Monday, July 28, 2003
Czechs tend to view religion with suspicion
"There's a hostility toward what religion did to them in the past," said Lawrence Cada, a Marianist brother from Cleveland who is on a scouting mission to determine whether the Catholic order should expand here. "The Czechs say they're the most atheist country in Europe, and they say it with some pride . . . This is how Western civilization may look in 50 years, because people here believe they live a full life without any religion."
A poll done by the European Values Study, a Netherlands-based organization that tracks religious and moral attitudes, found that fewer Czechs claim allegiance to organized religion than any other people in Europe, except Estonians, who are still trying to move beyond their Soviet past. Only 33.6 percent of Czechs belong to a religious denomination and only 11.7 percent attend services once a month or more.
"The churches don't know how to get closer to the daily lives of the people," said Monsignor Daniel Herman, spokesman for the nation's Catholic Bishops' Conference. "After so long of being separated from the people, the church became a kind of ghetto. After the persecution and brainwashing of Communism they live a horizontal life. There's no vertical dimension of spirituality."
"Society has gotten to the point where it believes in nothing," said Siklova. "The Czechs even stopped identifying with their government and their army. The invisible hand of the capitalist market has taken over. There's an aggressive drive for the accumulation of capital and not a lot of ethics."
More than most Czechs, Kopecka-Valeska is troubled by the spiritual state of things.
"What's lacking here is the aura of Christian morals," she said, waiting out a rainstorm in a cafe. "People have forgotten that right and wrong stem from Christianity. These days, if you're caught being naughty, there's no one to answer to. People cheat on their employers. They cheat on each other. The egoism is unbelievable. It's me, me, me."
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