Pastorisation and Evangelisation Plan of the Catholic Church in Slovakia for 2001-2006

This short overview of the Vatican plan for Slovakia is available in English for the first time. Prof. Rehák's article  skillfully penetrates the sacerdotal language of the bishops' five-year plan to convert Slovakia to point out what it means and how it could affect people's lives.

John Paul II stated that "our programme for the Third Millenium" was "to reach people, mould communities, and have a deep and incisive influence [...] in society and culture". (Nuovo millenio ineunte, § 29) To carry this out in Slovakia the bishops assembled more than fifty professionals, and an eight-man editorial board to draw up what critics have called a " five-year plan for a theocracy".

Wide-ranging plans will bring schools, the media and even science under the influence of the Church. "Forming" the society includes "Working out a spiritual profile of a teacher at a Catholic school and his or her continuous further Christian education."  (1.5.3.m) ...Some Slovaks wonder if they have merely traded ideological oversight by the Communist Central Committee for supervision by the Conference of Bishops. 

This section urges all Church members to evangelise. Priests are not to confine themselves to liturgy, religious orders are not to limit themselves to prayer, and the laity are not to consider religion either a priestly or "a private affair" but are to join lay groups, both open and secret. Those with "political and economic" gifts are to use them for the Church.

Chaplains are to pursue conversion ("kerygmatic heralding") in universities, the army and hospitals. (3.2.1.D) Faith-based (but state-funded) social services ("the deaconry") are to target both old and new forms of "poverty" (vulnerability?) such as "despair, desolation in old age and in illness, and dependency in people who are materially well-to-do." (3.5.1.C)

The steep drop in abortions is dismissed as due to contraceptives which the Church claims have "an abortive action". (4.1.1 D) The bishops apparently prefer "marital purity"....(4.1.3.h) Church activists ("animators") are to lead children's and youth groups, whilst chaplains are to evangelise university students. No mention here of seeking bequests, only the curious instruction "to make records about all elderly and ailing in the parish regardless of their religious conviction" ... (4.5.3.f)

To the Church ecumenicism is a "dialogue to perform evangelisation" (5.1.2) intended "to introduce into the [interfaith] meetings a missionary element." (5.4.2) Only Church officials are to attend commemorations of Msgr. President Tiso's deportation of Jews to the death camps, but not "representatives of the laity" (who are supposed to venerate this priest who led the Nazi puppet state) (5.3.1 F) In a note the translator explains why the statstics on religion may bear little relationship to people's actual beliefs.

Romany culture is to be studied for use in evangelisation. (6.2.3 b) Both soldiers and their families are to be evangelised. So, too, are the deaf, blind and mentally retarded. Addicts are presently evangelised by way of Alcoholic Anonymous, but the aim is to have priests installed in treatment centres, as chaplains are at prisons. Slovaks living abroad are to be evangelised by priests making the "strategic" (6.8.3.d) offer of help in dealing with officialdom.