Faith in a Wintry Season

I suppose this an appropriate post for the 2nd day of the New Year, which finds us smack in the middle of winter. As a lifelong Catholic who has nevertheless struggled with my faith, I have found comfort and support in the work of a theological giant like Karl Rahner. Rahner was a Roman Catholic priest and Jesuit who spent the majority of his life trying to engage with the modern world in fields like philosophy and theology. Though Rahner has now been dead about 25 years, I don't think we have a clear sense of his influence not only on Roman Catholicism, but also on the attempt for the Catholic Church to continue its dialogue with a postmodern world that we can no longer assume has a traditional religious sensibility.
I wonder what Rahner would make of the supposed "New Atheism" authors who have been in the news so prominently over the last decade. One of his most famous and probably most lasting concepts is "the anonymous Christian." What Rahner means by this is that following the pronouncement at Vatican II that one did not need to be a Catholic or even a Christian to attain salvation, he believes there are many individuals both famous and anonymous who have lived a life that is consistent with the Christian ethic, even if they were never exposed to Christianity.
I will confess that I have not tackled any of Rahner's densely theological works, but if you are interested in a deeply intelligent, lucid, and ultimately generous mind, you should take a look at the work of Karl Rahner. This particular volume, Faith in a Wintry Season, is a collection of interviews given in the last decade or so of his life. With Rahner dying in 1984 early in the papacy of John Paul II, he has some definite views on the new pope an on his main theological adviser, who is now Pope Benedict, but was then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
Surprisingly Rahner has been excused by some other Catholic hierarchy and theologians as not being a "true" Catholic, but these interviews clearly show that while he can be a critical Catholic, he is not at all a heretical one. Catholicism in particular and Christianity in general can use more thinkers like Rahner, who in some ways patterned his professional life after that of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who faced similar criticism from the Church regarding his work, but whose legacy is still felt today. Like Aquinas, Rahner has tried to keep pace with the secular world, while not losing his own anchor with the Catholic Church. I for one am thankful for his work and his example.

Happy New Year!

Czar