Sunday, March 30, marked the twenty-fourth anniversary of Karl Rahner’s death. Rahner, a German Jesuit, was perhaps the single most influential Catholic theologian of the 20th century. Some consider his theology too dense and complex for ordinary folk to plow through. I think the richness and beauty of his thought are well worth the effort.
Rahner’s work greatly influenced both the substance and the spirit of the Second Vatican Council. He endeavored throughout his life to coax the Church forward with gentleness, persistence and love. There can be no better way of doing theology than his way — with a deep sensitivity to the concrete concerns of ordinary believers, and with a firm conviction that progress happens not by rejecting or abandoning the past, but by working to stretch and develop it, maturing its instincts and enlarging its insight.
If you aren’t easily intimidated by intricate ideas and long sentences containing multiple clauses, Rahner’s Foundations of Christian Faith
“The first thing we should learn from Jesus is to be fully human.”
“God laughs. The laughter of the carefree, the confident, the unthreatened.”
“The message of Easter is the most human news brought by Christianity. That is why we have most difficulty in understanding it. It is most difficult to be, do, and believe what is truest, closest, and easiest.”
“Salvation is not a kind of posthumous, spiritual reward for good behavior, granted to some and withheld from others; it is simply a continuation of what has taken place during one’s life, a sharing in God to the extent that each person has developed the capacity for it through the practice of faith, hope and love. Heaven and hell are, in a sense, the same thing — remaining whatever you have made of yourself, forever.”
“The Church should be … a church in which the officeholders too, in joyous humility, allow for the fact that the Spirit breathes where it will and that it has not arranged an exclusive and permanent tenancy with them.”
“Until death’s door I’ll hold doggedly fast, if I may say so, to the belief that there is an eternal light that will illumine me … if a people or even humanity were to fall into the abyss, then I would still be firmly convinced — and I hope to keep this conviction — that even such an abyss always ultimately ends in the arms of an eternally good, eternally powerful God.”
Posted by CCHenry 
. “Shenanigans,” Hays instructs, is a shortened form of an old Irish invocation: Shee nanna gasne, or, “the Shee are rattling the dishes.” For those a little rusty in the Irish folklore department, the “Shee” were invisible fairy folk who roamed the Emerald Isle freely before the coming of Christianity and were very fond of making mischief — making tables dance, causing pots and pans to prance, and the like. The purpose of these pranks was to teach human beings (who were, then as now, prone to pride and to the wrongful illusion that they have power over all things), some much-needed humility.
. The book was written by Bishop Robert Morneau and begins by examining God’s mercy and the mystery of the human person.
