{"id":373,"date":"2009-03-30T08:05:31","date_gmt":"2009-03-30T08:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/three-saints-today-climacus-ra.html"},"modified":"2009-03-30T08:05:31","modified_gmt":"2009-03-30T08:05:31","slug":"three-saints-today-climacus-ra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/three-saints-today-climacus-ra.html","title":{"rendered":"Three saints of the day: Climacus, Rahner, Bowman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"Ladder<\/span>Or would-be saints, perhaps “will-be” saints, in the case of Karl Rahner, who died 25 years ago today, and Sr. Thea Bowman, the African-American Franciscan, who helped to found the Institute of Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans. At the National Catholic Reporter, Fr. Richard McBrien weaves together the stories of the three<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

John Climacus (ca. 570-ca. 649) had been married early in life but became a monk after his wife’s death. After living in community for a while, he took up life as a hermit. His only contact with others would occur at Mass with other hermits on weekends. It was while John was living in solitude that he wrote the work that gave him his name, Climacus, which in Latin means “ladder.” The work was titled The Ladder to Paradise<\/em>. [Icon of the Ladder of Divine Ascent<\/em> in St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai desert at right.] It was a volume on monastic spirituality, cataloguing the virtues and vices of monastic life, of both the communal and eremetical type. He held up apatheia (Greek, “passive disinterestedness”) as the ideal virtue, because it represented a complete mastery over one’s feelings and emotions. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

First, Rahner, the great German theologian who was a colleague of Ratzinger’s, though they grew increasingly estranged in the post-Vatican II period, to the point that Ratzinger declared they lived “on different planets.” Many would say Rahner was a bit too Earth-bound in his theology, despite his notoriously difficult style. At dotCommonweal<\/a>, Fr. Joseph Komonchak has a fine appreciation of Rahner that deflates that view a good bit:<\/p>\n

\n

I don’t know of any theologian who more than Rahner stressed the transcendence of the divine Mystery to all our feeble efforts to understand it. He embodied the Augustinian adage: “Si comprehendis, non est Deus”<\/em> (If you can grasp it, it’s not God.) The incomprehensibility of God, even after his self-revelation in Jesus Christ-Mystery remaining Mystery, not because of a lack of intelligibility, but because of an excess of intelligibility, nowhere greater than in the mystery we will be celebrating next week, when the mystery that is excess of meaning encounters and overcomes the utter lack of meaning that is sin.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Fr. Komonchak, who knows the virtue of a good anecdote as much as any great writer, also concludes with this:<\/p>\n

\n

A story: Johannes Quasten, great patrologist and professor at Catholic University, used to visit Mrs. Rahner, mother of Hugo and Karl, when he’d return to Germany for a visit in the summer. (She lived to be over 100, I have heard.) On one occasion when she was well on in years, Fr. Quasten commented on something Karl had said about some Church-controversy in Germany. Mrs. Rahner replied: “Oh, Fr. Quasten, don’t pay any attention to Karl. He always exaggerates!” Nice to know that Karl Rahner had a mother, too.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\"Thea<\/span>As for Thea Bowman (pictured at left), McBrien concludes:<\/p>\n

\n

In 1984, the same year that Fr. Rahner died, Sr. Thea learned that she had breast cancer. Nevertheless she continued her speaking and her travels, and in the process contributed to the ongoing transformation of the Catholic church in the United States.<\/p>\n

Toward the end of her life, she had become bald from her chemotherapy treatments and was confined to a wheelchair. Her prayer in her remaining years was: “Lord, let me live until I die,” that is, “to live, love, and serve fully until death comes.”<\/p>\n

“I don’t make sense of suffering,” she once said, “I try to make sense of life.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Only John Climacus is an “official” saint, but canonization is really only a final recognition of widely acknowledged spiritual reality. As McBrien says, “Saints are primarily exemplars, not intercessors. These three fit that profile very well.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or would-be saints, perhaps “will-be” saints, in the case of Karl Rahner, who died 25 years ago today, and Sr. Thea Bowman, the African-American Franciscan, who helped to found the Institute of Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans. At the National Catholic Reporter, Fr. Richard McBrien weaves together the stories of the three:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nThree saints of the day: Climacus, Rahner, Bowman - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/three-saints-today-climacus-ra.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Three saints of the day: Climacus, Rahner, Bowman - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Or would-be saints, perhaps “will-be” saints, in the case of Karl Rahner, who died 25 years ago today, and Sr. Thea Bowman, the African-American Franciscan, who helped to found the Institute of Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans. At the National Catholic Reporter, Fr. Richard McBrien weaves together the stories of the three:…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/three-saints-today-climacus-ra.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-03-30T08:05:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/imgs\/Ladder%20of%20Divine%20Ascent.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Gibson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Three saints of the day: Climacus, Rahner, Bowman - Pontifications","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/three-saints-today-climacus-ra.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Three saints of the day: Climacus, Rahner, Bowman - Pontifications","og_description":"Or would-be saints, perhaps “will-be” saints, in the case of Karl Rahner, who died 25 years ago today, and Sr. Thea Bowman, the African-American Franciscan, who helped to found the Institute of Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans. At the National Catholic Reporter, Fr. Richard McBrien weaves together the stories of the three:…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/three-saints-today-climacus-ra.html","og_site_name":"Pontifications","article_published_time":"2009-03-30T08:05:31+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/imgs\/Ladder%20of%20Divine%20Ascent.jpg"}],"author":"David Gibson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/three-saints-today-climacus-ra.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/three-saints-today-climacus-ra.html","name":"Three saints of the day: Climacus, Rahner, Bowman - Pontifications","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/three-saints-today-climacus-ra.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/three-saints-today-climacus-ra.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/imgs\/Ladder%20of%20Divine%20Ascent.jpg","datePublished":"2009-03-30T08:05:31+00:00","dateModified":"2009-03-30T08:05:31+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/three-saints-today-climacus-ra.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/three-saints-today-climacus-ra.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/three-saints-today-climacus-ra.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/imgs\/Ladder%20of%20Divine%20Ascent.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/imgs\/Ladder%20of%20Divine%20Ascent.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/three-saints-today-climacus-ra.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Three saints of the day: Climacus, Rahner, Bowman"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/","name":"Pontifications","description":"Catholic Faith and Culture","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71","name":"David Gibson","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","caption":"David Gibson"},"description":"DAVID GIBSON is an award-winning religion journalist, author, filmmaker, and a convert to Catholicism. He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}