Archive, Conversation with
Conversation with Johannes Wieczorek
Discourse about renewal in the Church can sometimes regrettably seem like a battlefield with opposing fronts. There is no shortage of big guns with heaps of ammunition.
In such situations it is important to listen out for the still small voice, to look out for modest but fruitful initiatives sprouting in unlikely terrain, like wildflowers.
This, I suspect is where lasting, long-term renewal will come from.
One such enterprise was born in Germany three years ago, founded by four young people, three women and a man, who had gone deep into St John Paul II’s theology of the body while studying at the Cistercian college of Heiligenkreuz. Their decisive motivation was existential, flowing from fundamental questions such as: Who am I? What is life for? What is the hunger for happiness that sometimes seems to consume me? How can I be free?
To address such questions searchingly they set up the Theology of the Body Initiative.
I was privileged to speak with one of the founders, Johannes Wieczorek, recently about some of the ways in which my own interests intersect with those of this courageous and creative initiate. You can follow our conversation, conducted in German, here.
The future Pope John Paul II in relaxed pose on one of those proverbial long hikes during which the theology of the body was elaborated conversationally.