Tomas Halik: Not Becoming People of Closed Minds

Catholic Priest, Monsignor Tomas Halik was recently in Australia and was interviewed (just under 30-minute interview) on ABC Radio Local’s Sunday Nights show (aired: June 21^st 2011). You can listen to the interview here (downloadable as an Mp3 as well).

“…We don’t need faith when confronted with unshakeable certainties accessible to our powers of reason, imagination, or sensory experience. We need faith precisely at those twilight moments when our lives and the world are full of uncertainty, during the cold night of God’s silence. And its function is not to allay our thirst for certainty and safety, but to teach us to live with mystery [italics, his].” 

I’ve previously reflected on Halik here.

“…Halik was an underground Catholic priest in repressive Communist Czechoslovakia. Disguised by his profession as a psychotherapist, he worked secretly as a priest. The cost of discovery by secret police was very high for clergy in the former Czecho, where the regime had thrown thousand of clergy and religious into labour camps.

Born in Prague 1st June 1948, son of the literary historian Dr. Miroslav Halik.

He studied sociology and philosophy (1966-71) at the Arts and Philosophy Faculty of Charles University. Awarded PhD in 1972. In the autumn of 1968 he attended a course in the sociology and philosophy of religion at the University of Wales (Bangor, UK). In 1984 he completed a post-graduate course in clinical psychology and became a licensed psychotherapeutical practitioner. He studied theology clandestinely in Prague with Josef Zvioina and after 1989 undertook a course of post-graduate study (majoring in religion studies) at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, obtaining a licenciate in theology (Th.Lic.). In autumn 1992 he took higher doctorates at Charles University in Prague (sociology) and at the Pontifical Theological Faculty in Wroclaw (theology). In 1997, he was appointed Professor of Sociology at Charles University…” 

If you haven’t come across Halik, here’s a 2001 address by him titled: The Shadow of a Dead God? It was delivered at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, USA, in January 2001. Here’s the closing section of that talk:

“…When my non-believing friends ask me what faith is and what it's good for, I reply that faith gives one the strength to accept reality fully and in its entirety, because it is based on the conviction and experience that there is a meaning to reality, that our life is not a succession of accidents nor - in the words of Shakespeare's Macbeth - "a tale told by an idiot... signifying nothing." Faith is the confidence that in all of life's situations there is meaning, opportunity and hope. It is not up to me personally to invest life with meaning - meaning is already here and challenges me to find it and strive to understand it as fully as I can. So I don't have to despair and flee from reality however complicated and harsh it may be. Nor do I have to dress it up in illusions. That is why I believe that faith is the ally of realism and critical thinking and the enemy of superstition, prejudice and illusion. It is the courage of truth. The priest who many years ago introduced me to Christianity used to stress that there was one commandment that pre-dated all the Ten Commandments, namely: Thou shalt not deceive thyself nor the Lord thy God.

During the communist period, in common with many Christians, I discovered that faith gives us the strength to stand the test in the difficult circumstances of persecution. For many Christians who stood the test during the period of persecution it is hard to stand the test at this time of freedom. They grew too used to a time when the world was black and white, when it was clear who was with us and who wasn't, and where the boundary between good and evil was situated. They find it even more demanding and complicated to live in freedom that opens up a many-hued palette of opportunity and requires one to make choices over and over again. I am firmly convinced, however, that a real and healthy faith is the courage to be free. It gives us strength to accept freedom with all its risks. I believe that God summoned us to freedom, even though he knew all the risks.”

 

Comments

[jstainer]

As someone who teeters along the edge of skeptic and believer, I find the closing comments incredibly helpful for me.

Thank you.

[Chelle]

I heard Professor Halik in Melbounre. Two things stick in my mind from his talk:
1. mature christians have more in common with mature athiests than you might at first think because maturity produces a capacity for questioning and an openness to living life without certainties.
2. patience - the one quality that best characterised good intellectual contemplation. Be patient with our conversation partners and be patient with our wisdom - let insight evolve slowly and emerge out of an integrated head, heart, life experience.

[Paul Fromont]

Thanks for the update Chelle. I would have liked to have heard him "live" too.