Otwarte okna. Szkice z kultury humanizmu katolickiego

Paweł Milcarek, PhD, has been one of the most important figures of Christian intellectual life in Poland since the fall of communism. Leader of a milieu of traditionalist Catholics grouped around the periodical Christianitas, over the last three decades, he has been a frequent participant in some of the most important public debates in Central Europe. On the one hand, he represents a viewpoint based on Thomistic theology and a dedication to the Roman heritage of the Church, with particular attention paid to the Latin liturgy; on the other, his opinions are coloured by the unique experiences undergone by Polish Catholicism, which in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has been faced with challenges posed by secularism in its various forms. This confrontation has become a personal matter for Milcarek, who during the communist years was active in the underground, editing, among others, an illegal Catholic periodical, and, following the downfall of totalitarianism, has been waging an intellectual battle in the independent media with the liberal advocates of laicisation.

But polemical passion has never clouded his precision of expression and deduction, which he derives from his Thomistic studies. This is especially apparent in the collection of essays included in his volume Open Windows. In them, the author grapples with an opinion that has become quite widespread in these latter days, according to which Catholicism and humanism have nothing in common. Milcarek rebuts such oversimplified convictions in these essays. Basing himself on the works of selected philosophers, writers and theologians from the Middle Ages until contemporary times, he proves that there is no contradiction at all between these two realities, just as there is none between faith and reason, or religion and science. As he sees it, controversies in this question arise from misunderstandings of Christianity on the part of the contemporary elite of the West. He attempts to elucidate these misunderstandings in order to build bridges between the two sides of the contemporary cultural quarrel.