Erich Przywara, S.J.: His Theology and His World

Chapter 2. The Challenge to Be a Catholic

Chapter 2 The Challenge to Be a Catholic How would Catholicism exist as the twentieth century progressed ? Could it flourish amid the cultural changes occurring as the century moved forward after World War I? Erich Przywara pondered those issues throughout his life. His personal mission was to show how Catholicism could speak to a world that had passed through a time in which the only prospect was the decline of theWest.The interplay of subjectivity and objectivity in philosophy,religion,and art were not always distortions and not always innovations but could express the Christian message.“For classical Catholic philosophy (Augustine andAquinas) as for classical modern philosophy (Kant and Hegel),the starting-point is the reflection of the ego upon itself .This kind of introspection is only apparently a purely epistemological matter,that is,something preliminary to all metaphysics .”¹ Catholic thought implies both types of philosophy, explorations of the self and of the world of being. Both the approaches of transcendental subjectivity and a metaphysics of being have their insights. Przywara sought to combine both perspectives in the expression of a Catholic view of God and Jesus Christ. In Karl Rahner’s view, between the two world wars “there was perhaps no major breakthrough toward a truly new and modern theology but there was a very fundamental breakthrough to a more open Catholic, and thoroughly Catholic, way of thinking which departed from traditional neo-scholasticism but was still part of the church’s patrimony . In the years before World War I we passed through a period of what is called integralism and a somewhat rigid  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * neo-scholasticism, but if you look at the period afterWorldWar I during which Guardini,Przywara,and others like them were writing,then you see already a completely different atmosphere in thought.”² Przywara was Catholic in his universal interest,in his correlation of past and present. Przywara placed himself among those “who from an inherited and never-shaken Catholic standpoint understand themselves and their entry into the world around them, precisely now when this ‘modernity ’ begins to enter a new development, to be an initiation of something like a ‘Catholic balance’ to the modern world.”³ The advantage of growing up in a pluralistic society in Kattowitz and of going to school with children from a secular or Jewish background was that his strong religious roots came from his family and parish community and not from state support or from the idiosyncrasy of the overly devout.⁴ The Jesuit saw a world and church impaired but full of possibilities. Correlation (a term from Hermann Cohen that Przywara employed but also a word associated with dialectical theology),⁵ marked Przywara ’s thought and his dialectical spirit of participation enabled him to see existence flourishing between philosophy and revelation, between culture and faith.The new trend is to evaluate God and the human person in the midst of culture.“All philosophy emerges from a given manifold variety and from the given contrast of things, and its goal is unity.”⁶ His first writings contrast philosophies in order to modify their diversity into complementarity. Religious perspectives of immanence and transcendence join with the basic themes of analogy and nature and grace to fashion the perduring perspective of Przywara. His typologies of patristic and medieval theologians or of modern philosophers were not rigid arrangements but pedagogical , inspirational frameworks. Przywara’s life and ministry sought to advance the meaning, survival, and presence of German Catholicism. An Embattled Church and a Catholic Renewal In the decades following the pontificate of Pius IX and the repression by the Kulturkampf, some in German Catholicism sought to relate Christian faith and tradition to the modern world. Because Catholics after  were increasingly deterred by Rome from pursuing philosophy and theology, they turned to practical areas of politics, social life, and the arts. During the decades leading to  Germany surpassed     almost every country in economic and technological power;networks of railroads, electricity, medical laboratories were a reality, and the creations of modernity spread through the panoply of culture. German national culture of the late nineteenth century was largely Protestant, and Catholics were viewed as provincial, rural, conservative, even as enemies of progress. Paradoxically, both the government’s attacks and the Catholic engagement with needy social groups helped Catholics resist the pressures of secularism and religious liberalism. Caught between Berlin and Rome, Catholics sought in a proliferation of addresses , books, and journals a renewed, even a reformed, identity...