In the current online version of the National Catholic Reporter there is an interview with Fr. Hans Küng, a leading Roman Catholic theologian and a former colleague of Joseph Ratzinger. In this excerpt from the interview, Fr. Küng talks about how and Ratzinger have grown apart in their thinking.
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It is symptomatic, Küng thinks, that the pope, who is by nature a humble man, should have adopted “pomp and circumstance” since his election. Küng was particularly disconcerted when Benedict put on the liturgical vestments of Leo X, “who condemned Luther without knowing him or having any idea of the Reformation.” Küng tells me that he wrote to Benedict, “at the time when we were still exchanging views,” asking him why he was doing this. Did he get a reply? “No, when he lifted the excommunication of the four schismatic Lefebvrist bishops and fished in Anglican waters, I did not think there was any point in continuing.”While researching for his 1980 book Does God Exist?: An Answer for Today, Küng read deeply in the philosophy of science. There he came across Thomas Kuhn’s theory of “paradigms” -- sets of controlling ideas that govern scientific opinion before giving way in a “paradigm shift” to a succeeding set of ideas that then becomes the norm. It struck him that there were close parallels -- as well as differences -- between scientific revolutions and epochal changes in Christianity, and he applies the paradigm theory to explain Benedict’s thinking.
“For me the first paradigm is the Judaeo-Christian one. He has no serious theological knowledge of it. The second paradigm, the Hellenistic one, is what interests him. For him the Enlightenment is the Greek enlightenment, when the biblical message meets Greek philosophy.” This second paradigm, he explains, then gives way to the third, the medieval Catholic paradigm that established itself in the 11th century with Gregory VII and culminated in the Renaissance.
Küng recalls how French theologian Yves Congar, who played a major part at Vatican II (1962-65), would tell him, “If you want to understand the Roman Catholic church today, look at the 11th century.” There one sees the break between West and East, the rise of “Roman absolutism” and “enforced clericalism -- including the law of celibacy.” Küng thinks that Benedict is still wedded to that paradigm. “He is an antimodernist in the deepest sense of the word.”
By contrast, Vatican II set itself to take account of the succeeding two paradigms of the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Unless this aim of the council is understood and implemented, Küng warns, its work will be “falsified.” For an example, he points to the “absolutely impossible statement” by Ratzinger’s doctrinal congregation in 2000 that the churches that issued from the Reformation “are not real churches.”
But this subverts the council’s teaching, objects Küng, as stated in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, that “the unique church of Christ … subsists in the Catholic church” (the Latin is subsistit in). At the time, Küng recalls, he wrote to the Belgian secretary of the theological commission, Msgr. Gérard Philips, to ask why they had said “subsists in,” rather than “is” as the preliminary text for the council had had it. The reply he received was that “we wanted to keep the matter open.”
Küng relives the promise those days held. “The great majority of the bishops and theologians were expecting that after the council all this would be settled anyway. We were on the right track, we thought, and we shall go on.”
Küng’s ideal pope is always John XXIII, who launched the council. Constantly in his writings Küng pleads for a papacy of pastoral service, like that of John, empowering the bishops, rather than one based on jurisdiction. “I am certainly not in favor of a straw man in Rome. But a pastoral authority is more powerful than just a jurisdictional authority.” In many ways, he believes, John had more authority than his predecessor, Pius XII. “In an audience in the Greek College in Rome, Pope John said, ‘I am only infallible if I speak infallibly but I shall never do that, so I am not infallible.’ That was his way, not making great historical arguments, but proceeding by his natural Christian feeling of what is authentically Christian and what is not.”
Küng said he is still devastated by the withdrawal in December 1979 of his license to teach as a Catholic theologian. When I ask him about his regrets as he looks back on a long and eventful life, his reply surprises me. He singles out his decision to go skiing that Christmastide, only for the bad news to be telephoned to him while he was on top of a mountain. It is not that it would have made any difference if he had not gone, but that his decision to do so seems to him to throw into relief his misjudgment. “I was under the illusion that the Vatican would follow their own statutes. I thought they would not withdraw my license without going through the whole procedure. Everything was blocked because they did not want to give me the files. I thought they would not dare.”
(Professor Fr. Hans Küng (Switzerland)
Professor of Ecumenical Theology, University of Tübingen, President of the Foundation for a Global Ethic (Welethos).
Fr. Hans Küng is a scholar of theology and philosophy and prolific writer. He studied philosophy and theology at the Gregorian University (Rome), the Sorbonne, and the Institut Catholique de Paris. In addition, Fr. Küng holds numerous awards and honorary degrees from several universities.
Fr. Küng is President of the Foundation for a Global Ethic (Weltethos). From 1960 until his retirement in 1996, he was Professor of Ecumenical Theology and Director of the Institute for Ecumenical Research at the University of Tübingen.
From 1962-1965, he served as official theological consultant (Peritus) to the Second Vatican Council appointed by Pope John XXIII.
Fr. Küng is co-editor of several journals and has written many books, which are translated into different languages, including: Justification; The Church; On Being a Christian; Does God Exist?; Theology for the Third Millenium; Christianity and the World Religions; Judaism; Christianity; Global Responsibility; A Global Ethics for Global Politics and Economics; Tracing the Way - Spiritual Dimensions of the World Religions. He was the drafter of The Declaration Toward a Global Ethic of the Parliament of the World's Religions in 1993, and of the proposal of the InterAction Council for a Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities, 1997.)
Sources include
http://ncronline.org/news/people/straight-arrow-theologian-and-pope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_K%C3%BCng
http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/ratzingers-responsibility
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0416/1224268443283.html
http://www.un.org/Dialogue/Kung.html
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