The fall of the ironic curtain

...People] need to learn about demo- that affect their lives...

...As for Czechoslovakia: "The fhst step is over and it is Havel wrote about this frame of mind in his letters to hopeful...

...barriers stands directly and obediently before the nation's liberation theologians do not...

...They are more comfortable allowing cratic behavior, the art of listening and dialogue...

...How could Gorbachev and a recalculation of Soviet Wenceslaus Square and East Germans to such confusion lead to 1989...

...It is a moment when a ficial" version draw on as a measure of which a mix of history, song fest, banquet, common participation in a particular truth...

...By such small almost imperceptible acts of "living in truth," people acted against "the eschatology of impersonal power," not simply the power of the state, but the power that their own complicity or complacency held over them...

...former Commonweal intern, is a legislative assistant for Maly fears that the new leaders of the country do not Senator John C. Danforth...

...Some stand their ground in Leipzig without systems with their rhetoric of irony and of my acquaintances even pay Ronald knowing the outcome...

...theater, in its origins, is tied to ritual and atmosphere of "alliance" and "fel- Alternative language, alternative spaces, meaning-making: lowship" is a central aspect of the alternative traditions were the train tracks The first embryonic appearance "socialness" of the theater I am talkof the parallel culture and were to be found of genuine socialness happens the ing about...

...new leaders: the people of Czechoslovakia themselves...

...in Poland in the Catholic church and in moment those participating in the Thus, Havel seems to provide the script the powerful memory of Polish history...

...But today, in a my guardian angel...

...Bible, not a dead word...

...Catholic Press Association Book Award 1989 $10.95 Paper THE CHURCH IN THE MIDST OF CREATION VINCENT J. DONOVAN A portrait of the radically new church that is taking shape out of develop- ments as momentous as those that shaped early Christianity...

...One must be educated...

...I finally Maly's political prominence was testimony to the spiritual managed to talk to him, not at his parish church where the dimension of the Czechoslovak revolution...

...We in embargo of Iraq, a former trading partner of Eastern Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, the GDR, and European countries...

...befriending a Catholic sister and an elderly woman con- Maly speaks from his own experience...

...In the midst of the slovenly indifference to work that socialism encourages, a more constructive worker would be difficult to imagine...

...with the people every day to help them understand the chal- "I want them to understand forgotten values...

...8 February 1991:105 in Truth, especially "The Power of the Powerless" and "Politics and Conscience," as well as his prison writings to his wife, Letters to Olga, and the volume of inter- views published as Disturbing the Peace...

...This man, he writes, "was proud of his profes- sion and he wanted our brewery to brew good beer...

...ethnic conflict between the Czechs and the he thinks that liberation theologians who have used a Marxist Slovaks...

...ity, in cynicism as hope...

...he was declared a "political sabo- teur" and fired...

...The deepest wounds there were the loss of the person and the personal in politics and pub- lic life...

...It was, after all, the subversion, their mordant humor and self- Reagan his due in tipping the balance of summer of 1989 when the Chinese gov- mockery, could have as easily ended in the equation by beefing up NATO's nuclear emment shot down peaceful demonstrators paralysis as upheaval, in confusion as clar- missile force...

...From this disappeared...

...He writes of the greengrocer who one day forgoes his habitual act of placing his "Workers of the World Unite" sign next to the carrots and onions in the window...

...coexistence suddenly blossoms into Goldfarb, an American sociologist, puzzled That potential is not always achieved, a feeling of mutual solidarity or by the theoretical and actual state of con- but when it is, he reminds us of how deeply brotherhood...

...the rapid increase in energy costs and complete analysis and hope for a Marxist revolution are naive about dependence on a diminished Soviet oil supply...

...The man, thwarted in these efforts by the manager, complained to high- er-ups...

...Rather we hear -----O eOeb attag THE HERITAGE the voice of a responsible member of a community struggling to save itself, offer- ing the community an utterly honest, unflinching account of its condition...

...Formerly, under But even his former comrades, members of the Civic Forum, the Communists, "they followed orders, now they expect regretted that they did not know how to contact him...

...These events, no doubt, are in Tiananmen Square...

...task to apply these teachings, to incorporate them into your A year after the revolution the obstacles to democracy life...

...10.95 Paper INTEGRAL JUSTICE Changing People Changing Structures JOHN J. WALSH A guide that helps the minister bring justice and peace concerns into the parishioners' everyday lives...

...He was When I was in Prague, Havel's face was plastered on described admiringly by the students as a "very, very kind posters all over the city, and he is, indeed, a compelling man...

...belief he has forged a human and democratic notion of Before I took a bike trip to Eastern Europe last summer, politics---one that allows him to raise critical questions I had never heard of Vaclav Maly...

...At least not now...

...I say, 'Above all, you are Christians...

...And finally, after is responsibility for public life...

...Havel, true to this insight, starts with himself...

...The joke, the shrug of the shoulder, the world-weary agnos- ticism, the rhetoric of irony will not do for "this system is not...a social order imposed by one group upon another, but rather something which permeates the entire society and is a factor in shaping it...

...theology...

...He cautions, "politics is not only the president headquarters, at the Albatross Theater, in bookstores, and and ministers, but in the widest sense of the word, politics on the street, I could meet Vaclav Maly...

...Isn't that, in part, part of the story...

...He spent almost all his time at work, continually thinking up improve- ments and he frequently made the rest of us feel uncomfortable because he assumed that we loved brewing as much as he did...

...documentary films about the Velvet Revolution...

...understood, evokes the wonderful is all-encompassing and yet flawed in He describes a many-houred performance elation that makes all the sacrifices unpredictable ways, what does the "unof- of"Retrospektywa," a theatrical event in worthwhile...

...Then people notice...

...works on environmental protection...

...To save themselves, as Havel writes, individ- uals must stop "living a lie"--a lie that is communal, a lie in which "everyone in his or her own way is both a victim and a sup- porter of the system...

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...But I don't preach politics, I preach "It isn't easy to decide about laws...

...the political revolution, is I sionate and successful uprisings of 1989...

...Or the brewmaster under whom Havel worked for a time...

...He was among 8 February1991:103 culture, or threats to the natural environ- reporting regularly appeared in the New death, fear of failure, fear of ridicule, fear ment in Poland, should be eliminated from York Review of Books (essays now gathered of fear gave way to a sense of mutual trust...

...In the former Communist societies of Eastern Europe, we can see the nadir of modernity, the manifestation of most of its vices and almost none of its virtues...

...Beyond Glasnost "it has the greatest potential to be a social between the participants...

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...I was led there by Beatrix, the elderly the Communist collapse and whose political posters exu- woman I encountered on the street, clearly sent to me by berantly proclaimed, "Gloria in Excelsis...

...When I asked where I might fred him, they were man...

...The ascendancy of Mikhail that allowed Czechs to gather in whole puzzling phenomenon...

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...It is harder for THE SOCIAL JUSTICE AGENDA Justice, Ecology, Power and the Church DONAL DORR Dorr calls urgently on the church to embody more faithfully the justice it seeks to promote in the world...

...people and become a community...

...He too was a dissident and an example of Havel's dictum: "Every piece of good work is an indirect criticism of bad politics...

...It is a are not, he says, accustomed to participating in the decisions question of how to react...

...It is not my understand the contagion of this mood...

...country where secret police have become taxi drivers, win- Spending any time with Vaclav Maly makes it plainly dow washers, journalists, and playwrights presidents, the clear that whether on the streets in 1989 or in the parish forty-year-old revolutionary cleric has become an almost in 1991, his work is dominated by the same principle: A invisible parish priest...

...I explain, but I also try to open people's eyes to One must take responsibility for other people---for the whole change...

...As a Catholic priest, reflection groups, and weekly discussion groups...

...one that took place in Wenceslaus Square The theater, for example, became a place when a shared experience, mutually in November 1989, where the playwright versing on a Prague street comer, neither of whom spoke English but who well understood my request, I found Vaclav Vaclav Maly: The Maly...

...the war and the dehumanizing nature of its ideology...

...no one, above all the leaders, could do anything to break loose...

...Every impulse, every thought starts with the individual...

...the people "incorporate all hopes in Havel...

...I try to show a living movement has become the government, and it worries Maly...

...Here you enter a state somewhat brain, our honor, and our conscience," to think critically akin to hibernation, allow yourself to be swept along by and to live fully...

...And then there was the the function of the current rage for "stand- snowballing effect (in Garton Ash's much- he fullest explanation of up comedy" in the United States--an quoted quip to Havel, "In Poland it took what happened, one that expression of our hapless and agnostic ten years, in Hungary ten months, in East accounts for the spiritual state...

...Meditations for the seasons reveal the social and political implications at the root of liturgical celebrations...

...As religious and political expression person of faith should be actively enaged in the world, par- flourish, a remarkable symbol of that freedom has seemingly ticularly the world, as he says, "of those below...

...others to decide their fate...

...How it will be used remains an open question...

...theater cease to be a mere group of for Czechoslovakia's greatest drama, the But these were not the only vehicles...

...In the "Power of the Powerless," Havel traces the evolution away from this "living a lie" and toward "living in truth," not sim- ply among writers who could mask their dissident views in novels and plays, but also among ordinary people in their every- day lives...

...But this popularity is dangerous, Maly warns, because unsure and directed me to the Civic Forum headquarters...

...They finally found in such small acts of personal responsibility as the greengrocer's and brewmaster's the means that enabled them to stand in December 1989 in Wenceslaus Square and demand the return of their nation, of their political life, of their human dignity...

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...Only then will Czechoslovakia have taken the stereotypical routine of prison life, sink into a kind of credible steps toward becoming a free and democratic coun- sweet mental lethargy, and the prospect of going back into ty...

...world of those below In a working-class parish across the river from Prague's Old Town and up a hill, Maly is carrying on the daily and year ago, Vaclav Maly was one of the most unnoticed work of real revolution in Sunday sermons, gospel public figures in Czechoslovakia...

...No, parallel literature, for all its Germany ten weeks: perhaps in transformation that underlay power, cannot in itself account for the pas- Czechoslovakia it will take ten days...

...his wife, Olga, from prison in the early 1980s: "Sometimes Maly hopes that every person will learn '"to be able to inspire I have the strangest feeling that I don't really want to leave himself or herself" to reject the slogan, "the party is our this place...

...In my ser- lenge raised by Havel and by the church...

...In his wide-ranging common experience of truth or flash cracy in order to express the official ver- Letters to Olga, Vaclav Havel, playwright of insight into the "life in truth" sud- sion, how do people find the wordsto before he was president, says of the theater, denly establishes new relationships express another reality...

...They They see poverty, injustice, and they want to react...

...But to Maly ~ mind, one of the greatest the Soviet Union had a complete experience of this ideology...

...in The Uses of Adversity and The Magic One cannot but return to Havel's reflections Censoring, being censored, writing in Lantern), attributes the impetus for change on the theater to gather a sense of the social order to be censored--what ensues, in to the election of a Polish pope and the and emotional climate, "this electrifying Baranczak's diagnosis, is a kind of hopes he generated in his 1979 visit to atmosphere of 'alliance' and 'fellowship,'" schizophrenia, which only adds to the Poland...

...These parallel interest are also part of the equation...

...No one has ever given a moment's attention to the sign, until it is no longer there...

...Maly was the doors were locked, not at his home--off the parameters official spokesperson for the Civic Forum, the political move-of my map---but in the hospital where he was confined ment dissident Czechs and Slovaks created on the eve of with a broken arm...

...it is necessary to be possibilities of filling the "open space...

...God is a living reality, therefore your fear, a human and a functioning economy are there for all to see: the fear, can be overcome.'" absence of laws supporting people's effort to start private Maly echoes themes heard in liberation theology, but enterprises...

...And though these essays and letters reflect an ego, an indi- vidual sensibility (and, perhaps, an exas- perating husband), we are not in the pres- ence of an individualist, a tortured soul, an existentialist anti-hero...

...Halfhearted ig an analysis from the "outside" by phenomenon in the true sense...

...Everyone was imprisoned in this system...

...But at a student-ran theater about the people's devotion to his friend, and president of in Prague called "Albatross," Maly was featured in several the republic, Vaclav Havel...

...The opposition mons, I explain the Sunday Gospel...

...I was only orders...

...LIZ McCLOSKEY the evil world, with its constant demands that you be deci- Liz McCloskey, a graduate of Yale Divinity School and sive, becomes somewhat terrifying...

...It is your population...

...Rumor is rife, second-guessing a and political discussion allowed the audi- adventure of the mind, the imagina- chronic mental condition...

...They aren't sure how to fill this open space, determined that if I asked enough people at the Civic Forum this vacuum...

...This electrifying fusion that "parallelism" provokes...

...They don't have bad motives...

...When language ence to learn from and confront Poland's tion, and the sense of humor, and has been co-opted by a hegemonic bureau- past and its politics...

...Yet a question remains: How to account think to be found in Havel's reflections, Timothy Garton Ash, whose astute for the moment, the moment when fear of the essays gathered in the volume, Living to accept the full responsibilities of freedom...

...The neighbors and passers- bys know that the greengrocer is no longer willing to live a lie...

...So he has taken task to do professional politics," Maly explains, "We don't up the unglamorous work of opening people's eyes to the only need speeches from a balcony...