Karl Rahner Consultation 2022: “Being Catholic Interreligiously”

This year’s Karl Rahner Consultation will feature two presentations related to the theme of “Being Catholic Interreligiously.”  They will take place on June 11, 2022, within the 76th Annual Convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America at the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel.

Maeve Louise Heaney (Australian Catholic University) will speak about “Musicking Interreligiously through the Lens of Friendship.”  She is a Dublin native and a member of the Verbum Dei Community who has published five CDs of her own music.  Her paper will make a case for music-making as a theological exercise.  Music gives people access, she will argue, to meanings “beyond the duality of verbal communication by opening spaces that generate shared and embodied meaning.”  Her presentation will include a brief musical example.

The Rahner Consultation will be moderated by Michael Rubbelke (St. John’s University/College of St. Benedict).

Peter Joseph Fritz (College of the Holy Cross) will address the topic, “Thinking Catholic Translatably: Revising Rahner on the World Church.”  His paper will update Rahner’s thinking on the world church in light of more recent developments in the study of global Christianity.  The Gambian-American scholar, Lamin Sanneh, has introduced the concept of “translatability” to explain the history of Christianity. Indian-American Lalsangkima Pachuau argues that translatability is a feature of Christian life that has never been fully implemented.  Sanneh and Pachuau enable Fritz to point out insufficiencies in Rahner’s concept of the world church, while also carrying forward Rahner’s insight into the Christological grounding of Christianity’s global expansion.

Anthony Godzieba (Emeritus, Villanova University) will respond to both presentations.