Echoes of Zeman’s farce. Duke ran into the bishops, while his “friends” want to rob churches even today

Under normal circumstances, the christening of the pamphlet “Conspiracy” for lovers of conspiracy theories, where the former president settles scores not only with the politicians who allegedly tried to remove him from office, but also with the doctors who saved his life, would not be worth paying attention to.

The birth of the pamphlet only illustrates the character of a vengeful man who left behind a trail of a bankrupt propagandist of Russian and Chinese interests, legitimizing communists at the government level, and striving for an extra-constitutional deviation to the presidential system.

Zeman’s conspiracy

If something could really be called a “conspiracy”, it would be Zeman’s publicly acknowledged intention to twice entrust the formation of the government of his ally Andrej Babiš after the 2021 elections, who could rule indefinitely without a vote of confidence, although he did not have a majority.

The anti-constitutional coup was only made impossible by the sharp deterioration of Zeman’s health. Of course, the former president has the right to write a paranoid bundle of nonsense, but the arrangement of its publication is striking.

Zeman’s creation was presented in the Archbishop’s Palace. He was blessed by Cardinal Dominik Duka, while the chairpersons of the Communist Party of Ukraine Kateřina Konečná, Jiří Paroubek, Jaroslav Foldyna and Jana Bobošíková were also invited.

What do they have in common? Unconcealed opposition to the churches, which leaves a bitter aftertaste just considering that this event was held in a hall named after Cardinal Josef Beran, a political prisoner of the communist regime. This lack of taste and insensitivity is especially surprising for Duka, who went through a similar experience during the times of totalitarianism.

A regrettable event

Zeman’s spectacle caused a storm of negative reactions among believers. “I consider it scandalous the connection of the presentation of this book, to which Cardinal Duka is of course entitled to personal moral support, with the Archbishopric of Prague, and thus with the Catholic Church,” declared Lukáš Fošum, provincial of the Czech Dominicans, of which Duka is also a member.

The archdiocese initially defended the event. “Cardinal Dominik Duka is a person who remains loyal to his friends regardless of their current popularity. From the beginning, it has been part of the Church’s tradition to be open to everyone,” the unsigned statement said.

But the believers’ dissatisfaction with the involvement of the Catholic Church in Zeman’s entanglements with the assistance of representatives with crypto-communist views did not end there. It was expressed in the unanimous statement of the Czech Bishops’ Conference.

“We consider the meeting in the Archbishop’s Palace in connection with the book Conspiracy to be a regrettable event and we are aware of the outrage it caused among people, which is evidenced by a considerable number of reactions, especially from the ranks of Catholics. We understand these reactions, we hear them and we take them seriously,” the bishops write.

They accepted the explanation of the Archbishop of Prague, Jan Graubner, that the lease was made without him having the necessary information available, and that he distanced himself from the event. They decided that when renting church premises, the ecclesiastical and secular dimensions of such events will be consistently separated in the future “including the appropriateness of the presence of a church representative”. This is a clear demarcation from the activity of Graubner’s predecessor Duka.

Duke’s friends

Let’s look at the opinions of Duke’s “friends”, who have nothing to do with faith, Christianity and democratic values, whose defense the cardinal often talks about. His position was very sharp towards these currents even in the recent past.

In this context, it is necessary to mention Duke’s merits, as he was able to bring to the end twenty years of frozen negotiations with the government of Petr Nečas on the property settlement of the state with the churches and their separation from the state. Church restitution provoked stiff resistance not only from communists, but practically from the entire left-wing scene.

In November 2012, Jana Bobošíková called on the then president Václav Klaus not to sign the fragile agreement between the state and the churches. This also happened because Klaus had a lukewarm attitude towards all restitution laws. At the same time, he did not vet him.

Zeman was not a supporter of church restitution either. In September 2018, he announced that he supports the communists’ proposal to tax property monetary compensation to churches. “I was somewhat fed up if the Holy Church demanded various pofideral property with lawsuits even after the conclusion of restitution laws in both municipalities and regions.”

It was just a substitute reason. The KSČM’s attack on the closed process of property settlement between the state and the churches was one of the conditions of its tolerance of the government of Andrej Babiš, whose patron was Zeman, and which acceded to their scandalous demand.

“I don’t see a single reason why social democracy would not speak out in favor of taxing church restitution,” declared the then deputy chairman of the ČSSD, Jaroslav Foldyna, now an MP for the SPD.

Ownership coup

In this context, former communist leader Miroslav Grebeníček published the book “In the sign of the cross”, which was christened by Zeman’s favorite minister of culture, Antonín Staněk (ČSSD). Later, due to his dismissal, the government almost fell.

“We are almost helpless witnesses to how the church is becoming part of a large-scale ownership coup that is still ongoing in the Czech Republic,” writes Konečná’s predecessor. “It’s no coincidence that the biggest religious revolts in history were connected precisely with opposition to church buying,” adds Grebeníček.

During the discussion of the law, the deputy chairman of the KSČM Stanislav Grospič also shone. “To say that this property was stolen after 1948 is very wrong,” he proclaimed.

Cardinal Duka described the then communist initiative as scandalous. “I would hate it if, in the 29 years of freedom in which our predecessors participated, we should suffer the revenge of those who established the dictatorship of the Communist Party, and who still have the decisive word as a kind of silent companion of the government, usurping the right to dictate.”

Taxation of church restitution, which the democratic opposition at the time described as the legitimization of communist injustice and robbery, passed in the lower house thanks to the votes of the broad coalition of ANO, ČSSD, KSČM and SPD, even after it was returned by the Senate.

Unconstitutional activity

The opposition parties, forming the current government coalition, filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court. He threw out the law as unconstitutional, as it was “a de facto and inadmissible reduction of the financial restitution compensation in a state of law, which is supposed to serve to alleviate the wrongs committed during the time of totalitarianism.”

Even the defeat at the Constitutional Court does not mean that communists of all shades are abating their hatred of the “uneaten prelates”. They were recently joined by another participant in Duke’s meeting, Jiří Paroubek. In March 2023, he called on Archbishop Graubner to drastically reduce the valuation of restitution compensation and questioned the legality of church restitution.

Duka can certainly support anyone he sees fit, and not even avoid “dubious” people, as his supporters in the media claim. However, the composition of his friends in the Josef Beran hall raises the question of why he aligns himself with those who have nothing to do with the rule of law and would rob churches even today without blinking an eye.

The reaction of the Czech Bishops’ Conference is a sign of the realization that Duke’s behavior can damage the credit of the entire Catholic Church. The fact that a cardinal with a respectable past and merits for correcting historical wrongs against the churches, standing today alongside those who want to continue in them, does not realize this is a personal failure that is difficult to understand.