ROME. Today the dream of a united Europe that breathes with both lungs, as John Paul II wrote, East and West, “is threatened by the dangerous tumors of nationalism, populism and fundamentalism in both lungs”. Czech philosopher and theologian, a man who challenged totalitarianism without being trapped in recriminations, Monsignor Tomas Halik believes that the priority for Christianity today is to avoid political exploitation and confessional identitarianism and reinvent itself as a source of spiritual accompaniment for women and men in search.
Born in Prague in 1948, Halik graduated in Sociology, Philosophy and Psychology in his city in the 1960s, was ordained clandestinely in East Germany in 1978, collaborated with Cardinal Frantisek Tomasek at the time of the «Church of the silence »Czechoslovakia and, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the then president of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel. Only after 1989 was he able to teach at the university in his country. He currently teaches Sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University in Prague, is rector of the Church of the Holy Savior for pastoral care with university students and president of the Czech Christian Academy. He received the Templeton Prize in 2014 and an honorary doctorate from ‘University of Oxford. Recently he was a guest of the Pontifical Gregorian University for an international and interdisciplinary conference organized by the Institute of Psychology to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its foundation. An opportunity to reflect, among other things, on the prospects for priestly formation.
“I see spiritual accompaniment very promising for the future”, explains Tomas Halik on the sidelines of the meeting of the Jesuit Roman university. “I think we need to differentiate between the different types of roles of the priest: there is the parish priest, there is the missionary, and I think there is a third way that I consider very promising for the future, spiritual accompaniment. Among the people of our society there are many who do not identify with the Churches, who define themselves as non-religious but spiritual people, people in search. The number of people fully identified with institutionalized religions decreases, the number of convinced atheists also decreases, while there is a large number of people who in their hearts and minds are halfway, with a mixture of belief and unbelief, of faith and doubt, and I think we need to communicate with these people, not in the way of the traditional missionary, not by pushing them into existing institutional structures, but by opening up these structures. We must converse with these people, walk with them, in respect: we can learn something from the treasure of our traditions and spirituality, but we can also learn something from them. In my opinion, an important role, from this point of view, can be played by chaplains, chaplains in hospitals, prisons, in the army, in universities: chaplains are there for everyone, not just for the devotees. They can listen, discuss, discover. In many of our countries, confessionals are empty, people do not recognize themselves in the classic mirror of the confessional, and there is also the question of what sin really is, what one’s responsibility, how determined one is by one’s culture or how much one is he has his own responsibility for his own actions… So many issues that people need to be able to talk about and discuss, and I think that for this reason spiritual accompaniment is very important. For example, I have been a priest for more than 43 years, I have heard thousands of confessions, but in recent years I always offer the possibility of a simple spiritual accompaniment: and people come. I expanded the group of collaborators also to lay people, to sisters, with experiences in psychotherapy and counseling, collaborators who can accompany people. I think it would be a very important service for the Church in the future. And it would also be important to create centers for this accompaniment. People say that the Czech Republic is the most atheist country in the world, but in my parish in Prague I baptize more than 3,000 adults every year, and every year they increase. Therefore it is also possible in the secularized world. But, in fact, we must offer not only liturgy, preaching, but also listen to people, give them the possibility of finding centers for the spiritual life. People come for spiritual retreats that are sometimes even very creative: for example a week of silence, with the possibility of watching two films a day, and then spend time meditating, contemplating the meaning of the film, how it affects one’s inner self. . People very willingly come to refresh their spiritual life, even in a time of crisis. In my opinion, this can be the way to the future ».
And what do you think of identityism, a trend that risks reducing Christianity to a flag to be waved but which in our times is spreading and cannot be ignored by pastors? What to say to those who seek refuge, a strong identity in Christianity, in the liturgy, in doctrine?
“True, there is a need for identity, and it can have several reasons. In my opinion, one reason is the crisis of the family: the family should be the natural environment that cultivates the identity of the child, but when the family is in crisis, there are divorces, or the parents are absent and put their children in front of the television. , people grow up who do not have a personal identity and therefore seek a collective identity. And they can find it in political radicalism, right or left, as well as in some religious fundamentalism: the psychological profile of these groups is very similar! It is a very dangerous phenomenon because with a perspective that sees everything in black or white, one cannot understand the real world. These people end up being afraid of a colorful world, of a changing world, and especially in this juncture of great change they are looking for something strong. But giving them faith as a form of ideology means giving them stones, not bread. The American psychologist Gordon Allport already in the 1950s underlined the difference between intrinsic religiosity and extrinsic religiosity: intrinsic when faith itself is the reason, extrinsic when religiosity is an instrument for something else, for example a position in society, a strong defense from the world. This extrinsic religiosity is connected with a rigid attitude, with authoritarianism, with a closed mentality. It is not healthy, it is typical of people who feel lost, in danger, frightened in the world. This fundamentalism is like a childhood disease ».
You come from a country where Christianity has been persecuted, you have a personal experience in this sense: have you personally experienced the temptation of identitarianism?
“I remember that when I converted, in the 1960s, I had the opportunity to travel to the West: there was the possibility of a cultural exchange with the Catholic university in Holland. I had high expectations. I arrived in the tumult following the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). I had only one book by Maritain, I asked if they had anything else by Maritain, and they told me that no one had read Maritain for years, that the students who initially were to become priests were now married, that they were demonstrating against the bishop … and I remained totally shocked! Especially in the post-communist world, the effect of the culture shock has been there. And when I returned home after this cultural shock, I met ultra-conservative Catholics who told me that those were the fruits of the Council, spoke to me of suspicions towards Freemasonry, Jews … and I lived a few months in this atmosphere of traditionalism. Thank God the spring of Prague came, in ’68, and I met wonderful priests who spent many years in the prisons of Prague and showed me an open Catholicism, they dreamed of a Church without triumphalism, poor, a Church that serves, in prisons there was a spontaneous ecumenism with Protestant Christians, and thus introduced me to the spirit of the Second Vatican Council. But many people in post-Communist countries had lived in isolation and after 1989 experienced a culture shock. Some of them are still in this besieged bunker mentality, “we must defend ourselves from the enemies”. In pluralist and democratic societies we are not accepted by everyone, but it is an absolutely different situation compared to totalitarian communism ».
Even in post-communist countries, as in the West, today Christianity is often used by politics to stir up nationalistic divisions. As you wrote in the magazine “America”, “secular language is often not capable of mobilizing strong emotions in crisis situations, and consequently religious terms appear spontaneously in the language of politicians, even those who are very distant from personal faith. and from religious ethics, when they invoke suggestive images from the collective unconscious of society “. It is something that we are also seeing in Russia in recent weeks …
“Some dictators and leaders of authoritarian regimes deliberately exploit religion on a political level. When Stalin realized that the peoples of the Soviet Empire, especially Ukraine, were not ready to fight for communism by the time Hitler’s troops arrived to invade, he defined the conflict as the “great patriotic war”, and Orthodox priests, icons in hand, marched at the head of the Red Army troops. Today even Putin, who is a great admirer of Stalin, says that Greater Russia needs a spiritual boost, and therefore seeks to exploit the Russian Orthodox Church. Some Church leaders, on the other hand, are his former KGB colleagues. The Russian propaganda points in particular to conservative Christians who could be in tune with Putin, and represents him as the new emperor Constantine who will save Christianity from the influence of Protestantism and Western liberalism ”.
But this alliance with nationalism damages Christianity even more than communism, according to Tomas Halik: «Is there a form of Christianity in today’s world that can be a source of moral inspiration for a culture of freedom and democracy? We must look for a form that is not a nostalgic imitation of the past, but that respects the fact that our world is not, and never will be, religiously or culturally monochromatic, but is instead radically pluralistic ».
Tomas Halik: fundamentalism and nationalism threaten Christianity