Overview

"Pope John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council so that the Church's doctrine might be ""more widely known, more deeply understood, and more penetrating in its effects."" However, since the close of the Council in 1965, the results are wanting. Rather than announcing the gospel boldly in the present age, the Church has been seemingly reduced to silence. How did she lose her voice? How did the structures of proclamation, intended to hand on the Catholic faith, devolve and even contribute to vaporizing a Catholic culture? Because He Has Spoken to Us traces such developments from fixed points drawn from the fluid theology of Karl Rahner to their postmodern condition--successive steps that usher in the crisis by subduing, dismissing, and silencing the tradition. This postconciliar anthropocentric structure can now be better understood, critiqued, and displaced by a Ratzingerian approach. Rather than embracing a ""given"" demanded by contemporary context, Ratzinger proposes the revelation of the Logos in Jesus Christ as the ""given,"" the true object of Christian faith. His alternate proposal requires the courage to face the full scope of the Christian structure, accessed through the Church's tradition, and a willingness to proclaim the gospel personally and with humble confidence."

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9781666735833

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This significant landmark study is essential reading for all in catechetical leadership. Explaining how the 'anthropological turn' in catechetics progressed after the Second Vatican Council in the Rahnerian configurations of Moran, Boeve, Pollefeyt, and others, as the proclamation of the faith was correlated against the shifting self-understandings of a postmodern humanism, Bursa convincingly unfolds Ratzinger's response to this, calling catechetics to recover its confidence in the logos, the person of Jesus Christ. --Petroc Willey, Franciscan University of Steubenville This marvelous book begins with a lucid presentation of the key elements of Karl Rahner's dense theology. Bursa then persuasively links Rahner's thought to the highly influential catechetical strategies of Gabriel Moran and Thomas Groome, and also to the postmodern catechetical strategies advocated by Didier Pollefeyt under the influence of Lieven Boeve. Bursa's presentation of Ratzinger's Christological or logos-centric personalism as the best alternative to these dreadful theological and catechetical approaches is absolutely masterful. --Matthew Levering, Mundelein Seminary This book is a comprehensive rendering of the fundamental theology of Joseph Ratzinger that shapes a much-needed assessment of the foundations of evangelization and catechesis. Bursa's searching analysis exposes the Gnostic and Pelagian idealism that plagues much postconciliar catechesis. But more than a rote doctrinal response to our malaise, Bursa's Ratzingarian articulation of a rich catechetics of the incarnate logos will benefit anyone interested in how good theology is made flesh. A must-read for anyone in the field of evangelization and catechetics. --Conor Sweeney, Christendom College

Author Information

Brad Bursa has been a catechetical leader in diocesan, parish, and school settings since 2008.

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