"I longed to be ordained a priest but I knew beforehand that I couldn't. That was one of the biggest contradictions in my life when it came to church life. Even at age sixteen, I wanted to go study theology. It wasn't an option at the time. It was officially only possible in Litoměřice, but that was a seminary for candidates for the priesthood. When the opportunity presented itself, I accepted it happily and studied. It's just that you're in an environment where you know that all those Salesians, the first group I studied with, could be ordained priests because they were men and I couldn't because I was a woman. Yet intellectually they are not better, or I am not worse than them. This was incomprehensible to me; it was a very tough, difficult experience."
"The regime tried to keep religion in the church strictly because it could monitor it easily that way. Priests were under strong pressure from church secretaries and were monitored. It was risky to be in contact with them because the StB [State Security] knew immediately. I think that the idea of our communist ideologues was that these old ladies would eventually die out, so let them have that - the declared freedom of religion. They were basically supposed not to let young people in. There was virtually no religious literature published, or very limited. Religion classes were closely monitored and took place not in parishes but in schools where there was a lot of control. Parents did not want to register their children because they had to do this with the head masters. The ideas of the Second Vatican Council couldn't really reach us through the media. Most of the priests who - I don't like the word 'progressive', but who had a sense of the development of the world, like Zvěřina or Mádr, were in prison and weren't released until 1965. So, the possibility for the Church to evolve the way it did in Europe or in the Western world at least was only fragmentary in our country. The only thing that was left of it, to oversimplify it a lot, was that the altar was turned. There was a change in the liturgy, that is, the national language was used and the priest would face the people."
"My dad's brother, my uncle, was arrested in 1951. He was the secretary of the bishop in Olomouc, and he spent ten years in prison as part of the action against the Church. He was released in 1960 and returned home to his father who lived near Hranice in Moravia. He worked as a road worker for a while, then his sister took him in to live in Ostrava. Having returned from prison, he was at the limit of his physical strength. We used to go to see grandpa during holidays and I had the opportunity to meet my uncle there. He influenced me a lot. Not that I was ever a non-believer. My sister and I were baptised at the hospital. My parents went to church with me until I was five. When I had the opportunity to take religion classes, they didn't want me to. They didn't want any conflict, and they especially didn't want to subject me to ridicule or persecution as a child. That's when my uncle gave me a catechism, which I read avidly. We had various prayer books from my mother's house, too. I was shaped by and attracted to Christianity from childhood, though I did not have the opportunity to become more familiar with it, because we only went to church during holidays at relatives' houses in Moravia. I liked going there and found it important. I always believed, I just couldn't practice in full. When I was eighteen, I made up my mind and started going to church despite my mother's disapproval and concerns. My dad sided with me in this."
"We as a generation accepted that communism would always be here and that we had to learn to function in it in a way that preserves our dignity and allows us to live a decent life according to our conscience. On the other hand, we had to work in society somehow. We belonged to a generation that, unlike those who became publicly involved in 1968 and then ended up working in boiler rooms, obtained normal education. We wanted to make a living and make a career out of it. For me, the red line that I wasn't going to cross, even if it cost me my job, was joining the Communist Party. That was out of the question."
"The Odeon was a phenomenon that is hard to describe. It was built on huge trust because we obviously worked with people in the editorial office who were not allowed to publish and did so under others' names. It was across the editorial office, not just in our little [art] office. The editors knew this, of course, and people kept quiet. Everybody covered it up because on the one hand it was about the value of the books that were being published, and on the other hand it was about giving these people something to live on. For many of them, it was one of the few ways to make a living when the regime didn't want to employ them anywhere. Life was sometimes full of amusing moments, for example when a new member of the administration was recruited, and that was Professor Hejdánek's daughter. That was after the Charter! Somehow the HR employee didn't notice, so they hired her and she stayed there. Things like that happened there."
Mireia Ryšková was born in Prague on 13 April 1951. Her father was a lawyer and worked as a commercial attaché in France until the early 1950s. He had to leave his job for political reasons. The communist regime sentenced his brother Josef Ryška to twelve years in prison for alleged espionage and treason in ‘church trials’. Mireia graduated from the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in French and art history. She witnessed lectures by Václav Černý and Jan Patočka during the ‘thaw’ period. Around 1973, she began studying Catholic theology at secret residential seminaries organized by the Salesians. She worked as an art editor at the Odeon publishing house in Prague. She was also involved in the underground church. She led an unofficial youth fellowship, taught theology, and went for voluntary work with young believers. As a result, the State Security set up a ‘signal file’ for her under the cover name ‘Preacher’ in 1977. In the 1980s, she secretly studied biblical studies in East Germany. In the free era, she earned a doctorate and an associate professorship in theology. She taught biblical studies at the Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague, which awarded her several prizes. In 2023, she lived in a rectory in Prague-Dolní Počernice, volunteering as a housekeeper.
Mireia Ryšková (left) in front of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University with French translator Václav Jamek (right) and translator and writer Vlasta Macková Dufková, early 1970s
Mireia Ryšková (left) in front of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University with French translator Václav Jamek (right) and translator and writer Vlasta Macková Dufková, early 1970s
Mireia Ryšková (centre) with Odeon colleagues (left: head of the art department Václav Rein, editor of the art department Jitka Hamzová, Spanish literature editor Hodoušek), likely 1980s
Mireia Ryšková (centre) with Odeon colleagues (left: head of the art department Václav Rein, editor of the art department Jitka Hamzová, Spanish literature editor Hodoušek), likely 1980s
