THE CZECHS OF CLEVELAND
trary methods of control which they had been accustomed to use in the old country. In Cleveland, the first break came through the opposition of the priest toa fraternal organization. This organization, the Cecho-Slavonic Benevolent Association, seems to have been quite harmless in original intention, having as its object mutual assistance and fraternal insurance. Its members felt that the priest opposed it because he could not dominate it. The priest said that it taught ideas subversive of faith and morality. Recrimination grew fierce and bitter, and nothing was too bad for either to say about the other.
Just at this time Author:Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason” was translated into Bohemian, and became the weapon of the liberal party. Robert E. Ingersoll, then in the height of his personal power, became to them the19th century apostle of religious freedom, and the pendulum of religious faith swung to the furthest extreme of complete denial of all creeds and of every religious form. The Czechs of America were divided into two camps, those who remained faithful to the church, and those who professed an absolute denial of all religion. This denial became a religion in itself. Persecution was enjoyed as the natural corollary of progressive thought. and the free thinking organizations by the end of the 80’s included fully half of the Czechs of Cleveland.
Any movement of protest loses impetus when resistance ceases, and the zeal of the free thinking movement could not be passed on in its first fervor from the founders to their successors, who had never personally known the need for protest. Many of the second generation have grown wp into what their parents call “the American indifference,” while others have found a balance of the pendulum in the Protestant churches.
The present religious situation of the Czechs in Cleveland then has three aspects: there are those who have remained consistently loyal to the Roman Catholic church; these are about half the total number; there are the positive free thinkers, whose number is steadily diminishing; the third group is the Protestants, among whom the young people are joining the English-speaking congregations of the city and entirely ceasing to be identified as Czechs. A fourth group might be made of the young people who are entirely indifferent to religion.
The First Church in Cleveland.
The first Czech priest in Cleveland was the Rev. Antonin Krasny, who came to the city in 1857, after eight years in an Austrian prison because of his part in the Revolution of 1848. In prison he had contracted an illness from which he never afterwards was free, and which was the cause of his death in 1870. His sufferings in his country’s cause ufdoubtedly furnished a favorable atmosphere among his countrymen here, and he was very much liked. As pastor of St. Joseph’s German church on Woodland avenue, he ministered also to the Czechs of the city. In 1863 they organized within St. Joseph’s church the society of St. John Nepomucene, which was the nucleus of the first Czech church. This church was founded in 1867 and named St. Vaclav’s after the first Christian king of Bohemia, who reigned from 928 to 936 and was afterwards canonized. Later the official name of the church was changed to the Latinized form St. Wenceslas. The first church building, erected in the fall of 1867, at the corner of Arch and Burwell streets, was with great effort completed before Christmas, and the first service actually took place on Dec. 22. A rectory and school building were added two years later, and from this center initiative was furnished for the establishment of the other early Czech
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