ŚLĄSKIE STUDIA HISTORYCZNO-TEOLOGICZNE

Paradigmatic Change in the Czech Catholicism during the 1950s and 1960s
This paper does not aim to describe the events, which the Catholic Church in the Czech lands has undergone during the harshest times of communist persecution. These facts have been already substantially clarified. It is the complex and ambiguous image of the local Roman Catholic Church that has not yet been sufficiently evaluated. The presented study, therefore, attempts to present and consider this image and the change it underwent in the 1950s and 1960s. The paradigmatic change in the Czech Catholicism can be described as a process of personalization of the Christian existence, i.e. the gradual transition from the life of faith based on the acceptance of the institutionally enforced moral principles and their formal adherence, to the life of faith, which perceives a Christian believer as an unique person, whose faith is personal and internally involved in the community of the Church.