The Canadian television station
Salt and Light has decided to use the account of a third epoch in the history of the Church developed by the famous theologian Karl Rahner, S.J. (1904-1984) as a way of describing the current pontificate. As Fr. Thomas Rosica, C.S.B., director of
Salt and Light and top English-language officer of the Holy See Press Office,
puts it in
an interview with America:
I really believe, with the coming of Pope Francis, that this is that third epoch that Karl Rahner talked about in “The Three Great Epochs of the Church.” In our recent Salt and Light documentary on Pope Francis, we start off the whole story with Rahner’s now-epic essay in which he speaks about the three great epochs of church history. (h/t: DJ)
Now, the essay to which Fr. Rosica refers is entitled “
Towards a Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II,” and in it Rahner argues that a new epoch of the Church began with Vatican II. The implication of Fr. Rosica's remark is therefore that up till the the current pontificate, the the Church had been held back from really entering the epoch inaugurated by the Council. And at least this much is true: the rejection of Rahner's idea can be seen as one of the main themes of Pope Benedict XVI's magisterium. Already long before the beginning of his pontificate Joseph Ratzinger had parted ways with his friend Rahner on this question, which is essentially about the meaning of the catholicity of the Church.
Rahner's idea of three epochs of the Church has antecedents (for example in Joachim of Fiore), but Rahner's version is unique. He sees the first age as having been the very short period of Jewish Christianity before the decision of the Apostle's not to impose circumcision on the gentiles. Rahner argues that the decision not to impose the Jewish law on gentile Christians brings about a radically different form of Christianity, a form appropriate to Graeco-Roman culture. This form, the second epoch of the Church, brought about far reaching changes in moral doctrine, liturgy, etc.
He then argues that with Vatican II, a new age is begins, and that the changes that will have to be worked out for this third age will perhaps be every bit as great as those from the first to the second. In this third age, the Church becomes truly a world Church. He thinks this change began as a kind of seed in Vatican II as an event bringing together bishops from all cultures, in its opening to vernacular liturgy (thus beginning to give up the attempt to impose Roman culture on non-European peoples), in its affirmation of positive elements in world religions etc. But he argues that the process has only just begun. He asks how Christianity will change in other parts of the world if it is not seen as tied to Graeco-Roman-Jewish notions of law, morality, ceremony etc. Will African tribesmen have to accept monagamy, or will their form of Christianity include polygamy? "Must the Eucharist even in Alaska be celebrated with grape wine?" He leaves these questions open, but his idea is that one will have to perform a "reduction or return to the final and fundamental substance" of Christianity in order for it to be then adapted to each culture.
This idea that Christianity can be "reduced" to a "fundamental substance" that is separable from particular cultures is one that Pope Benedict XVI never tired of refuting. In the Regensburg Address he says:
