Saturday, November 24, 2012

Seized properties to be returned to churches in Czech Republic

The parliament of the Czech Republic has voted to return Church property to the Catholic and other churches that was seized under the communist regime.

The long awaited law will see just over €3 billion worth of assets (representing just over half their value) being returned to churches from January 2013, with the balance of assets (valued at €1.8 billion) being compensated for over a 30-year period during which time churches will become independent of state support.  

Assets belonging to the Catholic Church are believed to account for about 80% of the total (around €3.8billion).

The law was passed by a slim majority (102 out of 200 votes) and should unlock about 6% of the country's forests and fields that once belonged to mostly Christian churches, but which have been tied up pending a resolution of the legal situation.  

The move has taken twenty years to negotiate.

The Church assets were seized in the 1940s and 1950s and have been a point of dispute in the Czech Republic ever since the overthrow of the communist regime in 1989.  

In an interview with Czech radio, the general secretary of the Czech Bishops’ Conference said the compensation was important for the Church, “because we need to have some independence to help us serve in a democratic society, as is normal for a democratic society because it means we’re independent from the influence of the state.”

Currently church employees are paid through the state, said Fr Tomas Holub.  

The compensation would mean the Church could be independent.

He said they had had 20 years to prepare for the decision and that the administration of the money would not be centralised. 

“It’s very important to us that these properties will be divided between individual parishes, dioceses, orders and congregations. The management of properties will be done locally, from the places where they are at,” he said.

Asked about parish priests becoming, “managers more than pastoral workers,” Fr Holub said the Church is not in the situation, “where the pastor or the parish priest would ever be solely responsible these things.”

“After the second Vatican council we shifted a great deal of responsibility to lay people in the parishes so some economic or parish council will be responsible for many things. What we’re trying to explain to society again and again, is that it’s not the decision of one person in the parish, but it’s up to elected people in the parish to be responsible for it.”

Fr Holub said that he foresees parishes getting involved in micro economies that would generate income and give employment, and he thinks the Church in the Czech Republic will change a lot.  

“I think it will affect the sense of responsibility within the church because the activities on the spiritual level will be much more rooted in the reality of the material world we live in. I think it’s important that the material and spiritual realities are not divided, because if we proclaim the gospel, it is the gospel for the whole world not only for some spiritual dimension."