The Ecclesiology of Karl Rahner by Richard Lennan
Doyle, Dennis M
THE TRADITION IS TO CHANGE The Ecclesiology of Karl Rahner Richard Lennan Oxford University Press, $55,289 pp. Dennis M. Doyle When I first read Karl Rahner in graduate school, I was directed...
...Authority in general could be much more consultative and less centralized...
...Ordinations could be given to a much wider range of ministers, not simply because the church needs more ordained ministers, but because those Christians who are actually performing the ministerial work of the church need its sacramental support...
...Like a skilled optometrist, Richard Lennan has crafted a lens that reverses the image...
...In those essays I learned of the Vorgriff, of the distinction between the categorical and the transcendental, of the THE TRADITION IS TO CHANGE fundamental option, of the ontology of the Realsymbol, of the ultimate identification of the immanent and the economic Trinity, and of God as both the woraufhin of our transcendence and as the formal cause of the human spirit...
...For example, Rahner held that a model of episcopal collegiality is more appropriate today than a monarchical model...
...Moreover, a static church cannot address adequately the fluctuations of the contemporary world...
...I say "fairly77 convincing because the point is prey to the same traps as any other claim to be "centrist...
...For Rahner, the church is not simply a human construct, but the sacrament of God's grace...
...It is a scholarly study, but written clearly enough to be accessible to a motivated nonspecialist...
...By rooting the philosophical in the practical, Lennan provides a clear context for explaining many otherwise elusive concepts...
...The primary contributions of this study are three: it traces the historical development of Rahner' s thinking before, during, and after Vatican II...
...Many complex decisions, including artificial birth control for married couples, could even be left to the consciences of individuals...
...Lennan demonstrates that Rahner held, paradoxically, that change was necessary for the church to maintain continuity with its identity and mission throughout history...
...it focuses on the practical ecclesial issues that constituted Rahner' s own primary concerns...
...Dennis M. Doyle teaches theology at the University of Dayton...
...Lennan shows how Rahner's more theoretical constructions were most often developed in response to the need to find conceptual tools for tackling very practical ecclesial questions...
...He saw no reason why episcopal offices might not someday be filled by committees...
...But that would be another book...
...Not just an abstract idea, the church as a concrete reality has certain social and juridical structures that are essential to it, including the episcopal college, the papacy, the sacraments, and the three-fold hierarchical ministry...
...Not only do many voices purport to represent the "center," but I think that given the current spectrum of opinion, most people would find Rahner to fall somewhere to the left, especially on practical ecclesial matters...
...Early on, Rahner viewed the church's own internal dynamism as the main catalyst for authentic change...
...The book that Lennan did write is a very good one,which, by reversing the common approach, brings Rahner into focus...
...I find the latter claim to be problematic...
...and it makes a fairly convincing case for Rahner as a "centrist" whose approach combines the deepest and most legitimate concerns of both the Left and the Right in the church today...
...Lennan admits that the church has not gone the way of many of Rahner's predictions...
...But, he argues, Rahner's great contributions to tackling present-day dilemmas lie in his articulation of an ec-clesiology that integrates continuity and change and in his carving out a path between the left-right quagmires...
...Editor's note: we think he means the "supernatural existential...
...A refusal to change means losing touch with the tradition as it has developed organically...
...Rahner envisioned the world becoming increasingly secular, and local churches becoming small intentional communities that would call for more conscientious participation from fewer members...
...What justifies Lennan's sympathy for the claim that Rahner made about himself is the genuineness of Rahner's simultaneous commitment to principles that are so strongly associated with either extreme...
...Rahner may not be the center, but I agree with Lennan that Rahner gives good witness to both the Left and the Right as a vivid demonstration that one can love the church unconditionally without giving up all hope for its radical improvement...
...Various Christian churches have already reached a point at which intercommunion and pulpit-sharing are appropriate...
...It was rich fare for a theology student in love with abstractions...
...And then I vaguely recall a super-cali-natural-istic-existential-dosis, or something like that...
...I knew also that Rahner often "applied" these concepts to practical issues, and I read with great interest some of these efforts at practical application...
...What we now know as parishes might each come to resemble more a diocese, such that "pastors" might come to resemble "bishops...
...Dennis M. Doyle When I first read Karl Rahner in graduate school, I was directed to his philosoph- ically "grounding" pieces...
...On the other hand, Rahner's dedication to the church led him to call for significant changes in the way that its essential structures needed to be shaped in order to most effectively engage the contemporary world...
...For him, what grounds Rahner is his dedication to addressing the practical and pastoral issues that have faced the Catholic church in the second half of the twentieth century...
...There are few intellectuals who cannot find a way to uncover a significant spectrum of positions to their left and to their right and then declare themselves the "center...
...Unfortunately, the price tag will make it inaccessible to many...
...later he viewed the needs of the world as dictating what the church must become...
...Lennan, who does a good job in raising critical discussion of many individual points in Rahner's work, does not bring him into a full-scale systematic dialogue with other significant figures of the twentieth century, such as Metz or von Bal-thasar, whose voices would help to place him...
...On the one hand, Rahner's loyalty, concern, and love for the church were evident throughout his life and work...
...Though the church was never to be simply identified with God, it continues in this world Christ's saving presence...
...Yet I read them always through the lens of the more "grounding" concepts, concepts that have continued to be of immense help to me over the years...
...Local churches need to be recognized as primary manifestations of the church...
...This "church of the diaspora," as Rahner called it, could more than balance off in quality and commitment what it would lose in numbers...
...What kind of a church must the Catholic churdi be in order to come to grips with science, secularity, and pluralism...
Vol. 123 • March 1996 • No. 5
