In his 1979 essay, “Towards a Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II,” Karl Rahner contends that the council must be understood as the “first official self-actualization” of the church as “world church,” while acknowledging that it must become inculturated throughout the world to realize this identity in the fullest sense. His thesis includes an interpretation of the changing epochs of Christian history. This session will explore the continuing significance of Rahner’s interpretation for understanding Vatican II and its reception; Vatican II’s rethinking of the church-world relationship; the nature of epochal shifts and disruptions in human history and their implication for the social location, self-understanding, and mission of Christianity; the growing importance of decolonization for the full inculturation of the church in the contemporary context.
In the conversation on decolonization, the Roman Catholic Church occupies a unique space, both because of its historical participation in the processes of colonization, but even more so because it is a religious home to both the colonized and the colonizer. My contention in this paper is that the theologies that come out of Vatican II have resources for a “decolonial turn” with a refocues attention on a pneumatological ecclesiology, which is characterized by a theology attentive to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Church, both as the Body of Christ and in each individual soul. I will use Karl Rahner and Yves Congar in conversation with decolonial thought to explain how pneumatological ecclesiology lends itself to the decolonial turn through the acknowledgement of multiple experiences.
Karl Rahner’s 1979 proposal about the entrance of the contemporary Roman Catholic Church into the epoch of the World Church he ends with a recognition that this is an initial insight that is “but dimly envisaged” (727). Like all proposals, it is limited by the author’s location and habits of thought. So it stands open to development. Engaging with Rahner’s broader thought, alongside analysis of tradition from Anne M. Carpenter and Willie Jennings, along with contemporary post-colonial ecclesiologies including Cyril Orji, this paper will argue that Rahner’s proposal must be reworked in light of the non-Roman history of the Church and contemporary developments, including Pope Francis’ call to synodality. Doing so will lead to a new ecclesiology, or at least the thematization of one that is emerging, that will understand Roman Catholic Christians alongside other ancient Christianities and the breadth of Catholic Christianities in the World (Catholic) Church.
Integrating formulations of Karl Rahner and Pope Francis, this presentation argues for a polyhedral model of the global post-conciliar Church to enter a new synodal epoch by dismantling the ongoing legacy of colonization. Decolonial thinkers Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh describe the lingering effects of colonization as a set of dominating relationships known as the colonial matrix of power (CMP). Decolonial action dismantles the CMP through pluriversality, a mutual interdependence on local cultures rather than the “universality” of European colonization. To work to dismantle the CMP, Rahner prioritizes a sacramental model of the Church incarnated within local cultures. Likewise, Francis’s ecclesiology focuses on a polyhedral model of reality, undoing structures of domination disrupting right relationship between human and non-human creation, and incarnating the praxis of solidarity formed in relationship via the culture of encounter. This model would allow a synodal Church to meet the pastoral needs of a global community.