"Do you think Balthasar will have a lasting influence?” That was one of the questions Fr Kacper Malicki asked on the trail down from the Mnich, a prominent rock pinnacle overlooking the Morskie Oko, a mountain lake and popular destination in Poland’s Tatra Mountains. The shadows were lengthening, but we had a good deal of daylight left. I answered: “Balthasar’s genius was literary, not logical. He’ll be read by future generations, but rarely followed.”
When a friend asked me to come to Poland to give some lectures and seminars on Christianity and politics (which these days inevitably means talking about Donald Trump), I said yes, on one condition: he had to find someone to go rock climbing with me in the Tatras. That’s how I met Fr Kacper, a priest of the Archdiocese of Warsaw and an accomplished climber, who knew exactly where to take me for a perfect day of climbing in spectacular surroundings.
