Was Karl Rahner a heretic?

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no, but my priest has said that he is confusing to understand. Ive found select articles by him to be helpful to understanding the faith, but if he is confusing maybe read him along with someone who understands

video on him that might be helpful:

 
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He was not a heretic.
He also wtote in German, so unless you read and understand that, you are reading a translation, and they are always flawed.

In my opinion, as well as that of others, he was a genius. Some thought he pushed limits. But that it was Jesuits do. He was an intellectual, a scholar, and dare I say, a mystic. His book, “Watch and Pray with Me” is a staple prayerbook for the Triduum for me.
 
“How is this not slander” Well, he is deceased, so there’s that . . .
 
The Latin phrase De mortuis nihil nisi bonum (also De mortuis nil nisi bene [dicendum] ) “Of the dead, [say] nothing but good”, abbreviated as Nil nisi bonum , is a mortuary aphorism, indicating that it is socially inappropriate to speak ill of the dead.
 
REPENT said:
german jesuit
wrote along side De Lubac and Von Balthasar
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Du Lubac was created a cardinal by JPII
When Benedict XVI went into retirement he took with him Von Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics (a 7 volume work - presumably for a bit of light reading)
During the Council, Rahner and Ratzinger worked closely alongside each other as periti (expert advisors).

Granted, some of Rahner’s later theology was edgy and led him into conflict with Ratzinger as the then-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. This is however very different from him being a heretic - itself a formal charge requiring a little thing called proof (not to mention intention). Students of Rahner also took his thought and writings in wrong directions.

What needs to be remembered however is that background against which Rahner and others were writing. Having just lived through a conflict which had left essentially all of western Europe utterly devastated and exposed what can only be described as pure evil, they and the society in which they lived were entering into a new era of hope and co-operation and so Rahner and his colleagues sought to understand and explore theologically how this might apply and be lived out in the life and mission of the Church.
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“I do not see either in the arguments used or in the formal teaching authority of the Church…a convincing or conclusive reason for assenting to the controversial teaching in Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae [encyclical against contraception] or to the Declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith which seems to exclude the ordination of women in principle and for all time.” Karl Rahner
 
No. A bit of a free-thinker, like Augustine truth be told, but not quite as self-constrained as Augustine was by Catholic doctrine as I see it. Either way I believe Rahner had some very good (name removed by moderator)ut, worthy of consideration with some qualifications and not nearly as far out there as some, often Teutonic, theologians.
 
He certainly espoused a spirit of heresy, especially given his teaching on so-called “anonymous Christianity.” It’s hard to say for sure if he was heretical but it’s very likely that he was in one way or another. He wrote about his opposition to church teaching on female ordination and birth control. This is a formal denial/doubt about core doctrines of the Catholic Faith.

-" I do not see either in the arguments used or in the formal teaching authority of the Church…a convincing or conclusive reason for assenting to the controversial teaching in Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae [encyclical against contraception] or to the Declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith which seems to exclude the ordination of women in principle and for all time."

-“When the Vatican declaration against the ordination of women (even in the future) came out a few years back, I published an article saying that it failed to convince me. (Of course, it was not an infallible definition). Rome is digging in its heels, it seems to me, against the development that one ought to admit calmly might not be a bad thing.”

On top of all this he had an extraordinarily close . . . relationship with German leftist Luise Rinser from 1962-1984. Rinser, despite calling herself a Catholic, contradicted almost every Church teaching in her works, married three times (once to Karl Hermann, a communist), and wrote about having a romantic relationship with a Benedictine abbot. . . ,

I’m not an expert on canon law nor am I the Pope so I can’t give you a concrete answer, but I would avoid taking his writings seriously if you are a faithful Catholic.
 
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Rahner’s religious order? The modern Jesuits are responsible for Carlo Martini, James Martin, Theodore McCarrick (in his education), Pierre de Chardin, Henri de Lubac, and America Magazine. Most of them espouse liberation theology. Not all Jesuits are bad but I certainly wouldn’t say they’re an order well based in Canon law and Catholic teaching. I wouldn’t trust whatever they’re saying about Rahner.
 
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