Published on YouTube with the kind permission of the Archives of the Central European Province of the Jesuits (http://provinzarchiv.jesuiten.org) and the Pastoral Office of the Archdiocese of Vienna. The lecture can be read in STh 14, pp. 11-22; SW 29, pp. 3-11. Photography: © Estate Administration Alfred Kutschera A commentary on the lecture by Archbishop Dr. Udo Markus Bentz For me, this short article is a real pearl among the Rahner texts, a key ecclesiological text, and it has accompanied me since before my doctorate on Rahner. For Karl Rahner, as I pointed out in my dissertation in 2007, the church in its concrete historical appearance was "the existential aspect of his life and his theology through the ages." (Jetzt ist noch Kirche, 2008, 15). Almost half a century after it was written, the text is still highly topical. The 6th church membership survey of the Protestant Church (How do you feel about the church?, 2023) seems to empirically substantiate what Rahner expressed so succinctly in his essay in 1979. Anyone who is still decidedly religious today is very likely to do so within the context of the church, e.g. in a congregation. Most of the respondents showed that a non-church, "free-floating", individualized, "alternative" religiosity and belief in Christ is less sustainable in the long term and is not "passed on" to the next generation. Religiosity largely requires an external and historically concrete form of "institutionalization" so that religious structures - both individual and collective - can be permanently established and consolidated and not simply evaporate later. This is because religious forms can spread, even form a "megatrend", but they can also decline and almost completely disappear. Karl Rahner was in many ways a far-sighted and "pious" and in that sense also "ecclesiastical" theologian. This key text, written just a few years before his death, proves this very impressively. In my view, this text can be seen as a condensation of his systematic theology. Rahner initially approaches the topic from the experience of the "infinite mystery". This mystery reveals itself in history. I can address this mystery. I can pray to it and dance before it and fall on my knees, as Heidegger once said in contrast to the "God of philosophers". The infinite mystery that we call God does not need (like this merely "imagined" God) to distance itself infinitely from me. This infinite mystery reveals itself in its truly unsurpassable self-promise to man (and to the world) - and in a very concrete ecclesiastical way: "My Christianity also and essentially has a historical dimension," says Rahner. A theologian like him must think historically. He does not do this in merely abstract ideas and idealized forms. This is precisely what I think sets Rahner apart when he says, on the one hand: "It is forbidden for Christians (the only prohibition that must be taken seriously) to be satisfied with less than the infinite fullness of God, to settle down happily in the finite or to suffocate in its narrowness, to believe with wicked modesty that God cannot seriously take this creature, finite by a thousand conditions, seriously." But on the other hand, this orientation of the historically conditioned "church Christian" towards transcendence, towards the "infinite mystery", does not simply ignore the factuality of existence. This of course includes having the courage to live in this church with the "bourgeoisie and night watchmen" and not to hastily and arrogantly flee into one's own (idealized) castles in the air. In the end, Rahner is certain: "The house of the church is much broader and by no means just consists of rooms that are narrow and stuffy." Rahner - a man of the church, as Karl Lehmann once laconically stated. Despite everything, that is how it is for him, he lives with great affection and love for the church. How else could one succeed in "thinking and living the incomprehensible in a very comprehensible way" than in a very concrete history that is always threatened by betraying and abusing its ideals. This in no way downplays the grave guilt of sexualized violence and the failure to deal with it in the church. In this context, he speaks very early on of the "sinful church". Rahner himself is a good example of how this "courage for church Christianity" ultimately also includes and goes through massive criticism of the blatant and "historically conditioned" grievances. For Rahner personally, this was the case, in his authentic "biographical dogmatics". And in this position I can follow him well.