Introductory notes for readers of this thesis - Theses - Flinders ...

One brief but notable spiritual influence on the adolescent Rahner was Peter GeorgioFrascati, a young man who boarded with the Rahner family long enough to leave animpression vividly recalled by Rahner over sixty years later:In a certain way, he was really a strange fellow—athletic, a mountain climber.Skier, rider, a funny, happy man who mixed with other students in the liveliest,even wildest way. He told me himself that as a Catholic student in Rome hesquabbled with the fascist students from the very beginning…On the other handhe was an extraordinarily pious person who prayed, who went to Mass almostevery day before the rest of the family got up, and who also displayedextraordinary social concern, as we would call it today, for the poor. It seems hedied from this work, eventually contracting polio in this environment. And hethought of the poor until the last hours of his life. Perhaps he will be beatified 16 .Whilst Rahner does not suggest that Frascati influenced his decision to join the order, theactive/contemplative features of the profile seem to point towards the spirituality of StIgnatius. Whilst Frascati’s personality is obviously quite different to Rahner’s (he wasneither athletic nor extroverted) their spirituality is strikingly similar. Rahner, too, was avery human man who integrated a genuine love of life with an intense piety and realsocial concern. Rahner’s description of Frascati’s ‘thinking of the poor until the lasthours’ was to play out in his own experience of his final days, as noted by G Kelly:Although fatally ill, Rahner found the strength to dictate a letter to Cardinal JuanLandazuri Ricketts, archbishop of Lima, and through him to the Peruvian bishopsasking them to extend their protection and understanding to Gustavo Gutiérrez,whose life was said to be in danger and whose liberation theology was then underVatican suspicion and scrutiny 17 .Characteristically, Rahner’s youthful sacrifice (future marriage, family and the pursuit ofa secular career in exchange for a lifetime of chastity, material simplicity and obedience)did not result from a ‘Damascus road’ experience; his decision to join the Jesuits reads asthe undramatic natural consequence of an emerging orientation towards a life of prayerand an interest in the mission and liturgical life of the church. ‘Ordinariness,’ ‘nondramatic’and ‘lacking in major events’ are descriptors that frequently appear in the16 Ibid, 33.17 From the introduction to his editorial presentation of Rahner in, Karl Rahner – theologian of the gracedsearch for meaning, (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992), 30.4