Pope Benedict’s call to a new Entweltlichung [unworldliness] of the Church, issued during his last visit to Germany in 2011, relaunched the debate on the relationship between the Church and world. Many theologians of different provenance share the conviction that the model elaborated by Vatican II has lost its plausibility in the context of postmodernity and has to be rethought. However, their solutions differ significantly. In view of a certain ambiguity in theological speaking of the “world”, …
Read morePope Benedict’s call to a new Entweltlichung [unworldliness] of the Church, issued during his last visit to Germany in 2011, relaunched the debate on the relationship between the Church and world. Many theologians of different provenance share the conviction that the model elaborated by Vatican II has lost its plausibility in the context of postmodernity and has to be rethought. However, their solutions differ significantly. In view of a certain ambiguity in theological speaking of the “world”, my article proposes to review some aspects of Romano Guardini’s idea of the Catholic faith as Weltanschauung. After drawing on the historical context, in which Guardini urged us to reintegrate the positive meaning of the world into Catholic thinking, his constant effort to distinguish the specificity of the Christian message, as well as his lifelong research into the indispensable tension between proximity and distance between the world and God, are presented.
