The Afternoon of Christianity: The Courage to Change - Hardcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Tomáš Halík is a Czech Roman Catholic priest, philosopher, theologian, and scholar. He is a professor of sociology at Charles University in Prague, pastor of the Academic Parish by St. Salvator Church in Prague, president of the Czech Christian Academy, and a winner of the Templeton Prize. His books, which are bestsellers in his own country, have been translated into nineteen languages and have received several literary prizes. He is the author of numerous books, including I Want You to Be: On the God of Love, winner of the Catholic Press Association Book Award in Theology and Foreword Reviews' INDIES Book of the Year Award in Philosophy.

Gerald Turner has translated numerous Czech authors, including Václav Havel, Ivan Klíma, and Ludvík Vaculík, among others. He received the US PEN Translation Award in 2004.

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“We are not living an epoch of change so much as an epochal change,” Pope Francis says. The forms of religions and their roles in different societies and cultures are also changing. Secularization has not brought about the end of religion, but rather its transformation. While some forms of religion are experiencing major upheavals, others are so vibrant that they have transcended their former boundaries. Traditional religious institutions have lost their monopoly on religion. The culminating process of globalisation is encountering resistance: manifestations of populism, nationalism and fundamentalism are on the rise. The world community of Christians is not united – but today the greatest differences are not between churches, but within them. Differences in doctrine, and in religious and political attitudes, often have roots hidden in the deeper layers of people’s intellectual and spiritual lives. Sometimes people reciting the same creed in the same church pew have very different ideas about God. Among the transformations of today’s spiritual scene is the collapse of the wall between “believers” and “non-believers”; noisy minorities of dogmatic believers and militant atheists are being marginalized, while there is a growing number of those in whose minds and hearts faith (in the sense of “proto-faith”) and unbelief (in the sense of doubting skepticism) are intertwined. I am finishing this book in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic; around me many sick people die daily in overcrowded hospitals, and many of the living and healthy are slipping into existential insecurity. The certitudes of our world are also shaken by this experience. In addition to the long-standing crisis of traditional religious certitudes, there is also a crisis of traditional secular certitudes, especially the belief in humans’ dominion over nature and their own destiny. The state of the Catholic Church today in many ways resembles the situation just before the Reformation. When an unsuspected number of cases of sexual and psychological abuse were exposed, it shook the credibility of the Church and raised many questions about the whole system of the church. I regarded the closed and empty churches during the coronavirus pandemic as a prophetic warning sign: this may soon be the state of the church if it does not undergo a transformation. Certain inspiration can be found in the “Catholic Reformation”, which was carried on by courageous mystics such as John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Ignatius of Loyola and many others who, through their original spiritual experience, enriched both the theological reflection on faith and the visible form and practice of the Church. The current reform efforts cannot remain limited to changes in some institutional structures and a few paragraphs in the catechism, the code of canon law and the moral textbooks. The fruitfulness of the reform and the future vibrancy of the Church depend on a reconnection with the deep spiritual and existential dimension of faith. I regard the present crisis as a crossroads where the possibility of moving into a new, “afternoon” epoch in the history of Christianity presents itself. Also through its painful experiences, a shaken Christianity can – like a wounded physician – unleash the therapeutic potential of faith. If the churches manage to resist the temptations of self-centredness as well as collective narcissism, clericalism, isolationism and provincialism, they can make a significant contribution to a new, wider and deeper ecumenism. The new ecumenism is about more than the unity of Christians; the renewal of faith can be a step towards that “universal fraternity” which is the great theme of Pope Francis’ pontificate. It can help the human family move not towards a clash of civilisations but towards the formation of a civitas oecumenica – a culture of communication, sharing and respect for diversity.

In history God is revealed in the faith, love and hope of people, even people on the margins of the churches and beyond their visible boundaries. The search for God “in all things” and in all historical situations frees our life from monological self-absorption and transforms it into dialogical openness. Here I see a sign of the times and a light of hope even in difficult times. This is the hope that this book aims to serve.

(excerpted from the preface)