PT Journal
AU Marek, P
TI The Contribution to the Struggle for a Theological Orientation of the Czechoslovak Church
SO Historica Olomucensia
PY 2014
BP 161
EP 187
VL 47
IS 2
DE Orthodox Church; Czechoslovak Chuch; Christianity; first Czechoslovak Republic
AB The article is a probe into history of the Czechoslovak (Hussite) Church in 1920s, which as a product of a reform movement of the Catholic clergy underwent a complicated development in finding the religious belief soon after its establishment. The Catholic religion was refused as unsatisfactory and the Church diverged from Rome. However, founders did not prepare a new belief that is why the Church divided into two streams, a group of traditionalists and a group of modernists, who struggled for enforcing their theological visions. While traditionalists inclined towards the Orthodox, modernists preferred to build a new rational ideology corresponding with the scientific interpretation of the world and values of the 20th century European culture in the spirit of Czech reform traditions. The study analyses results of the diocesan meeting in Prerov on 28 March 1923, where a sharp conflict of both ideological movements in the Church took place on the background of the solution of the Bishop Gorazd's resignation. He introduced participants his own vision of the Church reorganisation ensuring its unified form and coexistence of both streams. Although the meeting in Prerov accepted that, the ecclesiastical head office in Prague did not. Thus, the meeting became the last and unsuccessful attempt for a compromise between both fractions in the Church, which was followed by traditionalists' leaving the organisation and the Czechoslovak Church began the way of the theological modernism. The author attempted on a new interpretation of the Prerov meeting's significance in ecclesiastical history.
ER