Courage

Among my father’s belongings when he died was the Centennial History of Appleton Parish, which chronicled the Nebraska church his great-grandparents helped to found in 1877. Matej and Josefa Svoboda came to the United States from a village called Chotěbudice, near where Bohemia turns into Moravia. They settled on a farm in Butler County, about sixty miles west of Omaha. The book had a photo of them, and a complete list of their descendants, ending with my father, and then me, nine-year-old “Brian Svoboda—Single.”

When my father died I wanted to learn more about where I came from, and where I was going. My grandfather left the farm and worked as a custodian in nearby David City. My father moved to Lincoln and worked for State Farm. I graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1989, the same month in which the Communist government in Czechoslovakia collapsed. I did not go into the foreign service as I once planned. Instead, I became involved in politics and moved to Washington, working first as a U.S. Senate aide and then as a campaign finance lawyer.

Working in politics presented frequent questions of conscience and integrity. I had dinner one night in a Capitol Hill apartment with Frank LaMere, a tall, contemplative man from the Winnebago reservation in northeast Nebraska. “Don’t be a bag man for the boys downtown,” Frank said, quoting Paul Newman in The Verdict. Was that what I had become? I enjoyed my work as a lawyer, but it required constant subordination to the interests and objectives of my clients, whether corporate or political. Moreover, American politics seemed increasingly driven by a crude consequentialism.

So when I found the opportunity to visit the Czech Republic for the first time last March, on my way to teach a five-day course on American election law at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, there were two things I especially wanted to do. The first was to go to Chotěbudice and see where my ancestors lived. The second was to meet people who led the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989 and heroically confronted challenges to conscience and fortitude.

Two people came to mind. One was Václav Malý. Shortly after he became a priest in 1976, he signed Charter 77, which demanded that the Czech Communist regime comply with the Helsinki Accords. Other signatories “discouraged me from it,” Malý said in an interview. “They asked if I had taken into account the fact that I would lose the possibility of working as a priest.” Indeed the regime quickly took away his license. Malý was interrogated, beaten, and jailed. He was consigned to menial jobs, such as tending boilers in a hotel basement in Prague. “Few of the dissidents [have] suffered more than he has,” a diplomat told the Los Angeles Times in 1989.

But it was Malý, unbowed, who moderated the mass demonstrations in Wenceslas Square in 1989. As Tomáš Halík wrote in his memoir, From the Underground Church to Freedom, Malý “managed to stimulate something that surfaces only at dramatic moments in Czech history: the capacity for effective solidarity, mutual kindly concern, creative reactions, and, above all, splendid humor.” When a crowd of more than half a million people threatened to turn violently on a policeman who came up to the podium, Malý led them in the Lord’s Prayer. In that dramatic moment, which Halík called “a turning point” that marked “the end of the totalitarian regime,” Malý urged forgiveness rather than revenge. That symbolic gesture, Halík wrote, “cut through Communism’s deepest root, namely, hatred.” In 1997, Pope John Paul II made Malý auxiliary bishop of Prague.

I also wanted to meet Tomáš Halík. Clandestinely ordained in 1978, he served as an aide to Cardinal František Tomášek, the archbishop of Prague. At first not even Tomášek knew that Halík was a priest, to avoid leaks to the secret police. After the regime collapsed, Halík was finally able to receive formal seminary training in Rome. Of his time in seminary, the underground priest once interrogated by the secret police wrote: “I used to get up at 5:00 a.m. and take an ice-cold shower . . . imagining that nothing worse could possibly befall me during the coming day.” Halík once asked Tomášek whether the Church of Saint Salvator, near Prague’s Charles University, could again become a university church. Tomášek turned on a transistor radio on his desk to foil the listening devices planted in his office. The church started serving the university again in 1990, and Halík became chaplain. When he came to receive his certificate of appointment from Cardinal Tomášek, the radio was still on the desk, switched off.

Hoping to see Chotěbudice, Bishop Malý, and Monsignor Halík, I began planning my trip. At first I imagined I would just rent a car, drive to Chotěbudice, and see ruins of old buildings. Then I caught a break. A friend told me that he had hired a husband-and-wife team of genealogists in Prague to research his family tree and drive him to his ancestral home. He introduced me to them by email, and they agreed to research my family and to drive me to Chotěbudice.

Three weeks before the trip, the genealogists sent me copies of nineteenth-century marriage and baptismal records. Originally written in longhand in German, they showed that Matej Svoboda married Josefa Svoboda in the church at Horní Slatina, near Chotěbudice, in 1856, when he was thirty-five years old and she was twenty-three. Matej was a čtvrtláník, a peasant who owned a quarter-hide of land. He lived in Building Thirty-Five in Chotěbudice. Josefa was the daughter of Veit Svoboda, a půlláník, or a peasant who owned a half-hide of land. Her family lived in Building Twenty-Seven. The genealogists said that both buildings were still standing, and that we would drive from Prague to Chotěbudice three weeks from Monday to see them.

As for Bishop Malý and Monsignor Halík, I did a little research of my own. I found an email address for the bishop’s secretary and asked if I could meet him and receive his blessing. Three days before we were to leave, the reply came from Prague: I could meet Bishop Malý at the Archbishop’s Palace at 9:30 on Tuesday morning. I also found the website for the Church of Saint Salvator, where Monsignor Halík was still chaplain. It was right across the Charles Bridge from the Hotel Pod Věží, where my wife, Sheila, and I would stay. I checked the church’s calendar and saw that the monsignor would celebrate Mass that same Tuesday night. My trip was set.

Before I left, I told a friend about my plans: “It’ll be like going to Boston in 1800 and meeting Sam Adams.” My friend lifted an imaginary bottle: “Well, I’ll be meeting Sam Adams tonight!”

On Monday, Sheila and I walked across the Charles Bridge. It was a crisp, clear morning. The bridge was nearly empty. The early morning sunlight shone on Baroque monuments to Christ, Mary, and the Bohemian saints. It cast shadows in marvelous colors onto the Vltava River. Toward the middle of the bridge was a plaque marking where Saint John Nepomucene was martyred in 1383 for defying King Wenceslas IV. It showed the saint literally sleeping with the fishes: he had been thrown into the river and drowned.

We waited briefly in the hotel lobby, and saw Marie, our genealogist and tour guide, pull up in her blue car. We got in and rode east of Prague. Marie grew up in a Catholic family in Prague under Communism. The watchword in her family was “Don’t share your groceries outside the kitchen,” which meant, do not talk about what we say and do at home. She was a teenager during the revolution, and she and her friends were in Wenceslas Square in 1989: “Everybody was there.”

About an hour and a half out of Prague, we turned off the main eastbound highway. The roads became increasingly winding and narrow. The turns were sharp and frequent. The landscape’s most striking features were the field crosses: stone images of the Crucifixion that served as objects of contemplation for farmers and travelers hundreds of years ago.

When I asked Marie if we would meet anyone in Chotěbudice, she surprised me. The mayor was a cousin of mine: a direct descendant of Veit Svoboda. Veit’s home in Building Twenty-Seven still stood, and it remained in the Svoboda family. The mayor lived there. We were going to meet him.

We pulled into Chotěbudice. The main road ran in a U-shape, flanked by houses on both sides, with the town hall and a small chapel in the middle. With a population of about one hundred, it appeared unchanged from when Veit, Matej, and Josefa lived there. The homes were all single-story dwellings, hundreds of years old, in some cases inhabited by the same farm families. We pulled up into the center of the village, in front of the town hall, and walked inside.

The mayor, Vladimir Svoboda, was waiting for us in his office on the second floor. Hale in appearance, he spoke no English, and since we spoke no Czech, Marie translated. He expressed wonder that people from so far away would be interested in Chotěbudice. He pulled out a book—in English—called Chotěbudice: Life and Times in a Small Village in Moravia, translated by a couple from Oregon named Steve and Irene Neshyba. He had flagged the pages that pertained to the Svobodas and pointed them out to us.

As we walked downstairs to see the village, we peered at old photos on the wall. Vladimir pointed at one, which showed a group of village men in uniform in 1914: “That’s a Svoboda.” The man looked like my Uncle Al.

We walked across the north side of the road to Building Twenty-Seven, Vladimir’s home, which was a white, one-story house. It was bisected by a driveway that led back to a barn. Vladimir told us how the building next door had burned down, and how his father had risked his life to keep the flames from consuming their home as well.

In the driveway, we met Vladimir’s son. Dressed in work clothes, he was a farmer, like the mayor. He and his wife were expecting a baby. They lived in the west wing of the house, and the mayor lived in the east wing on the other side of the driveway. We walked back to the old barn, which had farm implements and cages of rabbits raised for food. Behind the barn was a big yard with a large tree that Veit would have seen two hundred years before.

Vladimir took us into his home, where we sat at his dining room table in front of a picture window looking out onto the town square. His son brought a bottle of homemade plum liquor and poured shots for us. He also brought out a plate of snacks: “head cheese” made from the brains of a pig they had recently slaughtered. I ate mine, and some of Sheila’s too. When I told my Aunt Doris about our trip the next day, she said, “Mom and dad ate that but I don’t want any part of it.” We toasted each other and downed our shots.

The mayor told us how the Svobodas almost lost Building Twenty-Seven. After the Communists took control of Czechoslovakia in 1948, a committee member determined that the Svobodas were kulaks—peasants who owned too much property
—and should be expelled from the village. He carried a list of the banished. The townspeople took him to a tavern, got him drunk, and stole the list from his pocket. Too embarrassed to admit that he had lost the list, and too lazy to make a new one, the committee member let the matter drop, and so the Svobodas stayed.

We left Building Twenty-Seven and walked east up the road to Building Thirty-Five, where Matej’s family lived until they left for the United States. While Veit and Josefa’s old home was alive with a growing family, Matej’s was vacant and in disrepair. Still, I took pictures and scooped a small pile of dirt into a plastic bag to bring home.

We walked back to the town hall, said goodbye to Vladimir, and drove about six kilometers to Horní Slatina to see the parish church and cemetery. Built around 1230, Saint Giles’s Church had served Chotěbudice since after 1781. Its black steeple and white belfry dominated the village landscape, topped only by a bare tree looming overhead. The mayor of Horní Slatina, an exuberant woman with a generous, cheerful disposition, met us on the church steps, unlocked the doors, and let us in.

Winter sunlight filled the small sanctuary. On top of a marble tabernacle with gold doors, an Infant Jesus of Prague stood in purple Lenten regalia. Behind the tabernacle was a painting of Saint Giles’s apotheosis. To the nave’s left was an ornate pulpit, accessible by stairs and topped by a painted, baroque statue of the Good Shepherd surrounded by cherubim. To the right was the baptismal font, held by an angel in a blue robe perched atop a pedestal. I walked up old, wooden stairs to the cramped choir loft and looked down onto the sanctuary.

Behind the church was a large cemetery. Our host explained that the graves were family plots, in which succeeding generations were buried atop the previous ones. The families had to take responsibility for the plots’ upkeep to keep access to the cemetery. This, she said, the Svobodas had done. Indeed, there was a new, black monument, close to the church—RODINA SVOBODOVA—with fresh flowers sitting in front of it.

I had come to Chotěbudice thinking that I would see the empty homes of dead ancestors. Yet even in the cemetery, I saw signs of a family that was fully alive.

On Tuesday morning I walked from the Hotel Pod Věží up to the Archbishop’s Palace to meet Bishop Malý and receive his blessing. Two women were in the reception area. The atmosphere was quiet and peaceful. A religious sister came and left. A few minutes later, the bishop’s secretary came and brought me to his office on the second floor.

Bishop Malý wore clerics, with a black shirt and an open collar. He put me immediately at ease: “Would you like coffee? Tea? Vodka?” I told him that, in fact, I had just visited my distant cousins, who had given me a bottle of plum liquor. He said, “You should have brought it for me!”

I had thought that I would simply greet the bishop and receive his blessing. Instead, his secretary brought coffee for him, tea for me, and mineral water and a Ferrero Rocher chocolate for each of us. We talked for half an hour. He asked about the United States—its politics, its relationship with Europe, and whether it was still a Christian nation. He talked about his own travels to America to meet with Czech communities. When I asked him if he had any words of advice, he replied, “Remember the Czech Republic.”

Bishop Malý asked gently whether I was Catholic, and I said that I was. We talked about my work, and I shared the concerns that led me to him. He spoke about the importance of life, human dignity, and human rights. We talked about the apostolate. He emphasized the need to talk with people and help them see things differently, but positively, in an accessible and inviting way.

When it was time for the bishop to leave, he blessed me twice, the second time making the sign of the Cross on my forehead. I asked him also to bless holy cards of the Infant Jesus of Prague that I had gotten at the Church of Our Lady Victorious in Malá Strana, which displays the original statue. “Bambino di Praga!” he exclaimed. “I will bless them—in Czech”—and he did.

The bishop went back to his desk. Thinking the meeting over, I put on my coat and started to leave. But he and his secretary hurried after me. He gave me a book about the Archbishop’s Palace. “Courage,” he said, and then I left.

His secretary gave me a quick tour of the palace. She took me into the Archbishop’s Chapel, where there was a small group of schoolchildren. She showed me a portrait of Cardinal Tomášek, displayed outside the Baroque oratory in which he had often prayed. “In moments of exhaustion,” Tomáš Halík wrote, “the cardinal apparently felt he was completely alone.” He was under a relentless eye. Surveillance photos, published later in a book called Prague Through the Lens of the Secret Police, show him at Christmas Mass in 1985, wearing his red biretta. Not just old and cautious, but tough and smart, Cardinal Tomášek met his moment when it came, giving one of the decisive speeches of the 1989 revolution:

In this important hour of the struggle for truth and justice in this country, I, and the entire Catholic Church, stand on the side of the nation! None of us should stand aside when a better future for our nation is at stake. I ask you in these days to combine courage with wisdom, and reject the path of violence. Oh God, free us by the truth and renew the face of our homeland, the entire land, the entire world!

That night, I walked across the Charles Bridge to the Church of Saint Salvator, where Monsignor Halík would say Mass. The sixteenth-century church filled with college students. Under bright lights, the red carpet and chair made a striking contrast with the old, dark sanctuary. A bell rang, and Monsignor Halík processed down the aisle. At the end of Mass, he blessed the congregation and me. He went back to the sacristy, followed by dozens of students, who would attend a talk he was giving in the crypt. I stayed in the church and made my thanksgiving.

Four months later, I drove my family to Lincoln, and we visited my father’s grave. It was the first time I had been there since his funeral. I took the bag of dirt from Matej Svoboda’s home in Building Thirty-Five in Chotěbudice, dug a small hole, and put the dirt on my father’s grave. A thousand miles away, under a computer monitor in my office in Washington, sits a picture of Bishop Malý and me. I look at it often, when I remember to seek a right intention and the courage to pursue it.