Catholicism Behind the Iron Curtain: Czechoslovak and Hungarian Responses to Humanae Vitae

Abstract

This jointly authored chapter considers official and unofficial Catholic responses to Humanae Vitae in neighbouring socialist States, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the People’s Republic of Hungary, where the Communist leadership controlled public debate on birth control. In Hungary in 1968, HV was rejected as an anachronism by centrist theologians who wanted to modernize the church. In the mid-1970s, church conservatives, with the help of the State, silenced these voices. In Czechoslovakia, preoccupied with the crisis brought about by the Prague Spring reforms, HV was scarcely reported, but both conservative and liberal Catholic responses were briefly aired before the Warsaw Pact troops arrived. HV was afterwards used as a minor propaganda item to shore up the Normalization regime.