The Church and the Sacraments

Quaestiones Disputatae #9

by Karl Rahner

From "About the Book" before the Preface: The connection between the Church and the sacraments is not very clear in the minds of the faithful or even among theologians. The Church dispenses the sacraments, it is said, which are the means of grace for the salvation of the individual. But the relationship between Church and sacraments is often treated as if God might have entrusted their administration to some other institution.

Karl Rahner sets the question in a wholly new framework by seeing the Church as the enduring presence of Christ in the world and thus as truly the fundamental sacrament, the source of all the sacraments. He emphasizes their importance as signs; they are causes of grace precisely because they are signs and symbols of God’s presence. Just as the sacraments are fundamentally expressive of the nature of the Church, so the Church experiencing her own nature by fulfilling it, recognizes that certain acts flowing from this nature are sacraments.

This approach enables the author to show the difference between the opus operatum and the opus operantis not to be radical as mediocre theology often suggests. He is also able to circumvent the historical difficulty of proving the particular institution by Christ of certain sacraments such as matrimony, holy orders, extreme unction, and confirmation. The dispute between Catholics and Protestants over the number of sacraments actually instituted by Christ in Holy Scripture thus becomes a relatively subordinate problem. The book at once provides a new schema for ecumenical discussion, and is bound to provoke much rethinking of traditional Catholic and Protestant statements concerning the sacraments, and will contribute to the deepening of the sacramental lives of many.

Genres: Theology, Nonfiction, Religion

118 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Karl Rahner, SJ (March 5, 1904 — March 30, 1984) was a German Jesuit and theologian who, alongside Bernard Lonergan and Hans Urs von Balthasar, is considered one of the most influential Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century.

He was born in Freiburg, Germany, and died in Innsbruck, Austria.

Before the Second Vatican Council, Rahner had worked alongside Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac and Marie-Dominique Chenu, theologians associated with an emerging school of thought called the Nouvelle Théologie, elements of which had been criticized in the encyclical Humani Generis of Pope Pius XII.