An Interview with Fr. Štěpán Smolen
Fr. Štěpán Smolen was just six years old when the Iron Curtain fell. Originally from the town of Český Krumlov in far southern Bohemia, he is now one of two Catholic priests serving at the Assumption of Our Lady Church in the factory town of Mladá Boleslav, less than an hour’s drive northeast of the Czech capital, Prague.
In November 2019 the editor of the East-West Church Report met with Fr. Štěpán in his presbytery kitchen. Over tea, he shared his experience entering the Catholic Church as a young adult, and the challenges and joys of ministering to a provincial urban parish in the Czech Republic. The conversation took place in English.
Did you have a Catholic upbringing?
My parents both had a Catholic upbringing, but during the years of Communism they lost their faith, so I was not raised as a Catholic. I was not raised as an atheist, either—no one thought about God. In our family I never heard anything religious until I was about 12 years old.
What drew you to the Catholic Church?
I am an avid reader, so it was partly an intellectual quest. I also met several teachers and fellow students who had interesting personalities, but they had one “fault” (laughs)— that was their Christianity. I was very upset by the fact that someone could still believe those old myths about Christ. I wanted to discuss and show them how stupid this Christianity was, and so I started to read the New Testament and books about Christianity to prove that it was not true. (Laughs.) I began to attend Sunday Mass when I was around 17. From 2003-09 I studied religion and philosophy at Charles University in Prague. I also attended the Catholic Theological Faculty there as a seminarian from 2010-14. It was a persistent, slow attraction that drew me. I was ordained a priest in 2015.
The Catholic Theological Faculty at Prague’s Charles University is not controlled by the Catholic Church. How was your experience there?
Theologically, it used to be quite a conservative institution, to some extent more conservative than similar institutions in the West. Following the reforms of Vatican II in the 1960s, the Catholic Church opened up to the outside world, but this seminary was of the traditionalist Tridentine type [following the Latin-language, formal style of Catholic worship ubiquitous prior to Vatican II]. It existed under close Communist surveillance. It was very difficult to enroll—some students tried five or even ten times. After the Communist collapse of 1989, the teachers continued to be mostly priests who wanted to educate future priests. Tension then arose in the early 2000s, when our then-archbishop, Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, grew unhappy with the faculty because he thought it was ery behind the times. For example, certain subjects were only for men, and only for future priests, which was not possible within the rules of Charles University. Most of the old professors left, and a younger generation came in—now many of the teachers are young men and women who received their degrees abroad, particularly in Germany and Italy. This created another tension, because the faculty turned more to the liberal side. That is a generalization, of course—there are conservative professors there as well as liberal—but that is the tendency. I studied there during those rather liberal times.
The parish where you serve—Assumption of Our Lady—is the only Catholic church in Mladá Boleslav, a factory town dominated by Škoda, the automobile manufacturer. Is it a very active parish?
This is perhaps the liveliest parish in the diocese of Litoměřice. We have many people who have come here from Slovakia, Moravia [eastern Czech region neighboring Slovakia] or Poland, and also Roma people, of whom some are quite fervent Catholics. We also have quite many converts. In 2018, for example, we had 26 adult baptisms, which is quite a lot for the size of parish. On Sundays, 450-500 people attend Mass. This is about one percent of the population of Mladá Boleslav. There are similar-sized towns in the diocese, such as Chomutov near the border with the former East Germany, where not even 100 people come to Mass on Sunday.
The Czech Republic is reputed to be one of the most atheist countries in Europe. What is your experience of Czech society?
My perspective is that of a priest who meets daily with people who want to hear something about God and who convert, so from my perspective it is not so bad. Every year there are people who knock on the door and want to hear something about God and then start to lead a Christian life. So here in Mladá Boleslav it is quite a happy job to be a priest. I sense thirst for God. Perhaps because people know almost nothing, they are even more open to hearing the Gospel here than in those traditional parts of the Czech Republic where they are used to “something religious”—a kind of popular, traditional religion. In the Moravian countryside, church is part of daily life. For some people it can be inner belief, but it is mostly part of the folklore.
Here in northern Bohemia, things are different. If you are a Catholic, you must choose to be a Catholic, because you will be the only one in your class or your workplace, and you must be prepared to be—not persecuted, but mocked.
What kinds of backgrounds do your parishioners have?
Everyone is different, that is what is interesting. Very typical for this parish, but not for the Czech Republic in general, is that there are more men than women, and mostly men between the ages of 20 and 50. This creates a certain kind of spirituality. Today after Mass a group of men, mostly fathers, met here to pray the Holy Office and the rosary, then they read the Gospel before going home to their families. This phenomenon of men coming to pray together is not something I knew in Prague or in my hometown. Also, in the five years I have been here, most of the converts I have known and who have remained here are young men.
Are they generally employees of Škoda?
Some are. Of the men that met this evening, one is a designer for the Škoda factory. Another is a worker there. One is a former drug dealer who converted and now has a family. Another is a former gambler, a Roma man, also now with a family. One is part Roma and has a well-paid IT job in Prague. Another is a manager. So all these men appear to have nothing in common, yet they come together. It is interesting how this one fact of belonging to the Church, of believing in Jesus Christ, the Holy Trinity, is something that brings people together. It is impossible to make statistics out of this. It is possible to say only that each one is an individual case, and that it is a tiny minority of the city’s inhabitants.
Statistically, Czech society appears largely atheist. Do you think Czechs are actually quite spiritual but do not wish to define themselves as such to pollsters?
The Czech Catholic theologian Tomáš Halík thinks so. However, the level of ignorance about the content of the Christian faith is immense. A few years ago a question in the high school graduation exam asked students to identify Judas. Most did not know who Judas was. There were complaints addressed to the Ministry of Education demanding why this question was asked, since this was not an exam in religious studies. “Oh my!” I thought. For me, familiarity with the character of Judas is basic general knowledge of anybody living in Europe.
Even some people who come wishing to baptize their children have no idea about Christianity—they know only that it is a tradition in their family. I once showed a crucifix to a couple and asked if they knew who was on it. They wondered whether it was a pope! Of course, that is an exceptional case— most people would say this was Jesus Christ. But even the fact of one such case means that something is amiss with people’s general knowledge.
Is there any religious education in Czech public schools?
At that level there is a law allowing priests or other religious educators to enter public schools to teach. If there are at least six or seven pupils of the relevant faith in the school, the principal must allocate a classroom, and you can teach there. In my diocese, however, most religious classes take place in the parishes, because we do not have that many students. In our town of around 50,000 inhabitants, for example, we have perhaps 100 students.
How is the Catholic Church generally perceived by the public?
Most people know very little about the Church, and their information comes from the media. Some negative material is partly true—one topic is pedophilia, and there was a terrible case last week involving a priest and a disabled teenage boy. People hear about such cases, and then they form their opinion.
From a public relations perspective, the restitution of church property confiscated by the Communists turned out to be a disaster. In the end, the Church got back most of its property, but we lost credibility. Even though the law was on our side, people do not see it that way—the Church is perceived as an institution awash in money. It is a great paradox that people think we are so rich. I have no reason to complain, but I know fellow young priests—friends who live in parishes around here—who can afford to heat their houses to a maximum of only 14 Celsius [57 Fahrenheit] in winter.
What has caused this problem?
When church property was returned by the state, parishes received some buildings and fields, for example, and dioceses received money as compensation for church buildings that could not be returned, such as when a historical church building now houses a hospital. This money was invested, but at a time when the investment climate was not favorable, so now there is less and less money for priests’ salaries. Spiritually, it is good that the state does not pay priests—when you are not dependent upon the state, you are freer to speak the truth. But many priests are now preoccupied with what they should do with their fields, forest, or buildings. For some priests, it is the only thing they can do, because they have just a handful of parishioners yet are obliged to maintain these buildings and fields.
Do you think Czechs’ lack of engagement with the Church is largely a legacy of Communism?
Well, Poland and Slovakia had the same experience, but they are more devout. I think it lies somewhere deeper. For Poles, Catholicism is part of national identity: “We have to be Catholic, because of those Orthodox Russians and Protestant Prussians; we must keep our faith and national identity.” Slovakia is largely rural with a different culture, and their national uprising or renewal was also connected with Catholicism. Here, on the other hand, we have the notion that being incorporated into the Austro-Hungarian Empire forced us to be Catholic.
When the new Czechoslovak Republic was founded in 1918, a statue of the Virgin Mary on the Old Town Square in Prague was torn down as a symbol of the AustroHungarian Empire. Just now there is controversy over what to put there. Some people say it cannot be reinstated, others say that it is time to rebuild it, and a replica of the original Marian Column has already been prepared. For different Czechs, this Column has different meanings. For some, it is a symbol of religious oppression and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. For others, it is a symbol of the Virgin Mary who prays for our nation, and so a symbol of God’s protection. We cannot find a satisfactory solution.
[Editor’s note: In January 2020 the Prague city authorities announced that the Marian Column would be reinstated. A portion was re-erected in June 2020 and was subject to an arson attack the same month. See Filip Noubel, “In the Czech Republic, controversy over a newly re-erected Catholic monument ends in flames,” Global Voices, 30 June 2020, https://globalvoices.org/2020/06/30/in-the-czechrepublic-controversy-over-a-newly-re-erected-catholicmonument-ends-in-flames.]
Has Communist-era collaboration between some Catholic clergy and the authorities had a long lasting negative impact, in your experience?
A Slovak colleague told me that in Slovakia, all parish priests who held significant offices had to resign after the 1989 Velvet Revolution, and there was a process of vetting before they could be re-appointed. But here in the Czech Republic it was not like that. Of course, not all priests were open about what they did during those years of Communism. But I do not experience this as something that would deform church life now.
When I was a fervent young convert, I thought that many problems we have in church life in the Czech Republic were caused by the fact that it had not been possible to put into practice the reforms of Vatican II as had happened in the West. Then I spent a year in Belgium, and I saw the emptiness of Belgian churches and the secularization of life there. What to do with this experience? It felt like cognitive dissonance in my heart. So to some extent—this is a dangerous sentence, but—to some extent Communism did less harm to the Church than consumerism. Some characters were bent by the persecution, some were crushed, but many people found their faith in persecution. I am not arguing for Communism, I have only seen that the Czech seminaries were full then, which is very different from today. In the Czech Republic, also Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary, values have remained more conservative. On the other hand, Catholics in Germany have opinions that are very similar to the secular population. So the Iron Curtain did provide this protection from major changes, of which many are questionable to me as a Catholic.
Do you think the Czech experience of the Communist era has anything to teach people in the West?
There is a notion that it can be a good inspiration for Western Christians—who are to some extent, and in a very different way, being persecuted by secular society—to look at how Christians in Central and Eastern Europe managed to live through the years of Communism. This might be the case, but I think there are also many differences, and it is a big temptation to make easy comparisons.
The Communist authorities suppressed all monastic orders in then-Czechoslovakia in 1950 [see the East-West Church Report, vol. 26, no. 3 (2018), 5-8.] Has there been a revival of monastic life in the Czech Republic in recent years?
This has been a big problem, because a whole generation was lost. There were some secret religious orders, but monks and nuns could not live as communities in religious houses. It was very difficult to keep a vocation in a normal, everyday occupation. There was a big revival in monastic life after 1989, but most of those vocations did not last. It was very difficult for fervent young Catholics who knew nothing about religious life to connect with the old religious who had lived through persecution. They had spent most of their lives in civil occupations and were trying to live in community again, now in their 60s or 70s. It was very difficult for them as well.
In the Czech Republic today, it is much easier to be part of a monastic community that is totally new, even if its way of life is traditional, such as the Trappists. We have a vibrant Trappist monastery in Nový Dvůr [two hours west of Prague] where the men are mostly in their 20s, 30s, or 40s. [A short documentary on the monastery may be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT8tZzmEDVo.]
The origin of this monastery is interesting. In the 1990s, young men wanting to enter a monastery looked around, but did not find what they were looking for in the Czech Republic, so they went to Sept-Fons in France, where there is a large Trappist monastery. Over time, perhaps 10 Czechs went there, and so the Trappists started a new foundation here in the Czech Republic. Almost the same thing happened with a community of Trappist nuns. Some young women started their vocation in Vitorchiano in Italy, and after some time there were quite a few, so they founded an abbey south of Prague—Klášter Naší Paní nad Vltavou.
These communities are more stable, I think. Monastic life is not just about reading books—you must pass on the knowledge and experience that is lived within a community. That was possible in France and Italy, but it was not possible here during the Communist years. Even though the old monks were heroes, it was very difficult for them to renew the religious life afterwards.
Alongside your parish work you run a Catholic publishing house, Hesperion [https://www. hesperion.cz/]. What does it do?
Hesperion is a small publishing house—we are five friends who started publishing books in 2013. We wish to help people get to the roots of their Catholic Christian spirituality with the help of various texts on the importance of silent prayer, adoration of the Eucharist, and liturgical beauty, for example. Our books appeal mostly to conservative and traditionalist Catholic readers. We do address difficult subjects, including by publishing books in translation, such as Philip Lawler’s book on the sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church [The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture, originally published in 2008]. We wanted to speak out about the reasons for this scandal and not just have the secular media speak about it. We were quite unhappy about the defensive way in which some church members discuss the issue. That is not a good way of dealing with the problem, because it helps it to happen again.
We have also published a Czech translation of Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option [subtitled A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation and originally published in 2017] because to some extent we think it can be an inspiration for Catholics here. Of course, the context is totally different. However, we are also small groups of Christians living in a secular society, and it is very important not only to have strong mission and evangelization, but also to build communities where faith is actually practiced. We must live our faith within a context.
