Catholic Teacher Draws Papal Fire
By “Awake!” correspondent in Germany
SELDOM has a religious subject commanded newspaper space for so long, and captured the attention of Germans as much, as the announcement last December that the Vatican had revoked Hans Küng’s permission to teach Catholic theology at Germany’s University of Tübingen. Widespread and highly emotional expressions of protest—but also of support—quickly followed.
One Catholic weekly called “the condemnation of this world famous, controversial, aggressive, keen-minded theologian” a “profound shock” that would be felt “throughout the entire Western religious world.” What had caused the Vatican to take such a step?
A Controversy of Long Standing
Hans Küng, born in Switzerland in 1928, studied in Rome and was ordained to the priesthood in 1954. As early as 1957 he caused raised eyebrows among orthodox Catholics with the thesis he wrote for his Doctor of Theology degree. In it he argued that the doctrine of Christian justification as taught by Karl Barth, one of Europe’s leading 20th-century Protestant theologians, was compatible with Catholic teaching.
In 1967 Küng, now professor of dogmatics and ecumenical theology at Tübingen University, published a book entitled “The Church.” His unorthodox views were quickly rejected by Vatican officials, who invited him to Rome to have the matter clarified. Küng refused to go, claiming that the Hierarchy’s authoritarian manner would prevent a fair and open hearing. Three years later he published the book Infallible? An Inquiry, timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the dogma of papal infallibility, a dogma Küng claimed was open to question.
Meanwhile his books were selling well. New ones published in 1974 and 1978 became best-sellers. Some thought the controversy showed signs of waning, when, in his 1978 book, Küng dealt with a “safe” subject: proofs for the existence of God. But in the spring of 1979 he published a book entitled “The Church—Remaining in the Truth?” and also wrote the introduction to an anti-Vatican book authored by August Hasler, How the Pope Became Infallible. The slumbering flames of religious controversy flared anew, this time higher than before.
So the Vatican’s ruling, although long in coming, was not totally unexpected. It found that “Professor Hans Küng, in his writing, has departed from the integral truth of Roman Catholic faith, and therefore he can no longer be considered a Catholic theologian or function as such in a teaching role.”
What did this actually mean? The action stopped far short of excommunication, and even permitted Küng to remain a priest. But it did take away his permission to teach Catholic theology and to train men for the priesthood.
On What Authority Did the Church Act?
In 1933 a concordat between Germany and the Vatican was signed by Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli (who later became Pope Pius XII) and Hitler’s vice-chancellor, Franz von Papen. This concordat granted the Catholic Church in Germany certain rights and favors in exchange for certain concessions made by the Church to the government. In 1957 the German Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the concordat was still binding under present German law.
Section 22 provides for “the designation of teachers of the Catholic religion . . . by mutual agreement between the local bishop and the local state government.” This means that no one can be appointed to teach Catholic theology without Church approval, not even at a state-run school.
This raises the interesting question: Can Küng continue to teach theology as a member of the university’s theological faculty, although not officially representing the Church? Or must the university transfer him to another department to teach a nonreligious subject?
The members of Tübingen’s Catholic theological faculty had come out in overwhelming support of Küng, but in February called upon him to resign from the theological staff. Küng thereafter canceled his classes, but said he was “saddened that they [were] just now taking this action” after supporting him at the beginning.
Küng’s View
Küng denies that he is a disgruntled heretic—indeed, the Church has stopped short of accusing him of heresy. At present he neither rejects the Church with its papacy nor tries to turn Catholics away from Catholicism. To the contrary. In a letter to Pope Paul VI he acknowledged his “criticism of our Church,” but called it “a criticism based on love.” The basis for his criticism, he claims, is Pope John XXIII’s wish, expressed at the 1962 Ecumenical Council Vatican II, “to let some fresh air into the church.”
“Progressive” Catholics have been quick to support Küng’s suggestions for reform on such subjects as birth control, women in the priesthood and priest celibacy. Also by questioning such doctrines as papal infallibility, the doctrine that Christ and God are “one in substance” and the doctrine of the virgin birth, he has touched on subjects many Catholics find difficult to believe. His call for a more democratic form of Church government, allowing bishops a greater share in shaping Church policy, has found widespread support.
Küng says he has never claimed to be an official spokesman for the Hierarchy. Rather, “as a Catholic theologian inside the Church” he sees himself as a spokesman “for the legitimate concerns of numerous Catholics.” He asks: “When will the representatives of the financially so-well-oiled and perfectly administrated Church apparatus finally recognize in the silent departure of hundreds of thousands of Catholics . . . an alarm signal calling for critical self-examination?”
The Church’s View
Munich’s Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger explained the Church’s view, saying: “Everyone has the right to develop his own ideas and to express them . . . But not everyone has the right to say that his ideas are an expression of what the Catholic Church teaches . . . [Küng] must be permitted to investigate and to study. The Church must be permitted to reject him as an interpreter of its teachings.”
The Church says that a person of Küng’s prominence dare not be permitted to challenge its authority openly. His calling Church dogmas into question has created confusion and stirred up unrest among Catholics. Action, some feel, was long overdue. Time magazine quoted one Vatican official as saying privately: “John Paul II is cracking down, and he is picking the big ones first.” Other Church “embarrassments,” such as the Netherlands’ theologians Schillebeeckx and Schoonenberg, or Brazil’s theology professor Leonardo Bogg, may be next.
Who Is Right—The Church or Küng?
In all honesty it must be admitted that, viewed from their standpoint, both have certain valid arguments. But two things are disturbing: the unchristian way in which they have carried on their controversy, and their failure to appeal to solid Scriptural evidence in support of their positions.
The Catholic weekly Christ in der Gegenwart (The Contemporary Christian) under the heading “Mistakes on Both Sides” said that the Church had made “regrettable mistakes” in handling the matter, but added: “To a certain extent Professor Küng, too, must be blamed . . . His cutting language has helped destroy brotherly confidence.”
The Hamburger Abendblatt was more blunt: “It was no moderate dispute among holy ones, not one characterized by persuasion, by listening, by a striving for truth in the spirit of love. It was one characterized by beating and stabbing.”
Is this what a person would normally expect of a Church claiming to be based upon Christ, “who, when he was reviled, did not revile” (1 Pet. 2:23, Douay), or of one of its most distinguished theologians, whose “criticism,” he claims, is “based on love”?
It is apparent that the Church, confronted with divisive elements within its ranks, is trying hard to uphold its authority. Küng is fighting hard to remold the Church into what he thinks it should be.
But both have failed. In what respect? In the hundreds of pages of material presented in defense of their individual stands, solid Scriptural argumentation has been forced to take a backseat to Church tradition, popular opinion, human wisdom and philosophical hairsplitting. This should never be.
If you as a sincere Catholic—or Protestant for that matter—are sometimes unsure as to what you should believe, if you are “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine,” so to speak, then turn to the Bible for true guidance. Read it, study it, accept help from persons willing to aid you in understanding it. The Bible, and the Bible alone, is “inspired of God” and “is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice.”—Eph. 4:14; 2 Tim. 3:16, Douay.
“Now I exhort you, brothers, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you should all speak in agreement, and that there should not be divisions among you, but that you may be fitly united in the same mind and in the same line of thought.”—1 Cor. 1:10.