New Age Church
This is an extract from an essay "Towards a Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II" by Karl Rahner, the Jesuit.
Can one venture this thesis and through it determine the meaning of Vatican II in the sense that there the Church, even if only initially and unclearly, proclaimed the transition of the Western Church to a world Church in a way that had previously happened only once, when the Church changed from a Church of the Jews to a Church of the Gentiles? To repeat: I think one can and should answer this question affirmatively. Of course, this cannot mean that in content these two caesuras and transitions are simply the same. No historical event occurs twice. Nor would I contradict someone who is convinced that the break inaugurated by Paul also had characteristics of a formally theological nature which are not repeated, so that the transition to a world Church is really not comparable in every respect with the transition from the Christianity of the Jewish Jesus to the Christianity of Paul. I also do not doubt that such transitions happen for the most part and in the final analysis unreflectively; they are not first planned out theologically and then put into effect, but are unreflectively realized through a finally hidden instinct of the Spirit and of grace that remains mysterious—even though the element of reflection borne along with the action should certainly not be disregarded or considered superfluous. But with these provisos I would want to affirm and defend the thesis I proposed.
Next I venture to affirm that the difference between the historical situation of Jewish Christianity and the situation into which Paul transplanted Christianity as a radically new creation is not greater than the difference between Western culture and the contemporary cultures of all Asia and Africa into which Christianity must inculturate itself if it is now to be, as it has begun to be, genuinely a world Church. Today's difference may to some extent be hidden, inasmuch as a leveling layer of rational-industrial culture from Europe and the United States lies over these other cultures, so that the difference between our culture and the other cultures is veiled, and one might expect Christianity still to be well received throughout the world as a Western export ware wherever it coincided with the dubious blessings of the West. Antiquity did indeed have an analogue for this, namely, the Diaspora of the Jews with their proselytizing across the ancient world, on which foundation a Jewish Christianity apparently could also have been exported to that world. But, prescinding from some minor exceptions, modern missionary history shows that Christianity as a Western export actually succeeded neither with the high cultures of the East nor in the world of Islam, precisely because it was Western Christianity and sought in that way to establish itself in the rest of the world, without risking a really new beginning or breaking with many continuities that seem self-evident to us. This showed in the different rites controversies; in the export of Latin as a liturgical language to countries in which Latin was never a historical reality; in the unquestioning way that Western, Roman law was exported through canon law; in the naive, unquestioning way that an effort was made to impose the bourgeois morality of the West in all its detail on people of different cultures; in the rejection of religious experiences of other cultures, and so forth. This, then, is the issue: either the Church sees and recognizes these essential differences of other cultures for which she should become a world Church and with a Pauline boldness draws the necessary consequences from this recognition, or she remains a Western Church and so in the final analysis betrays the meaning of Vatican II.
Notice that he compares the post-Vatican II era with the break from the synagogue, a comparison that can only be insulting to the Church and the synagogue. He fails to discuss the relationship of the Mass to the service of the Temple.
The comparison leaves the way open for worship of the "Spirit of Vatican II" breaking forever with tradition, like those who refused the Jewish scriptures at the break between the synagogue and the Church. The break which was inevitable when Christians proclaimed the divinity of Our Lord.
The Church was Catholic before the Second Vatican Council, not perfectly represented in each and every country, but still a presence everywhere.
Wits christened Father Rahner, the holy ghost writer of the Second Vatican Council, which could lead one to question who was the real author.
So he wanted a world church, the stuff of nightmares for protestants, especially given the politicisation of the Church since the Council, but diametrically opposed to his ideas of collegiality and interculturation, which fragment the Church.
Poor Fr Rahner was virtually an unbeliever towards the end of his life, not least because he thought the Trinity as in heaven was identical with the Trinity as we poor banished children of Eve experience God. An elementary mistake but completely dangerous to souls.
Catholic worked after the Council and will work again after the Council.
So he wanted a world church, the stuff of nightmares for protestants, especially given the politicisation of the Church since the Council, but diametrically opposed to his ideas of collegiality and interculturation, which fragment the Church.
Poor Fr Rahner was virtually an unbeliever towards the end of his life, not least because he thought the Trinity as in heaven was identical with the Trinity as we poor banished children of Eve experience God. An elementary mistake but completely dangerous to souls.
Catholic worked after the Council and will work again after the Council.
The text
....What results if we apply the theology of this transition to the one in which we are living today, a transition for which Vatican II implies something like an ecclesiastically official beginning?
As for the first question, we can start by saying at least that it concerns an event of importance not only for the history of culture but for theology and the history of salvation. This seems to me to be evident in Paul. He proclaims abolition of circumcision for Gentile Christianity, an abolition which Jesus certainly did not anticipate and which can scarcely be cogently derived from Jesus' own explicit preaching or from the preaching about the salvific meaning of his death and resurrection. And yet for Paul this principle belongs to his gospel and means revelation in some sense. It is the interruption of a salvation-history continuity which a human being cannot undertake on personal authority alone. Thus the properly theological question arises which Paul himself did not adequately pursue: What can still remain and must still remain from the Old Testament salvation history and from the Church, if circumcision could be done away with, one of the realities that pertained to the final substance of salvation existence for a Jew of that time, something that according to Paul could and in fact should have remained for the Jewish Christians of the time? This transition, for him, constitutes a genuine caesura or break. We must furthermore consider that many other abolitions and interruptions of continuity in the history of salvation were connected with this change: abolishing the Sabbath, moving the Church's center from Jerusalem to Rome, far-reaching modifications in moral doctrine, the rise and acceptance of new canonical writings, and so forth. And for the moment it does not concern me whether these turning points can be referred to Jesus or explicitly to Paul or happened somehow and somewhere in the apostolic age. Today, as a matter of fact, perhaps even in contrast to patristic and medieval theology, we do not have a clear, reflective theology of this break, this new beginning of Christianity with Paul as its inaugurator; perhaps that will only gradually be worked out in a dialogue with the Synagogue of today. And so I hope no one will hold it against me if I cannot say anything beyond the suggestions already given. And yet I would still venture the thesis that today we are experiencing a break such as occurred only once before, that is, in the transition from Jewish to Gentile Christianity.
....What results if we apply the theology of this transition to the one in which we are living today, a transition for which Vatican II implies something like an ecclesiastically official beginning?As for the first question, we can start by saying at least that it concerns an event of importance not only for the history of culture but for theology and the history of salvation. This seems to me to be evident in Paul. He proclaims abolition of circumcision for Gentile Christianity, an abolition which Jesus certainly did not anticipate and which can scarcely be cogently derived from Jesus' own explicit preaching or from the preaching about the salvific meaning of his death and resurrection. And yet for Paul this principle belongs to his gospel and means revelation in some sense. It is the interruption of a salvation-history continuity which a human being cannot undertake on personal authority alone. Thus the properly theological question arises which Paul himself did not adequately pursue: What can still remain and must still remain from the Old Testament salvation history and from the Church, if circumcision could be done away with, one of the realities that pertained to the final substance of salvation existence for a Jew of that time, something that according to Paul could and in fact should have remained for the Jewish Christians of the time? This transition, for him, constitutes a genuine caesura or break. We must furthermore consider that many other abolitions and interruptions of continuity in the history of salvation were connected with this change: abolishing the Sabbath, moving the Church's center from Jerusalem to Rome, far-reaching modifications in moral doctrine, the rise and acceptance of new canonical writings, and so forth. And for the moment it does not concern me whether these turning points can be referred to Jesus or explicitly to Paul or happened somehow and somewhere in the apostolic age. Today, as a matter of fact, perhaps even in contrast to patristic and medieval theology, we do not have a clear, reflective theology of this break, this new beginning of Christianity with Paul as its inaugurator; perhaps that will only gradually be worked out in a dialogue with the Synagogue of today. And so I hope no one will hold it against me if I cannot say anything beyond the suggestions already given. And yet I would still venture the thesis that today we are experiencing a break such as occurred only once before, that is, in the transition from Jewish to Gentile Christianity.
Can one venture this thesis and through it determine the meaning of Vatican II in the sense that there the Church, even if only initially and unclearly, proclaimed the transition of the Western Church to a world Church in a way that had previously happened only once, when the Church changed from a Church of the Jews to a Church of the Gentiles? To repeat: I think one can and should answer this question affirmatively. Of course, this cannot mean that in content these two caesuras and transitions are simply the same. No historical event occurs twice. Nor would I contradict someone who is convinced that the break inaugurated by Paul also had characteristics of a formally theological nature which are not repeated, so that the transition to a world Church is really not comparable in every respect with the transition from the Christianity of the Jewish Jesus to the Christianity of Paul. I also do not doubt that such transitions happen for the most part and in the final analysis unreflectively; they are not first planned out theologically and then put into effect, but are unreflectively realized through a finally hidden instinct of the Spirit and of grace that remains mysterious—even though the element of reflection borne along with the action should certainly not be disregarded or considered superfluous. But with these provisos I would want to affirm and defend the thesis I proposed.
Next I venture to affirm that the difference between the historical situation of Jewish Christianity and the situation into which Paul transplanted Christianity as a radically new creation is not greater than the difference between Western culture and the contemporary cultures of all Asia and Africa into which Christianity must inculturate itself if it is now to be, as it has begun to be, genuinely a world Church. Today's difference may to some extent be hidden, inasmuch as a leveling layer of rational-industrial culture from Europe and the United States lies over these other cultures, so that the difference between our culture and the other cultures is veiled, and one might expect Christianity still to be well received throughout the world as a Western export ware wherever it coincided with the dubious blessings of the West. Antiquity did indeed have an analogue for this, namely, the Diaspora of the Jews with their proselytizing across the ancient world, on which foundation a Jewish Christianity apparently could also have been exported to that world. But, prescinding from some minor exceptions, modern missionary history shows that Christianity as a Western export actually succeeded neither with the high cultures of the East nor in the world of Islam, precisely because it was Western Christianity and sought in that way to establish itself in the rest of the world, without risking a really new beginning or breaking with many continuities that seem self-evident to us. This showed in the different rites controversies; in the export of Latin as a liturgical language to countries in which Latin was never a historical reality; in the unquestioning way that Western, Roman law was exported through canon law; in the naive, unquestioning way that an effort was made to impose the bourgeois morality of the West in all its detail on people of different cultures; in the rejection of religious experiences of other cultures, and so forth. This, then, is the issue: either the Church sees and recognizes these essential differences of other cultures for which she should become a world Church and with a Pauline boldness draws the necessary consequences from this recognition, or she remains a Western Church and so in the final analysis betrays the meaning of Vatican II.
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