I’ve been dipping back into the riches of Karl Rahner’s writings recently as a result of some T.A. work I’ve been doing. I can’t help but be comforted by his reflections on how to bear with the reality of being a member of a flawed and sinful Church, particularly a Church whose flaws spring from national pathologies. A taste:
“We cannot have a fatherland unless we are prepared to live with its philistines and slackers. It is the same with the Church. We must not simply identify the ‘Catholicism’ of a particular country with the Church as a whole and blame the latter for the narrowness and hard-heartedness of a particular regional Catholicism. But, even in a local church where this narrow-minded Catholicism prevails, the word of God and his grace is proclaimed, his forgiveness granted and the death and resurrection of Jesus celebrated until he returns.”
[Karl Rahner, “Courage for an Ecclesial Christianity,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. XX: Concern for the Church, (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 11-12.]
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