Father Melvin Michalski, Co-Editor of Encounters with Karl Rahner, will offer some personal recollections of Rahner.

At the June 11, 2011 Karl Rahner Society breakfast, members discussed the structure of future breakfasts, recalled the character of Rahner, and heard about the latest volumes in Rahner's Sämtliche Werke.

Melvin Michalski, who had studied in Munich under Karl Rahner in the 1960s, shared his personal reflections about his teacher with society members at the breakfast, which took place at the Fairmont San Jose Hotel.  Michalski is Professor at Sacred Heart School of Theology in Wisconsin.

Michalski had spent a sabbatical in 2001 in Germany, where he tape-recorded interviews with more than two dozen individuals who had known Rahner, including colleagues, confreres, and family members.  The sabbatical resulted in a book entitled Encounters with Karl Rahner (Marquette University Press, 2009), co-edited with Andreas Batlogg, SJ.

The breakfast meeting was led by Heidi Ann Russell (Loyola University of Chicago), who coordinates the Karl Rahner Society Steering Committee.  She introduced Andreas Batlogg, SJ, Research Director at the Karl Rahner Archiv in Munich, who described the current status of Rahner's Sämtliche Werke.   Batlogg  also had made a presentationat the Rahner Consultation on June 10.

For more details about the breakfast, see the meeting agenda.  The breakfast took place within the annual conference of the Catholic Theological Society of America, June 9-12, 2011.

Status of the Sämtliche Werke

Andreas Batlogg outlined the history of Rahner's Sämtliche Werke, which was announced as a 32-volume series in 1989.  The first volume appeared in 1995 (no. 19: Selbstvollzug der Kirche. Ekklesiologische Grundlegung praktischer Theologie).  Since then, 27 volumes have appeared, including three double volumes (no. 6: De paenitentia I & II, and no. 17: Enzyklopädische Theologie I & II, and no. 24 Das Konzil in der Ortskirche).  Since last year, three new volumes have appeared:

The remaining volumes are 1, 5, 7, 21, 22/1, and 32.  A one-page description of the Rahner's Sämtliche Werke is available for download.