Two outstanding Catholic politicians, Jan Šrámek and Bohumil Stašek, members of the People’s Party, and their political activities in Czechoslovakia between the two world wars are examined and compared in the study. Their personal and political career reflects not only the peripeteia of the political and religious situation in the First Czechoslovak Republic, characterized by a strong influence of the secularization and anti-Catholic wave existing in the country, but also the regional differences between Bohemia and Moravia. Their common denominator consisted in the efforts aimed at improving the negative view of Catholicism in the nation’s eyes. In spite of these common efforts, however, each of them chose to follow a different way in practical political work. Šrámek compressed the Catholic political program in the narrow limits of short-time and often defensive solutions, and was able to achieve a compromise even with his ideological opponents, which helped the Party score important political points, but it was also a target of criticism by some Catholic circles. Stašek differed from Šrámek by his endeavor to formulate clear ideological concepts and rather offensive political ideas that were often based on the Pope’s revival program for the Church. These features gave later rise to ideological differences between the People’s Party Members and resulted in a political and power struggle inside that party of political Catholicism.
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The issue of celebrating church holidays as state holidays is an example of the development of the relationship between the interwar Czechoslovak republic and the Catholic Church, as well as one of political Catholicism’s real successes in interwar Czechoslovakia. Political Catholicism managed to defend most church holidays in the changed political landscape. Introducing the single new, and anti-Catholic, Mr. Jan Hus holiday in the newly created state in 1925 caused a diplomatic affair between Czechoslovakia and the Holy See, and indirectly provoked significant domestic political unrest.
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