Walter Kasper and his theological programme

Walter Kasper’s name is by now well-known among English-speaking readers of theology: the 1984 translation of Der Gott Jesu Christi following on the translating in 1976 of Jesus der Christus established his reputation as a writer at once conceptually rigorous and historically well-informed. What is less understood, however, is the total context to which these works belong. From Kasper’s background in the Tubingen School his writings so far can be shown to represent a total theological programme of a quite distinctive kind. This programme is not only of considerable intrinsic interest. It also has a wider church-political significance in the light of Kasper’s selection as the official theologian of the Roman Synod Secretariat, encharged with the collation and theological analysis of the ‘submissions’ made to the Holy See by national conferences of bishops in readiness for the 1985 Synod on ‘The Church after Vatican II’. His appointment offers a useful key to the debate about the intentions of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (and more generally, of the Roman Curia in its higher echelons) in the middle 1980’s. In particular, it helps to determine whether these intentions are best described as ‘Neo-Ultramontane’, as argued (in effect) by a group of writers in New Blackfriars in June 1985, or rather, as the present author has maintained, as offering a via media or re-accentramento (‘re-centring’) for Church and theology, amid the competing voices of left and right-wing radicalism in post-conciliar Catholicism. This is a debate which has not ended with the ending of the Synod.