Religion booknotes
Cunningham, Lawrence S.
W hen Karl Rahner assumed Romano Guardini's chair at the University of Munich in 1963, he praised the octogenarian writer and thinker as a Christian humanist who had led...
...He not only lectured and wrote, but he also celebrated the liturgy, worked with youth, served as a confessor and counselor, and enjoyed a vast reputation as a preacher...
...Guardini rejected Nazism, which he viewed as a system of ersatz salvation...
...At the 1993 Parliament of World Religions, the Dalai Lama suggested a meeting of Buddhist and Christian monastics take place in order to discuss their The Gethsemani Encounter edited by Donald Mitchell and James Wiseman, O.S.B...
...Continuum, $27.50, 320 pp...
...His keen interest in phenomenology, Kreig notes, gave Guardini's theological orientation a direction not unlike that of Hans Urs von Balthasar (who had been Lawrence S. Cunningham a student of Guardini), John Paul II, and the later Josef Ratzinger (whose dissertation work was also on Bonaventure...
...W hen Karl Rahner assumed Romano Guardini's chair at the University of Munich in 1963, he praised the octogenarian writer and thinker as a Christian humanist who had led Germany's Catholics out of an intellectual and cultural ghetto and into the contemporary world...
...All likewise have a deep interest in belies lettres...
...Curiously, within a few years his writings were practically unread...
...But he also wrote studies of Pascal, Socrates, Rilke, Dostoevsky, and Dante, as well as a steady stream of works on cultural criticism, meditative reflections on the Bible, the Christian life, and the church's sacramental life...
...Guardini's early studies were on Bonaventure (on whom he wrote both his dissertation and academic habilitationschrifi...
...contact:Fred Lawrence Lonergan Workshop, Carney 405 Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02167...
...617 782 7319 (H), 617 552 8095 (0)~ FAX 617 552 0794...
...He more specifically suggested the Cistercian Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky as the site for the meeting because it had been the home of Thomas MetTwenty-fifth Annual Lonergan Workshop JUNE 15-19,1998 BOSTON COLLEGE Letting Ourselves Dream: Anticipating the Future in Light of the Past I n honor o f Joseph Flanagan, SJ Speakers, Workshop Leaders, & Panelists: B. Anderson F. Braio D. Burrell P. Byrne P. Caringella J. Flauagan M. Glandon C. Hefting G. Hughes M. Lamb T. Kohler J. Komonchak D. Fleischacker D. Levy J. Madrid P. Marcoux W. Mathews M. McCarthy T. McPartland K. Melchin J. Miller S. Moore M. Morelli W. Murnion F. Murphy D. Oyler H. Pottmeyer D. Tracy P. Wallbank G. Weiss For info...
...Krieg, better than most, understands that with Guardini we are not dealing with an intellectual system builder...
...Guardini serves as a model for a kind of Christian thinker we need in every generation--a theologian who has a wide-ranging interest in real issues faced by a culture at a given time...
...In 1941 he was banned from public speaking...
...University qfi Notre Dame, $18,270 pp...
...Such a theological "tone" owes more to Plato than to Aristotle, is deeply contemplative, and less concerned with historical-critical approaches to Scripture...
...Romano Guardini surely did that, as Robert Krieg shows in this extremely interesting and well-researched work...
...respective ways of living the monastic life...
...In the last decade his work has undergone a modest revival...
...Robert Krieg's study invites us to reconsider in depth the work of a Catholic writer who was one of the most popular and influential in the first half of the twentieth century...
...Such a theologian must combine the ancient understanding of speaking of God out of authentic experience with a willingness to speak to an audience larger than that of fellow academics and theologians...
...Commonweal 3 9 April 10, 1998...
...His chaired positions were never in theology as such...
...One could hardly quarrel with those words...
...Guardini died in 1968 at the age of eighty-three...
...Krieg opens with a biographical chapter and closes with a bibliography of Guardini's works and works about him, as welI as a chronology of his life...
...From The Spirit of the Liturgy (1918) to the phenomenally popular The Romano Guardini: A Precursor of Vatican II by Robert A. Krieg, C.S.C...
...All of these writers combine a deeply rooted Christian vision with a passionate drive to speak to tile contemporary world...
...After the war he resumed his active career with such distinction that in 1965, three years before his death, Pope Paul VI wanted to name him to the College of Cardinals, an honor Guardini declined...
...After publishing on his antiNazi position in 1935, his lectures were monitored by informers...
...Some of his works have begun to reappear (in, for example, the "Ressourcement" series published by herdroans...
...Guardini spent his entire mature life, after a few years in pastoral work, within a university milieu...
...This strain of theology is more sapiential than intellectual...
...In a long career, Guardini made singular contributions in liturgy, literary criticism, and the philosophy of religion...
...At Berlin, for example, his chair's province was the "Catholic World View...
...Whether there will be a new appreciation of Guardini in the future is hard to predict...
...Lord (1937), his books were considered classics in their day...
...In 1939 he lost his professorship and had his youth center closed...
...Guardini's books covered Christology, liturgy, spirituality, and ecclesiology...
...One thing is clear, however...
...A series of thematic chapters set out Guardini's thinking on a range of topics...
Vol. 125 • April 1998 • No. 7
