Karl Rahner emerged as the most influential of the “new theologians” throughout, and for a long while after the close of Vatican II. He provided justification for a variety of feminist, liberationist and revisionist moral theologies.
His influence has been profound and pervasive. Rather than challenge and refute, his approach was to adopt and modify. Rahner was determined to situate Christianity within the intellectual horizon of modern civilization. To do so it was necessary to reject the authority of Neo-Scholasticism, which had imparted to the Catholic world, and the world beyond Catholicism, absolute right and wrong.
The common denominator among all new theologies is that the Church must join equally with people of good will to address the pressing moral and social questions of our time. Sixty years after the close of Vatican II this goal has been proven entirely unattainable! Modernity now views the Churches’ metaphysical and dogmatic certainty as simply barbaric, in its presumptive and direct claim to objective truth. Rahner and his followers reject that the trajectory of Church history must run perpendicularly to that of world history and insist it must run parallel to it.
Francis, growing up in a provincial capital in the Southern Hemisphere where poverty and revolution are endemic, was certainly influenced by wave after wave of the new theologies. Employing Rahnerian techniques, adopt and modify rather than, challenge and refute, Francis is redirecting the Universal Church toward an emphasis on the well-being of society rather than continually reaffirming absolute truth in a world which totally rejects it.
NEW DIRECTIONS CHARTED BY THIS PONTIFICATE:
Nurse over Teacher
Pursuing Rahnerian techniques, Francis is repositioning the Church in directions fundamentally rejected during the last several Pontificates. Among the greatest of these shifts, reflecting the “Spirit of Vatican II,” Francis is positioning the Holy Roman Catholic Church as nurse to a wounded world rather than propounding her primary function as universal teacher of objective truth to a subjective and relative world.
Love over Reason
By compromising the role of Reason, Francis is propounding the healing power and guidance of emotional, subjective love over the need for human reason.
New Theologies over Thomas’ Perennial Philosophy
Francis, in an effort to establish a field hospital for the moral, spiritual and physical ailments of society, is resurrecting many of Rahner’s new theological concepts: Feminism, Liberation Theology, and revisionist moral theologies, while simultaneously negating or denigrating Thomistic philosophy.
Submission to, Rather than Challenging World Views
Francis, accepting Rahner’s contention that Christianity must engage in and co-operate with current history rather than stand in opposition to it when Christ’s teaching dictated such a course of action reduces the role of the Church in society.
Reviewing these shifts, one must ask its chance for success? Christendom has been pronounced dead by a host of Catholic intellectuals beginning with Jacque Maritan, followed by Malcolm Muggeridge, and Alasdair MacIntyre. Cataclysmic encounters with secularism for control of men’s minds during this interregnum, foreshadows a new world order that requires clear and bold action by the Church if it is to survive in the format instituted by Christ.
The approach charted by Francis, appears to run parallel to that chosen by mainline Protestantism during the last fifty years. A simple reading of history clearly indicates that such techniques have dissolved that institution while the counter-cultural Protestant churches which stand fast to given principles, appear to possess survival qualities. God protect the Holy Roman Catholic Church in these perilous times.
--Xavier Rynne
