Philosophy and Theology

Volume 31, Issue 1/2, 2019

Jakob Karl Rinderknecht
Pages 175-197

Another World Is Present
Rahner’s Theology of the Church after Failure

Contemporary Roman Catholic considerations of church reform are often impeded by the worry that any acknowledgment of systematic or properly ecclesial failure calls Jesus’s promise of the church’s indefectibility into question. This makes honesty about such failure, and therefore true reform, impossible. At best, in this way of thinking, blame can be shifted onto a few “bad apples.” Karl Rahner’s engagement with a quite different problem—how Roman Catholics can account for the fruits of the Spirit in Protestant Ministries—can provide tools for a renewed ecclesiology capable of honestly reckoning with sin in and by the church.