“Help my unbelief! Finding God in a secular age”

We are delighted to invite you to our next exciting guest speaker as part of the Bishop Vincent Presents series: A conversation with Czech priest and theologian, Tomas Halik.

Moderated by Fr Frank Brennan SJ, you won’t want to miss this conversation on the topic: “Help my unbelief! Finding God in a secular age” on Monday 12 February at 6pm at St Patrick’s Cathedral Hall.

Monsignor Professor Tomas Halik, the ‘underground priest’ who converted to Catholicism as an adult and was secretly ordained a priest in 1978 during the communist rule of then-Czechoslovakia is coming to Australia for a whirlwind tour.

A renowned public intellectual, philosopher, sociologist and priest, Halik is known for being a leading voice against Soviet communism in the 1980s (he was persecuted by the secret police as an “enemy of the regime”) and was co-responsible for the revival of the Czech Catholic Church after the fall of communism. During this time, he also worked as a psychotherapist for drug and alcohol addicts.

He is a passionate voice for ecumenism, inter-faith dialogue and religious tolerance, and his award-winning books have focused on the dialogue between faith, agnosticism and atheism.

As a professor of sociology at Charles University, Prague, president of the Czech Christian Academy, and a university chaplain, he has a unique ability to reach out and discuss faith in different contexts. This has resulted in him preparing for baptism and baptising over 1,000 university students and young academics.

His best-selling book Patience with God received the prize for the best European Theological Book and in 2014 he was the recipient of the Templeton Prize which is awarded to a living person who has “made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery or practical works.” Considered by many as the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for religion, he joins an illustrious list of previous winners including Mother Teresa, Desmond M Tutu, and the Dalai Lama.

Places are limited so please register today!