Abstract: The essay interrogates the relationship between presence and absence in The Modern Mystics and highlights the role of mystical marginality through figures like Óscar Romero and Gustavo Gutiérrez. I conclude that McGinn’s volume is a practical guide for making sense of the mystical path that Karl Rahner and Thomas Merton told us would be essential for the survival of Christianity. McGinn shows the impoverishment of thinking of the Christian life as one that shuns mystical presence or that undercuts the radical witness of mystical marginality.
Peter Casarella (Mon,) studied this question.