A Little Black Spot

As Lent is coming up, I found this bit on the Deacon's Bench and it's pretty damn funny. It's also rather poignant too.

I can't believe that Ash Wednesday is next week. As of late, I've been a bit weak and really struggling in my faith. I'm hoping that Lent will revive me as it always seems to do. My students made their First Confessions and I think I've turned the tide with them. Now, to make it to First Communion and we'll be good.

It amazes me how fast time flies. Easter is my favorite season.

Oh Hi...

Is this thing on? It seems that I've taken a long hiatus from blogging. I've been drifting away from matters of spirituality lately. I'm not even sure I'll ever get back that vim I once had for blogging, but I'm going to try because I still need an outlet for my thoughts and reflections. I do have to say that I haven't been keeping up with the general Catholic blogosphere all that much, many of my favorite Catholic bloggers have been quiet and quite honestly, I've been way too caught up in falling in love to pay attention to anything else. :)

I'm finally feeling like I'm making a dent with my students. This year, the children are not as engaged in the sacrament as they were last year. Of course, I don't think I'm as engaged as a teacher as I was last year. Now that First Confessions are coming up, I think all that will change. I have got to go myself. It's been over six months and I've been wanting to go for ages. I've actually refrained from the Eucharist since last fall, when I needed to go to Confession. I think some mortal sins are worse than others and those are the ones which trouble me more than the others. Sometimes, I think what they say about having Catholic Guilt is true. Of course, none of this I want to instill in my children. I want them to learn that Confession is a sacrament of healing and not to be afraid. I was most certainly terrified to go when I was their age. I still get nervous and frightened.

At my parish all the priests know me in some way and I've felt comfortable chatting with them in any situation but now I'll only confess to behind the screen. The children, more than likely, will be making their confessions face to face as we have one confessional that has a screen for privacy. On Saturdays, there is always a line of people waiting for confession but our church has one room. But for the children, there will be a service with individual confession. There should be about 10 priests offering the sacrament, so most will go face to face.

When I was a child, I found that comforting. I also made sure my mom was close by. I also don't know how well prepared I was for my first confession. I don't really remember much from my catechism classes. I don't remember what the sisters names were who taught us. I remember a few songs and learning that we'd be receiving the real Body and Blood of Jesus and that we could not chew on the host. I've never chewed on it since. I remember we got to drink the Blood. My parish always gives Communion in both species.

So, I'm still teaching catechism. My life, meanwhile is a bit unhinged. I was hoping that I might be able to get a teaching assistant job at the parish school, but my resume and messages have gone unnoticed and unreturned. There is a position for an assistant and I hoped I would at least be interviewed, considering I am interested in becoming a teacher in a Catholic elementary school. It seemed perfect, almost divinely inspired. But nothing! I need a career change and so far, nothing.

I can't let it get me down. I can always go back to school. I can always still try to get in with the public schools and work toward my teaching certificate this fall. I just need to start the process.

And one of the things I realized as well, is that while our lives get busy and caught up in the ennui, sometimes we put God aside. Or at least to the bottom of the list. I got to the point where I was barely making it to Mass. Until last week, the last time I was at Mass was the 4th Sunday during Advent. I did attempt Midnight Mass, but fell asleep. My mom and D. were wide awake and me, the night owl, couldn't stay awake so we left.

Meanwhile, my prayer life has dried up, but I'm trying to find my way back. It's times like this when I realize God doesn't abandon us or leave us. He patiently waits for us. And with all that I'm dealing with right now, I'm so glad that He is always there. I believe He brought D. into my life.

Now, all I have to do is open the door and let God back into my life.

Remember Me?

This is a nice post over at the register's site about Jimmy Stewart and psalm 91 and how It's a Wonderful Life has meaning for everyone, even today.

There has been a lot I've wanted to post lately, but I've been so occupied with other real life stuff that I haven't made time to post any thoughts or reflections. I'm also feeling a bit more distanced right now Church wise. I suppose the politics will always creep in, huh?

Still, the last few days of Advent linger and then it will be Christmas. This year, I'm grateful for finding love. Somehow I knew last year that it would be my last year alone (I'm never really alone as I have friends and family) and somehow I'd be with the one I'd spend my life with. It was a strange flash but I truly felt that. I also feel that God has orchestrated bringing this wonderful, loving man into my life. We've known each other all our lives and have crossed paths periodically but the time for us was never right. We have been waiting until this moment. It feels right, it feels comfortable and I'm falling more and more in love every day. One day I'll post more about our rediscovery.

I have a lot to write about. And deep down I know that God has always been there. It's really a blessing to know that.

Just Wanted to Say Hey

At some point, I plan to come back to blogging. With Advent, I almost feel remiss for not blogging. This is one of my favorite seasons of the Church year, how can I not blog. Anyway, I'm falling in love and focusing on my new blossoming romance. We bought a Christmas tree the other day. I've not had a real tree in 20 years or so... the house smells wonderful.

We put up our Christmas Tree the other night. We got about half the ornaments up tonight, (There are 21 days left to get the tree completely done so there is no hurry.) and will finish on Friday.




Me trying to hide under the tree.




Me, David and Iggy.



The redheads on one side and the brunettes on the other. ;)




David, Me and Estrella.

Betcha, he's not what you expected. ;P We're telling everyone we made a pact in kindergarten that one day we'd get together and fall in love. Granted, I don't think we remember each other from kindergarten, but our paths crossed a lot in high school and college, only we never were aware of it. It's actually really pretty neat how our lives were always a hop, skip and a jump away from each other, but we didn't find each other until now, when we were supposed to.

I really am in love. It's sickening huh? ;)

Procession Slide Show

Posting this for someone. Yes... I am still alive. Just happily in love. He went to Mass with me Yesterday. It was lovely. Maybe I'll talk about it later.

A Storybook Story...

Wow... three weeks since I've last posted. Well, I have a good excuse. Three weeks ago today, I reconnected with a classmate of mine from high school and we're really busy now falling into something more than "really Like".

Will keep you posted. Wish I could go to the All Souls Mass at my parish tonight, but I have to teach my class. Meanwhile, it's Kinda a Wonderful Life around here.

Seen On Another Blog

Ah, man... I always did want to live under THIS administration. I miss the West Wing.



h/t to Crystal, at Perspective. She found the link at an Andrew Sullivan blog post, whom I read too. Go read her post because she has links to other articles and the transcript of the West Wing scene.

I really do think this is a policy that needs to be changed, like NOW! It's shameful that truly capable, patriotic and qualified Americans are discharged from the military because of their sexual orientation.

Weeky Iggy Antics

In lieu of any content... I continue with the Iggy updates.

He discovered Ice Cream.

Nothing but the best.

Hmm, the purple poodle toy or the Haagen Dazs?

Look guys, I'm growing.


I've got discriminating taste in my ice cream.

Yum. Rich and Creamy...


The best cardboard I ever tasted.

God and Dog

One of my blogger friends posted this video to her parish blog and I thought I'd share this here, because it seems like we all love our animal companions, most especially our dogs. It touched me because this is exactly how I felt about Barkley. I always thought he was the perfect companion. I knew that God was also good and loving because he gave us such special creatures to share our lives with, to love them and have them love us. I will miss that dog every day of the rest of my life. I feel a little big guilty for already loving Ignatius as much as I do. He's a charming little puppy (all except for his puppy farts) and I know he's going to be a great, loving dog. He won't be Barkley but he'll be special.

Anyway, watch the video, and if your parish is blessing the animals this weekend, try to take them. I'm going to try to take mine.

What if he were a priest...

Today on the blogosphere and from blogger friends as well, I've been reading about, Roman Polanski and the outrage his arrest has gone around the world and back. Father James Martin penned this blog post at America asking the question, what if he'd been a priest, how would he be treated then? I thought it was interesting question to ponder. I also admit last night I asked the same question in my head too, "what if he was wearing a collar?"

I wish I had the energy to extrapolate a bit more with my own thoughts, but I thought I'd share. I haven't kept up with my online subscription of the magazine, looks like I've missed some good stuff.

Still, all I can say is that there is no excuse for sexual abuse of children. I find it totally outrageous and immoral. On Saturday I have to give the students a presentation on abuse, both sexual and physical. I suppose it's good that we are educating our children but it makes me sad that we have to do this as well.

The Pope In the Czech Republic Continued.

All right, I'm going to try to compile links of Pope Benedict's visit to the Czech Republic. They won't be in any particular order and quite possibly of only interest to myself, but I'm going to do it anyway and will be updated throughout the next day or so.

Over at Whispers in the Loggia, Rocco posts the pope's impromptu speech to the youth of the Czech Republic and neighboring lands.

Benedict's Reality Czech. A bit with video at National Catholic Register.

John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter has been providing great coverage of this trip as well. He already put a list together at his blog, so I don't have to. Heh.

And for fun, this piece about a Spider Crawling on the pope, is quite amusing.

St. Wenceslaus

Continuing with the Czech theme, it is the feast day of St. Wenceslaus, which is also celebrated in the Czech Republic as a Czech Statehood Day. I wonder if the real meaning of the day has some significance? Probably in old religious circles.



This is what Catholic Online has posted about him:

St. Wenceslaus

Feastday: September 28

St. Wenceslaus (903-29), also known by Vaclav, was born near Prague, and was the son of Duke Wratislaw. He was taught Christianity by his grandmother, St. Ludmila. The Magyars, along with Drahomira, an anti-Christian faction murdered the Duke and St. Lumila, and took over the government. Wenceslaus was declared the new ruler after a coup in 922. He encouraged Christianity. Boleslaus, his brother, no longer successor to the throne, after Wenceslaus' son was born, joined a group of noble Czech dissenters. They invited Wenceslaus to a religious festival, trapped and killed him on the way to Mass. He is the patron saint of Bohemia and his feast day is Sept. 28.

(photo credit. Picture from here. )

A Future Nun, Runs

Here's a bit from a news story at the CNS blog about a very determined young woman trying to raise money to pay off her student loan debt so she can enter a convent. She started The Nun Run to help her do so.

Chicago woman runs in order to raise funds to enter religious life

By Joyce Duriga
Catholic News Service

CHICAGO (CNS) -- When Alicia Torres laced up her running shoes and tackled the 13.1 miles of the Chicago Half Marathon Sept. 13, her goal was to become a nun.

Torres is not a runner and had never run a distance race. But she ran the race as part of an appeal to friends and strangers to help pay off more than $90,000 in student loans so she can enter religious life.

When Torres felt God calling her to this vocation, she realized there was one major obstacle in her path -- $94,000 in student loans that must be paid off to enter the Franciscan community she's chosen. Most of her loans are held by private lenders so they can't be consolidated or the interest rates negotiated.

It is a contemporary issue. Men and women graduate from college with student loan bills and feel God calling them to join communities that take vows of poverty. But they must enter debt-free since the communities do not typically have resources to pay off the loans.

read the rest at the site. Check out her website to read more about her and her progress.

Czech believers find islands of hope in a secular sea | National Catholic Reporter

I am following the Pope's visit to the Czech Republic for a myriad of reasons. This article actually helps me with my fiction. :)

Czech believers find islands of hope in a secular sea | National Catholic Reporter

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Profiles

I have a soft spot for all things Czech. Anyway, John Allen at the National Catholic Reporter profiled the Archbishop of Prague, Cardinal Vlk, here and it's really interesting. At least to me. I am a Czechphile after all. ;)

I posted it here, but it's here, at the NCR website.

The German shepherd bids farewell to a 'wolf in winter'

Sep. 25, 2009

By John L Allen Jr

Cardinal Miloslav Vlk (CNS)

Pope Benedict XVI, the first German pontiff since the 16th century (or the 11th, depending on whether you count Adrian VI, born in Utrecht while it was still part of the Holy Roman Empire), has sometimes playfully been dubbed "the German shepherd." To extend that zoological pun, this weekend in the Czech Republic, the German shepherd will share his stage with a wolf -- albeit a wolf by now in winter.

At 77, and struggling with spotty health, Cardinal Miloslav Vlk of Prague (whose last name in Czech means "wolf") has announced that this will be his last major public event, and that he expects to be replaced by the end of the year. In effect, Benedict's visit is also Vlk's swan song.

One of the most remarkable Catholic prelates of the 20th century, Vlk is that rare figure whose biography seems to perfectly crystallize the larger dramas of his time. He's also perhaps the closest thing to an alter ego of the late Pope John Paul II on the European scene, so a look at Vlk's story may also offer some insight about the state of the church, and John Paul's legacy, in the early 21st century.

A circuitous path

Like John Paul, Vlk's path to ecclesiastical prominence was circuitous, shaped by the vicissitudes of life behind the Iron Curtain. Born in South Bohemia in 1932, Vlk's original dream was not of the priesthood. Unlike the young Karol Wojtyla, however, who aspired to the theatre, Vlk's fantasy was to be an airplane pilot. By the time he got to middle school, a sense of vocation to the priesthood had begun to flower instead.

Following the 1948 Communist takeover of what was then Czechoslovakia, entering the seminary wasn't an option. Vlk therefore worked in a car factory and completed his military service, before earning a Ph.D. in library science and becoming a professional archivist. It wasn't until 1964 that he could begin studies for the priesthood, leading to ordination in 1968 during the short-lived "Prague Spring".

After that brief window of hope was slammed shut by a flotilla of Soviet tanks, Vlk was marked as a potential enemy of the regime. In 1971, he was exiled to a string of remote mountain parishes; by 1978, he was denied permission to act as a priest altogether.

For the next decade, "Citizen Vlk" ministered in an underground catacombs church, while working during the day as a window-washer in downtown Prague. He later said that he was sustained during this period by the spirituality of the Focolare movement, founded by Italian laywoman Chiara Lubich and emphasizing unity across political and religious divisions. Vlk would later become one of Focolare's best friends, chairing its annual meeting of bishops.

His taste of repression inclined Vlk to be skeptical of the Vatican policy of Ostpolitik, or outreach to the Soviets, under Pope Paul VI and his Secretary of State, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli. Papal biographer George Weigel, however, said that Vlk's critique was always "more thoughtful than you'd get from a true wild man of the resistance church." If nuanced, Vlk's anti-Communism was no less steadfast; as recently as 2006, he suggested that Communist parties perhaps ought to be banned in the same way that being a Nazi is against Czech law.

While he wasn't a protagonist of the 1989 "Velvet Revolution," which swept the Communists from power, Vlk was sympathetic to its aims. He would later carve out a warm relationship with dissident intellectual Vaclav Havel, an avowed agnostic who became the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic. (Despite his agnosticism, Havel also has some common ground with Pope Benedict XVI. The pope's motto is "co-workers of the truth," while Havel described his political philosophy, shaped in the context of an Orwellian regime, as "living in truth.")

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Vlk's upward movement was swift. John Paul II named him the Bishop of Ceské Budĕjovice in Budweis in 1990 (so yes, Vlk was briefly a "Budweiser"), and then in 1991 tapped him as the archbishop of Prague. Vlk became a cardinal in 1994, by which time he was already a heavyweight in the global church. Elected president of the Council of European Bishops' Conferences in 1993, he would hold that post for almost eight years, succeeding the legendary Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milan.

For the next decade, Vlk was widely tipped as a possible successor to John Paul II. In the end, however, his role in the conclave of April 2005 that elected Pope Benedict XVI was mostly as a footnote: he was the lone cardinal-elector whose last name didn't contain a single vowel.

Two streams of criticism

In another parallel to John Paul II, Vlk rocketed to international influence and celebrity status while never being quite able to shake two persistent streams of criticism: Catholic traditionalists, who see him as a liberal modernizer, in his case literally a wolf in shepherd's clothing; and liberals of both the Catholic and secular variety, at least some of whom who regard Vlk as a conservative stick-in-the-mud.

Perhaps fueled by his formation with Focolare, unity has been a central passion of Vlk's career. His episcopal motto is Jesus' prayer from the Gospel of John, "That they may all be one."

Vlk took a lead role in promoting reconciliation between Czechs and Germans, no small challenge given that, in some ways, Czech nationalism has been defined over the centuries in terms of resistance to perceived German (and Austrian) aggression. Czechs and Germans still fall into cycles of mutual recrimination for the German occupation of Czechoslovakia during World War II and the post-war expulsion of more than two million ethnic Germans from the Sudetenland. An estimated 300,000 Germans died in what is today regarded as a classic instance of "ethnic cleansing."

Vlk pioneered an exchange of letters between the Czech and German bishops in the early 1990s, apologizing for past wrongs and offering forgiveness. Vlk styled that exchange as a model for civil society. For his efforts, Vlk was awarded the Grand Cross of Merit by then-German President Roman Herzog in 1999.

In a recent interview, Vlk acknowledged that Czech-German tensions are, despite his best efforts, still very much alive, reflected in speculation in some Czech media that Benedict XVI is coming to their country as "the voice of Sudeten Germans." (To this day, the Germans who were expelled, and their descendants, seek compensation from the Czech government.) In what is arguably a sign of sensitivity, organizers have announced that Benedict XVI will not speak German while in the Czech Republic, but rather English and Italian. (For the record, Vlk says that's because English is more familiar to young Czechs, and Italian is "closer to the liturgy.")

Vlk has also been an ardent champion of Christian unity. His breakthrough success on that front came in 1999, when Vlk was instrumental in crafting an apology by John Paul II for the "cruel death" of the famed medieval Czech reformer Jan Hus. Burned at the stake as a heretic in 1415 during the Council of Constance, Hus is considered a forerunner of the Protestant Reformation as well as a father of the Czech nation. In his 1999 speech, John Paul expressed "deep sorrow" for Hus' death and praised his "moral courage."

That act, which built upon consistent statements and gestures from Vlk, was widely praised for ushering in a new ecumenical climate, not just in the Czech Republic but across Eastern and Central Europe.

Vlk's interest in unity also naturally led him to broad support for European unification and for the Czech Republic's entry into the European Union, a position which at times put him at odds with conservative leaders. (For some European Catholics, anti-EU activism is a signature issue, analogous to the anti-abortion struggle for Catholics in the United States. In those circles, the EU is seen as a vehicle for imposing secularism. Vlk is not unsympathetic; in a recent interview, he said that the rejection of an EU treaty by Irish voters came because the EU has "dropped its Christian roots." He also warned that the religious tone in Europe will increasingly be set by Muslims unless Christian values are restored.)

Shock therapy

A defining feature of Catholicism in Vlk's part of the world is that the tensions which shaped the church elsewhere after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), between reformers and traditionalists, were largely frozen in place during the Communist era. As long as Catholics were struggling to keep the church alive vis-à-vis a hostile regime, they simply didn't have time to fight amongst themselves.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the church thus experienced its own form of "shock therapy," as developments and fissures that evolved over several decades in the West erupted all at once in the 1990s -- which meant, in practice, that they all happened on Vlk's watch.

In many ways, Vlk came down on the side of the reformers. One small example: Communion in the hand wasn't widely introduced in the Czech Republic until the mid-1990s, and even then a coalition of traditional priests tried to discourage it. Vlk shot them down, saying it had become normal practice elsewhere, and there was no reason why the Czech Republic should stand apart.

Vlk has been a champion of lay activism, again informed by his experience of the Focolare. He's also been an outspoken proponent of the need for the church to come to terms with its own failures. In 2007, when a scandal erupted in Poland based on revelations that some clergy had collaborated with the secret Communist-era police, Vlk condemned the popular conservative radio outlet Radio Maryja for trying to "sweep the whole thing under the carpet." For his part, he's called for the Czech church to be a "house of glass," including cooperating with government inquiries about the role its clergy played under the Soviets.

Vlk has been sharply critical of the rise of far-right and xenophobic sentiment in Central Europe, joining Jewish protests in 2007 when right-wingers planned a march through Prague's Jewish quarter on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. In 2006, Vlk criticized a group of Lefebvrite Catholics who staged a conference in Prague, accusing them of sympathies for "anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism." Local organizers fired back that Vlk showed "ill will to socially ostracize Catholics who point to the negative consequences of liberalization processes in the church."

Vlk's reputation as a "man of the council" was cemented by his role in changing the theological climate at Prague's Charles University. During the 1990s the Catholic theological faculty under Fr. Vaclav Wolf was seen as a bastion of traditionalism. According to local sources, Wolf had discouraged the admission of laity to theology programs, and had insisted upon a largely pre-conciliar curriculum -- a situation which not only produced intra-Catholic division, but also led to threats in 2001 of a loss of accreditation from the state's Education Ministry.

In 2002, Vlk withdrew Wolf's canonical license as a theologian. That led to the appointment of a new Jesuit dean who, as Vlk put it, would preside over "an open faculty which will cooperate with church and civil authorities in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council." (Wolf appealed to Rome, but Vlk's action was upheld.)

Inevitably, however, Vlk didn't move far or fast enough for everyone's taste. In 1999, one of the Czech Republic's best-known progressive priests, Dominican Fr. Odilo Stampach, announced that he was abandoning Roman Catholicism to affiliate with the Old Catholic Church in protest over what he described as harassment about his orthodoxy. (Stampach taught at Charles University, where he repeatedly clashed with Wolf. Stampach has also been perhaps the most flamboyant voice calling upon the church to come clean about its role during the Soviet era, including the alleged collaboration of priests with the secret police.)

Early success, later frustration

Again to some extent like John Paul II, many of Vlk's defining successes came early, while his later years have been more ambivalent, marked as much by frustration as triumph.

Most notably, Vlk has fought a decade-long, and still unsuccessful, battle to work out a new legal framework for the Catholic church in the Czech Republic, which would include resolution of some $6 billion in church property confiscated under the Communists and never returned. That includes almost a million acres of forest which formed the church's traditional economic base. In 2004, Vlk agreed to waive restitution of much of that property in exchange for financial compensation, and at one stage a deal seemed within reach that would have paid the church roughly $4.8 billion over sixty years (with interest, the final total would have been close to $15 billion).

That plan fell apart in parliament due to opposition from leftist forces -- including, naturally, the Communists. It was merely the latest setback for Vlk, who seemed initially optimistic about a new climate for the church post-1989, but who has since grown increasingly bitter.

More than once, Vlk has suggested that Czech politicians actually prefer the status quo, since in the absence of compensation or restitution of its property, the church remains financially dependent upon the state. Priests' salaries in the Czech Republic, for example, are paid by the government. A serious compensation package, Vlk has hinted, would give the church an independence which some politicians fear.

(By the way, that suspicion is not simply paranoia. When the Communists began paying priests' salaries in 1949, it was with the explicit aim of making them more compliant. One consequence of the proposed compensation deal is that salary subsidies would be gradually phased out.)

To date, the Czech parliament has also not ratified a new concordat, or basic treaty, with the Vatican, making it the lone Central European state to fail to do so. Things became so testy that in 2005, when John Paul II died, Vlk spurned suggestions that he call for a national day of mourning. "If this government wants to make a gesture," he snapped, "let it approve the Czech-Vatican treaty."

In 2006, the Czech government claimed the power to approve, or to reject, the opening of church facilities such as parishes and charities, a move Vlk strenuously opposed. One year later, Vlk publicly defined church-state relations in the Czech Republic as the worst of all Central European post-communist societies.

At a deeper level, Vlk shared John Paul's dream that the newly liberated nations of the Soviet sphere, where Catholics paid in blood to keep the faith alive, would awaken the West from its spiritual torpor, and he has also shared John Paul's disappointment that this dream has gone largely unrealized.

"We discovered that God was near when the rest of the world had forgotten us," Vlk said a decade ago. "Today, people are searching for religion the world over … not just religious theories, but the true living God. That's where our experiences may prove helpful in a Western context."

Instead, both John Paul and Vlk watched as the missionary tide in Europe flowed mostly in the opposite direction: the East assimilated Western values, lifestyles and patterns of consumption, without shipping much spiritual energy in the other direction (except, perhaps, for the growing number of Polish priests serving abroad.)

Truth to be told, the Czech Republic probably wasn't ever destined to become a spiritual exporter. According to Austrian sociologist Fr. Paul Zulehner, the Czech Republic and the former East Germany are the only two zones of the erstwhile Soviet sphere where state-sponsored atheism was an unqualified success. Today, some 60 percent of Czechs say they have no religious affiliation, and while a third of the population is nominally Catholic, levels of Mass attendance and other indicators of religious vitality are notoriously low. For the last several years, more priests have died in Prague each year than were ordained.

Meanwhile, Czech society is rapidly embracing a Dutch-style ethos of tolerance. A domestic partnership law for gay couples was adopted in 2006, legal abortion is inexpensive and widely accepted, and polls show growing support for the legalization of euthanasia. Echoing John Paul once more, Vlk has warned Czechs about divorcing freedom from truth -- becoming intoxicated with liberty, but failing to ask what ultimate ends that liberty ought to serve.

"All kinds of things have been transformed," Vlk rued not long ago, "but no one bothered about the transformation of hearts."

Faced with these disappointments, local observers say that Vlk has become a bit more withdrawn, especially in the face of health difficulties. (Vlk took an extended convalescence in 2008 due to heart problems, which he said were compounded by exhaustion.)

At least in terms of Vlk's public image, the populist prelate who once merrily revealed that as a young man, "various girls swirled around me, and one fell in love with me," has to some extent receded. Czech journalist Petr Tresnak lamented in 2007 that Vlk has become a "crashing bore," and that in Vlk's twilight, the Czech church "shows zero internal life, movement or creativity."

Not quite done

As the clock winds down on Vlk's tenure, speculation inevitably has turned to who might come next as Archbishop of Prague. Local media have pointed to three names: Bishop Dominik Duka of Hradec Králové, a Dominican who spent time in Czech jails with Vaclav Havel during the Communist era; Archbishop Jan Graubner of Olomouc, widely seen as the leader of the local church's conservative wing; and Norbertine Abbot Michael Josef Pojezdný of Prague's Strahov Monastery.

While there's certainly something to be said for each, most observers concede that none is likely to capture the same international spotlight as Vlk.

That's not to suggest, however, that the "wolf in winter" is quite done yet. Vlk seems eager to use this weekend's visit of a German pope to deepen healing between Czechs and Germans. With typical candor, Vlk recently said that neither society has done enough to promote reconciliation, because nationalist resentments remain too valuable a "trump card" for politicians.

Vlk is also hardly sitting out the current political crisis in the Czech Republic, which has seen a deal to allow new elections to replace an unpopular interim government fall apart at the last minute. This week, Vlk published a column urging Czech voters to scrutinize the moral character of political candidates, looking past their "often nonsensical and naive promises for which there is no ground."

The current crisis, Vlk opined, is a logical consequence of the entire course of post-1989 development, which prioritized economic development over moral renewal.

Whatever balance sheet historians eventually draw, Vlk will inevitably loom as one of the great Catholic personalities of his time. If his batting average of success and failure isn't quite as high as that of his mentor, John Paul II, it's worth recalling that John Paul got to take his swings all over the world, while Vlk was fated to play in what is, by Catholic standards, definitely not a hitter's park -- the thoroughly secularized Czech Republic, where atheism, for all intents and purposes, is the state church.

One suspects that most Czechs, whatever their theological or ideological inclinations, will be cheering for Vlk's informal exit this weekend to go well. Certainly few figures in recent Catholic memory have done more to earn a rousing sendoff.

[Editor's Note: Pope Benedict XVI is visiting the Czech Republic Sept. 26-28, traveling to Prague, Brno, and Stará Boleslav. It's the pope's first visit to the country and his second to a former Soviet satellite state, after Poland in 2006. NCR senior correspondent John Allen will be in the Czech Republic covering the trip. Watch the NCR Today group blog pages through the weekend for more of Allen's reports.]

John L. Allen Jr. is NCR senior correspondent. His e-mail is jallen@ncronline.org