Joe Humphreys opinion piece in The Irish Times yesterday.
A powerful read and makes such great sense. Any chance the Irish Dominicans would invite Fr Halik to Ireland to talk to the Order of Preachers?
Catholic theologian and philosopher Tomas Halik argues that the difference between belief and non-belief is not as great as we think
If you were looking for someone to give direction to Ireland at this juncture in our history, you probably wouldn’t think of a 78-year-old priest from Prague. But then Tomas Halik is not an ordinary cleric.
The Catholic theologian, philosopher and author was active in the “underground church” during communist rule in then Czechoslovakia. He has worked as a psychotherapist with drug addicts, supports gay marriage and other liberal causes, and is outspoken on world affairs, describing as “genocide” both Israel’s actions in Gaza and Russia’s war on Ukraine.
But what really makes Halik interesting is his view of faith. The difference between belief and non-belief is not as great as you’d think, so Halik argues. We typically think of faith as acceptance of a set of principles but, he suggests, a non-believer may have more of the “spirit” of Christianity than a pious churchgoer.
Acknowledging the rise of “nones” across Europe – 14 per cent of the Irish population said they had no religion at the last census in 2022 – Halik boldly states: “The time has come for Christianity to transcend itself.” Its future “will depend primarily on the extent to which Christians relate to the spiritual seekers among the nones”.
How you believe is as important as what you believe, Halik writes in The Afternoon of Christianity. “If we want to understand this world, we must discard dogmatic adherence to the principle that ‘a’ cannot be ‘non-a’ at the same time.”
Halik (who I’d never heard of until a kindly reader of this column recently recommended him to me) is attracted to the notion of “anatheism” promoted by Irish philosopher Richard Kearney. This points to a “god after god”. As Kearney puts it, “anatheism is a radical opening to someone or something that was lost and forgotten by western metaphysics and needs to be recalled again.”
Openness
The key word here is “opening”. The answer to the puzzle of life, Halik and Kearney suggest, is not faith per se – let alone dogmatic faith – but rather an “openness” to something beyond the purely material or measurable.
Halik has gained a strong following among liberal members of the church.
But, if – like me – you’re in the “lapsed Catholic” bracket, or otherwise of an atheistic persuasion, you may wonder is there anything in Halik for you?
I believe there is. In Ireland, Catholics are often sneered at for holding contradictory beliefs. Sometimes it’s played for laughs. In Father Ted, Ardal O’Hanlon’s character Fr Dougal Maguire innocently proclaims that basic tenets of the faith are “mad”. In one scene, he tells a bishop: “You know the way God made us all? . . . And when we die we’re all going to heaven? Well, that’s the bit I have trouble with.”
No contradiction
But Halik sees no contradiction in Dougal’s doubt. Nor it seems did Pope Francis who famously said good atheists can go to heaven – and perhaps relatedly invited O’Hanlon to the Vatican with other comedians in 2024. It’s not that faith makes no difference. But the line between belief and non-belief is permeable.
Christianity, of course, is not the only option in the marketplace of belief systems – some might look to eastern mysticism, or some to nature, for spiritual nourishment. However, Christianity merits special attention in Ireland due to its link to our ancestors. It connects us to a more ancient way of thinking about moral character and our place in the universe that is both Christian and pre-Christian. And, as the French philosopher Simone Weil, said: “To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognised need of the human soul.”
What are these ancient ways of thinking? Three dimensions stand out.
First, the idea that things in the natural world (human included) have inherent value, and are not just valuable because they are useful or because they are a means to an end.
Second, the idea that cruelty, envy, pride and other vices are types of self-harm, and that you need to protect your soul from such base instincts.
Third, the idea that there are truths beyond what science or the “knowledge economy” tells us, and that these truths include moral truths.
These beliefs aren’t unique to any one philosophy or religion, which is why Halik sees scope for people across the religious divide to build alliances and to support one other – spiritually and materially – to create a better world.
We have been sucked into religious tribalism and identity politics for too long – the labels we tend to put on one another are largely superficial. The real fault line today – the fault line of most consequence – rests on the issue of power. It lies between, on the one hand, those who believe in the right to exercise absolute power – power without legal or moral constraint – and, on the other hand, the rest of humanity.
Ireland in 2026 is not short of knowledge, nor is the world as a whole, and the promise of future “smart” societies hardly inspires hope. What we are short of is moral courage – the spirit to hold the line against greed and hatred, and to defend what we know deep down to be true. Where to find that spirit is the challenge ahead.
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