Karl Adam: Catholicism in German Culture.

I have a principle, imperfectly observed, of not reviewing the books of my own colleagues but Krieg's book shall be a rare exception. The reasons are simple: Adam's essays have appeared in the pages of this journal in the past and, I suspect, many readers of a certain age have read such works as The Spirit q[Catholicism and were deeply influenced by them as were, to cite two widely different people, Flannery O'Connor and Pope Paul VI. Karl Adam (1876-1966) was a Tubingen theologian whose writings gained wide influence in the Catholic world, especially between the two world wars. Krieg makes it quite clear why he deserved such popularity. Adam, steeped in the biblical and patristic world, provided a vision of both the church and of Jesus Christ free of the scholastic aridities of a Catholic theological world traumatized by the antimodernist movement. It is worthwhile noting that every major book of Adam was removed from the bookshelves until he made corrections demanded by the Holy Office which studied texts that had to be translated into Latin for the benefit of the curial censors!

Despite such interference, the books were very influential. I would say of myself that the two most important works on the church I read as a very young man were The Spirit of Catholicism (the battered Image edition is still in my possession) and Henri de Lubac's The Splendor of the Church. Similarly, Adam's Christology, culminating in The Christ of Faith, brought to the fore serious biblical scholarship, engagement with Protestant theologians, and a deep faith in the humanity of Christ which steered an orthodox path between the suffocations of neoscholasticism and the reductionism of liberal Protestant "Quest" literature.

As Krieg points out, however, the very strength of Adam's theology was also a blinding weakness. Deeply indebted to the regnant Lebensphilosophie of his native land, Adam stressed the organic and communitarian nature of the believing community as a vision of the church that was normally presented as a monarchical hierarchy seen as a sodetas perfecta. From that romantic impulse, however, Adam also accepted the same vision for his native Germany.

Lebensphilosophie first inspired harmless exercises in hiking, singing, and folk music among the Weimar young in the 1920s but, by a malign alchemy, later became an ideology of the Volk in the hands of the Hillerites. Adam was harassed by the Brownshirts in the 1930s and defended the basic rights of the Jews, but he also attempted to mediate between the church and National Socialism, accepted social restrictions for the Jews, and argued (against the German hierarchy) that seminarinns and priests should serve in the army of the Third Reich. Adam never joined the Nazi patty but he was at worst a passive supporter of the regime; at best, a silent protestor. Tellingly, Krieg's book jumps from 1939 to 1946 without much of a transition.

The postwar years saw Adam as an active theologian involved in his theological work and as a pioneer ecumenist. He died with the Second Vatican Council finished but his influence on it was that of a precursor since age and infirmity precluded his active participation. He is not much read today except by those interested in the deep background of the sea shift in Catholic thought. Krieg's well-written book explains why Adam was important and, in the process, gives us a panoramic view of the halting developments of twentieth-century Catholic theological thinking. We should be thankful lot that. We also await the completion of Krieg's current project which is a study of another of the seniores not much read today:Romano Guardini.

Alphonsus of Liguori (1696-1787), the founder of the Redemptorists, a crucial figore in the development of moral theology, and indefatigable missioner, was declared a doctor of the church in 1831. In many ways, his life reflects a kind of piety and ascelicism that is repugnant to the modern mind. Plagued by moral scruples, repressed sexually, given over to extreme forms of personal asceticism, and immersed in both clerical and royal cab fights over the rounding of his community, Liguori seems best left to the dustbin of hagiography.