Bishop Hodur strongly advanced the idea of the National Church model (really no different than the Orthodox model – the local bishop with his clergy and people around the Holy Eucharist represents the fullness of the Church). Among the reasons for this advocacy was Bishop Hodur’s knowledge and experience of the Polish Church’s struggles. Real world experience showed that the good of the local Church was often secondary to the political machinations of the Bishop of Rome and the Vatican bureaucracy.

Hillary White (thanks to the Young Fogey for the links) has two articles that explore the Vatican’s betrayal of local Church leaders, particularly Cardinals Mindszenty and Beran. The Wikipedia article on the Vatican’s “Ostpolitik” refers to the phenonena as an invention of Paul VI. In fact it is a policy that has been entrenched in the Vatican for centuries. Poland was betrayed numerous timesNorman Davies, God’s Playground, a History of Poland: 1795 to the present, Chapter 7, pages 207-225 and Georg Brandes, Poland: a study of the land, people, and literature page 251 for examples. in the interest of “global” politics.

Read Church of Traitors and Church of Traitors, Part II. The telling lines from Part II:

Casaroli continues,

…

“We opted for negotiations, because we didn’t know how long those regimes would last, and in the meantime we had a moral obligation to insure that the Church had priests, that the faithful could receive the Eucharist and go to Confession. If we lost the hierarchical institution, we would lose the Church…”

Now, this is interesting, because I have known some priests who were underground in Soviet bloc countries and their stories are illustrative. Had the Vatican supported their efforts, would the Faith have died or flourished? Would the Church have been “lost” as Casaroli said? Hard to say at this distance in time.

But from what I have been told, the Church was flourishing. And one of my informants was a Slovak priest who was ordained secretly in Czechoslovakia, one of the countries that Casaroli described as a “hardline” state in which the Church would have “died out” without his “careful step-by-step diplomacy”.

The difference, perhaps between men like Casaroli in the Vatican and the men actually baptising and marrying and saying Mass in secret in these countries was that the latter knew and accepted the possibility of martyrdom. It seems that Casaroli and his popes rejected that possibility utterly and were more interested in creating comforts, a typical Novusordoist goal.

I wonder, who bore true witness to the faith, who stood on the side of God’s politics? In my book it was the local Church, those who knew the situation on ground, the evils of the communist system, the violence and selfishness of its leaders, and who nevertheless chose to face the consequences of witness to the faith. As Tertullian wrote: The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.