Church history through the eyes of a catacombs priest

[didymus]

NCR:

Church history through the eyes of a catacombs priest

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Prague
If history is really biography, then the stories of remarkable Catholics such as Fr. Petr Pit’ha, an intellectual-turned-catacombs priest who helped keep the faith alive during the dark days of Communist oppression, are a fascinating way to narrate church history in this part of the world.

Secretly ordained in 1969, Pit’ha ministered in the shadows for two decades, teaching religious education in private apartments and hearing confessions disguised as friendly chats. His priesthood was a carefully guarded secret; his own father, mother and brother didn’t even know until after the Velvet Revolution of 1989.
Pit’ha, now 71, sat down Friday afternoon for a conversation with NCR. He was ordained clandestinely in Holland in 1969, after it became clear that the brief hope of the 1968 “Prague Spring” was giving way to another cycle of brutality.

An accomplished linguist and professor of culture, Pit’ha went on to serve as Minister of Education in the Czech Republic during the early 1990s. Today he says Mass, celebrate the sacraments and teaches the faith to a small circle of people, but otherwise he doesn’t hold himself out as a priest; he receives visitors to his Prague apartment, near the famed hrad, or castle, still the seat of government, vested as a “minister” in the secular rather than sacred sense of the term.

Though Catholicism was a target all across the Soviet sphere, in some ways the crackdown was most severe in the former Czechoslovakia. The church was in the unenviable situation of being strong enough that it represented a threat, but not so strong that it could protect its autonomy as in Poland. Monasteries were shut down and religious orders suppressed, some priests were jailed and others were given jobs as factory workers and window-washers, while still others chose to collaborate with a government-sponsored Pacem in Terris association.

 

[Prague]

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