Mar 12 2009
Tomas Halik - the second Lent speaker at St. Clements
Tomas Halik, the second Lent speaker at St. Clements
Image source assuming fair use
St.Clements series of Lent speakers “Being a Christian during Communism” continues with Tomáš Halík as the second speaker at the English-speaking Anglican/ Episcopalian Church in Prague. Every Thursday during Lent at 19:00 they will have a member of a different denomination speaking about their personal experiences and the experience of their churches during the times of communism in the Czech Republic. Tomáš Halík, was born in Prague on 1st June 1948, twenty years before the so called “Prague Spring”. He studied sociology and philosophy at Charles University. In the autumn of 1968, the year of the “Prague Spring” he attended a course at the University of Wales (Bangor, UK) and in 1984 he became a licensed to practise psychotherapy. He also studied theology clandestinely in Prague and majored after 1989 in religious studies at the Pontifical Lateran University, the most important and prestigious Vatican/ Roman Catholic University. After more studies he was appointed Professor of Sociology, again at Charles University (Prague).
During the Communist period, he was banned from teaching and was registered with the Secret Police as “an enemy of the regime”, I guess he took this as a compliment! He had to work in many secular professions, just as Bishop Dusan, the first speaker of these evening talks. Tomáš Halík himself worked as a psychologist and sociologist, concentrating on working with alcoholics and drug addicts at a clinic of the University Hospital in Prague. He also focused on sensitivity and social communication training in management and leadership together with lecturing to doctors and medical students about patient-doctor communication and interactions. Apart of this, he also covered a wide field of related issues such as the philosophical, ethical and psychological aspects of medicine and psychotherapy, publishing several articles on those topics. As he was never a member of any political party, he was held in high esteem by his colleges inside and out side the political and church underground.
His studies let him to discover and affirm his personal vocation and in October 1978, he was secretly ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in Erfurt (East Germany). Before and after his ordination he gave clandestine seminars in private homes, published articles in samizdat (an underground political magazine) and helped publish illegal (=not approved by the Czechoslovak, communist regime) philosophical and theological books and articles. He counted many dissidents and political activists, inside and outside the underground church, among his friends. The best known of these being Václav Havel, who one day would become the first president of a, then free, Czechoslovak Republic.
After the velvet revolution, that brought political and personal freedom to the country in 1989, he became General Secretary to the Czech Conference of Bishops and lectured in pastoral psychology and sociology at the Catholic Theological Faculty of Charles University, where he once studied. Since 1990, he has been the parish priest of St Saviour, the Charles University church, and the President of the Czech Christian Academy.
His continuous academic work includes the positions of lecturer at the Institute for Philosophy and Religious Studies of the Arts and Philosophy Faculty of Charles University, focusing on the philosophy, psychology and sociology of religion, the relationship of religion and culture, and the role of religion in modern society. He was initiator of the international research project “Aufbruch”, German for “Beginning/ New Start”, that is concerned with religiosity and the role of the church in post-Communist societies.
He has published over 200 works, ranking from short web articles to full-length books. These have been translated into many languages such as German, Polish, Italian and Spanish.
He is a member of the editorial boards of many national and foreign-language professional organisations and is a member of such prestigious professional bodies like the “Swiss Psychotherapeutic Society” and the “Daseinsanalytische Gesellschaft”. He is a regular lecturer of many European universities and participant of international conferences, concentrating recently on the inter-religious/ inter-faith dialogue between Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. He is also known for taking a stand for racial, national, religious and political tolerance, as a pacifist and a forward thinking theologian in the field of ecumenism, especially in the relation with the German churches.
Since 1999, he has been a frequent participant in international debates and panel discussions with European politicians regarding the widening of the European Union and on the cultural and spiritual aspects of the process of European integration (Berlin, Hanover, Passau, Lausanne, Paris, etc.).
There is only one question, where does he find the 36 hours in a day necessary for this??? I am looking forward to hearing him speak this evening and hope that a lot of people will attend this event! More information about Tomáš Halík can be found on his personal web site whose information was used to compile this blog post.
