Book Review: "From the Underground Church to Freedom" by Tomas Halik

This book came across my radar because this man was mentioned in another religious book that I had read recently. The author and subject of this book grew up in Prague during the Communist occupation (a time where religion was seriously suppressed and the secret police LOVED imprisoning religious leaders and believers), came to faith through the Catholic Church, and eventually was ordained as a priest - all in secret because he could have been tortured to death for like, a 1/3 of the amount of things that he had done. A story about giving the middle finger to foreign occupation in one of my favorite places in the world? Yes please, sign me up.

Okay, so the guy telling the story is Tomas Halik. He was born to an upper crust intelligentsia family in Prague. He was a nerdy kid who loved history and books. This was post WWII which means the Czechs had recently traded the Nazis for the Communists. This means that there was really no religions allowed to practice in the open and Stalin had a particular hatred for priests so he looked for any opportunity to stifle any underground churches and loved to imprison and torture religious folks. Through a series of events Tomas becomes involved in an underground Catholic church, comes to faith, decides that he wants to be a priest, goes to like, an underground catholic seminary, becomes and priest and can't actually be a priest until the Communists leave in the late 80s. The first president post communism, a playwright named Vaclav Havel was a family friend of Halik's and so Halik was pretty high ranking in czech society and has met popes and the Dali Llama and a bunch of other famous people. 

Aside from the story of Father Halik there were two really interesting things that I keep thinking about from this book.

- When the Velvet Revolution happened in Prague (when the Communists finally left the Czech Republic in 1989) the citizens would gather in Wenceslas Square and shake their keys in a "it's time for you to go now" move to the governing bodies. I like this because a)it's such a flex and b) in high school at our basketball games if we were winning a game by a ton everyone would pull out their keys and do this. Very similar circumstances, obviously.  

-I heard about this next part when Quinn and I were in Prague, but I had forgotten about it until I read about it in this book. When the Communists left there was an option for you to see what your secret police file said about you. I've talked about this with a couple of different people, would you want to see your file or not? What if one of your friends denounced you to the police? Your parents? Your spouse? I decided that if someone denounced me under duress (aka torture) I wouldn't be mad, but if someone denounced me because, like, they wanted the apartment I lived in or because I was dating their ex-boyfriend and that somehow landed me in prison I would want to know. Even though I have a feeling that would make me incredibly bitter for at least a little while.