Velvet Recall: 'A Spiritual Revolution'
Velvet Recall: 'A Spiritual Revolution'

Summary/Abstract: A key figure in communist Czechoslovakia's "underground church" on the religious side of the revolution. A TOL special report. On 17 November 1989, police in Prague cracked down on a student demonstration, triggering 10 days of mass protest and political action that peacefully brought down Czechoslovakia's communist regime. To mark the anniversary, all this week TOL features prominent Czechs offering their recollections of the Velvet Revolution. Today: author, commentator, and Catholic priest Tomas Halik. For more memories of 1989, see the Recollections section of our 20 Years After website http://20years.tol.org/. * * * A priest, theologian, sociologist, and psychotherapist, Tomas Halik was a key figure in communist Czechoslovakia's "iunderground church." Today he is one of the Czech Republic's most prominent public intellectuals and a respected voice on moral, ethical, and political issues. Trained in sociology and philosophy at Prague's Charles University, Halik studied theology clandestinely and was secretly ordained in East Germany in 1978. Eleven years later, he was assisting with preparations for the canonization of Agnes of Prague – a 13th-century Bohemian princess who abandoned her life of privilege for one of charity – when the mass protests that triggered the regime change erupted. Branded “an enemy of the regime” and banned from university teaching during communist rule, Halik did postgraduate work in clinical therapy and worked for several years with alcoholics and drug addicts. After the revolution he served as an adviser to President Vaclav Havel (who at one time suggested him as a potential successor). Now a professor at Charles, Halik has lectured at Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard and written more than 200 articles and several books, including Patience With God (published in English in April by Doubleday) and Confessor's Night (scheduled to be released in English next year). Earlier this year Pope Benedict XVI granted him the title of monsignor.

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