WEST CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa. – Tomás? Halík, a Czech priest and philosopher who risked imprisonment for illegally advancing religious and cultural freedoms after the Soviet invasion of his country, and has since become a leading international advocate for dialogue among different faiths and non-believers, has won the 2014 Templeton Prize.
Condemned by his nation’s communist government as an “enemy of the regime” in 1972, Halík, 65, spent nearly two decades organizing and building an extensive secret network of academics, theologians, philosophers and students dedicated to cultivating the intellectual and spiritual underpinnings for the democratic state he and others envisioned.
Those years of groundwork and counselling to liberation leaders such as Václav Havel and Cardinal Frantis?ek Tomás?ek helped Czechoslovakia transition to democracy following the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989. More.
This is the third in aseries, the last two also being religious figures with an impact on politics: Desmond Tutu (2013) and The 14th Dalai Lama (2012). But the previous three were multiverse cosmologist Martin J. Rees (2011), Darwinian evolutionist Francisco J. Ayala (2010), and quantum cosmologist Bernard d’Espagnat (2009).
Rees and Ayala’s wins had left some wondering whether Templeton wished to become a sort of lifetime achievement award for postmodernism in science. It seems not. They seem to have headed back more to their roots in “religion for people who have a life, or think they should, somehow.” Here are past winners.
Follow UD News at Twitter!