I.
My faith can only survive in the community of those who together form the holy Church of Jesus Christ. And therefore (among other reasons) it is essential to my own salvation that she be the very home and foundation of my faith.
Karl Rahner wrote those words toward the end of his life and after a long season of painful experiences. As the prayer unfolds, you can hear his pain breaking through again and again—sometimes as anger, sometimes as a grief. What he says about clericalism is especially harsh. Through it all, however, he never forgets his own frailty, and continually returns to gratitude. Here’s the remainder of the prayer, every line of which deserves careful reading:
I know of course that she always is and always will be this for me through the power of Your tender mercy. Yet because she is also the Church of poor sinners she can only serve as a foundation and a dwelling place to an entirely different extent: she can make it easier or more difficult for me to believe in You and in Your victorious love for me. Truthfully though, I do not consider myself to be any better than others in the Church, I know that I am anything but a sterling argument for the origin of the Church in the mercy of God's will—I who am a member of this Church and am supposed to represent it.
But I should therefore wish to add that my sisters and brothers in this Church will just as vehemently take issue with me should I pray: I believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic Church, the communion of saints, and the life everlasting. How tiresome, feeble-minded, short-sighted, and tyrannical “office holders” in the Church appear to me to be at times, solely concerned with the reputation of the organization and, in the worst sense, conservative and clerical. And when they unctiously and irritatingly display their noble intentions and their selflessness, it becomes even more annoying because I only too rarely hear them publicly and audibly confess their errors and mistaken judgments, but instead ask that we today believe in their infallibility and forget what major blunders and transgressions they committed the day before. How often are they morally outraged about a certain incident-their righteous anger about some social arrangement or other, the reason for which I see less clearly. They do a great deal of moralizing, yet far less is heard of the ecstatic joy, bursting hearts and minds, prompted by the message of Your grace in which You bestow Your very self. And indeed, would that greater perspective were included in their trite homilies, would that they made so much as a passing reference in praise of Your magnificent grace, the abundance of life, which You impart to us.
It is certainly not my intention to speak of the official conduct within Your Church, which often appears to me so limited in horizons, as if the Church was not a universal Church but rather a European one, peddling its wares to the rest of humanity. Three hundred years ago we burned witches, and a sorry thing it would have been had one ever doubted that witches did exist. Today this wholesale madness no longer exists, yet do we know for certain that other forms of madness are not still afoot among those who naively conform in the Church? Among those partisan supporters of the old madness may be included saintly, learned, and pious folk of good intention who failed to see how their actions contradicted the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Is the Church of today immune to the atrocities which occurred in former times? How do I come to know this? How then is one to find proof of such immunity?
God, have mercy upon us poor, short·sighted, and foolish sinners, we who form the body of Your Church. Have mercy upon those who call themselves Your representatives (in all honesty, I find that word inadequate because God simply cannot be represented). Have mercy upon us. I do not wish to belong in the company of those who find fault with the officials of the Church and yet bear more responsibility than they for the fact that Your Church appears to lack credibility. I desire even less to belong in the company of those who naively consider whether or not they are still willing to remain in the Church.
I shall continue to labor on behalf of the far-sighted among us who are able to glimpse the miracles of Your divine Grace occurring within the Church itself. I must confess that I see these miracles more plainly among the young people in the Church (Andrea, for instance, who worked for an entire year without pay as a laundress in a home for abandoned youths during the course of her studies) than among the adults whose comfortable, middle-class existence goes its inevitable way. But perhaps my weary eyes do not allow me to view “authority” and '“power” without becoming unduly emotional.
One may, in all good conscience, sing praises to the sanctity of the Church. It professes for all times Your divine grace and Your unspeakable grandeur above and beyond anything which can be imagined. Therefore it shall endure until the end of time, even though I await the Kingdom of God, which will also bring an end to the Church. But even a somewhat bitter lament and a plea for divine mercy toward the Church still praise this Church and Your mercy.1
II.
In his Theological Investigations, Rahner speaks fairly often (in the language of Vatican II) of the sinful church, yet again raising his voice in lament and protest intermingled with praise and thanksgiving. One passage, in particular, stands out to me:
There is, however, a further hindrance and danger to faith besides the deep bitterness of human existence and the great variety of philosophies of life in the world. I am referring to the assembly of believers itself—the Church. She is indeed the holy Church, even in the view of any unprejudiced student of history. She is the sign which, lifted up above all nations, bears her own testimony to her divine origin and life by her inexhaustible fruitfulness for all holiness. But she is also the sinful Church of sinners, the sinful Church, because we her members are sinners. And this sinfulness of the Church does not merely mean the sum total of the, as it were, private faults and failures of her members, including even those who bear her highest and most sacred offices. The sinfulness and inadequacy of the members of the Church have their effects also in the actions and conduct which, in so far as they take place within the sphere of human experience, must be designated as the actions and conduct of the Church herself.
Sinful human nature, insufficiency, finiteness, shortsightedness, a falling short of the demands of the times, lack of understanding for the needs of the times, for her duties and for the trends of the future—all these most human characteristics also belong both to the office-bearers and to all the members of the Church and they also take effect by God’s permissive will in what the Church is and does. It would be silly self-deceit and clerical pride, group-egoism and cult of personality as found in totalitarian systems—which does not become the Church as the congregation of Jesus, the meek and humble of heart—if it were to deny all this, or tried to hush it up or to minimize it, or made out that this burden was merely the burden of the Church of previous ages which has now been taken from her. No, the Church is the Church of poor sinners; she is the Church which does not have the courage to regard the future as belonging to God in the same way as she has experienced the past as belonging to God.
She is often in the position of one who glorifies her past and looks askance at the present, in so far as she has not created it herself, finding it all too easy to condemn it. She is often the one who, in questions of science, does not only proceed slowly and carefully—intent on preserving the purity of the Faith—but also often waits too long and… has sometimes been too quick to say “no” when she could have pronounced a “yes” earlier than she did—with, of course, the necessary nuances and distinctions. She has quite often in the past sided more with the powerful and made herself too little the advocate of the poor. Often she has not proclaimed her criticisms of the powerful of this world loudly enough, so that it looked as if she were trying to procure an alibi for herself without really coming into conflict with the great ones of this world.
She often places more value on the bureaucratic apparatus of the Church than in the enthusiasm of her Spirit; she often loves the calm more than the storm, the old (which has proved itself) more than the new (which is bold and daring). Often in the past, she has in her office bearers wronged saints, thinkers, those who were painfully looking for an answer, and theologians—all of whom wanted merely to give her their selfless service. Often before, she has warded off public opinion in the Church, although according to Pius XII such public opinion is essential to the well-being of the Church. Not infrequently she has mistaken the barren mediocrity of an average theology and philosophy for the clarity of a good scholastic tradition. She has often shown herself more in the role of an anathematizing judge… than in the form of a loving mother who meets her child halfway…
All this is true. All this represents a temptation to faith, a burden which may impose itself on the individual and almost stifle him. But first of all, are we ourselves not part of this burden which weighs on us and threatens our faith? Are we not ourselves sinners too? Do we not also belong to the tired grey company of those in the Church who obscure the light of the Gospel by their mediocrity, their cowardice and their egoism? Do we really have the right to cast the first stone at the sinful woman who stands accused before the Lord and is called the Church—or are we not ourselves accused in her and with her, and delivered up to Mercy for good or ill?2
III.
Rahner’s words point me to the broken Christ, the same one to which Miguel Romo’s 2006 sculpture (Aguascalientes, Mexico) bears witness:
The plaque beneath the statue begins (in Spanish, of course): “Leave me broken. I want to be seen as broken…”
Selah.
Rahner, Prayers for a Lifetime, pp. 114-117.
Rahner, “Thoughts on the Possibility of Belief Today,” Theological Investigations 16 (1962), pp. 15-17.
Thank you for this. I will be reading it again and again.
Thanks. This could be material for writing a powerful litany of confession.