English Translation

d5a -2- President E l i a found secret letter from the Presidium of the Council of Ministers on the dissolution of the Benedictine Order and the Order of the Brothers of Mercy in Prague. This document is a model example of conscious Czech duplicity. It is impossible for the author, who, after all, is a good connoisseur of the relevant canonical and Austrian state-law provisions, to act in his citations of good faith; for his way of quoting is totally unscrupulous. Soon he takes places arbitrarily out of the context, soon he quotes laws that have been invalidated by practice for decades, and soon he cites provisions that do not belong here at all and are only intended to confuse. The whole document is not dictated by interest for the religious concerned, but by hatred against the German Reich. If their interests so required, never let themselves be guided in their actions by respect for ecclesiastical laws. After the overthrow in 1918 the former CSR. proceeded with remarkable unscrupulousness against the Roman church. The newly founded Czechoslovak Church was supported by the state in alie only possible way, under the motto: "We have settled with Vienna, now we will settle with Rome." The Church's exit propaganda was promoted by the government by all means. A considerable number of Roman priests came out of the church at that time, despite a lack of education, immediately received well-paid state posts. The GsR. was completely indifferent to what the canon law said. The fall of the Marian Column on the Old Town Ring, on which the Hus monument now stands, is a symbol of the official attitude of the governing bodies. Likewise, while the so-called land reform served on the one hand the Czechization of the German large estate, on the other hand the secularization of important parts of the church- 80935 -3-