Fr. Anthony R. Lusvardi, S.J.: Getting Back into the Baptizing Business

Fr. Anthony R. Lusvardi, SJ, teaches sacramental theology at the Gregorian University in Rome. He is the author of Baptism of Desire and Christian Salvation (Catholic University of America Press, 2024) and numerous other essays, short stories, and articles. …

In the late 1960s, Fr. Richard McBrien, future president of the Catholic Theological Society and long-time Chair of the Department of Theology at Notre Dame, declared that the Catholic Church had gotten out of “the salvation business.”  Though most people wouldn’t have put it so crudely, McBrien was expressing a view that remains enormously influential in Catholic theology and pastoral life.  In my own theological education, I often found that the question “What is the mission of the Church?” provoked waffling or embarrassment.

Attempts at an answer haven’t been lacking.  Heirs to Karl Rahner’s Anonymous Christianity have argued that the Church’s job is merely to point out a salvation that already exists in whatever state of belief or unbelief people find themselves.  Others, skirting talk of the supernatural or of Heaven, have insisted on a primarily political, or at least social, mission. ….

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