The Czech Catholic Church and Problem Legitimation: From Inspiration to Personal Effort 1
In the following text, we describe how the Catholic Church attempts to legitimate problems in the agenda-setting process in the Czech Republic. We introduce a number of theoretical concepts and terms related to agenda setting that we apply to the case of the Catholic Church in the Czech Republic. We based our empirical analysis on semi-structured interviews; we spoke with eight re- spondents from different strata of the Church structure and with Catholic poli- ticians. We describe two kinds of strategies the Church would like to use, which we call: (1) the media strategy, whereby the Czech Catholic Church aims to legit- imate issues in the media arena, and (2) the vertical strategy, whereby the Czech Catholic Church aims to legitimate issues through the laity active at the top of the political hierarchy. We discuss these strategies in connection with the indi- viduals engaged in their implementation. We conclude by questioning these pro- posed strategies that are based on the principle of inspiration. We also suggest there is a need to revise the strategies and base them on the principle of personal effort instead.