Author Topic: An Open Letter to Hans KÃ¼ng (Read 2489 times)

Lorenzo · « **on:** February 27, 2013, 01:55:57 PM »

An Open Letter to Hans KÃ¼ng
April 21, 2010
George Weigel

Dr. KÃ¼ng:

A decade and a half ago, a former colleague of yours among the younger progressive theologians at Vatican II told me of a friendly warning he had given you at the beginning of the Councilâ€™s second session. As this distinguished biblical scholar and proponent of Christian-Jewish reconciliation remembered those heady days, you had taken to driving around Rome in a fire-engine red Mercedes convertible, which your friend presumed had been one fruit of the commercial success of your book, The Council: Reform and Reunion.

This automotive display struck your colleague as imprudent and unnecessarily self-advertising, given that some of your more adventurous opinions, and your talent for what would later be called the sound-bite, were already raising eyebrows and hackles in the Roman Curia. So, as the story was told me, your friend called you aside one day and said, using a French term you both understood, â€œHans, you are becoming too evident.â€

As the man who single-handedly invented a new global personality-typeâ€”the dissident theologian as international media starâ€”you were not, I take it, overly distressed by your friendâ€™s warning. In 1963, you were already determined to cut a singular path for yourself, and you were media-savvy enough to know that a world press obsessed with the man-bites-dog story of the dissenting priest-theologian would give you a megaphone for your views. You were, I take it, unhappy with the late John Paul II for trying to dismantle that story-line by removing your ecclesiastical mandate to teach as a professor of Catholic theology; your subsequent, snarling put-down of Karol Wojtylaâ€™s alleged intellectual inferiority in one volume of your memoirs ranked, until recently, as the low-point of a polemical career in which you have become most evident as a man who can concede little intelligence, decency, or good will in his opponents.

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #1 on:** February 27, 2013, 01:57:41 PM »

I say â€œuntil recently,â€ however, because your April 16 open letter to the worldâ€™s bishops, which I first read in the Irish Times, set new standards for that distinctive form of hatred known as odium theologicum and for mean-spirited condemnation of an old friend who had, on his rise to the papacy, been generous to you while encouraging aspects of your current work.

Before we get to your assault on the integrity of Pope Benedict XVI, however, permit me to observe that your article makes it painfully clear that you have not been paying much attention to the matters on which you pronounce with an air of infallible self-assurance that would bring a blush to the cheek of Pius IX.

You seem blithely indifferent to the doctrinal chaos besetting much of European and North American Protestantism, which has created circumstances in which theologically serious ecumenical dialogue has become gravely imperiled.

You take the most rabid of the Pius XII-baiters at face value, evidently unaware that the weight of recent scholarship is shifting the debate in favor of Pius' courage in defense of European Jewry (whatever one may think of his exercise of prudence).

You misrepresent the effects of Benedict XVIâ€™s 2006 Regensburg Lecture, which you dismiss as having â€œcaricaturedâ€ Islam. In fact, the Regensburg Lecture refocused the Catholic-Islamic dialogue on the two issues that complex conversation urgently needs to engageâ€”religious freedom as a fundamental human right that can be known by reason, and the separation of religious and political authority in the twenty-first century state.

You display no comprehension of what actually prevents HIV/AIDS in Africa, and you cling to the tattered myth of â€œoverpopulationâ€ at a moment when fertility rates are dropping around the globe and Europe is entering a demographic winter of its own conscious creation.

You seem oblivious to the scientific evidence underwriting the Churchâ€™s defense of the moral status of the human embryo, while falsely charging that the Catholic Church opposes stem-cell research.

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #2 on:** February 27, 2013, 01:58:02 PM »

Why do you not know these things? You are an obviously intelligent man; you once did groundbreaking work in ecumenical theology. What has happened to you?

What has happened, I suggest, is that you have lost the argument over the meaning and the proper hermeneutics of Vatican II. That explains why you relentlessly pursue your fifty-year quest for a liberal Protestant Catholicism, at precisely the moment when the liberal Protestant project is collapsing from its inherent theological incoherence. And that is why you have now engaged in a vicious smear of another former Vatican II colleague, Joseph Ratzinger. Before addressing that smear, permit me to continue briefly on the hermeneutics of the Council.

While you are not the most theologically accomplished exponent of what Benedict XVI called the â€œhermeneutics of ruptureâ€ in his Christmas 2005 address to the Roman Curia, you are, without doubt, the most internationally visible member of that aging group which continues to argue that the period 1962â€“1965 marked a decisive trapgate in the history of the Catholic Church: the moment of a new beginning, in which Tradition would be dethroned from its accustomed place as a primary source of theological reflection, to be replaced by a Christianity that increasingly let â€œthe worldâ€ set the Churchâ€™s agenda (as a motto of the World Council of Churches then put it).

The struggle between this interpretation of the Council, and that advanced by Council fathers like Ratzinger and Henri de Lubac, split the post-conciliar Catholic theological world into warring factions with contending journals: Concilium for you and your progressive colleagues, Communio for those you continue to call â€œreactionaries.â€ That the Concilium project became ever more implausible over timeâ€”and that a younger generation of theologians, especially in North America, gravitated toward the Communio orbitâ€”could not have been a happy experience for you. And that the Communio project should have decisively shaped the deliberations of the 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops, called by John Paul II to celebrate Vatican IIâ€™s achievements and assess its full implementation on the twentieth anniversary of its conclusion, must have been another blow.

Yet I venture to guess that the iron really entered your soul when, on December 22, 2005, the newly elected Pope Benedict XVIâ€”the man whose appointment to the theological faculty at TÃ¼bingen you had once helped arrangeâ€”addressed the Roman Curia and suggested that the argument was over: and that the conciliar â€œhermeneutics of reform,â€ which presumed continuity with the Great Tradition of the Church, had won the day over â€œthe hermeneutics of discontinuity and rupture.â€

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #3 on:** February 27, 2013, 01:58:33 PM »

Perhaps, while you and Benedict XVI were drinking beer at Castel Gandolfo in the summer of 2005, you somehow imagined that Ratzinger had changed his mind on this central question. He obviously had not. Why you ever imagined he might accept your view of what an â€œongoing renewal of the Churchâ€ would involve is, frankly, puzzling. Nor does your analysis of the contemporary Catholic situation become any more plausible when one reads, further along in your latest op-ed broadside, that recent popes have been â€œautocratsâ€ against the bishops; again, one wonders whether you have been paying sufficient attention. For it seems self-evidently clear that Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI have been painfully reluctantâ€”some would say, unfortunately reluctantâ€”to discipline bishops who have shown themselves incompetent or malfeasant and have lost the capacity to teach and lead because of that: a situation many of us hope will change, and change soon, in light of recent controversies.

In a sense, of course, none of your familiar complaints about post-conciliar Catholic life is new. It does, however, seem ever more counterintuitive for someone who truly cares about the future of the Catholic Church as a witness to Godâ€™s truth for the worldâ€™s salvation to press the line you persistently urge upon us: that a credible Catholicism will tread the same path trod in recent decades by various Protestant communities which, wittingly or not, have followed one or another version of your counsel to a adopt a hermeneutics of rupture with the Great Tradition of Christianity. Still, that is the single-minded stance you have taken since one of your colleagues worried about your becoming too evident; and as that stance has kept you evident, at least on the op-ed pages of newspapers who share your reading of Catholic tradition, I expect itâ€™s too much to expect you to change, or even modify, your views, even if every bit of empirical evidence at hand suggests that the path you propose is the path to oblivion for the churches.

What can be expected, though, is that you comport yourself with a minimum of integrity and elementary decency in the controversies in which you engage. I understand odium theologicum as well as anyone, but I must, in all candor, tell you that you crossed a line that should not have been crossed in your recent article, when you wrote the following:

There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005).

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #4 on:** February 27, 2013, 01:59:08 PM »

That, sir, is not true. I refuse to believe that you knew this to be false and wrote it anyway, for that would mean you had willfully condemned yourself as a liar. But on the assumption that you did not know this sentence to be a tissue of falsehoods, then you are so manifestly ignorant of how competencies over abuse cases were assigned in the Roman Curia prior to Ratzingerâ€™s seizing control of the process and bringing it under CDFâ€™s competence in 2001, then you have forfeited any claim to be taken seriously on this, or indeed any other matter involving the Roman Curia and the central governance of the Catholic Church.

As you perhaps do not know, I have been a vigorous, and I hope responsible, critic of the way abuse cases were (mis)handled by individual bishops and by the authorities in the Curia prior to the late 1990s, when then-Cardinal Ratzinger began to fight for a major change in the handling of these cases. (If you are interested, I refer you to my 2002 book, The Courage To Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church.)

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #5 on:** February 27, 2013, 01:59:27 PM »

I therefore speak with some assurance of the ground on which I stand when I say that your description of Ratzingerâ€™s role as quoted above is not only ludicrous to anyone familiar with the relevant history, but is belied by the experience of American bishops who consistently found Ratzinger thoughtful, helpful, deeply concerned about the corruption of the priesthood by a small minority of abusers, and distressed by the incompetence or malfeasance of bishops who took the promises of psychotherapy far more seriously than they ought, or lacked the moral courage to confront what had to be confronted.

I recognize that authors do not write the sometimes awful subheads that are put on op-ed pieces. Nonetheless, you authored a piece of vitriolâ€”itself utterly unbecoming a priest, an intellectual, or a gentlemanâ€”that permitted the editors of the Irish Times to slug your article: â€œPope Benedict has made worse just about everything that is wrong with the Catholic Church and is directly responsible for engineering the global cover-up of child rape perpetrated by priests, according to this open letter to all Catholic bishops.â€ That grotesque falsification of the truth perhaps demonstrates where odium theologicum can lead a man. But it is nonetheless shameful.

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #6 on:** February 27, 2013, 01:59:47 PM »

Permit me to suggest that you owe Pope Benedict XVI a public apology, for what, objectively speaking, is a calumny that I pray was informed in part by ignorance (if culpable ignorance). I assure you that I am committed to a thoroughgoing reform of the Roman Curia and the episcopate, projects I described at some length in Godâ€™s Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church, a copy of which, in German, I shall be happy to send you. But there is no path to true reform in the Church that does not run through the steep and narrow valley of the truth. The truth was butchered in your article in the Irish Times. And that means that you have set back the cause of reform.

With the assurance of my prayers,

George Weigel

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washingtonâ€™s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.

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islander · « **Reply #7 on:** February 27, 2013, 02:28:03 PM »

judging from his surname, weigel must also be german, or at least of german descent. wow!

there was this other intellectual german giant who went against the authorities of the church in his time: martin luther. we know what happened next. i daresay the catholic church authorities are more circumspect and enlightened now, not quick to condemn, more tolerant of the noise that comes out in the marketplace of ideas.

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islander · « **Reply #8 on:** February 27, 2013, 02:30:32 PM »

You take the most rabid of the Pius XII-baiters at face value, evidently unaware that the weight of recent scholarship is shifting the debate in favor of Pius' courage in defense of European Jewry (whatever one may think of his exercise of prudence).

egad!

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islander · « **Reply #9 on:** February 27, 2013, 02:31:34 PM »

grabeha ni uy. this is scholarly writing to the max!

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islander · « **Reply #10 on:** February 27, 2013, 02:34:48 PM »

You display no comprehension of what actually prevents HIV/AIDS in Africa, and you cling to the tattered myth of â€œoverpopulationâ€ at a moment when fertility rates are dropping around the globe and Europe is entering a demographic winter of its own conscious creation.

cry, my beloved country (not south africa but the philippines and its rh bill this time).

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #11 on:** February 27, 2013, 02:41:21 PM »

Now, this, is an example of Wisdom that comes from God.

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islander · « **Reply #12 on:** February 27, 2013, 02:49:11 PM »

George Weigel (born 1951) is an American author and political and social activist. He currently serves as a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Weigel was the Founding President of the James Madison Foundation. He is the author of the best-selling biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope and Tranquillitas Ordinis: The Present Failure and Future Promise of American Catholic Thought on War and Peace.

Weigel lived in Seattle, serving as Assistant Professor of Theology and Assistant Dean of Studies at the St. Thomas the Apostle Seminary School of Theology in Kenmore, and Scholar-in-Residence at the World Without War Council of Greater Seattle, before returning to Washington, D.C. as a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

-excerpts from wikipedia

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islander · « **Reply #13 on:** February 27, 2013, 02:50:42 PM »

Now, this, is an example of Wisdom that comes from God.

do you happen to have an example of wisdom that comes from somewhere else, like below, in a place that i heard is called hell?

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #14 on:** February 27, 2013, 02:52:14 PM »

judging from his surname, weigel must also be german, or at least of german descent. wow!

there was this other intellectual german giant who went against the authorities of the church in his time: martin luther. we know what happened next. i daresay the catholic church authorities are more circumspect and enlightened now, not quick to condemn, more tolerant of the noise that comes out in the marketplace of ideas.

Luther was instrumental in the Protestant Reformation, and this lead to the subsequent Catholic Counter-Reformation of the 16th Century. Luther was a vehement , outspoken critic of Church Theology, Church Tradition and even Scripture. So much that he decided, with no authority at all, to remove 7 books from Holy Scripture (incidentally, those 7 books support Sacramental Truths). This resulted in the Protestant version of the Holy Bible.

This resulted in the rise of protestant doctrines of : Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, which are in contradiction to Catholic Church Teachings. The latter stresses that Revealed truth comes through Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture.

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #15 on:** February 27, 2013, 03:28:04 PM »

I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church (â€¦) I will give you the keys to the of kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be lost in heaven
(Matthew, XVI, 18-19).

These were, according to the Holy Scriptures, Jesusâ€™ words, speaking to the Apostle who would become later the first bishop of Rome, a charge which he passed onto his successors and to which the Conclave, inspired by the Holy Spirit, chose Joseph Ratzinger, who took the name of Benedict to wear Saint Peterâ€™s sandals. Since then, even though we do not doubt that the Roman Church does not only have friends in this world, we are nonetheless surprised by the ferocity put by some Catholics in crucifying Peterâ€™s successor, who is already victim of violent attacks from those who, some months ago, have chosen the Holy See as their target.

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #16 on:** February 27, 2013, 03:28:47 PM »

Among those Catholics, from which more solidarity and support could have been expected for the legitimate leader of the Church, was the Swiss theologian Hans KÃ¼ng, in a Open Letter to the Catholic bishops. Having taken part in the Second Vatican Council, Hans KÃ¼ng, who was teaching Catholic theology at the University of TÃ¼bingen, saw, nonetheless, how his missio canonica was withdrawn by Rome: partisan of an out of control ecumenism, he had taken stands opposed to the teachings of the Church. Nothing surprising, then, that his open letter has no mercy for the Vatican. But, at least, it could be fair play, if the arguments used were well founded and, even more, if the text could not be blamed for a lot of omissionsâ€¦

To begin with, Hans KÃ¼ng attacks Benedict XVI, that 'old and reactionary Pope', on the matter of the 'come back into communion' with the Church of anti-Semitic and schismatic bishops. This critic is repeated several times. The argument is strong and it is used with extent; we can read: he has taken the bishops of the traditionalist Pius X Society back into the Church without any preconditions.

If we had no knowledge of this person and his mastery on Church matters, we could think it is a mistake, an error of the profane or the badly informed. But, coming from an eminent theologian, we are forced to assume there is indeed bad intention. So, at the very beginning the tone is settledâ€¦ Hans KÃ¼ng contributes to the confusion that pervades the Pius X Society, because Benedict XVI has never 'taken back' into the Church the schismatic bishops of Lefebvre. Even it is true that the excommunication decided by John Paul II has been dropped by Benedict XVI, that does not mean that the Pius X Society is now part of the Church, who has demanded several conditions for letting them back: the Pope has only made a gesture, looking for dialogue in favour of the unity of the Christians, and it is only the beginning of a long road, that one which might never even be undertaken; yet at this moment, th participation of Catholics in the worship of the Pius X Society is still not allowed.

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #17 on:** February 27, 2013, 03:28:59 PM »

Also: the attack against the will of Benedict XVI to beatify Pope Pius XII, who Hans KÃ¼ng opposes to Judaism. Always the old process against Pius XII, accused of having kept silent about what happened to Jews during Second World War. Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill or Charles de Gaulle were not more talkative, they, who were perfectly aware of the tragedy that was taking place in camps, in the east. Indeed, when Jewish associations asked the Allies to bomb the railways which carried the unfortunate to death, by hundreds of thousands, their cynical answer was that they had other matters to care for. Then, why this bitterness against Pius XII, less acceptable since it was him, as it has been established by historians long time ago, who organized the rescue of the Jews, with the help of all European monasteries? The Great Rabbi of Rome has thanked Pius XII for this, on repeated occasions. And, as a secretary of Pius XI, he was one of the main writers of the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge that, in 1937, condemned Nazism, encyclical exceptionally written in German to be well understood.

Are these facts unknown to Hans KÃ¼ng? Furthermore, talking again of the words of the Pope in Africa, about the use of condoms, even though it has been well proved that Benedict XVI did not condemn the use of condoms, contrary of what a sentence out of context might let think; he wanted to emphasize that, besides the use of condoms, fidelity in a couple and respect of the partner are a far better means to fight the spread of the disease.

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #18 on:** February 27, 2013, 03:29:16 PM »

And, of course, adding as well comments on paedophilia matters which are rocking the Church. Will Hans KÃ¼ng continue to be ignorant to the fact that the popular John Paul II dealt with these delicate matters internally, and that we owe Benedict XVI the fact that everything has come to light?

Will not he know that it is Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then prefect of the Congregation for the doctrine of faith, who, under John Paul II, was fighting so that the criminals of sexual abuse were subjected to specific measures?

Who convinced John Paul II to create a commission in charge of making all these facts as clear as possible? Who, in the Curia, fought to reopen dossiers that had long been abandoned? Not a word about this reality. Let him feel the urge to call forward scandals and the refusal to accept Benedict XVIâ€™s will of transparencyâ€¦

In addition, there is the accusation put forward of the Pope betraying the ecumenist intentions of the Second Vatican Council. But, is it not Hans KÃ¼ng who, in his theological vision, has left the Church for a relativism that suits well, according to the times, where all religions will lead to salvation? The Catholic Church is it not then universal? In this case, it is not catholic any more (catholicos : universal). The antireligious dialogue, nonetheless, would now be universal... From a catholic point of view, it is crystal clear that Hans KÃ¼ng has gone down the dangerous road of the Reform. To end and among other easy summaries and double talk sentences, he asks for a new Council that will take control of everything and put this authoritarian Pope and his old Curia jealous of its privileges in the place they deserve.

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #19 on:** February 27, 2013, 03:29:36 PM »

Hans KÃ¼ng reminds us that 'the Council, according to canon law, represents the highest authority in the Catholic Church'. Isnâ€™t this again wicked, since the hypothesis of ignorance has to be excluded? Or schizophrenia? We have to consider that, if Hans KÃ¼ng had to renounce to teaching theology, it was precisely because he had contested the Councils resolutions, in particular resolution of First Vatican Council about papal infallibility. Yet, on the contrary, not a single word about the impressive social message of Benedict XVI, well-worded in his recent encyclical Veritas in Caritate (which is nonetheless quoted), in which the Pope blames multinationals corporations and calls governments to take control of economy and its rules; he condemns the impoverishment that has reached the middle class in rich countries, delocalisation, the weakening of social State, the lack of rules in the labour world and invites Trade Unions to resist and to defend workers going as far as calling for an international organization to face globalization. Nevertheless, that speech, the call of a sovereign pontiff with a great heart, in favour of the most humble and poor, does it still allow Hans KÃ¼ng to reach the conclusion of painting an image of Benedict XVI as that of an old Pope, conservative and reactionary?

The question remains, for which church is Hans KÃ¼ng preaching? Certainly not the Catholic Church in any case...

Pierre Piccinin, Professor of History and Political Science, European School of Brussels.

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chicogon · « **Reply #20 on:** February 28, 2013, 01:49:58 AM »

And the Church is full of Weigels and Lorenz... a blessing indeed! But listen to the difference, scholarly vs condemning. Theologian to theologian, they never stop seeking the truth! What hapened to you Hans? We're fond pa naman of your many venerable works, Wiegel insinuated. But I never heard him once saying "you're a damned (kondenado) heretic, boy! You're going straight to hell!" Ako sad, no comment.

Dako kaayo respect ni Weigel kang Hans... bisan grumpy and old na si Lolo Hans. Like Benedict he is a teacher of teachers. German nga utangag loob ni Hans (he became a theology faculty at Turingen bec of Hans), Benedict can only look at him and treat him with compassion like our Lord. Popes leave it to their ghost experts as in any high office.

That's all I'm saying... If you can't be like our Lord in compassion, follow the example of the Holy Father, we are so fond of... so you say.

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #21 on:** February 28, 2013, 02:14:07 AM »

Fr. Roel,

I want to stay as much as possible through doctrine that is supported and defined by the Catechism of the One, Holy Roman Catholic Church. As you said before, we are judged by our actions. That is true, and it is in prayerful observation that we , the people of God, hope that the actions of Fr. Kung do not further damage the faith. I have read Kung's paper when he accused His Holiness in being to rigid, and accused His Holiness of being reactionary, conservative and old. Why? Simply because His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI's theological viewpoint differs from that of Hans Kung, who, incidentally, was a colleague of his from the past.

The Word and Decision of the Pope and the Ecumenical Council is definitive. The Catechism teaches us:

880 When Christ instituted the Twelve, "he constituted [them] in the form of a college or permanent assembly, at the head of which he placed Peter, chosen from among them."398 Just as "by the Lord's institution, St. Peter and the rest of the apostles constitute a single apostolic college, so in like fashion the Roman Pontiff, Peter's successor, and the bishops, the successors of the apostles, are related with and united to one another."

882 The Pope, Bishop of Rome and Peter's successor, "is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful."402 "For the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered."

891 "The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful - who confirms his brethren in the faith he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals. . . . The infallibility promised to the Church is also present in the body of bishops when, together with Peter's successor, they exercise the supreme Magisterium," above all in an Ecumenical Council.418 When the Church through its supreme Magisterium proposes a doctrine "for belief as being divinely revealed,"419 and as the teaching of Christ, the definitions "must be adhered to with the obedience of faith."420 This infallibility extends as far as the deposit of divine Revelation itself."

Reference:
The Catechism of the One, Holy, Roman Catholic Church
Retrieved from: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a9p4.htm#I

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chicogon · « **Reply #22 on:** February 28, 2013, 02:28:20 AM »

I agree with you 100% on being faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church and I stand by it even if some teachings are hard to swallow. I leave the quarrel to the differing thoughtsmiths. Like I said somewhere, let their words, actions and dialogue be the judge, not us! Not us. Be careful of what you say (or do)... same measure we will be dealt with, Jesus warns. Makahadlok kaayo! Bilib ko ninyo kay isog mo and courageous! I'm afraid to dare that path... the path of inquisition LoL

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Lorenzo · « **Reply #23 on:** February 28, 2013, 05:15:11 AM »

Why is this such a big deal? It's a big deal because our dear brother Hans Kung speaks contradiction to the Revealed Truth and has challenged the very Foundation of the Roman Catholic Church. You know Father Roel, I had a close conversation with my very good Friend JR, who is a last year seminarian (he will be ordained a priest this summer), and also with my close friend, Fr. Mark, about this issue of Hans Kung and their stance is quite close to mine. In fact, they too are overwhelmed with the revolutionary and acute ideas of Hans Kung.

So, for those who read this topic and want to understand the meat and bone of this issue , they have to understand what Hans Kung wants. This man is vehemently against the following: 1) The Heirarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, 2) He accuses the church of being "Authoritarian" in system, and 3) The selection process of the Bishops and 4) the Power of the Role of the Bishops and the Pope.

He is quite vocal about this , too. Now, as much as we forgive him, the Church is trying to correct him for his heresy. Note that the word heresy is defined as: "the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same, " (Catechism 2089).

He challenges the heirarchy of the church as defined by the Catechism. In addition, he challenges the works of the ecclesial ministry. These are many things we have to consider and the debate regarding Hans Kung is seen in many Catholic apologetic forums. Many others refer to him as being guilty of heresy.

These are very important issues that are raised, as well, we hope that there is institutional continuity as was defended by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI and all papal legates regarding this matter. It is in hope that there is reconciliation with Hans Kung, I believe that he is an intellectual, however, his recommendations and personal point of view , which he shares so openly, is heresy. I do pray for him and we all should, however, he should accept correction. Blessed Pope John Paul II corrected him when he was still alive, and so did his old friend and colleague, Pope Benedict XVI.

Yours In Christ,
Dr. Lorenzo

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islander · « **Reply #24 on:** February 28, 2013, 10:21:02 AM »

Ultimately, each person hungers for Truth that can only be filled by Jesus Christ. However, it is imperative that we avoid being judgmental, antagonistic, or frustrated lest the Gospel message perish in our faults and mistakes. In the end, the Churchâ€™s divine foundation will prevail against the winds of the times.

-from The Seven Great Threats to the Catholic Church in Modern America, S.M. Miranda, http://www.saintaquinas.com/modernism_intro.html

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