Karl Rahner

"In brief, he was a man of prayer, a man who tasted every day the bread of death and of life, a man consumed with love for his brothers." - Preface to "Pier Giorgio Frassati: I giorni della sua vita" by Luciana Frassati

"...who has nothing sectarian about him, who lives his Christianity with a spontaneity that is almost frightening, as if he had no problems at all. In point of fact, he immersed his problems, at the price of who knows what sufferings, in the grace of his Faith."

"Here is where there appears the mysteriousness of divine grace that flies in the face of logic: in an ambient where Christianity is considered to have been overcome, there arises a Christian who breathes the joy of living..."

"His faith nourished itself with the very substance of Christianity: the existence of God, prayer as the leaven of existence, the sacraments as the food of eternal life, universal fraternity as the law of human relations."

"But what was even more surprising was that all this appeared so natural and warmly spontaneous! His faith had no human ‘explanation.’ If Frassati was Christian, it was neither in reaction to the liberal and anticlerical generation of his parents, nor because of some vague ‘cultural’ motive."

"What was striking in [Pier Giorgio Frassati] was his purity, his radiant joy, his piety, the ‘freedom of the children of God’ with regard to all that is beautiful in the world, his social sense, his consciousness of sharing the life and destiny of the Church."

"With such basic realities of life, there is really only one alternative: either a radical protest that carried to its extreme would have to end in suicide, or an acceptance and living through of life with all its negative aspects." – "Our Relationship to the Church" in "Faith in a Wintry Season"

"What can the word 'still' mean here? It is like asking whether I will 'still' be a human being, or whether I will 'still' live in this pitiable twentieth century."

"In the face of negative experiences the question is very quickly asked: Shall I still remain in the Church? The question drives me 'crazy.' For me as a believer it is in the last analysis meaningless."

“The cross of the Lord is the revelation of what sin really is. The cross of Christ mercilessly reveals what the world hides from itself: that it, as it were, devours the Son of God in the insane blindness of its sin—a sin in which Godless hate is truly set on fire upon contact with the love of God”

"...that the first man was also the first to incur guilt before God and his guilt as a factor of man’s existence historically brought about by man, belongs intrinsically to the situation in which the whole subsequent history of humanity unfolds." - "Hominisation"

"Consequently we know nothing except that man was created by God as God’s personal partner in a sacred history of salvation and perdition; that concupiscence and death do not belong to man as God wills him to be, but to man as a sinner..."

"They do not believe in the charismatic character that belongs to the Church’s ministry even in the world of every day, even under the routine of what is laborious and unpretentious and commonplace.” — "The Charismatic Element in The Church"

"Such people may imagine they have a heroic love for the Church, of the “in spite of everything” sort. In fact, they consider themselves to possess a mind of superior discernment to that of the actual average everyday Church."

"—as though the life of the Church amounted to practically nothing but sin and falling away from the mind of Christ."

"...or if one wanted to hold with a sort of mental obstinacy (there are such people), that more or less everything is wrong that the Church has in actual practice done in the course of history, except her solemn dogmatic definitions..."

"But it would be incompatible with the invincibly Christian character and holiness of the Church and contrary to an ecclesiastical spirit to maintain that, though infallible in her teaching, she is not, in her normal life & activity, under the guidance and direction of the Spirit promised to her..."

"...can exhibit faults, omissions, partially mistaken developments, signs of sclerosis, reactionary tendencies."

"Everyone knows that the Church in the exercise of her pastoral office, in her legislation, administration, adaptation to the requirements of the age, pastoral practice, in her activity in art, learning and the shaping of Christian life in practice..."

"...nor does it mean that these heterodox views cannot contribute in a positive way to the further development of the Church’s understanding of the faith." — "Pluralism in Theology and the Oneness of the Church's Profession of Faith"

"...but this does not mean that such a position can be held legitimately in the Church. In rejecting a heterodox position, the Church does not rule out a person’s good faith or his chances for salvation..."

"...but the oneness of the Church’s profession, which makes her what she is, must be maintained in this complex interrelationship. We may gain some psychological, historical or sociological insight into the reasons why someone arrived at a clearly heterodox position..."

"Theological pluralism does not permit us to tolerate anything and everything. Credal profession and theology have a mutual relationship to each other, and they cannot be neatly distinguished from each other in concrete cases..."

(From "Christmas: Grace in the Human Abyss" in The Great Church Year)

"For her, then, Christmas can only mean the beginning of the life which in this world ends on this cross — or in death or the empty bitterness of total disappointment — it all amounts to the same thing."

"For doesn't the Christian hang upon the walls which enclose her life, as a sign of her faith, a cross, a gibbet on which a man is nailed and dying?"

"If one is a Christian, one very definitely has the duty of not being under any illusions about this magical Christmas spirit. For a Christian cannot be a person who hides the pitiful reality of human life under pious phrases. By God, she cannot."

(Congratulations, you're the first person I've actually broken character as it were to reply to instead of just posting quotes off and on.)

Rahner's emphasis on discerning the hierarchy of truths—remember, he was an editor of Denzinger's Enchiridion and that style of dogmatics also emphasizes this—only makes sense if he thinks it's actually real and matters and stands together as a whole, not if it's all up for grabs!

Which is why I found this quote interesting, the way he emphasizes that just because something is "secondary" does not mean it is optional and of course while he was a diplomat and charitable in public in his private correspondence with Küng you find harsh (if still charitable) disagreement