Karl Rahner: The Role of Everyday Mysticism, Ignatian Discernment, and Retreat Experiences in Medical Decision-Making
Michelle Harrington, PhD(c), Religious Ethics, University of Chicago
Could anything be more “enchanting” than the notion that God, Creator and Ground of Being, would speak to each of us personally? What if one were to find one’s deepest freedom and highest responsibilities revealed in such a communication—the bestowal of God’s own self? Twentieth century Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner posits in his pastoral theology that we humans are “hearers of the word,” creatures to whom God reveals God’s self, and furthermore that such divine communication is not limited to a spiritual elite but that the “everyday mysticism” of God’s self-communication is available to everyone.
In an era of complex medical prognostication, patients and their families are frequently burdened with difficult choices that will influence the trajectories of their lives—and deaths. Many Church teachings, including those distilled into the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, have sought to provide faith-based responses for health care practitioners and recipients alike. While not discounting the validity of Church teaching or the importance of personal religious formation, Rahner draws on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola to contend that individual responses to the existential and practical questions of human living can be specific to particular individuals. The process of bringing one’s question before God within the process of spiritual discernment, whether conducted on retreat or as part of an ongoing pattern of life, can enable one to choose in freedom, and be itself the occasion for the experience of grace.
This paper seeks to bridge Rahner’s theology of “everyday mysticism” and its affirmation of Ignatian discernment within the Spiritual Exercises with the process of medical decision-making for patients and health care providers alike. Given the time constraints with which patients and providers are often faced—many medical scenarios demand a more or less immediate response that will not allow for a 30-day retreat—I will attend to the significance of such retreat experiences for helping one to set a fundamental life-direction and to cultivate a posture of indifferencia as a precursor to ongoing practices of self-examination that may enable a person to choose well when medical decisions present themselves. Such an investigation has the potential to deepen the patient autonomy discourse and to relativize implicit obligations to choose based on models of medical probability alone.
Could anything be more “enchanting” than the notion that God, Creator and Ground of Being, would speak to each of us personally? What if one were to find one’s deepest freedom and highest responsibilities revealed in such a communication—the bestowal of God’s own self? Twentieth century Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner posits in his pastoral theology that we humans are “hearers of the word,” creatures to whom God reveals God’s self, and furthermore that such divine communication is not limited to a spiritual elite but that the “everyday mysticism” of God’s self-communication is available to everyone.
In an era of complex medical prognostication, patients and their families are frequently burdened with difficult choices that will influence the trajectories of their lives—and deaths. Many Church teachings, including those distilled into the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, have sought to provide faith-based responses for health care practitioners and recipients alike. While not discounting the validity of Church teaching or the importance of personal religious formation, Rahner draws on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola to contend that individual responses to the existential and practical questions of human living can be specific to particular individuals. The process of bringing one’s question before God within the process of spiritual discernment, whether conducted on retreat or as part of an ongoing pattern of life, can enable one to choose in freedom, and be itself the occasion for the experience of grace.
This paper seeks to bridge Rahner’s theology of “everyday mysticism” and its affirmation of Ignatian discernment within the Spiritual Exercises with the process of medical decision-making for patients and health care providers alike. Given the time constraints with which patients and providers are often faced—many medical scenarios demand a more or less immediate response that will not allow for a 30-day retreat—I will attend to the significance of such retreat experiences for helping one to set a fundamental life-direction and to cultivate a posture of indifferencia as a precursor to ongoing practices of self-examination that may enable a person to choose well when medical decisions present themselves. Such an investigation has the potential to deepen the patient autonomy discourse and to relativize implicit obligations to choose based on models of medical probability alone.