Abstract
Book review Michal SKLENÁŘ, Dean Václav Boštík. Parish in Ústí nad Orlicí between 1927 and 1963 as a picture of the history of the Roman Catholic Church.
Sklenař's Boštík finally shows and documents how in the struggle for faith the Catholic Church, retreating behind the walls of churches, gradually began to pull the short end of the rope. This situation finally allows the author to reflect on the failure of a part of the diocesan clergy, who "in confrontation with the communist totalitarian rule" for various reasons chose "the closer good of remaining in the parish and the possibility of legal priestly activity".
Sklenář can afford to make an evaluative judgment, because he knows that it is difficult to separate him from his work as a historian. The book about Dean Václav Boštík may indeed be only one of the possible "pictures of the past of Catholic Christians in the Czech lands".
It is, however, an eloquent depiction that, from the periphery of East Bohemia, interestingly illuminates the Czech Catholic landscape and its modern historiography.