This is the first work published since the war by the author of The Spirit of Catholicism. It is, in effect, a discussion of the possibility of reunion between Catholics and Protestants, but it begins unusually but sensibly--in a historical examination of how the breach came about in the first place. He finds a large part of the cause in the open scandals afflicting the Church, dimming the mark of Holiness. The unity of Christendom was lost through the action of men who thought Holiness had been lost. There follows an examination of the major Reformation doctrines--as they were in Luther and as with the passage of time they became in his successors--to show just what of Catholicism is in them and how easily they might he brought to absorb more. Karl Adam's conclusion is not optimistic, but on reflection not hopeless either.
Karl Borromäus Adam was a German Catholic theologian of the early 20th century.
Adam was born in Bavaria in 1876. He attended the Philosophical and Theological Seminary at Regensburg and was ordained in 1900. Adam spent the next two years doing parish work. Adam received his doctorate at the University of Munich in 1904.
In 1915, he became a professor of theology in Munich. Two years later, he accepted a chair in moral theology at Strasbourg and in 1919 he went to teach dogmatic theology at the University of Tübingen. He retired from that post in 1949.
Adam is best known for his 1924 work, The Spirit of Catholicism. It has been widely translated, and is still in print today. In The Spirit Of Catholicism, Adam communicates with the laity about the Catholic faith and the Church's role as the keeper of the faith.