In a previous article online, this writer has analyzed Hans Kung. A great help was the Andrews dissertation by C. Enrique Espinosa, "Orthodoxy and Heresy in Hans Küng: An Analysis and Critique of his criteria and norms of Christian truth and error" Dissertation presented for a Ph.d at Andrews University, Michigan, USA February 1988.

2. Hans Küng is regarded as heretical (Robert Nowell 1981: 11).

3. Hans Küng was removed from his "canonical mission" in 1963 but in 1979 he regarded himself as an "authentic son of the Roman Catholic Church" (Espinosa 1988: 9). Needless to say, he is, and if one reads his works there is not really a change.

4. "Professor Hans Küng, in his writings, has departed from the integral truth of Catholic faith, and therefore he can no longer be considered a Catholic theologian or function as such in a teaching role" December 15, 1979 (Leonard Swidler, 1981: 387-388, op. cit. Espinosa 1988: 9).

5. On his part, Hans Küng declared to be loyal to the church:

"I have never made a secret of the fact that, in spite of all the difficulties which have been created for me in this my Church, almost since I received my doctorate in Theology, I remain loyal to this my Church and I stand passionately on her behalf" Letter to Cardinal Höffner, 21 February 1977 (in The Küng Dialogue, 1980: 115-116).

6. Dissenting is viewed from two angles in Christianity: Particularistic and Pluralistic models (Confessional vs Pluralistic models) (Espinosa 1988: 4). With the pluralistic model "dissent is not only legitimate but natural" (Espinosa 1988: 3). Hans Küng belongs to the pluralistic model.

           Der Spiegel printed an interview with him which we translated and present here (Martin Doerry, Ulrich Schwarz und Peter Wensierski, “Jeder Reformer muss Angst vor Rom haben” Der Spiegel [18 December 2011]). “Every Reformer must fear Rome”. In this interview, Küng reacts very similar to Martin Luther when he was still Catholic, before he became Protestant.

THE INTERVIEW IN DER SPIEGEL

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. professor Küng, you have still contact with  your old faculty colleague Joseph Ratzinger?

Hans Küng: After his selection to the Papacy he invited me to a four-hour, friendly discussion into his summer residence Castel Gandolfo. At that time I was hoping it is at the beginning of a new era of openness. But this hope did not fulfill itself. We correspond only with one another. The sanctions against me - withdrawal of church training, that permission is still lacking.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: When did Benedict XVI wrote to you the last time?

Küng: He thanked me through his Private secretary Gänswein for the sending of my book “Can the church still be saved?”and also his cordial greetings.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: They published this book as a critical disputation, in which you criticize the Pope harshly because of his reform-hostile church politics.

Küng: I find it nevertheless very pleasing that he did not simply break off the personal relationship.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You do not stand with your criticism alone. The church is in opinion of many Catholics in a rather desolate condition. The cover-up of the Child abuse by clerics drove believers in crowds from the church. What went wrong?

Küng: If you ask so simply, then I answer also simple. Ratzinger’s predecessor Johannes Paul II, had a program, against the intentions of the second Vatican council, to restore the church politically. He wanted a rechristianization of Europe. And his most faithful Adlatus was already very early, Joseph Ratzinger. One can speak of a period of the restoration of the preconciliar Roman rule system.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why do the distortions now suddenly come into the church 50 years after the council?

Küng: It was bubbling in the church already for a long time. It is shown most clearly at the cover-up for many decades of sexual encroachments of clerics against children. Until the world-wide child abuse could not let itself any longer be denied. But denying the sexual abuse is not the only cover- up action of the catholic hierarchy. The cover-up of the church’s state of emergency is just as bad.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What do you understand by it?

Küng: That the church life in many countries far away on districts level broke down. In Germany there was in 2010 for the first time more withdrawals from the Catholic Church (over 181,000) than baptisms (round 170,000). We lost since the council in the sixties ten thousands of priests, hundreds of pastoral buildings are without Ministers, men and women orders became extinct, they could find no more a new generation. The service attendance constantly sank. But the church hierarchy does not have so far the courage to admit honestly and unexcusingly how the real situation is. I ask myself, how that is to continue?

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What you said, sounds very pessimistic. Is the Catholic Church still to be saved?

Küng: The Catholic Church as a faithful community will remain in my admiration, but only if she can give up the Roman rule system. A thousand years we could do without this absolutist system. The whole misery took its beginning in the eleventh century. At that time the Popes established their absolute requirement for rule over Church, with clerics who did not want to grant the layman at all any more power. Also the celibacy laws originated from this epoch.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In one " Zeit" - interview you compared Pope Benedict to Ludwig XIV who was as a king not as wonderful as the  absolutist governing head of the Catholic Church. Could Benedict, even if he wanted it, really change the absolutist Roman system?

Küng: It is correct that this absolutism is an essential element of the Roman system. But it was never an essential element of the Catholic Church. The Second Vatican Council did everything, in order to get away from it, but unfortunately not consistently enough. One did not dare to criticize the Pope directly, one had to see the collegiality of the Papacy with the bishops, to bring him again back into the community.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: With success?

Küng: One cannot maintain that. The embarrassing way with which the collegiality since then simply hushed up and neglected Vatican Politics, is unparalleled. There reigns today again a personality cult without comparison, which stands in contradiction to all that which one can read in the New Testament. To that extent one may also say with all clarity, Benedict allowed them to give him again a Tiara, a Papal crown, the medieval symbol of absolute papal power, that which his predecessor Pope Paul VI had solemnly put down. I find that unacceptable. When he wants, he can change everything overnight.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But he does not want to?

Küng: He does not want. I absolutely believe that, because he has the authority. He would have to use it only in the spirit of the gospel.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You do not want to push only the power of the Pope back, you demand an end of celibacy. You want women also as priests. You want them to waive the pill prohibition. Papal-loyal Catholics are saying, those are all elements which belonged to the identity marks of the Catholic Church. If you throw all this away, what will remain of the church?

Küng: What remains, is a catholic church, like it already was - and it was better. I do not say, one is to abolish the papacy. But we need offices, which stand in the service of the congregation, we need a papacy, like the one that was practiced by Johannes XXIII. He did not want to dominate, but has simply shown, he is for all, also the other churches, therefore he made possible the council and a new flourishing in Ecumenism. He left a new church to become alive. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: There are many in the Catholic Church, who say, if all these reforms are applied, which you demand, then you have made the church a piece closer to Protestantism and that is giving up Catholicism.

Küng: The church will become more protestant, no question. But we will always retain our own characteristics, this global thinking, universality, which differentiates us from a narrow-mindedness/tightness of the protestant regional churches. That is to remain also so, as the office. But if again everything is concentrated in the office, then stands at the end again the medieval Pastoral-lord, the prince bishop and similarly the Pope as the absolute ruler, who embodies at the same time executive, legislative and judicial aspects, everything in contradiction to the modern democracy and to the gospel.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You and Benedict are walking on two differentiated ways. You want to reform the church, in order to keep it alive. The Pope tries to reinforce the church outward and restrict it ever more on a conservative core, which possibly will then survive.

Küng: Indeed. In former times people compared the Roman system with the communists. Also there, only one had all the say. Today I ask myself whether we do not stand in a phase of the Putinizing of the Catholic Church. Understandably I do not want to compare the holy father as a person with the unholy Russian statesman. But structurally, politically there are many similarities. Putin had taken over also an inheritance of democratic reforms. He did however everything, in order to take it back if possible. In the church we had the council, which initiated a renewal and an ecumenical understanding. Even pessimists could not imagine that such setbacks would be possible thereafter.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: A daring comparison.

Küng: That naturally may not be overemphasized. But unfortunately similar negative developments are not to be ignored when one acknowledges all the positives. Practically Ratzinger brought, similarly as Putin, his former co-workers into prominent positions and cold-placed others, which were unpopular to him. And one could draw still further comparisons: deprivation of power of the parliament/the Bishop-synod; degrading of the province governors of the bishops to command receivers; a conformalistic "nomenclature"; a resistance against genuine reforms. Ratzinger promoted his assistants from his time as a boss of the Faith Authority to be cardinal Secretary of State and thus promoted him to be a deputy of the Pope.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is bad about it?

Küng: The fact that under the German Pope a small predominantly Italian clique of yes-men could set themselves near the lever of the power, who does not have understanding for demands of reform. Their representatives are even among the jury members of the new Ratzinger price for theological studies, sponsored by Italian banks: beside the mentioned cardinal Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, the cardinal Angelo Amato, likewise under Ratzinger’s secretary of the Congregation of Faith and today Prefect of the Holy Speeches Congregation. At the top is the reactionary former president of the Italian bishop conference, cardinal Camillo Ruini. All these curia members are jointly responsible for the stagnation, which suffocates each modernization of the church system.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What do conditions in the Vatican have to do with the situation of the church in Germany?

Küng: Behind all Roman friendliness, liturgical splendor and pseudo- statehood is hidden substantial power politics. The Vatican controls the occupation of bishop chairs and theology chairs and let only Vatican conformists pass. His clique supervise the bishop conferences and inform constantly the center. In this system, denunciation boomed again. Each reform-oriented minister in Germany, also each bishop, must have fear that he is denounced in Rome. In addition there is the enormous Vatican-influence over the media - see the Papal visit!

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What role does the Cologne cardinal Meisner play, a proven hardliner, in this internal-church wrangling?

Küng: It is an open secret that the bishop conference is placed  increasingly under the influence of Meisner, which man could not consider as actually possible. Meisner has even the direct wire to the Roman power core. Among his attendants younger bishops rank such as Tebartz van Elst in Limburg. Also the new archbishop in Berlin, Rainer Woelki, is a Meisner favorite. Man tries to occupy the strategically most important posts, which also has system. Man wants to strengthen with all means the ruleship system.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Your prognosis sounds dark.

Küng: It is to me very important that we do not sink in pessimism. But my diagnosis indicates that the church is ill, it is the illness of the Roman system. There I cannot say simply like a bad physician, ‘everything will become well soon’.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What would the counter-therapy be?

Küng: The basis must collect their forces and emphasize itself in such a way that the system no longer go past at it. In my book I presented a comprehensive catalogue of measures.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: At the beginning of 2011 a number of prominent German Catholics had an initiative for the abolishment of the Duty celibacy. The effect was zero.

Küng: In addition, there are signs that resistance is not futile. The Roman prohibition of female ministries failed because of the disobedience of soul-care and fellowship. In Austria approximately 400 catholic priests and deacons together, presented an initiative to call the “Roman refusal to open up a long-awaited necessary church reform and the inactivity of the Bishops" as "disobedient". They want to ignore for instance the Vatican prohibition for lay-theologians to preach and to permit again marriage for divorced ones, and to let Protestants, as well as the wayward into the fellowship. The Viennese cardinal Christian Schönborn threatened them immediately with sanctions. But they called upon their conscience and did not want themselves to be intimidated.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: 2010 you wrote an open letter to all bishops of the world, in which you justified in great detail your criticism of the Pope and the Roman system. What was the result then?

Küng: There are approximately 5000 bishops in the world, and none dared to express themselves publicly. That shows nevertheless that something is not correct. If you talk with individual bishops, you often hear: "Fundamentally it is like that, as you say, but one cannot do anything." It would be marvelous, if a prominent bishop mentioned sometimes: "It cannot continue this way! We cannot sacrifice the whole church, to please the Roman bureaucrats." But so far no one showed the courage. The ideal would be for me a coalition from reform theologians, reform-ready laymen and soul-care takers with reform-ready bishops. Those would conflict naturally with Rome, but they must then be tolerated in critical loyalty.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: That is how the Reformation started 500 years ago. The Roman system also at that time was not able to understand the criticism from below.

Küng: One is surprised after 500 years that the Popes and bishops did  not recognize that a reform was necessary. Luther did not want church splitting, but the Pope and bishops were blind. Today one has the impression that it is similar again.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Would a council help the church?

Küng: I hope that a council comes or anyhow a representative meeting of the Catholic Church.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you believe that you will still experience such a council?

Küng: One should not set limits to God’s grace.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. professor Küng, we thank you for this discussion.

Martin Doerry, Ulrich Schwarz and Peter Wensierski led the interview. It is published in the online book "Wie gut ist Ihre Allgemeinbildung? Der große SPIEGEL-Wissenstest - Religion" (24 November 2011) by the editors Martin Doerry and Markus Verbeet.

Source:

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/0,1518,801075,00.html

http://www.spiegelgruppe.de/spiegelgruppe/home.nsf/pmwebaktuell/A05B2CC14EA39F30C1257952004BCDB4 (Site of the online book).