speak of “concretely graced human nature” and point out that it is of this
that the church fathers typically speak. Karl Rahner, perhaps the most
inÀ uential Catholic theologian of the 20th century, speaks of a “supernatural
existential,” an offer of grace that is intrinsic not to human nature but to
concrete human existence. The supernatural existential makes possible a turn
to experience in Rahner’s theology, making him the fountainhead of Catholic
Liberal theology.
The ideas of de Lubac and Rahner were very inÀ uential in the Second
Vatican Council in the 1960s. Pope John XXIII, who called the council,
described its task as aggiornamiento (updating), bringing the church up to
date. The central document of the council was the Dogmatic Constitution
on the Church, Lumen Gentium (which begins with a reference to Christ
as the “Light of the Nations”). Rejecting clericalism, the council de¿ ned
the church as the people of God, not just the hierarchy. More deeply, the
council described the church itself as a sacrament, a sign and instrument of
communion with God and unity among human
beings. The Pastoral Constitution on the church
in the modern world, Gaudium et Spes (“Joy
and Hope”) made the church a sharer in the
hopes and fears of the modern world.
The council took a much more positive attitude
than the Roman church earlier had toward the
world, other churches, and other religions.
Taking a strikingly different attitude than Pius
IX a century earlier, the council af¿ rmed the right to religious freedom,
based on the dignity of the human person. The council af¿ rmed that the
Jews are not rejected by God, who does not take back the choice he has
made. In a move that changed the Christian world, the council committed the
Roman church to the ecumenical movement seeking to restore the unity of
all the churches. The Roman church recognized other churches and ecclesial
communities as genuinely Christian, describing them as “separated brethren”
in real but imperfect communion with the true church, which “subsists in”
the Roman Catholic church but also is present in some ways outside it. Ŷ
Rejecting clericalism,
the council de¿ ned
the church as the
people of God, not
just the hierarchy.