Although the Czech Republic has a reputation as one of the most atheist countries in the world, one of its most prominent religious thinkers, Mgr Prof Tomáš Halík, thinks there is more to the picture than this characterisation suggests.
Mgr Halík spoke with us while visiting Melbourne on his recent Australian lecture tour, which included a conversation with Fr Frank Brennan SJ AO as part of Newman College’s Dom Helder Camera Lecture Series (see box below).
Mgr Halik was ordained a Catholic priest in 1978, the day before the installation of Pope John Paul II. The clandestine ceremony was conducted outside his home country, then known as Czechoslovakia, in the private chapel of a bishop in East Germany.
When he returned to Prague, he could tell almost nobody that he was now a priest since the Church was under constant surveillance by the Soviet communist regime that was then in power in his country. He did not even tell his mother, nor did he immediately tell his cardinal, František Tomášek, with whom he became a long-time collaborator and who contributed significantly to the peaceful ushering in of democracy with the 1989 ‘Velvet Revolution’. (When he did tell Cardinal Tomášek much later, he wrote the news of his ordination on a piece of paper and promptly burnt it.) His network of known priests was small—it had to be—and to this day he doesn’t know how many were ordained in secret at that time.
A friend of the late Czech president Vaclav Havel, Mgr Halík also won the Templeton Prize in 2014 for his contributions to interfaith dialogue, joining previous recipients such as Mother Teresa and Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.
Since the fall of communism in his country, Mgr Halík has personally baptised more than 3,000 people—mainly university students—and regularly has conversations with ‘seekers’ wanting to explore and discuss issues of faith. To assist in this ministry, Mgr Halík founded what is known the ‘Academic Parish of Prague’, which runs courses as part of its two-year catechumenate for baptism. ‘There are even more and more people coming with the intention to be baptised,’ he says.
The Academic Parish of Prague functions as an open space for seekers, welcoming those wanting to ask questions and to explore their doubts, their concerns and their struggles with the Church. It is for these people that Mgr Halík has a real heart.
‘I think many people have a distance from the church,’ he says. ‘They are open to spiritual values, and the church [needs] to find the language and the manner, how to communicate with those people.’
‘They have sympathy, and they are open, and they need to discuss things. It is not possible to give them “from above” some rigid [catechesis].’
Interestingly, the parish’s courses focus primarily on spirituality, prayer and contemplation. Mgr Halík says the length of the catechumenate and its spiritual focus are intentional.
‘I realised after several years of this catechumenate that many of those newly baptised, they were disappointed with the Church because they [experienced] a living church in the academic parish, but then after they finished the study in Prague, they returned to some small towns and discovered the church is empty,’ he explains.
‘I discovered that it’s very important to give them some deeper spiritual formation. So, when we founded the centre in Prague, there are many courses on meditation, on contemplative prayer, and also the possibility to speak very openly about our problems with faith, with church.’
It’s not just spirituality which is something like a private garden. I always say, our spiritual dimension of faith must always be connected with activity in the world, for justice and peace.
This ‘spiritual deepening’ is something the Church more widely must go through today, he believes. While institutional reform is an important element, without spiritual deepening any institutional reforms ‘would be nothing’. He reminds us that while there was a ‘Protestant reformation’ in the 16th century, there was a ‘Catholic reformation’ going on at the same time, exemplified by figures such as St Ignatius of Loyola, St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila. He believes it is this path of spiritual, mystical and contemplative deepening that we must take.
‘And it’s not just spirituality which is something like a private garden,’ he clarifies. ‘I always say, our spiritual dimension of faith must always be connected with activity in the world, for justice and peace.’
The Church as ‘Courtyard of the Gentiles’
In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI proposed the idea of creating something like a modern ‘Courtyard of the Gentiles’, a space for different religious and philosophical perspectives to enter into mutually enriching conversation.
The idea is based on the ‘Court of the Gentiles’ that existed outside the Jewish temple in Jesus’ day. This space was reserved for Gentiles who, though not fully identified with Judaism, were pious and sympathetic to it, Mgr Halík says.
This is my mission, not just [to] convert the converted, not just to have a culture war with ‘the enemies’, but to have an open dialogue with the people who are seekers, and to show them that we are also seekers.
In the same year, Pope Benedict also did a famous in-flight interview on his way to visiting the Czech Republic, where he said that if the Church is the minority in a given country, then it must be a ‘creative minority’, since ‘it is creative minorities who determine the future.’
Benedict said that one of the Church’s first responsibilities is to engage in ‘intellectual dialogue with agnostics and believers’.
They both need each other: the agnostic cannot be satisfied with not knowing whether God exists or not, but must seek and perceive the great heritage of faith; the Catholic cannot be content with having faith but must seek God even more, and in dialogue with others must re-learn God more deeply.
Benedict’s proposals have deeply inspired Mgr Halík’s work.
‘I welcome this idea to create space for the seekers,’ he says. ‘[This] I have found as my personal mission … I think we must create such open spaces to think together.’
Reflecting on the task of evangelisation in a society with many different religious beliefs and perspectives, and where the Church may be a minority, he acknowledges the temptation to become simply a ‘sect’. The Church becomes a sect when it retreats into itself, when it becomes a ‘ghetto’ and appears ‘narrow’ or ‘closed’, Mgr Halík says. This is something he calls ‘closed Catholicism’.
The future of Catholicism, he believes, lies in creating more spaces like the one he has in Prague, spaces for people to come together and think and talk and be formed.
‘Evangelisation without inculturation is just indoctrination. Especially after communism, the people [in my country] are allergic to indoctrination.’
‘We are not owners of the whole truth,’ Mgr Halík says. ‘Only Jesus can say, “I am the truth”. We are not Jesus. We are followers of Jesus … Yes, we must seek, and when we find, we must seek again and again … This is my mission, not just [to] convert the converted, not just to have a culture war with “the enemies”, but to have an open dialogue with the people who are seekers, and to show them that we are also seekers.’
Synodality is a common way we must go, with the seekers, not to push them into the existing structures, but to open our structures and our mental structures, and to take seriously also the spiritual experience of the others, of the seekers, of people with another face.
This is actually how Mgr Halík understands the concept of synodality. While he admits the term requires deeper thinking, for him synodality is something like the refusal to become a sect. It is the opening up of spaces where Catholics can walk together with others as they wrestle with the faith and with the Church.
‘This is synodality … [It] is a common way we must go, with the seekers, not to push them into the existing structures, but to open our structures and our mental structures, and to take seriously also the spiritual experience of the others, of the seekers, of people with another face.’
Into the depths
A recurring theme of Mgr Halík’s work is the need to go ‘into the depths’. The phrase comes from Luke’s gospel, when Jesus tells the apostles, who have been fishing all night without success, to try again and cast their nets ‘into deep water’ (Luke 5:4).
Many priests and Christians perhaps have the same feeling as the apostles, Mgr Halík says, working tirelessly only to find our nets are empty. When this is our experience, he says, we must hear Jesus’ words afresh: go into the depths.
‘It doesn’t mean to repeat the old mistakes,’ he explains. ‘Go to the depths, go to the depths, and try it again.’
What this may mean in practice, perhaps, is a rediscovery of a ‘spirituality’ of the cross and resurrection—the very depths from which Christianity springs.
Throughout this process of rediscovery, Mgr Halík is adamant that two things need to be held in tension. While he advocates for an ‘opening’ of structures, of creating opportunities for seekers to genuinely explore issues of faith, he also believes Christianity is a demanding enterprise, primarily because it centres around the cross and resurrection of Christ. It requires us to think deeply, to wrestle with our own doubts, our own darkness and our own unbelief. It also requires us to let things die, in ourselves and in the Church, so that something new might be born.
We are on the crossroad. We can just close our heart, our brain, and create a ghetto or some ‘contra-culture’ in the world … or go through this deep transformation and accept something must die also in the Church. Only after the death is a resurrection. And then we must be open to seek the resurrected, transformed Christ, and to offer the transformed Christianity. It’s a very demanding task, but it is [a] necessity.
Lent is a perfect time for us to do just this, he thinks.
‘We must discover the demanding Christianity. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the greatest Christian thinkers in [the] last century, spoke about cheap grace, and I think there is also some cheap faith, cheap belief, cheap Christianity—just the ideology and a set of dogmas and set of rituals. But, I think such cheap Christianity, superficial Christianity, cannot survive in this world. I think now is the end of this form of Christianity,’ Mgr Halík says.
‘We are on the crossroad. We can just close our heart, our brain, and create a ghetto or some “contra-culture” in the world … or we must go through this deep “eastern” transformation and accept something must die also in the Church.’
‘Only after the death is a resurrection,’ he reminds us. ‘And then we must be open to seek the resurrected, transformed Christ, and to offer the transformed Christianity. And I think it’s a very demanding task, but it is [a] necessity.’
What this ultimately looks like, no one knows. But Mons Halík hopes that his own work offers something of a glimpse into a future that is both open and deep, and also strangely demanding.
‘Help my unbelief’
Mgr Tomas Halik reflects on finding God in a secular age at the latest Helder Camera lecture
As part of his recent Australian lecture tour, Mgr Halík was the latest speaker in Newman College’s Dom Helder Camera Lecture Series, engaging in a wide-ranging conversation with Fr Frank Brennan SJ AO, Rector of Newman College, on the topic ‘Help my unbelief! Finding God in a secular age’.
Introducing Mgr Halík, Fr Brennan quoted the citation for an honorary doctorate that the Czech theologian and philosopher received from Oxford University in 2016, describing him as a ‘physician, pastor and writer’ who is ‘able to give respectful and thoughtful attention equally to his own flock and to those wandering outside it’.
In front of a packed crowd in Newman College’s famous Oratory, the conversation began by exploring some of Mgr Halík’s remarkable life story, including his upbringing in an intellectual family in Prague, his early attraction to the literary, musical and artistic heritage of the Church, his secret journey to the priesthood and activity in the ‘underground church’ under communism, and his significant role in the revival of the Church in the Czech Republic after the fall of the communist regime, including his productive relationships with Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis. He also spoke at length of his ongoing ministry in Prague, particularly among young people and seekers, making connections to opportunities that he believes are presenting themselves for the transformation of the Church in our current ‘secular age’.
Sometimes in the Church we look in the wrong places for Jesus, who often comes to us in ‘his anonymity’ and in ‘surprising forms’.
For many years, Mgr Halík said, he asked himself ‘why I feel sometimes nearer to some unbelievers than to some believers’, realising eventually that many who call themselves unbelievers might actually be thought of as ‘anonymous Christians and anonymous believers’, people whose life experiences have meant they don’t consciously identify with the Church but who nevertheless demonstrate an openness and generosity of heart towards God.
Recalling the story of the women who were asked at the open tomb, ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead?’, he said that sometimes in the Church we look in the wrong places for Jesus, who often comes to us in ‘his anonymity’ and in ‘surprising forms’. The Church is called to go out in a spirit of adventure, he said, to seek the resurrected, transformed Jesus in the ‘Galilees’ of our own time, among those who are questioning and seeking and suffering, and not just in the places with which we are already familiar and comfortable.
‘The resurrection was not just the reanimation of a dead body,’ he said, but a ‘radical transformation’ so that ‘even his nearest and dearest aren’t able to recognise Jesus.’ If, like St Thomas, we are to recognise this transformed Jesus, he said, we must have the courage to see and touch his wounds.
Christian Bergmann
Christian Bergmann is a writer in the Communications Office of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne. He is a graduate of Campion College, as well as a husband, father and professional bookworm.
