Mons. Michael Slavík , Th.D.

"I reproach myself... or do I reproach myself? Maybe that's not the right word, but I regret that I was not able to talk straight about these things with my primary preacher, Lojza Kánský. Because - I'm jumping back in time now - he told the State Security things about me that we said in private. Of the ten or so people who - according to the file that the State Security kept on me - there were about seven priests, or how many, and the others sort of said innocuous things or didn't fulfil the assignment that they had towards me either, but Lojza Kánský then, unfortunately, told about my personal opinions and evaluations. So I wanted to discuss that with him sometime. But I can't say that I don't forgive him or anything like that. We met afterwards in practice, here in Prague, on a regular basis, and I had no problem talking to him. But somehow I didn't get the strength to open this chapter, and maybe it wasn't even necessary."

"He arrived just as our unit was in the field on a military exercise. So there was only a back detachment in the barracks, and we were always on duty, duty - rest... And he arrived just on the day I was on guard duty at the gate, so it was not even possible for me to leave the barracks, duty and so on. And he told me that he was not from the Ministry of Defence, but from the Ministry of the Interior, I think he expected me to be impressed, which I pretended to be, but in fact I wasn't. And he sort of started to tell me some of these things, so when he finally went straight with me, he just wanted me to somehow make this deeper contact with him and so on. I kind of took advantage of that, I was like, 'So you are being honest with me, but you actually lied to me last time, so I don't have the confidence to continue with you because people who don't speak the truth to me, I...' Well, so it ended up pretty much upsetting him. This was all taking place on the gate outside the barracks. And I somehow still got a promise out of him that he'd never come back."

"He was our civics teacher.. civics, and so he always had me read some ideological texts for the whole class that were anti-church or anti-religion or somehow promoted this materialistic worldview, and so I would read that. That was the role at that point - he asked me to read it, he didn't ask me to agree. And one day what happened was he said to me, 'Well, what do you think about that? You're on the other side, so tell me, what do you think about that?' In front of the class... And I don't know what came over me, I was like, 'How come I'm on the other side? Professor, you're baptised too.' And he says, 'Well, as a child.' And I had the information that he wasn't baptised as a child, that he was baptised at eighteen. So I said, 'No, that's not true - as a child, you were baptised as an adult, at eighteen.' Well, by then the class was getting into a frenzy, it was like a football game. And he said, 'How do you know that?' And I said, 'I was told that by the old vicar' who lived in the rectory and who baptised him. And he said, 'Tell Comrade Vicar that he's confusing me with my brother. I mean, comrade... to the vicar!' And I said, 'Oh, he's not confused, he baptised you both.' And at that moment he started to sigh, or whatever you want to call it, and staggered out of the classroom. Well, the class was quite happy... Well, I was quite cheeky, today, I have to admit that, but on the other hand, he's made a run for it, he's asked for it. And he's been the hard core, the solid one, the one who never got out of the line, and now this could hurt his political profile. And after the break, this professor came up to me, and she goes straight to me, and she says, 'What did you do to him?' I say, 'Nothing, he started it.' And she says, 'He's sitting there in the staffroom, his head in his hands, and he's just screaming, 'I'm not going to survive this...'!"