From the Underground Church to Freedom by Tomáš Halík (review)

The world’s most interesting person just might be a Czech priest. Friend of popes and of heads of state, winner of the Templeton Prize, prolific author, polyglot, world traveler, shepherd of a community of Christians and of spiritual seekers who are fellow survivors of totalitarianism, Tomáš Halík has a life story worth telling. Because seasons of silent reflection have punctuated his litany of exploits, his memoir offers both a first-hand account of the actions undertaken by a player in world events and a vivid glimpse into otherwise inaccessible realms.

Born in 1948 into a family of intellectuals and sometime-Catholics, Halík came of age in a Marxist police state. His father safeguarded the manuscripts of writer, playwright, journalist, and pro-democracy activist Karl Čapek. Halík’s youthful rebellion against communism took both subtle forms—like wearing a three-piece suit to class—and more dangerous ones—like posting a memorial to J.F.K. in the hall of his school. In young adulthood, his friends misconstrued his conversion to Christianity as another form of protest, rather than as an organic outgrowth of his reading (Augustine, Aquinas, Chesterton), his contact with intellectual priests like Jiří Reinsberg, and spiritual forces no materialist could acknowledge.

Halík left for a semester in the U.K., establishing himself as a lifelong Anglo-phile, when the Soviets crushed his homeland’s brief experiment with “socialism with a human face” that had been the 1968 Prague Spring (62). Upon returning home, Halík organized a requiem for classmate Jan Palach, who had immolated himself in protest. From that point forward, Halík entered two decades devoid of the two things that would most characterize his life thereafter: public demonstrations of faith and travel abroad.

Discerning a call, he entered the novitiate. Few knew. She might have eventually guessed, but he never told his mother, despite the fact that it had been she who had insisted upon his baptism as an infant. Those who served openly as priests in communist Czechoslovakia faced a choice between imprisonment and collaboration with the secret police. Utter secrecy was the only alternative. Halík was ordained during a brief sojourn in East Germany.

Publicly, Halík remained a single layperson. He received a doctorate in sociology and philosophy but, after giving a subversive graduation speech, he was blacklisted from academia. He offered sociological training to managers in industry and then counseled addicts as a psychotherapist. Meanwhile, privately, he celebrated mass, mentored novices, encouraged other believers, and attended clandestine lectures by ostensible tourists including Charles Taylor, Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur, Hans Küng, Walter Kasper, and Johann Baptist Metz.

Under Gorbachev, the Soviet Union relaxed its grip on the Eastern Bloc. The leadership of the underground Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia foresaw the end of communism and concluded that the Church might be one of the only institutions prepared to reconcile alienated nations and to provide a coherent message of hope, justice, and the responsibilities entailed with freedom. Halík became architect and chief promoter of a Decade of Spiritual Renewal for the nation. He traveled to Rome, where he befriended John Paul II and soon, in collaboration with new Czech President and lifelong friend Václav Havel, became one of the primary organizers of the first Slavic pope’s visit to the Czech Republic.

A period of personal tumult followed. Halík found himself assailed by those jealous of his sudden prominence, including former collaborators with the communist regime. Several years of expansive ministry, teaching, writing, public speaking, and related travel (e.g. the U.S., Egypt, India, Japan) gave way to a time of diminished public activity, deep introspection, and travel-for-adventure’s-sake. A near death experience in Antarctica brought with it a profound sense of awe at God’s presence in the midst of all things.

It is not self-evident that the lives of people of action lend...