For the Church is not simply an institution for the private religious needs of the individual. In the liturgy as well as in other departments of the Church's life there are regrettable. This is quite obvious if we have really understood the true intention of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.
According to the traditional teaching of the Church truly educated theologians have always distinguished between. True, the Church cannot adapt the moral demands of the gospel to the statistics of average morality. The Church can certainly not give up the principle of the indissolubility of a consummated sacramental.
Grace in Freedom by Karl Rahner
Christian Faith: Deliverance of the World
For this chapter deals precisely with this subject, namely the proper development of culture and the importance of the Christian faith for this development. This hope for eternity is realized in the constant transformation of the structures of secular life. Hence in the practical risk of the unforeseen inner-worldly future man realizes his eschatological hope by looking away from himself to the absolute which is not in his power.
It is therefore true that man must impress his hope on the structures of the world.
Religious Patterns
This is shown, for example, by a theological analysis of the structure of the Old Covenant. Hence the salvation God wanted man to have reached him according to the divine will and permission in the concrete religion of the historical conditions and circumstances of his life,. And so it is true that in the last analysis the preaching of the Gospel does not make into a Christian a man.
But this does not exclude, it rather implies that prophecy and vision remain in the Church as an actualization of the permanent message of Christ.
Ecumenical Perspectives
One of the decisive reasons for the separation of the Churches is the difference in the doctrine of man's justification before God through grace. Nor can I report the differences of the theological opinions which have since emerged on this subject in the various Churches. Hence every single statement can always be criticized, integrated, newly formulated and better protected from misunderstandings in the context of the whole.
In this sense we Catholics, too, can and must speak of the sinner who is also just. This justifying grace of God frees us from the enslaving powers of death, from the merely external demands of the law and the world. A Catholic Meditation on the Anniversary of the Reformation It is difficult for a Catholic to speak on this subject.
Ultimately he, like any other Christian, can only be silent before this event in the history of the Church. And the Protestant Christian knows that the New Testament originated in the apostolic kerygma of the living apostolic Church and therefore is and remains her book. The profession of this faith is necessary as an appeal to the conscience of the individual, who obeys because he is free in the greater .. community of the Church of truth, hope and love.
I do not think that the leaders of the Churches are really wholly devoted to the cause of ecumenism. So the actual situation of personal faith may be the same in the Catholic Church as in Protestantism, though it is hidden behind the facade of the official doctrine (though we do not dispute that this is also of . theological importance).
Free Acceptance of Creatureliness and Cross
In the darkness of death I cried out: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me. Your sorrow is my own sorrow, thus says the voice of Christ in the words of the Church today. If we want truly to be Christians, this week ought to be a time when we share in a special way in the Passion of Christ.
For we share by faith in the Passion of our Lord precisely by realizing that our life is a. If we were aware of this, we would also better understand that we can share in the Passion of the Son of Man during this Holy Week, we would understand that his Passion is the unique acceptance of. Today we still speak of the cross only in the explicit language of the Church and religion; perhaps some pious old Christians may still use the expression for the experience of their own life.
This linguistic change makes it more difficult to relate our own life to the Passion of the Lord. Then we would know that we must truly act out our faith when we are asked: Do you accept the cross of your life, do you know that it means sharing in the Passion of the Lord. In the first quotation the cross remains incomprehensible and is not explained away, while in the second it is accepted as this remaining mystery.
We announce the death of the Lord in the Mass to our salvation only if in serene faith and hope we also encounter it in its everyday form of sorrow and. For what finally comes to light in the darkness of the first Good Friday is, in the words of St.
Commitment to the Church and Personal Freedom
Hence the institutional norms of the Church and the freedom which is realized most decisively in the spiritual life cannot be in complete mutual. First of all it must be said that according to the explicit teaching of the Church which is also expressed by Vatican 2. a). There is a prayer of individuals and groups which is not liturgical prayer in the strict sense of the word.
It is an act of the Church in a true sense, even if not expressly commissioned by the authorities of the Church. The Church herself is sancta Ecclesia not only because of the objective holiness of her members. If it can be said that the Church is a sinful Church because of the sins of her.
Hence the ultimate meaning and end of all democracy is the very precondition of the Church. For according to Catholic ecclesiology the fundamental constitution of the Church is of divine right and hence immutable. I mean something like an election of the ministers of the Church by the Christian people themselves.
In such a community the democratization of the Church on this level would have solved itself. We should like to draw attention also to another aspect of meaningful democratization of the Church. Hence theology is an essential condition of the developing history of the Church's faith and creed.
The dogma of the Church is the presupposition of any intraecclesial dialogue between the Church and the theologian.
The Little Word "God"
He would not even be confronted with the whole of the world and himself in silent confusion. We can only say he would have ceased to be a man, he would have returned to the state of the animal. The absolute death of the word "God", wiping out even its past, would be the signal -- though heard by none -- that man himself has died.
But the very fact that the question of the death of the word "God" can be put shows that this word is still there because of man's very protest against it. It may be said that God is not present in the realm of science and in the world organized by it, that the scientific method is therefore a priori a- theistic, since it is concerned only with the functional relationships of the individual phenomena. For what happens in this sphere, that is, what can be proved experimentally, can certainly not be what we mean by God in the proper sense of the word.
For he is the silent abyss and thus the ground of the world and of our knowledge of it. The God of the philosophers is no "Father", but the incomprehensible ground of all reality which escapes every comprehensive notion because he is a radical mystery. It is the feast of the Son who came from the Father, in whom God as the Father is accessible in everyday history, and not only in the inaccessible experience of the inner man if we repeat the word "Father" after the Son.
It is not the source of the fear of death but the promise of our own infinity. If we are not bored by the message of the incarnation as it is presented to us in helpless words from the pulpit, but meet it with a longing heart.
True Freedom
It is a decisive element of the Christian idea of freedom that it is not only dependent on God and refers to him as the basis of the freedom of choice, but that it is also freedom before God. For the free act is the act of the subject because it is transcendence, while the individual things in the world which we encounter in the horizon of transcendence are not. In its origin, freedom is freedom of saying Yes or No to God, and thus freedom of the subject to itself.
We cannot here pose the question of the real knowability of freedom in the theory of knowledge. This radical mystery of freedom continues in the free act of the subject as such. Freedom is always exercised on given particular material, even when it is total commitment of the free subject.
By realizing my own freedom I also partly determine the sphere of the freedom of others. This enlargement of the social sphere of freedom is actually of Christian origin and hence not actually suspect to Christians. Hence the very essence and realization of freedom in the life of the community involves legitimate limitations.
The common good which limits the freedom of the individual is only another's right to freedom, so that the sphere of freedom is limited for the sake of freedom itself, and not by an alien element. Hence the freedom of the Christian is, in the last resort, bound to be the holy foolishness which is the true wisdom of God; he must believe that the other wills the good even where,. Further, freedom with regard to a certain object is ultimately the freedom of the subject to commit himself.
It is rather the confession of the absolute future of man which is God him- self.