Prague spring: Czechs encounter pluralism.

Prague last spring resounded with the sounds of music and the tramp of tourists' feet. Hundreds of concerts, large and small; thousands of tourists, large and small. The fiftieth anniversary of the close of World War II in Europe coincided with the Fiftieth Prague Spring Music Festival. And though the range of offerings extended from Byrd's polyphony to Cage's aleatory, pride of place, in this city of baroque churches and palaces, went to Vivaldi and Bach and Handel. Among the groups holding forth in churches and salons for a one-hour concert (of which one might choose several of an evening, like a multi-course dinner), you could almost spy an occasional powdered wig among the violins.

A palpable sense of liberation, prematurely released in the short-lived Spring of '68, finally prevailed in the "Velvet Revolution" of '89, and continues to animate Wenceslas Square. And though sad-faced Alexander Dubcek is gone, Vaclav Havel's ironic wisdom remains, giving voice to the moral aspirations that sustained so many through the forty bleak winters of communism. But, along with the tourists, Western capitalism and consumerism have taken hold with a vengeance; and, as ever, the united front that achieved the "freedom from" totalitarian constraint has now fragmented into competing understandings of the "freedom for" and what it entails.

The Catholic church is not exempt from the booming, buzzing confusions. Claims for restitution of church properties, however well-founded in theory, in practice collide with a revived Czech anticlericalism and compromise the moral capital the church had gained through its support of the anti-communist opposition. Repair of long-neglected physical structures, by no means a useless endeavor, nonetheless deflects energy from the challenge of developing spiritual strategies for a postmodern age.

The American visitor with little knowledge of the Czech language is yet struck by the familiarity of the issues confronting Czech Catholicism. They resemble those discussed in the pages of Commonweal or in many a pastoral planning session in America. How to promote a Vatican II-inspired "active participation" of the laity? How to bridge the divide separating the world of Sunday worship from the everyday concerns and demands of life in society? How to wed committed discipleship and responsible citizenship?

The most astute church leaders with whom I spoke are searching for the elusive middle course between retreat into a relatively safe enclave of sectarian Catholicism and the cultural accommodation that surrenders distinctive identity and prophetic witness. No simple formula can guarantee the achievement of such a via media; it requires the capacity and courage to sustain the soul-stretching tension of ongoing dialogue and discernment. Living in truth (the title of one of Havel's books) is not the enterprise of a day; nor are its conditions settled once and for all.

Two "ecclesial-political" acts illustrate this point. On both occasions the central actor was the Slavic pope, John Paul II, and the deeply involved and participating audience was the Czech church and society. In the first, John Paul canonized Agnes of Bohemia, a thirteenth-century princess and religious reformer. Thousands of Czechs and Slovaks attended the canonization in Rome on November 12, 1989: an event full of drama and meaning for the whole society. Within a week the Velvet Revolution had begun in Prague. Providential intervention? Prophetic annunciation? Pure coincidence? When the pope subsequently visited Prague in April 1990, President Havel wondered aloud about "miracles" and their contemporary occurrence.

A second canonization took place during the pope's most recent visit to the Czech Republic in May 1995. This time, however, the canonization of the priest, Jan Sarkander, imprisoned and tortured during the religious wars of the seventeenth century, evoked strong protests from Czech Protestants who saw Sarkander as anti-protestant and a partisan of the Austrian Habsburgs in their domination of the Czech lands. Whatever the merits of the rival claims and despite the pope's appeal for mutual forgiveness, the proceedings clearly did not further ecumenical understanding and religious concord.

Two acts of ecclesial and political significance, in different contexts, communicating different messages. Part of the church's evangelizing responsibility in the postmodern world includes renewed sensitivity to the reception of its message and the ample patience and delicate discrimination this demands. One ought not construe such a requirement as a brief for moral paralysis in the face of secular culture's plurality and ambiguity. But it does suggest that the authentic vision (and sometimes inflated rhetoric) of the Vatican's great "C-word," Communio, can only be actualized and made credible by the more mundane practice of the small "c-words," consultation, communication, and collaboration. And this holds whether establishing pastoral priorities, selecting bishops, or even canonizing saints.

On Pentecost Sunday, I joined in a lovely liturgy at the ancient Strahov Monastery located above the Prague Castle complex. The monastery, closed by the Communists, has once again become a center of spiritual life. Hearing the familiar Pentecostal readings, through the unfamiliar Czech tongue, brought sharper awareness of the Spirit's mission of inspiring the manifold gifts of nature and grace to serve the one communion of humanity redeemed: e pluribus .... una persona mystica.

Earlier in the week I had visited the historic Jewish quarter of Prague, the Josefov, from which thousands of Jews had been deported by the Nazis and destined for extermination. Against this somber background, the reference in the First Eucharistic Prayer, recited on Pentecost, to "Abraham, our father in faith," took on stunning resonance. One could not help but wonder whether such an invocation, in the vernacular, during the 1930s might have served as symbolic focus of opposition to the anti-Jewish assaults of the Nazis.

The afternoon of Pentecost Sunday in Prague was spent with a Czech priest, secretly ordained during the Communist era. Over robust Czech beer, he recounted that his initial difficulties with the regime dated from his doctoral defense when he dared thank a number of his professors who had been removed from their posts by the authorities. The then guardians of the Castle deemed gratitude a subversive activity.

Gratitude, thanksgiving, Eucharist: the heart of Christian experience whether in premodern, modern, or postmodern times. The exhortation of the eucharistic prayer, "always and everywhere to give thanks," is one for all seasons. It abolishes facile divisions between worship and witness, mystical and political. It does not merely conjure up the subversive memory of Abraham and Jesus the Christ. It conspires in the extravagant Pentecostal hope of the Spirit.

Robert P. Imbelli, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, teaches systematic theology at Boston College.