A Rahnerian surprise

Karl Rahner, SJ (1904-1984), one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the twentieth century, is a favorite whipping boy for many traditionally minded Catholics.

Yet Rahner was something of a split personality. Part of him was the pious Swabian who, shortly after Vatican II, sat on stage at Notre Dame telling his rosary beads while another scholar read his lecture in English for him—and, who, at the same event, told a youngster asking how he might become a great theologian to “memorize Denzinger” (the 700-page compendium of Church doctrine).

The other half of Rahner was the student of existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger, the theological lodestar of a generation of Catholic thinkers who took the “spirit of Vatican II” in the direction of Catholic Lite, and the precursor, in some respects, of contemporary Germany’s “Synodal Path.”

It’s interesting, then, that Karl Rahner gave a very sharp answer to an interviewer who asked him in 1982 why he, a critic of the direction Catholicism had taken under Pope John Paul II, remained in the Church:

In all honesty, the [question] ‘Why I remain in the Church’ strikes me as abominable. … [The] real Christian believer can’t possibly have a patronizing attitude toward the Church that allows him or her to weigh staying in the Church against getting out of it. Relationship to the Church is at the very essence, an absolute of Christian faith. And one should be able to detect this when people who claim to be people of the Church, members of the Church, criticize their Church. …

As far as I’m concerned, people can energetically, fiercely, bitterly, even rabidly criticize much in the Church. But if it is the criticism of a Catholic, one should be able to see that here’s someone who wants to find eternal salvation as a member of the Church. Remember, the Catholic critic argues in the Church against the ‘Church’ on the basis of an intimate understanding of it. [This kind of critic] knows that the Church, ultimately, is not merely a … religious organization satisfying people’s needs but … the community which believes that Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen one, is God’s irrevocable promise to us. Of what great importance is angers with pastors, bishops, possibly even the papacy, when one knows that in this Church … as nowhere else, in life and death, one can hold on to Jesus, the trusted witness of the eternal God?

A cradle Catholic, I must confess that I have never had a crisis of faith, although I will simultaneously confess that there have been times when the Roman engine room of the Barque of Peter has bred in me a transient cynicism that is spiritually desiccating. But then I return to that part of me that still admires parts of Karl Rahner (on whose Christology I wrote a thesis fifty years ago), and realize anew, with Rahner, what the sacraments mean:

…in this Church, God’s tangible word of grace was promised through baptism for a lifetime … in the Eucharist one can celebrate Jesus’s death and resurrection as an event of the holy God … in this Church … one can always hear the pure word of God’s eternal self-communication [and]… is promised forgiveness of all life’s guilt.

The inherently ecclesial character of Catholic faith was affirmed twenty-five years ago when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the declaration Dominus Iesus (The Lord Jesus) during the Great Jubilee of 2000. The declaration’s purpose was to reaffirm the Church’s conviction—central to the teaching of Vatican II—that Jesus Christ is the world’s unique savior, not simply one expression of a generic, divine “will to save” that expresses itself in history through various religious figures.

In this 2025 Jubilee of Hope, and in light of the ambiguities in the Abu Dhabi “Document on Human Fraternity,” the key teachings of Dominus Iesus are worth recalling:

There is one true God, and thus one history of salvation.

If Jesus is Lord, then he is Lord of all, whether his lordship is recognized or not.

God denies no one the grace needed for salvation.

All who are saved, whether they explicitly acknowledge Christ or not, are saved through the redemption wrought by Christ.

There is one Church of Christ because the Church is Christ’s Body, and Christ does not have multiple bodies.

The Catholic Church is the fullest expression in history of the one Church of Christ.

And if you believe all this, as I do, you are an evangelical Catholic called into missionary discipleship, offering others the gift you have received: friendship with the incarnate Son of God.

(George Weigel’s column ‘The Catholic Difference’ is syndicated by the Denver Catholic, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Denver.)