Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2013
This article examines the life and work of Bernard Häring, C.SS.R., especially his valuable contributions to the Second Vatican Council and his dedication to the council's vision of renewal. It begins with an overview of Häring's preconciliar religious and theological formation in his family, seminary and university, during World War II, and during his teaching in Rome. The next section deals with Häring's work at the council, especially his efforts on the original Theological Commission to resist the rigidity of the first drafts, and his contributions to Lumen Gentium (“The Constitution on the Church”), Unitatis Redintegratio (“The Decree on Ecumenism”), Dignitatis Humana (“The Declaration on Religious Freedom”), Gaudium et Spes (“The Constitution on the Church and the Modern World”), and Optatam Totius (“Decree on Priestly Formation”). The final section considers Häring's mission to spread the council's message of renewal to the world, his conflicts with the forces attempting to repress the progressive agenda, and his courageous visioning of what a renewed church might look like in the future.
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For a valuable commentary on how Veritatis Splendor reinterprets Gaudium et Spes and shifts morality back to law, magisterial teaching and a moral theology of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Elsbernd, Mary, “The Reinterpretation of Gaudium et Spes in Veritatis Splendor,” Horizons 29/2 (2002): 225–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This approach in effect attempts to undo the efforts of Häring to place Scripture, personalism, conscience, and the community as foundational for moral theology.
60 Ibid., 13.
61 Häring, , My Hope for the Church, ix.Google Scholar See n. 51 above.
62 Ibid., 93. See Pottmeyer, Hermann J., “Una nuova fase della ricezione del Vaticano II. Vent'anni di ermeneutica del concilio,” in Alberigo, Giuseppe e Jossua, Jean-Pierre, eds. Vaticano II e la Chiesa (Brescia: Paideia Editrice, 1985), 41–60.Google Scholar
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69 For a view that supports such a restoration, see Johnson, Paul, Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Restoration (New York: St Martin's Press, 1981).Google Scholar