The New Herder

Extract

The publication now in progress of the second edition of this standard work of reference, thoroughly revised and refashioned, is an event not only for German-speaking Catholicism but for the entire Catholic world. In its new form the Lexikon can fairly be described as the flowering of a long process of growth within the Church beginning perhaps under Pius IX, in which she began fully to accept the challenge of the modern world. If there have been hesitations in this growth, and sometimes even the apparent rejection of the possibility of growth at all, as in the Modernist crisis, these have been precisely crises of growth, brought about by the unbalanced and uncritical pursuit of novelty on the one side, and an often unfounded suspicion of it on the other. We have not seen the last of these crises; how could we, if, as we must firmly believe, the Church will continue to grow under divine Providence and fed by the Spirit of Christ, until the Coming of the Truth of Christ at the end of time?

Meanwhile we can be grateful for this remarkable manifestation of Catholic maturity. It need hardly be said that the Lexikon maintains the highest standards of German scholarship, wissenschaftlich in the best sense. As far as publications go, Mgr Höfer of Rome is best known for his studies in nineteenth-century German Catholicism and as an editor of Scheeben; Fr Karl Rahner, S.J., is Professor at Innsbruck, editor of the current Denzinger, and undoubtedly the most influential theologian writing in German today.