Which way is this going to go?

Not long ago, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, echoed a 50-year-old passage from a book by ... wait for it ... Swiss theologian Hans Küng.

Speaking on Spain's church-owned COPE radio network, Parolin underscored the Good Friday theme of Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher for the papal household, and (perhaps unknowingly) brought forth a concept delineated by Küng 50 years ago: Some things can change, but internal church divisions are dangerous.

Dangerous they are, and many divisions fostered by the well-funded hard right in the United States are fixated on pelvic issues and incorporate forms of Trumpism.

The relatively disorganized progressive left can tend to cross the line as well, in the opposite direction.

Still some things, Parolin said, can and should change, although "there is a level that cannot be changed, the structure of the church — the deposit of faith, the sacraments, the apostolic ministry — these are the structural elements."

So, who can change what?

Canon law maintains power in the priestly class, although the combined power of the secular purse and the power of media can present checks and balances to clerical power.

But money also supports clericalism.

Money and media, especially social media, demonstrate the dangers of a clerical-political cash-infused soup.

No doubt about it, there are many people only too happy to replace anything vaguely post-Vatican II with their 1950s imaginings.

There are probably just as many people annoyed at the ill-informed preaching of lace-dressed younger clerics and some bishops. (Recently, the bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, preaching during Ireland's RTE radio Mass, spoke about "Mary Magdalene with her colourful past.")

For those who think the Second Vatican Council was a good idea, there are many legitimate issues to discuss and many "merely ecclesiastical laws" that can and should be modified.

And the majority of the church — the lay 99% — want to have a say.

That is where the question of justice rises to the discussion.

Aside from women ordained as deacons, a fact continually affirmed by historians, there are well-researched, well-documented, well-established facts that support lay participation in church governance.

Over the centuries, the church froze the laity out of any participation in governance and jurisdiction, and the Code of Canon law nailed that door shut.

Canon 129.1 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law — written by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — firmly states that laypeople can cooperate but not participate in the power of governance.

Cash, clericalism, divisions and authority

So how does the church — that means all of us — view what is going on with cash, clericalism, divisions and authority?

The money behind the alt-right is lay money aimed at affecting the way the church reacts to questions of justice: for the poor, for the needy, for women, in addition to the fixation on sexual matters.

Change or no change?

The "no-change" folks have a lot of clerical support. Some "change" folks continue to speak, but many simply walk away.

We know the church can change because it has, usually to maintain clerical power.

Over centuries, the church moved to remove women from any role in the celebration of Eucharist, to keep women outside the altar rail "fence" of superstitious misogyny. (The ridiculous beliefs remain: A bishop told me just the other day that his cathedral rector apologized because a woman was in the sanctuary during the Easter Vigil.)

Yet, there is some light at the top of the clerical ladder.

Pope Francis changed the law so women can be installed as lectors and acolytes. Cantalamessa warned against divisions. And Parolin's talk sounded like a passage from Küng's 1971 book, Why Priests? Küng writes:

A multiplicity of opinions, criticism, and opposition have their legitimate place and require a constant dialogue and the constructive display of contrary ideas.

In all this the private sphere of every member of the Church should be respected (whether they are avant-garde or conservative in nature).

In "matters of faith and morals" nothing can be attained with mere votes. In this regard, where it is impossible to obtain some sort of consensus (not unanimity), it is better to leave the question open according to ancient conciliar tradition.

Echoing Küng, Parolin said: "Sometimes ... one fails to distinguish between what is essential that cannot change and what is not essential that must be reformed, must change according to the spirit of the Gospel."

The secretary of state continued, "There is a whole life of the church that can be renewed."

But is there fear that change will cause the far right to take their money and run? You may recall that the church leaves many questions open because, as Küng points out, "it is impossible to obtain some sort of consensus."

I am not so sure avoiding decisions is the best route.

It is never good to prefer peace to justice.

• Phyllis Zagano is a senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University, in Hempstead, New York. Her most recent book is Women: Icons of Christ, and her other books include Women Deacons: Past, Present, Future. Study guides for both books are available for free download at sites.hofstra.edu/phyllis-zagano/.
• First published by ncronline.org. Republished with permission.

"I come from the land of William Tell and we weren't brought up to be subservient," he said.

"Why should we always crawl? Standing tall suits a theologian too."

Küng paid dearly for that independence, being stripped of his right to teach Catholic theology by St. John Paul II and repeatedly frustrated in his efforts to reform the tradition-bound Vatican.

But Küng's theology books became bestsellers, his articles were printed around the world and his causes — such as abolishing priestly celibacy, challenging papal infallibility and championing interreligious dialogue — became markers for a more open and questioning Catholicism.

"Küng remained one of the spokesmen of an informal global liberal Catholicism that never found its organizational form," said Bernhard Lang, a German theologian who studied under Küng at Tübingen University.

"The rebellious Swiss was jokingly called ‘Martin Luther Küng' by his followers, but he didn't see himself as a Martin Luther." He never wanted to found a new church, just reform the Catholic one he belonged to, Lang noted in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

"Hans Küng loved the church. He even loved the pope," Bishop Felix Gmür of Basel, head of the Swiss bishops' conference, said on learning the theologian had died in his home in Tübingen in southwestern Germany.

"He wanted a renewed church that deals with people's lives as they are and the world as it is."

Bishop Georg Bätzing, head of the bishops' conference in neighbouring Germany, hailed his "concern to make the gospel message understandable and give it a place in believers' lives."

It's often forgotten that Küng, who was born in Sursee in Lucerne canton in 1928, was a loyal priest in good standing, educated in Catholic universities in Rome and Paris and incardinated, or registered as a priest, in his home diocese of Basel. He also wore suits, drove sports cars and skied until late in his long life.

He was self-assured to the point of arrogance, unafraid to criticize popes and question church teachings. After the Vatican barred him from teaching Catholic theology in 1979, he continued as a professor of ecumenical theology at Tübingen, whose theology department has a deep tradition that included Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI. In 1995 Küng launched the Global Ethic Foundation to find common ethical ground among the world's faiths.

Küng crossed swords early on with the Vatican, which began investigating him in 1957 after he published a book questioning whether Catholics and Protestants were really so divided over issues that led to the Reformation.

He played an active role at the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, whereas a theological adviser he argued for liberalizing reforms and dashed off speeches in Latin — the official council language — for bishops from several countries to read to the plenary.

In subsequent years, he repeatedly challenged church teaching with bestsellers such as "Infallible?" (1970), "On Being a Christian" (1974) and "Does God Exist?" (1978). After he wrote a stinging criticism of St. John Paul II's first year in office, the Vatican withdrew his permission to teach Catholic theology.

That didn't stop him. Among other of his over 70 books were "Can the Catholic Church Be Saved?" (2011). In "Die Happy?" (2014), he said he might opt for assisted suicide — which the church opposes — "if I show any signs of dementia."

His growing interest in other religions prompted Küng, who spoke six languages fluently, to also write books about Judaism, Islam and Asian faiths. His works have been translated into about 30 different languages.

Küng had a famously complicated relationship with Pope Benedict XVI, whom he brought to Tübingen to teach in the 1960s when the then-Father Ratzinger was a liberal theologian. He later turned more conservative and headed the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog agency, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, before becoming pope in 2005.

Shortly after that, the two former colleagues held a private meeting to discuss world ethical questions. Benedict did not lift Küng's teaching ban and the theologian soon went back to blasting the conservative pope.

Küng's work on global ethics brought him into contact with political and social leaders around the world. Before the United Nations General Assembly in 2001, he repeated the motto: "No peace among nations without peace among religions. No peace among religions without dialogue between the religions. No dialogue between the religions without investigation of the foundation of the religions."

He was enthusiastic at the election of Pope Francis in 2013, seeing in him a possible successor to the reforming Pope John XXIII, but gradually grew disillusioned with him too.

The Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano carried an interview on Wednesday with Cardinal Walter Kasper, former head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, who was Küng's assistant in Tübingen as a graduate student in the early 1960s.

"He was a combative man, he loved a dialogue painted in strong colours," the German cardinal recalled. "We had our differences, but that never caused any enmity. … In the depth of his heart, he was Catholic.

He never thought of leaving the church." Küng had given the church "reform ideas that have become current issues in Germany," Kasper said, including ideas such as women's ordination or optional celibacy with which Kasper did not agree.

But younger church leaders have drifted in Küng's direction. Gmür and Bätzing, for example, support blessing same-sex couples, as does Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schönborn.

"Küng spearheaded two major developments in Catholic theology after Vatican II," Massimo Faggioli, professor of historical theology at Villanova University, told Religion News Service.

"His books took theology out of the shadow of church control and he looked at religions with a global perspective. His work on global ethics made him unique in appeal and influence."

Margot Kässmann, a prominent German Lutheran theologian, recalled Küng's example for others.

"As a student, I learned from him how to stand tall," she said. "You have to stand up for your convictions, even if they are not always a majority in your church."

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, also a Protestant, praised Küng as an exemplary public intellectual in a condolence message to his sister.

"With his Swiss incorruptibility, he never evaded the necessary dispute about the right path to peace and understanding," he wrote.

The London Catholic weekly The Tablet, a regular outlet for Küng's articles, called the late theologian "one of the most influential and prophetic voices of 20th century Christianity."

It quoted the Rev Yves Congar, a French theologian also active at the Second Vatican Council, as saying of his Swiss colleague: "Küng goes straight ahead like an arrow. He is a demanding, revolutionary type, rather impatient … We need such people."

• Tom Heneghan is an author at Religion News Service. Republished with permission.

But Fr Küng is refusing to release the text of a letter he said he received from Pope Francis on the subject last month.

The theologian cited the "confidentiality that I owe to the Pope".

Catholic media outlets The Tablet and the National Catholic Reporter have therefore been unable to verify that the letter exists.

On March 9, Fr Küng had issued what he called an "urgent appeal to Pope Francis to permit an open and impartial discussion on infallibility of Pope and bishops".

Now the theologian has issued a statement where he expresses his joy at receiving a "personal reply" from Pope Francis.

Fr Küng noted that the Pope had clearly read his infallibility appeal and had made a response himself, which the theologian saw as significant.

Fr Küng said the Pope is highly appreciative of the considerations that were listed in the appeal.

"Pope Francis has set no restrictions [on discussion]," Fr Küng added.

"I think it is now imperative to use this new freedom to push ahead with the clarification of the dogmatic definitions which are a ground for controversy within the Catholic Church and in its relationship to the other Christian churches," he said.

"I am deeply grateful to Pope Francis for this new freedom and combine my heartfelt thanks with the expectation that the bishops and theologians will unreservedly adopt this new spirit and join in this task in accordance with the scriptures and with our great church tradition."

Sources

• The Tablet
• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Huffington Post

Scarcely a month after taking office, he created an international group of eight cardinals to advise him on reform of the Roman Curia.

Only one of them was a Vatican official; the others came from Australia, Chile, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Germany, Honduras, India, and the US, and some of them were outspoken critics of Vatican operations.

As secretary, he appointed an Italian bishop who had recently gone on record for saying that bishops should be men of service, not men of power.

On 1 October, this commission, now officially constituted as the Pope's permanent advisory body, met for the first time for three days of closed-door discussion, during which the Pope listened more than he spoke.

In a long interview given a week earlier to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica to be published on the opening day of the meeting Pope Francis stated that, in creating this body, he wanted 'advisers', not 'courtiers' and that he intended it as a first step in making the Church 'an organisation that is not just top-down but also horizontal'.

Candidly, he expressed his criticism of the Curia and outlined his programme of reform. Continue reading.

Fr Hans Küng is a theologian and author based in Tübingen, Germany.

Source: The Tablet Blog

Image: Living Wittily

In the final volume of his three-part memoirs, he says he has macular degeneration as well as Parkinson's disease. He will soon be blind, and can hardly manage to write by hand any longer.

"I don't want to go on existing as a shadow of myself," Kung writes.

"Human beings have a right to die when they see no hope of continuing to live according to their very own understanding of how to go on living in a humane way."

Kung says cannot understand why his Church and German law deny people the right to assisted suicide. In his native Switzerland suicide organisations are allowed to offer incurably ill patients lethal medication which the patients themselves can then take.

Kung writes that people have a right to "surrender" their lives to God voluntarily if illness, pain or dementia make further living unbearable.

He asks readers: "If I have to decide myself, please abide by my wish."

But if he does have to decide, he says, he does not want to go to a "sad and bleak" assisted suicide centre but rather be surrounded by his closest colleagues at his house in Tuebingen or in his Swiss home town of Sursee.

"No person is obligated to suffer the unbearable as something sent from God," he writes. "People can decide this for themselves and no priest, doctor or judge can stop them."

A spokesman for Rottenburg-Stuttgart diocese, where Tuebingen is located, said Kung's views on assisted suicide were not Catholic teaching. "Mr Kung speaks for himself, not for the Church," Uwe Renz said.

The Vatican withdrew Kung's licence to teach Catholic theology in 1979 after he questioned the doctrine of papal infallibility and refused to recant.

Kung described Pope Francis as "a ray of hope" and disclosed that the new pontiff had sent him a hand-written note thanking him for books that Kung sent him after his election in March.

Sources:

Reuters

The Tablet

Image: Clarin.com

When I decided, months ago, to resign all of my official duties on the occasion of my 85th birthday, I assumed I would never see fulfilled my dream that — after all the setbacks following the Second Vatican Council — the Catholic church would once again experience the kind of rejuvenation that it did under Pope John XXIII.

Then my theological companion over so many decades, Joseph Ratzinger — both of us are now 85 — suddenly announced his resignation from the papal office effective at the end of February. And on March 19, St. Joseph's feast day and my birthday, a new pope with the surprising and programmatic name Francis assumed this office.

Has Jorge Mario Bergoglio considered why no pope has dared to choose the name of Francis until now? At any rate, the Argentine was aware that with the name of Francis he was connecting himself with Francis of Assisi, the world-famous 13th-century downshifter who had been the fun-loving, worldly son of a rich textile merchant in Assisi, until at the age of 24, he gave up his family, wealth and career, even giving his splendid clothes back to his father.

It is astonishing how, from the first minute of his election, Pope Francis chose a new style: unlike his predecessor, no miter with gold and jewels, no ermine-trimmed cape, no made-to-measure red shoes and headwear, no magnificent throne.

Astonishing, too, that the new pope deliberately abstains from solemn gestures and high-flown rhetoric and speaks in the language of the people.

And finally it is astonishing how the new pope emphasizes his humanity: He asked for the prayers of the people before he gave them his blessing; settled his own hotel bill like anybody else; showed his friendliness to the cardinals in the coach, in their shared residence, at the official goodbye; washed the feet of young prisoners, including those of a young Muslim woman. A pope who demonstrates that he is a man with his feet on the ground. Continue reading

Sources

• Hans Kung in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: The Guardian

Theologian Fr. Hans Küng writes from Tübingen, Germany.

Sources

• Leonardo Boff
• Image: UCA News

Leonardo Boff was one of the initiators of liberation theology, and lectures in the fields of theology, philosophy, ethics, spirituality and ecology.

Yet it is Benedict XVI himself who is being accused by his lifelong dissenting colleague, Hans Kueng, of "provoking" disobedience.

Kung goes as far as to call the Pope "schismatic" if he goes ahead and gives canonical recognition to the Society of St. Pius X, founded by Mgr. Lefebvre.

Kueng's harsh accusation was recently published in German newspaper Suedwestpresse.

He writes that preparations for the "final recognition" of the Lefebvrians are already underway and that recognition would be granted "even at the cost of integrating them into the Church using canonical subterfuge." He recalled that the members of the Fraternity "continue to reject fundamental documents of the Council." Continue reading

He made the call in a video message on June 10, the first evening of a conference of the American Catholic Council in Detroit.

"I think few people realize how powerful the pope is," Kung said, likening papal power today to the absolute power of French monarchs that the French people revolted against in 1789.

"We have to change an absolutist system without the French Revolution," he said. "We have to have peaceful change."

In the interview with Kung, played on two giant screens in one of the convention center's main rooms, the theologian predicted change in the church despite resistance from Rome. Vatican II "was a great success, but only 50 percent," he said.

Read more of Hans Kung urging a peaceful revolution against Roman absolutism

Source

• Image: Mundabor's blog

Introducing his new book "Can the Church Still Be Saved?", Kung argues that the malady of the church goes beyond recent sexual abuse scandals.

According to him, the church's resistance to reform, in its secrecy, lack of transparency and misogyny are at the heart of the problem.

He said that the Catholic church in the United States has lost one-third of its membership."The American Catholic church never asked why," he said."Any other institution that has lost a third of its members would want to know why." He also said that eighty percent of German bishops would welcome reforms.

He told the mostly elderly audience, "I would have preferred not to write this book. It is not pleasant to dedicate such a critical publication to the church that has remained my church."

Kung compared the changes needed in the Catholic Church to the democratic changes taking place in the Arab world."When will in our church the youth take to the street? That is our problem; we have no young people anymore," he said to laughter from the 350 people present.

Referring to the celibacy debate that arose after the sexual abuse cases, Kung said, "the Roman Catholic church survived for the first thousand years without celibacy." He is strongly in favour of allowing priests and bishops to marry.

Kung said he has not lost his vision of a church that would meet the expectations of millions of Christians, but certain conditions have to be met. In their reforms, this Church should show Christian radicalism, constancy and coherency.

In concluding Kung said, "I have not given up the hope that it will survive."

Sources

• NCR
• The Christian Century
• Image: The Orate Fratres