Swiss-born Catholic theologian Hans Küng

[CHIMO]

Made Professor at Tübingen at the age of 32, Hans Küng’s famous book, ‘Structures of the Church,’ helped set the reform agenda for the Second Vatican Council. An opponent of the doctrine of infallibity, his licence to teach was revoked in 1979, but he was defended by the University and his contract upheld.

Stephen Crittenden: The Second Vatican Council is right at the centre of this first volume of your memoir, and you tell the story of the Council being undermined right from the very beginning by the Roman Curia. And unlike many progressive people in the Catholic church, you’re critical of Pope Paul VI. You see him as a Curia man. Has the legacy of the Second Vatican Council gone on being undermined? Is the Curia perhaps less Italian and more international, but still just as powerful as ever?

Hans Küng: Well there is no doubt that the most important people in the Curia, they were opposed to the Second Vatican Council. That is not my invention, that is I think the evidence. And they tried from the beginning to hinder Pope John XXIII to have a real renewal. I think I was fair to all the Popes I met, Pius XII, John XXIII, Pope Paul VI, and I just tried to evaluate their problems. And I must say that of course, for all three Popes the Curia was a problem. But Pope Pious XII was in concordance to a great extent with the Curia; John XXIII by-passed it very often; and Pope Paul again was afraid of the Curia, and did not have the courage to make a thoroughgoing reform. The problem was that he wanted to have reform, but he used the cabinet of his predecessor, was already against the reform, and so got into troubles. Personally I must say, Pope Paul - and I’m describing an audience I had with him - was very sympathetic. He had great sympathy for me personally. I was a young man, a young theologian, when he met me the first time; he was often on vacation in Switzerland; he knew about my work on the great Swiss Protestant theologian, Karl Barth; and I think he would have liked that I would have entered the curial service. But that was not possible under these circumstances, because to enter the Curia would have been, I would have sold my soul. And I would only have co-operated if it would have been a serious reform, but not to enter in the present system.

Hans Küng: The next election will certainly be very decisive, and there is no doubt that especially all these Cardinals from the Opus Dei, who are favourable for thIS secret organisation which is an authoritarian, Spanish organisation which has a great influence and which was supported heavily already by Karol Wojtyla when he was Archbishop of Krakow. And the whole question will be: will now the Catholic church be dominated again by a clique of people who is in this authoritarian organisation which is, as a matter of fact, living in a mentality of, I would say, the counter-Reformation, of anti-Modernism, or will we have enough bishops who still remember the Second Vatican Council and who see especially the terrible situation in which our church is in, in the present moment? If you see for instance that the Church of Ireland - I know that a lot of bishops and priests in Australia too, come from this beautiful and most constructive Ireland - I mean constructive in a way that they constructed a great deal of churches, especially in the Anglo Saxon world, and I admire very greatly these people, I was often there. But it’s terrible to see what happens to a Catholic country like Ireland, that this country, who was practically sending priests, hundreds and thousands of priests all over the world, they are practically lost now. They had in 1990, they still had 300 ordinations a year. Last year they had eight ordinations. Eight! As a matter of fact, also in other European countries, and this will happen also to other parts of the world, I’m sure also in Australia, practically the celibate clergy is dying out. And we have already in our German speaking countries, more or less half of the parishes who have not anymore a pastor. We are losing the Sunday Eucharist, all because we do not want to have ordained married men, and why we don’t want to have ordained women.


http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/relrpt/stories/s1267856.htm

[Hardrada]

1. He is right on the mark.

There is also a book out, I forget the author, about the end of Catholic Ireland. The Xian ministry has kept going in Protestant churches because women are allowed into the ministry in many of the denominations though there are some sexist holdouts among the mainstream denominations notably the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

[CHIMO]

2. His Thinking

Goes beyond the point in Ireland though.

Back in the sixties he was leading the pack. Now we have reverted to cliches and Opeus.

Wonder how long it will take before they realize that they have been left behind.