Hans Küng is deeply impressed with Pope Francis.
He has issued a plea to Francis to open a discussion about the dogma of infallibility with a view of overturning it. Küng, by the way, thinks that Vatican II didn’t go nearly far enough in digging at the foundations of faith and morals. He would bring pretty much everything down and, essentially, let majority rule in particular communities on every point.
The Fishwrap (aka National Schismatic Reporter aka National Sodomitic Reporter) has published an attack on Church teaching by Hans Küng, still alive. Küng is going after infallibility, again. He wants the doctrine of infallibility dogma overturned so that all sorts of other teachings can be abandoned, especially Humanae vitae.
“These questions are as relevant today as they were then. The decisive reason for this incapacity for reform at all levels is still the doctrine of infallibility of church teaching, which has bequeathed a long winter on our Catholic church. Like John XXIII, Francis is doing his utmost to blow fresh wind into the church today and is meeting with massive opposition as at the last episcopal synod in October 2015. But, make no mistake, without a constructive “re-vision” of the infallibility dogma, real renewal will hardly be possible.”
There was a point that I found ironic.
Küng:
“1965: Chapter III of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church is devoted to the hierarchy but, oddly enough, Paragraph 25, which is on infallibility, in no way actually goes into it. What is all the more surprising is that in actual fact the Second Vatican Council took a fatal step. …”
The irony is rich.
Fishwrap admires Küng, who criticizes elements of a Dogmatic Constitution of Vatican II, but is against Archbp. Lefebvre and the SSPX, who criticize far less weighty elements of the Council’s lesser documents.
Hypocrites.
Francis is about as likely to renounce his infallibility as Küng is to renounce his own.
And Greg Reynolds is still excommunicated.
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I cannot get my head around this latest exercise in Kung-fu…. I don’t know if it’s simply irony or a violation of the principle of non-contradiction.
Francis is about as likely to renounce his infallibility as Küng is to renounce his own.
Another great line.
Pope Francis in fact strikes me as being pretty authoritarian.
I once read a volume of Küng’s memoirs. I did not realize that it was possible for one human being to spew that much venomous bile. He complains mightily about injustice. However, if anyone reads his theology, it is very clear that he stopped teaching Catholic theology long ago. The solution they came up was to give him a chair in “ecumenical theology” at the University of Tübingen, where he was previously teaching Catholic theology. He remains a priest in good standing of the Diocese of Basel, Switzlerland.
I never understood what Küng has been complaining about. He obviously has no intention of teaching what the Church teaches. I still think he should have been punished more severely than he ultimately was.
I’m always surprised that Kung has neither had his priestly facvulties revoked, nor been excommunicated (assuming Wikipedia is accurate).
“Francis is about as likely to renounce his infallibility as Küng is to renounce his own.”
Hear, hear! Fr. Küng, who has believed his own nonsense for a long time, very much needs our prayers . . .
I saw the Greg Reynolds article on Fishwrap (from Pewsitter) and read it anyway. Never heard of him before yesterday. I wanted to leave a long comment, but discussion was not open on it. Perhaps it never was. Perhaps “they” knew that there would be too much negative said. And he was a “priest” at one time? Amazing. Worst “priest” I’ve heard of so far. A Protestant for sure. Why didn’t he just leave on his own?
Could pope Francis infallibly overturn the doctrine of infallibility?
So the Church should speak out authoritatively against it’s own authority? The reality is, she does not have the authority to weigh in on this matter. That competency lies with her founder and bridegroom who bequeathed that authority, HIS authority, 2000 years ago to the Church. If we submit that there is, in fact, no infallible guide on earth, then we are not simply rationalists who must only be bound to those beliefs we are personally convicted of by our own reasoning, we are, in the end, hopeless nihilists.
Funny how often his name comes up in a bad way. I’m reading The Jesuits by Malachi Martin right now and Küng and the usual suspects play heavily in the attempted and continuing efforts to tear down our Church. Hopefully someday a new type of order like the Jesuits of old will come along and kick people like him down the street of anonymity.
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Fishwrap needs to embrace it’s identity as a comedic Catholic publication. They can start by coming up with better headlines. They missed a golden opportunity here:
“Everybody Hans Kung Tonight”
Dear RichR, even more is true.
Not even Christ himself can abrogate a dogma. For God cannot contradict Himself.
I think it was Hans Urs von Balthasar who said that Kung was the most orthodox Protestant he ever met.
Greg Reynolds is excommunucated, but still gets a forum at NcR: http://ncronline.org/news/spirituality/free-eucharist-curse-clericalism
[He gets a pedestal! Reynolds is one of their heroes! He is what all “presbyters” should be, whether they are female, formerly male, questioning, trans-species….]
@MikeToo, I don’t think the Pope could. It would be logically inconsistent. Further, the Pope is not infallible if he speaks heretically, which overturning a doctrine or dogma would be. Further, from the excerpt here, I am not sure Kung is simply talking about Papal Infallibility, but rather the infallibility of the church as a whole which goes back a lot further than the first Vatican Council.
Packrraat says:
I saw the Greg Reynolds article on Fishwrap (from Pewsitter) and read it anyway. Never heard of him before yesterday. I wanted to leave a long comment, but discussion was not open on it. Perhaps it never was. Perhaps “they” knew that there would be too much negative said. And he was a “priest” at one time? Amazing. Worst “priest” I’ve heard of so far. A Protestant for sure. Why didn’t he just leave on his own?
Jean Meslier was a French priest who died in the 18th century. He was kindly and affectionately thought of by his parishioners. On his death his testament was published, which was an attack on all religion and an assertion of his own atheism.
[You raise an interesting point. I was about to chime in and say that even the weirdest and “worst” priests manage to do some good in their ministries over the years. Also, back in the day, the intelligent and the polite kept things to themselves rather than spew them out in public. Today, no dissident does. It’s always and perpetually all about them.]
If the Pope were to be infallible, then he could not infallibly declare that there is no papal infallibility, and we could just ignore that statement.
The liar’s paradox, from “I, Mudd”
Harry Mudd says, “I am lying”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WRtqmHpLvg
I swear reading the comments over at that pit it scares me. They want to burn Rome down and dance in the flames as the devil plays the fiddle.
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Okay, I’m going to say it: I like Hans Kung.
Do I agree with everything he says? No. Do I agree with most of what he says? No.
I read his memoirs too, both volumes. They were funny–not intentionally, mind you. But they were funny.
I like Hans Kung because he says people who like the TLM should be able to celebrate it–that’s more than most so-called progressives would ever say. I like him because, back when Vatican II was just kicking off, he wrote about what it would mean if the council would “fail”. Think about that. Have you ever heard a party-line cleric admit that the council could fail? Well, I think it did.
And I like Hans Kung because he’s not afraid to admit that Vatican I was a failure too–that the promulgation of papal infallibility was not only “inopportune” but just plain wrong. That’s an important point for traditionalists. There would be no Vatican II, with all its excesses, without the excesses of Vatican I. The idea that the pope can do anything he wants–proclaim new dogmas, abolish the Mass of the ages–all that comes from a wilful misunderstanding of the papacy and the insecurity of Pio Nono as he watched his temporal domain slip away.
Is Hans Kung a heretic? Maybe. But as heretics go, he’s a pretty good one.