő put forward two new considerations: whereas Gawlina concentrated on the false and dangerous statements in the articles published in the Polish journal and in Piasecki’s book and primarily pressed for these publications to be put on the Index, Csertő was not satisfied with a simple condemnation of the Hungarian periodicals that propagated similar ideas – A Kereszt, circulated within Hungary, and Bulletin Catholique Hongrois, which spread propaganda to foreign readers. He proposed that condemnation of the publications should extend to a reprimand of the ‘crypto-communist’ individuals behind them. He argued that this – possibly only indirect – censure was needed to address the conscious efforts by the state, unrelated to these journals, to persuade authoritative priests and bishops to collaborate with the system, causing confusion among the faithful. Announcing the condemnation of the peace priests by name via Vatican Radio would have almost no effect,Footnote 38 and neither was it sufficient for the Holy See to withhold grants of honorary titles. Local bishops’ right to grant titles conferring the right to wear pontificals should be suspended. This combination of measures would make clear and visible to the faithful that Rome fully and officially condemned the peace priests’ movement.Footnote 39
Following similar requests concerning Poland transmitted to the Holy See via the Polish embassy in exile,Footnote 40 the chancellery of the Holy Office drafted a proposal on 21 May 1955 that also connected up condemnation of ‘progressive’ Catholics with condemnation of their publications. The document situated the Polish and Hungarian cases within a broader genealogy of Roman responses to state-sponsored ecclesiastical fragmentation. It reviewed the aforementioned position statements on the matter issued by the various dicasteries and, in particular, revisited the Holy Office’s own precedents in dealing with analogous challenges.
The memorandum recalled that in 1949 the Holy Office had condemned the Czechoslovak schismatic Catholic Action,Footnote 41 and that in 1950 it had excommunicated Latin-rite priests in Romania who had formally broken communion with Rome.Footnote 42 It further noted that, in January 1951, in response to dubia raised by the Secretariat of State, the dicastery had clarified that participation in the Romanian ‘Catholic Action Committee’ incurred excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See. At the same time, the memorandum underscored an important counter-example: at the time of drafting the encyclical Ad Sinarum gentem, the Holy Office had deliberately refrained from formal excommunication of members of the ‘Three-Self Movement’ in China, opting for stating only that anyone who accepted the dangerous doctrines proclaimed by ‘Three-Self Movement’ could not be regarded as Catholic.Footnote 43 Against this background, the proposal requested the consultors and the cardinals of the congregation to state their position on which measures should be taken against the Polish and Hungarian pro-communist Catholics, or at least against their leaders, and against the relevant periodicals and book.Footnote 44
The information received by the Holy Office was interpreted as evidence that condemnation could not worsen the state of the already precarious situation of the Hungarian and Polish churches.Footnote 45 On this basis, and supported by expert opinions by Garrigou-Lagrange OP and Eduard Elter SJ,Footnote 46 at the meeting of the consultors on 30 May 1955 (feria II), a unanimous conclusion was reached: the three periodicals and Essential Questions met the criteria for condemnation. At the same time, the consultors distinguished between censuring texts and sanctioning individuals behind the journals or the ‘progressive’ movements themselves. The latter, they argued, required a more cautious approach. Accordingly, their recommendations focused on targeted measures: in Poland, the faithful were to be warned against joining the PAX Association and priests were to be prohibited from doing so. In Hungary, bishops collaborating with the government were to receive confidential admonitions to break off the collaboration, and all Hungarian bishops were to be temporarily deprived of the right to grant church honours.Footnote 47
Wilhelm Hentrich SJ, however, advanced a more expansive interpretive framework. In a separate votum submitted in advance, he not only argued for listing the publications on the Index and recommended suspending episcopal authority in conferring honorary titles in Hungary, citing the propagandistic use of images of ‘para-communist’ clergy vested in pontifical, which, in his view contributed to the international misperception of religious freedom behind the iron curtain, but also argued for issuing an official declaration in Acta Apostolicae Sedis banning all Catholics from joining or supporting the ‘progressive’ Catholic movements voluntarily. Furthermore, extending the analysis beyond the immediate cases of Hungary and Poland, Hentrich also urged a coordinated response to communist influence in the West, proposing that all ordinaries outside the iron curtain should receive a formal warning from the Holy See about the dangers posed by ‘progressive’ Catholic propaganda.Footnote 48
The cardinals of the Holy Office, at their meeting of 8 June 1955 (feria IV), endorsed the consultors’ principal determinations. They approved the issuance of a decree banning the identified periodicals and the suspension of the rights of bishops to grant honorary titles in both Hungary and Poland, thereby aligning their final decision with the consultor’s more restrained recommendations rather than with Hentrich’s broader programme.Footnote 49
Two decrees were subsequently published, with the signature of the notary, Mario Crovini, in Acta Apostolicae Sedis on 28 June 1955. Neither of them, however provided for the suspension of the right to grant honorary titles.Footnote 50 The omission reflected Pius XII’s intervention at the audience of 24 June 1955, during which he approved only the proposal to ban the publications. As for the suspension of the powers of Polish and Hungarian bishops to grant honorary titles, the pope adopted a broader analytical perspective: considering that the Church in every communist country was in a similar situation, selectively targeting Hungary and Poland was judged insufficiently coherent. Instead, Pius XII considered it more effective for the Holy Office to prepare a general, unambiguous monitum warning the priests and faithful of the nations against the dangers of ‘progressivism’ – understood as attitudes approaching communism with sympathy – and against forms of association aimed at taking the priesthood out of full subordination to the Holy See and forming instead a national clergy. This strategic recalibration thus prioritised doctrinal and disciplinary clarity across the entire bloc over restrictive measures aimed at individual episcopates.Footnote 51
General Moves against ‘Progressivist’ Catholics
By separating the matter of the pro-communist periodicals in Hungary and Poland, and Piasecki’s book, from that of curtailing the powers of bishops, Pius XII directed attention towards the challenges posed by the ‘patriotic’ clerical movements. A report on the Czechoslovakian ‘progressive’ Catholics submitted by Josef Bezdíček, vice rector of Pontifico Collegio Nepomuceno, one day before the pope’s decision, was clearly a contributory factor. Bezdíček’s submission cast the conduct of several Czechoslovakian bishops – Mořic Pícha of Hradec Králove and Štěpán Trochta of Litoměřice – and apostolic administrators – Jozef Čársky of Košice, Ambróz Lazík of Trnava and Eduard Nécsey of Nitra – in explicitly problematic terms.Footnote 52 Their decision to take the oath of loyalty to the state, together with their subsequent attempt to justify that decision, was presented as incompatible with ecclesiastical integrity and their statements in Katolické Noviny and other Czechoslovakian papers were considered as encouraging collaboration with the communist regime.Footnote 53 For the Holy Office, these materials raised questions about not only individual culpability but also the structural vulnerability of the Czechoslovak Church to state manipulation.
The submission prompted the consultors of the Holy Office, at their meeting of 4 July 1955 (feria II), to consider possible disciplinary and doctrinal responses. Augustin Bea SJ, who was tasked with drafting the votum, framed the issue as one of juridical and pastoral complexity. Canon law offered clear guidance only in the case of manifest schism; yet, although some priests appeared to be edging towards schismatic behaviour, the majority of the clergy and even the bishops who had taken the oath did not want to break communion with Rome. Under these conditions, Bea judged that a public condemnation of the abuses risked transforming a precarious situation into an open schism by provoking a decisive government intervention. Bea therefore recommended a calibrated response: confidential admonitions to the still-active bishops rather than a public warning, combined with indirect communication to the faithful via Vatican Radio to reinforce their fidelity to the Church.Footnote 54
On this basis, the consultors proposed three measures: the condemnation of Katolické Noviny of Prague, as had been done with the Hungarian and Polish ‘progressive’ journals, formal warning of the five bishops who had taken the oath to conduct themselves in a more apostolic manner and – to prevent the possibility of the formation of potentially schismatic clergy – a prohibition on ordaining graduates of the two national seminaries set up by the government, whose operation violated canonical norms. (The 1950 legislation abolished all theological faculties and diocesan seminaries, concentrating priestly training in state-controlled theological faculties in Prague for Bohemia and Moravia and in Bratislava for Slovakia – an arrangement that replicated Josephinist models. The mandated reduction of the programme from five to four years violated ecclesiastical regulations, with the full curriculum reinstated only in 1955.Footnote 55) The consultors also requested that the pope consider issuing an encyclical to strengthen and embolden the Czechoslovakian bishops, priests and faithful.Footnote 56
The cardinals of the Holy Office, at their session on 13 July 1955 (feria IV), endorsed the consultors’ proposals, adding only a recommendation that Vatican Radio should be reorganised within a new Press and Propaganda Department inside the Vatican Secretariat of State.Footnote 57 Pius XII approved the cardinals’ decision on 15 July but judged that the situation did not warrant a new encyclical specifically addressing the Czechoslovakian church.Footnote 58 Instead, consistent with the approach adopted with regard to Poland and Hungary, he directed the Holy Office to prepare a comprehensive monitum addressing the broader phenomenon of ‘progressive’ clerical movements under communist rule.Footnote 59
The affair of ‘progressive’ Catholic publications and movements on the other side of the iron curtain therefore did not come to a close with the condemnation of Katolické Noviny on 22 July 1955.Footnote 60 Rather, the limits of Roman disciplinary authority under communist conditions were revealed, along with the ways in which pro-communist actors sought to exploit institutional ambiguities. In Poland, the author of the condemned Essential Questions, Bolesław Piasecki, attempted to neutralise the Holy Office’s decree not through direct engagement with Rome – which the communist authorities preventedFootnote 61 – but by mobilising episcopal intermediaries. His appeal to Venceslaus Majewski, vicar-general of Warsaw, on 8 August 1955 combined professions of doctrinal loyalty with tactical concessions, including a commitment to ensure that all articles in the columns of Dzis i Jutro would in future be in harmony with Catholic teaching, and the preparation of a revised edition of his book.Footnote 62 The letter had been immediately published by ‘progressive’ Catholics in Poland and abroad, with the claim that Piasecki’s declaration in the letter had resolved the matter of condemnation by the Holy Office.Footnote 63
This strategy initially proved effective. By securing the support of Vicar-General Majewski and, more significantly, Bishop Michal Klepacz of Łodz – acting president of the Polish bishops’ conference (Wyszyński being in prison)Footnote 64 – Piasecki created the impression that the Vatican’s condemnation had been suspended. This perception, actively disseminated by Polish ‘progressive’ Catholic circles, generated confusion among the faithful and weakened the immediate impact of the decree.Footnote 65 Nevertheless, while the Holy Office’s decree remained absent from official media, its effects were enforced through informal ecclesiastical channels: via the parishes, in personal conversations and sometimes in sermons. In this way, the bishops and clergy acted as vectors of Roman authority, counteracting ‘progressive’ Catholic influence at the grassroots level. The decree also facilitated an exit for clergy previously involved in ‘progressive’ Catholic organisations, particularly after two progressive Catholic organisations were merged within the People’s Front. Finally, the condemnation of the book Essential Questions and the newspaper Dzis i Jutro may have curtailed Piasecki’s attempts to expand his movement internationally.Footnote 66
The Roman response to Bishop Klepacz’s intervention further illuminates the Holy Office’s priorities. Although Klepacz gave his support for the continued publication of Dzis i Jutro under the supervision of the bishops’ conference,Footnote 67 the cardinals interpreted his letter as minimising both the seriousness of ecclesiastical persecution in Poland and the doctrinal dangers posed by ‘progressive’ Catholic groups. Their decision – approved by the pope on 21 October – to uphold the condemnations and to admonish Klepacz reflected a broader concern with restoring doctrinal clarity and ecclesiastical authority. In the draft reply to Klepacz produced in early November, the Holy Office explicitly framed the condemnations as a means of dispelling the widespread confusion caused by the opinions of ‘progressive’ Catholic groups by prohibiting both the clergy and the faithful from joining them, and it invoked Wyszyński’s earlier public stance against ‘progressive’ Catholics.Footnote 68
Neither did the condemnation of newspapers produced by the Hungarian peace priests’ movement have anything like the desired effect. The journals A Kereszt and Bulletin Catholique Hongrois remained in circulation, accompanied only by a nominal change in the listed publisher from the National Peace Committee of Catholic Priests to ‘working group of A Kereszt’. This absence of visible compliance led to uncertainty within the Vatican as to whether the Hungarian episcopate even received the Holy Office’s decree, despite its formal promulgation in L’Osservatore Romano and Acta Apostolicae Sedis.Footnote 69 Although these publications were regularly sent to Hungary, it was supposed that the Hungarian Post Office did not deliver the editions containing the condemnation.
As later became clear, the bishops did learn about the decree from Vatican Radio broadcasts, and copies of Acta Apostolicae Sedis found their way into Hungary by informal channels. Their decision to publish the condemnation in diocesan circulars,Footnote 70 however, was thwarted by state censorship. The Holy Office, unaware of these unsuccessful efforts, interpreted the complete lack of change after the condemnation as a sign of further deterioration in ecclesiastical conditions. As the Hungarian-born Holy Office archivist Sándor Csertő observed, the failure of Western bishops to refuse ceremonially distributed copies of the condemned Bulletin Catholique Hongrois further reinforced the perception that the Hungarian authorities did not take the Vatican decree seriously. Csertő therefore advocated a shift towards more explicit and coercive measures, including prohibitions on episcopal attendance at international peace conferences (a Hungarian ecclesiastical delegation, which included bishops, attended the World Peace Conference held in Helsinki from 22 to 29 June 1955, at the very time when the condemnatory decree was published), encouragement of demonstrative episcopal loyalty to Rome even under risk and the application of latae sententiae penalties on the staff and contributors of the journals on the basis of the 1949 decree of the Holy See against collaborators with communism.Footnote 71 The information received from Csertő prompted the consultors and cardinals to resume their discussion of the Hungarian situation in mid-November.Footnote 72
A comparable pattern emerged in Czechoslovakia. The condemnation of Katolické Noviny on 13 July 1955 (published on 22 July) produced no immediate change: the periodical remained in circulation with the permission of the ordinaries. The Holy Office hoped to achieve some degree of change by sending a letter to the five bishops who were not imprisoned, all of whom had taken the oath. The prolonged preparation of this document and the delayed discussion of its draft started on 5 November reflect both the sensitivity of the situation and the Vatican’s uncertainty regarding episcopal agency under communist constraint. The letter articulated the Holy See’s interpretation of the crisis as one of deliberate state-driven ecclesiological fragmentation, citing the establishment of state-controlled central seminaries and the incorporation of the clergy into National Front structures as an effort to detach Czechoslovak Catholics from the Holy See. It therefore prohibited ordinations from these seminaries, warned against episcopal participation in National Front events or in any other expressly political activity and explicitly linked the condemnation of Katolické Noviny to a broader rejection of ‘Catholic progressivism’ considered as an instrument of state policy.Footnote 73
Within this framework, Vatican Radio assumed renewed strategic significance. Following the proposal made on 13 July 1955, a 3 November 1955 letter to the heads of the relevant dicasteries framed the broadcaster as a potentially decisive instrument for countering ‘progressive’ Catholic narratives and maintaining ecclesial communication with the faithful behind the iron curtain, despite obstacles to reception. The proposed reorganisation of Vatican Radio thus reflected a growing recognition that informational control, rather than formal juridical action alone, was essential to sustaining Roman authority behind the iron curtain.Footnote 74
These parallel deliberations converged at the Holy Office consultors’ meeting of 5 December 1955, which reviewed the letters written to the Czechoslovakian bishops and Bishop Klepacz of Łodz and the draft monitum requested by Pius XII earlier in the summer.Footnote 75 While the letters were accepted without changes or comments, the draft monitum was substantially reworked and expanded at the proposal of Augustin Bea SJ. The new text reframed ‘progressive Catholicism’ as a coordinated, state-supported strategy aimed at normalising communism as compatible with religion or the Catholic Church, spreading uncertainty among priests and faithful, generating division among Catholics, detaching clergy from the Holy See and fostering national churches independent of Rome. Reaffirming that communism was in reality materialist, atheistic and anti-Christian – and therefore incompatible with Catholic teaching even in social matters – the document explicitly prohibited clergy and laity from participation or collaboration, whether direct or indirect.
Significantly, Bea’s revisions extended the monitum beyond the communist world to address Catholics in Western societies, whom the Holy Office accused of propagating socially progressive, pro-communist positions under the guise of social justice, in utter disregard of Catholic teaching and the rights of the Church. In doing so the dicastery reaffirmed the continued relevance of the decree of 1 July 1949 against collaboration with or assistance to communism.Footnote 76 Additional proposals, including remarks by P. Hentrich recommending that every church title and honour awarded after the communist takeover, unless given subsequent approval by the Holy See, should in future become invalid within three months, further underscored the effort to reassert centralised authority.Footnote 77
At the meeting of 14 December 1955 (feria IV), the cardinals also approved the draft letters and the version of the monitum proposed by Bea,Footnote 78 but all documents were eventually dropped without being finalised. At the end of December 1955, Pius XII halted the process, judging that his Christmas radio speech had already articulated the Church position with sufficient clarity.Footnote 79 In that speech, the pope had rejected every conception of society that excluded the laws of God and every anthropological notion of man unconnected to God. In this context, as well as criticising consumer-oriented industrial society, he repeated that in the light of Christian teachings, the Church rejects both the communist social order and teleological narratives that presented communism as a providential stage of history, and – as an answer to ‘progressive’ Catholic doctrines urging social involvement in society – warned against forms of coexistence that compromised truth and justice.Footnote 80 In doing so, the pope effectively subsumed the Holy Office’s planned interventions into a broader magisterial statement.
Although Pius XII prevented the already-prepared letters and monitum from being sent, he made clear at the 29 December audience to Domenico Tardini that the matter of ‘progressive’ Catholic movements was not closed but merely deferred.Footnote 81 By May 1956, the Holy Office considered that sufficient time had elapsed to put the issue back on the agenda, particularly in light of developments that appeared to confirm earlier concerns about the consolidation and normalisation of pro-communist Catholicism. In Czechoslovakia, the bishops, like Bishop Klepacz in Poland, had effectively taken the progressive Catholics under their protection, publicly asserting that the communist state respected the freedom of the Church and even supported it. The continued publication of the condemned Katolické Noviny further reinforced the perception that Roman interventions had failed to alter ecclesiastical practice on the ground.Footnote 82
Parallel developments elsewhere strengthened this assessment. In Hungary, a memorandum received following the death of Gyula Czapik, archbishop of Eger, defending his policy of accommodation, including participation in the peace priests’ movement and the international peace conferences, thereby retrospectively legitimised collaborationist strategies.Footnote 83 At the same time, statements by Western communist figures – such as communist parliamentary deputy Gian Carlo Pajetta’s public praise of religious freedom in Poland – demonstrated how ‘progressive’ Catholic narratives were being instrumentalised internationally to bolster claims of communist tolerance.
In the light of these developments, following prior consultation with the Secretariat of State, the Holy Office again proposed – on 18 May 1956 – that the monitum concerning ‘progressive’ Catholicism should be placed before the cardinals of the dicastery.Footnote 84 While the archival records does not confirm that the proposal was actually put on the agenda, surviving documents indicate a strategic shift towards intensified information-gathering. Rather than immediate juridical action, the dicastery prioritised close observation of ‘progressive Catholics’.
A memorandum of 25 May 1956 concerning changes in the practice of publishing the Hungarian periodical A Kereszt illustrates this recalibrated approach. The practice of publishing articles without the names of the authors – introduced following the condemnation – had given way to a new tactic of republishing, with attribution, articles written for secular publications by various priests and bishops.Footnote 85 Subsequent reports appeared to confirm both partial compliance and tactical adaptation. A few months later – perhaps in accordance with a handwritten note on the memorandum (attendere ulteriori sviluppi e documentazione) – the secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, Tardini, sent to Alfredo Ottaviani, pro-secretary of the Holy Office, information from a reliable source that publication of the periodical A Kereszt had been discontinued on 5 August in apparent compliance with the condemnation of the previous year, presumably at the intervention of József Grősz, archbishop of Kalocsa, who had been set free in May 1956. Yet this apparent concession was quickly offset by the launch of a new weekly, Catholic Word (Katolikus Szó), on 12 August.Footnote 86 The official publisher was once again the National Peace Committee of Catholic Priests, with the explicit stipulation that the paper’s publication was subject to ecclesiastical approval.Footnote 87 A comparable pattern had already emerged in Poland, where Dzis i Jutro was replaced on 26 May 1956 with the new paper Directions (Kierunki).Footnote 88
The Holy See’s response reflected recognition of structural continuity beneath formal change. As in the above-mentioned case of Nova Pot in 1950, in September 1956, responsibility for monitoring the new papers was delegated to trusted intermediaries: the apostolic nuncio in Vienna was tasked with reporting every three months on the activity of the priests’ peace movement in Hungary, while Józef Feliks Gawlina was assigned a comparable role in Poland.Footnote 89 The letter requesting the collection of information and publications concerning ‘progressive Catholicism’ in Hungary for the Holy Office was sent out to the Vienna nuncio, Giovanni Dellepiane, on 18 October 1956 – just days before the outbreak of the revolution in Budapest.Footnote 90
The events of late 1956 marked a decisive turning point. The temporary victory of the 1956 Revolution and the freedom of church governance recovered by the bishops for a few months transformed the context in which the peace priests’ movement in Hungary operated, demanding new action by the Holy See. The matter was thenceforth treated more as a disciplinary than a doctrinal question, and consequently – at least in Hungary’s case – the matter of the ‘peace priests’ was referred to the Sacred Congregation of the Council.Footnote 91
Summary
The movements of ‘progressive’ Catholic clergy were from their inception regarded by the Holy See as dangerous not only because of their political accommodation with communist regimes but above all because of their ecclesiological implications. By legitimising collaboration with communism and downplaying or denying the persecution of the Church, these movements were understood to serve a broader state strategy aimed at loosening ties with Rome and fostering national churches detached from the Holy See. Since Catholic ‘progressivism’ caused both disciplinary and doctrinal issues, various congregations – the Congregation of Extraordinary Church Affairs, the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, the Sacred Congregation of the Council and the Consistorial Congregation – were involved in seeking ways of contending with these movements in the late 1940s and the 1950s, leading to a number of condemnatory decisions. After the 1949 documents banning collaboration with the communists, the matter of the ‘progressive’ Catholics’ movements came before the Holy Office again in connection with their publications, which functioned as key vehicles for disseminating their interpretations both domestically and internationally. While the Holy Office played a central role in articulating the doctrinal diagnosis of ‘progressivism’, its proposals repeatedly intersected with papal judgements about timing, proportionality and the risks of escalation.
The investigation leading to the condemnations of 1955 was driven to a significant degree by the interventions of émigré clergy from behind the iron curtain – most notably Józef Feliks Gawlina, Sándor Csertő and Josef Bezdíček. Operating at the intersection of local knowledge and Roman decision-making, these actors translated developments in their home churches into analytical categories intelligible to the Holy Office, persistently framed ‘progressive’ Catholicism as a coordinated, state-supported challenge to doctrinal and hierarchical unity and urged stronger action against them. Their memoranda decisively shaped the Holy Office’s agenda and contributed to the shift of focus from Western ‘progressive’ Catholic circles to ecclesial dynamics in Central and Eastern Europe. Unlike the earlier investigation of the Slovenian Nova Pot in autumn 1950 – which found nothing in the paper of doctrinal or moral concern and concluded that the only action required was to keep it under observation – these interventions led to the rapid placement on the Index of the Polish newspaper Dzis i Jutro and Bolesław Piasecki’s book Zagadnienia istotne, and of the Hungarian periodicals A Kereszt and Bulletin Catholique Hongrois, and shortly thereafter the Prague weekly Katolické Noviny. At the same time, the assessments of Western theological experts proved influential – notably Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s observation that Dzis i Jutro disseminated views comparable to those of the recently condemned French periodical La Quinzaine.
A stated reason for the ban was that these publications spread opinions concerning the possibility and indeed the necessity for collaboration between Catholics and communists and the claim that there was no persecution of the Church in countries on the other side of the iron curtain, collaboration being good for the Church. By publishing such statements, the Holy See judged, local churches were objectively serving the communist efforts to distance them from Rome and create national churches independent of Rome. Yet the decision to place these periodicals on the Index was not based on their content alone. There was also an express intention, following Sándor Csertő’s memorandum in particular, to condemn not only the publications but also the ‘progressive’ movements and the individuals responsible for producing them – while avoiding measures that might provoke open schism or harsher state retaliation.
At the same time, the sources make clear that the Holy Office did not operate as an autonomous engine of repression. Its consultors and cardinals repeatedly distinguished between condemning texts and sanctioning individuals or episcopates, and several proposals – such as suspending bishops’ powers to grant honorary titles or issuing immediate warnings – were either softened or set aside at the pope’s intervention. Pius XII’s role was not merely formal but also decisively substantive: while he approved the condemnations of publications, he repeatedly rejected or postponed more far-reaching disciplinary measures, judging them either insufficiently coherent or potentially counterproductive across the communist bloc. In doing so, he asserted papal control over the scope and form of Roman action and redirected dicasterial initiatives towards broader, more universal instruments.
This dynamic is particularly evident in the fate of the proposed monitum on ‘progressive Catholicism’. Instead of sending individual warning letters to local bishops’ conferences, Pius XII initially ordered the preparation of a monitum directed at all bishops behind the iron curtain. The draft aimed to warn Christians against ‘progressive’ Catholic movements being created at communist behest and to reaffirm the incompatibility of Catholic teachings and communism. Significantly, it extended beyond the communist world to address analogous tendencies in Western churches – a scope underscored by an addendum from the Holy Office decision makers, introduced at the recommendation of Augustin Bea, reminding everyone of the Holy Office Decree against Collaboration with Communism of 1 July 1949.
While the Holy Office thus sought a general warning addressed to all bishops of the world, Pius XII ultimately decided against promulgating the document. Instead, he included its core arguments in his Christmas radio message of 1955, opting for a universal magisterial statement over further disciplinary acts. This decision reflected practical considerations rather than theological priorities: by late 1955 it was unclear whether written Roman documents could reliably reach the faithful behind the iron curtain or be publicly communicated by local bishops. Vatican Radio thus emerged as a key instrument for sustaining ecclesiastical communication and countering ‘progressive’ Catholic narratives where normal channels were obstructed. The choice of that medium by Pius XII fitted well with the plan put forward by the cardinals of the Holy Office for Vatican Radio to be reorganised so that it could more effectively inform the faithful living beyond the iron curtain.
The uneven reception of the 1955 condemnations underscores both the limits of Roman authority under communist conditions and the logic of papal restraint. Only in Poland did the Vatican decree have a measurable impact, weakening the position of the PAX Association and enabling clergy and faithful to distance themselves from the ‘progressive’ movement despite attempts by Bolesław Piasecki and episcopal intermediaries to neutralise the Roman decision. In Hungary and Czechoslovakia, by contrast, the condemnations produced little immediate change. Tactical adaptations by pro-communist actors, state censorship and episcopal constraints limited their reach, and subsequent developments were shaped more decisively by de-Stalinisation and the associated political relaxation of spring and summer 1956, together with the cautious crisis management – most notably by archbishop József Grősz of Kalocsa in Hungary. These circumstances forced Rome to rely increasingly on indirect means, such as Vatican Radio and prolonged monitoring.
Taken together, the condemnations and warnings issued by the Holy See in response to the challenge of progressive Catholicism illustrate some characteristic features of the pontificate of Pius XII. Confronted with communism as what he regarded as the paramount threat to Church and Christian civilisation, Pacelli prioritised doctrinal–disciplinary unity as the Church’s primary line of defence. In the Western context, this stance manifested itself in suspicion towards and condemnation of various forms of ‘progressive Catholicism’ from nouvelle théologie that challenged the traditional frameworks to the worker–priest movement. Under communist rule, however, papal interventions reveal a persistent effort to calibrate Roman action to the realities of coercion and vulnerability. The resulting policy was neither uniformly repressive nor fully conciliatory but rather marked by strategic hesitation and selective engagement. More broadly, the study highlights the structural dilemma faced by the Holy See in the early Cold War: how to preserve doctrinal integrity and hierarchical authority when normal instruments of ecclesiastical discipline were systematically obstructed.
Funding statement
Research funded by the European Union (ERC, Sovereignty, 101044165). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Open access
