The German theologian Peter Hünermann, a leading scholar of the Second Vatican Council, died on 21 December aged 96.
Born in Berlin in 1929, he studied in Rome at the Gregorian and at the Germanicum from 1948 until 1958 and was ordained priest there in 1955.
On his return to Germany he initially worked as a chaplain and teacher whilst continuing his studies. After an initial teaching post as a professor of dogmatics in Münster, Hünermann was Professor of Catholic Dogmatics in Tübingen from 1982 to 1997.
He was actively involved in theological research until his final days and celebrated the seventieth anniversary of his ordination last October.
The Dean of the Faculty of Catholic Theology in Tübingen Sakia Wendel called Hünermann a theologian “who, out of a deep spirituality and with critical loyalty, has accompanied and helped shape the development of theology and the Church since the Council”.
The editor of a five-volume critical commentary on the Second Vatican Council and for four decades of the handbook of Catholic creeds and council documents known as “Denzinger”, as well as of the acclaimed series Quaestioes Disputatae, Hünermann believed that theology should always serve the Church.
His scholarship, students and colleagues wrote, opened doors into new worlds of thought, life and faith. Already in the 1970s he made international connections for systematic theology in Germany.
In 1989, he was one of the founding presidents of the European Society for Catholic Theology. He was awarded honorary doctorates by universities in Germany, Argentina and Bolivia.
In his farewell lecture on his retirement from university teaching Hünermann said that “faith, the Church and theology are being put to the test in a completely new way”.
“They must prove themselves anew every day in their encounter with the times, in their engagement with cultures, and in their dialogue with religions,” he said. “There is no retreat behind the bastions. Theologians today are challenged to be creative with a different intensity than in the pre-Vatican II era."
“They not only bear a heightened responsibility for the future of faith and the Church, but they are also urgently called upon in their personal faith, hope, and love. For dogmatic theology is about developing that understanding of faith in light of different cultures and life contexts, which is the flip side of those forms of life in which faith is to be articulated in these cultures and life contexts.”