Heidi Russell (Loyola University, Chicago) was elected Coordinator of the Karl Rahner Society Steering Committee at the annual KRS breakfast meeting on June 12, 2010.  She replaces Rev. James Voiss, SJ (St. Louis University), who has served as Coordinator since 2007.

The committee also elected Rev. Melvin Michalski (Sacred Heart School of Theology) to the Steering Committee.  Father Michalski and Andreas Batlogg recently published Encounters with Karl Rahner (Marquette, 2009).

At the meeting, facilitated by Ann Riggs (Rivier College), the society amended its Constitution and By-Laws to create a new category of membership listed as "Friend" of the society.  This category will be for non-voting members such as those enrolled in Masters degree programs and pastoral ministry.  Details can be found in the breakfast meeting agenda.

The meeting of the KRS took place within the annual conference of the Catholic Theological Society of America, June 10-13, 2010 in Cleveland.

Also at the breakfast meeting, Mark F. Fischer (St. John's Seminary, Camarillo) sketched the so-called "New Christology" in Rahner's Foundations of Christian Faith.  Rahner had first developed this Christology in 1970, said Fischer, and its presence in the Foundations is explained in the "Editorial Report" which prefaces volume 26 of the Sämtliche Werke.  That volume is dedicated to Rahner's Grundkurs des Glaubens.  That book was first published in 1976 and edited by Nikolaus Schwerdtfeger and Albert Raffelt in the Sämtliche Werke edition of 1999.

Mark F. Fischer reported on the "Editionsbericht" or Editorial Report to vol. 26 of Karl Rahner's Sämtliche Werke.

The Schwerdtfeger-Raffelt "Editorial Report" suggested that the Grundkurs, which in 1978 was translated into English as Foundations of Christian Faith, marked a change in Rahner's Christology.  It shows that he had first developed the sections on Christology during lectures given in Munich (1964-66) and in Münster (1968-69). 

Shortly before Foundations was published, however, Rahner decided not to use the Christology texts from the earlier lectures.  In their place, he inserted the Christology that he had elaborated in cooperation with Wilhelm Thüsing in 1970-71.  The Rahner-Thüsing collaboration was published in German in 1972 as Christologie - systematisch und exegetisch.

The 1972 Christology was apparently published in English in 1980 as A New Christology.  Rahner's portion of A New Christology, however, was not a translation of the text from 1972, but of three shorter, unidentified texts by Rahner.  Fischer showed that Rahner's portion of the 1972 Christology never appeared in English under the title "Christology - Systematic and Exegetical," but only as a series of Lehrsätze or "propositions" buried within Chapter Six of the Foundations.