Finding God in All Things: Celebrating Bernard Lonergan, John Courtney Murray, and Karl Rahner

1. Introduction

1. Introduction Mark Bosco, S.J. In every age, the church carries the responsibilities of reading the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel, if it is to carry out its task. In language intelligible to every generation, it should be able to answer the ever recurring questions which people ask about the meaning of this present life and of the life to come, and how one is related to the other. We must be aware of and understand the aspirations , the yearnings, and the often dramatic features of the world in which we live. —Gaudium et Spes The above sentiments of the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World capture a transitional moment in the Catholic Church’s attitude in its relationship with modernity. This shift is seen most remarkably in the language of the Council, what Jesuit historian John W. O’Malley notes is a change from ‘‘the rhetoric of reproach’’ so prevalent in documents from previous church councils to an embrace of the ‘‘rhetoric of affirmation and invitation .’’ The rhetorical change in attitude that permeates the Council documents was matched by a new formulation of the Church’s consciousness of itself since the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council. Such pivotal themes about the nature of the Church found new expression and emphasis: the acceptance of historical consciousness in the articulation of the Church’s history and doctrine; the importance of 2 / Mark Bosco, S.J. an active role for the laity; the spirit of détente between the Church and the modern world; the modification of the Church’s identity beyond clerical terms to the more inclusive ‘‘people of God’’; the renewal in liturgical practice; the affirmation of religious freedom to worship according to one’s conscience; and the stress on human rights as fundamental to religious faith. Thus, the previously ‘‘agonistic’’ tone of Roman Catholic theology at war with the Reformation and the Enlightenment is, for the first time, given what O’Malley calls a humbler, ‘‘irenic ’’ timbre. A more pastoral and temperate sensibility suffuses the Council documents in order to express in a new way the ‘‘substance’’ of the Roman Catholic tradition. Indeed, O’Malley argues that if we want to understand the Catholic Church of the past forty years we need to think about this distinctive theological ‘‘style,’’ this change in attitude towards methodology and expression of Catholic belief and faith.1 O’Malley’s formula is an apt way to introduce this collection of centenary essays on the theological vision of three of the greatest Jesuit thinkers of the twentieth century. Bernard Lonergan, John Courtney Murray, and Karl Rahner were influential in bringing to fruition—or deliberatively extending—the rhetorical and methodological style of the Second Vatican Council. It might be said that to understand the past forty years of Catholic theology one must understand the contribution of these men. Interestingly, they were each born in 1904 during the height of the Church’s most militant, agonistic rhetoric against all things modern. Just three years after their birth, the Vatican’s Congregation of the Holy Office issued the decree Lamentabili (1907), a sweeping condemnation of sixty-five propositions against the ‘‘errors of the age.’’ Two months later in the same year, the encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (on the doctrines of the modernists) was promulgated, followed by an antimodernist oath for all Catholic bishops, priests, and theologians. Under this umbrella of suspicion and oaths, Lonergan, Murray, and Rahner were nurtured in their Catholic faith and underwent theological training in the Society of Jesus. Each of them in their own way felt the burden of the antimodernist policies in their theological formation. And yet by the time of their mature work during the 1950s and 60s, these three individuals were instrumental in helping the Church usher in a critical dialogue between modernity’s historico-philosophical expression and contemporary Catholic theological scholarship . In an era of détente with science and Enlightenment thought (due in no small part to Pope John XXIII’s Council), each of these Jesuits Introduction / 3 brought their understanding of the Catholic theological tradition into closer relation with modern outlooks in philosophy, history, and political science. Lonergan, Murray, and Rahner were also loyal sons of St. Ignatius of Loyola. They shared a spiritual as well as intellectual ‘‘way of...