This article investigates how the Vatican viewed and responded to ‘patriotic’ or ‘progressive’ priestly movements in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia during the early Cold War. While these movements have been examined within their respective national contexts, little attention has been paid to their reception in Rome. Drawing on archival material from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the article analyses a 1955 Vatican investigation that led to the banning of clerical-progressivist newspapers in the Soviet bloc. It argues that the condemnation of these publications was intended not only to censor specific texts but also to delegitimise state-supported clerics and shield the Church from internal division. The investigation was shaped decisively by émigré clergy from Central and Eastern Europe, who translated local ecclesial developments into analytical categories intelligible to the Holy Office and persistently framed ‘progressive’ Catholicism as a coordinated, state-backed challenge to doctrinal and hierarchical unity. At the same time, assessments by Western theological experts influenced Roman deliberations, reinforcing parallels between Eastern European clerical periodicals and condemned Western ‘progressive’ Catholic publications. The article further demonstrates that the Holy Office did not operate as an autonomous repressive apparatus. While it pursued condemnations of texts, Pope Pius XII repeatedly curtailed or postponed broader disciplinary measures, favouring calibrated responses that avoided provoking schism or intensified state repression. Overall, the study situates Vatican responses to ‘progressive’ Catholicism within the broader constraints of Cold War politics, revealing a strategy marked by doctrinal vigilance, institutional restraint and adaptive use of indirect instruments of authority.
András Fejérdy (Thu,) studied this question.