Hans Kung Attacked By The Crying Room Generation

Hans Kung is one cat Benedict can not charm, nor can traditionalist easily dismiss--as one can tell from their pathetic attacks.

Hans Kung's Long Goodbye
by Michael Brendan Dougherty 4/22/10

Hans Kung is still alive! He periodically sends out messages to remind us of the fact -- kind of Bin Laden-ish of him, which speaks to his ecumenical integrity. Last week he published an open letter to the bishops of the world with one message: Undermine my gracious friend and medieval dictator, your pope. (Kung asked for a rethinking of the theology of infallibility and the office of the papacy, as he has consistently done through out his career.)

George Weigel has ably answered many of the plain calumnies in the letter, and I'm happy to add to the catalog of Kung's errors. Kung complains that Protestants "have been denied the status of churches in the proper sense of the term," making intercommunion impossible. And he decries the move to bring the Society of St. Pius X "back into communion with the church." Apparently if you are trying to be part of the Catholic Church (like the SSPX), you deserve no quarter; but the pope should shuttle Tradition, doctrine, and dogma for people who don't think of themselves as Catholics and don't ever want to. (This is so typical of the narrow kind of self serving statements of a 'traditionalist'. Catholicism has never been one monolithic Roman latin expression. Google Eastern rites.)

Kung desires that "the spirit of the Second Vatican Council" become the compass for the Church and charges Pope Benedict XVI with violating "the spirit of the Council Fathers." These are spirits that Kung has no trouble divining, and they increasingly resemble a private revelation that I dearly wish the Holy Office would examine more fully. (Name another theologian who has had the Vatican scrutiny that Hans Kung has undergone. By the way it's called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, not the Holy Office.)

Kung says, "He [Benedict XVI] promotes the medieval Tridentine Mass by all possible means." Except by publicly celebrating it. And exactly what Mass did the Council Fathers celebrate? Oh! That old thing. (What other one were they going to celebrate?)

The New York Times has gone after Benedict for being too concerned with doctrine and not enough with governance. But this is much more true of Kung than Benedict, who declares the lack of Vatican II spirit as "the most serious of all" defects in the current Church. (Vatican II had one or two words to say about governance, as Benedict well knows.)

But apart from the errors, obfuscations, and lies, Kung's letter is notable for its utter lameness, and sadness. There are people who tell me that I just "don't get it," and "it" is the 1960s. They play the records and try to tell me how it felt to listen to them. Hans Kung is a lot like this.

Vatican II is his Woodstock. Oh Ratz, you were one of us. Now you've become "the Man," man.
Kung's protesting missive is befuddling; it's as if someone decided to defiantly burn a bra today. The gesture is so antique, it borders on the endearing. His treasured ideas about the liturgy, recognizing Anglican orders, and changing the Church's teaching on birth control are as outdated and naive as free love. "It was the spirit, man -- a liberation. And we need more of that today." No, we really don't, one thinks, before politely asking, "Want me to mash your meds in some hummus?" (This entire paragraph is utterly childish. It is a perfect example of juvenile male gibberish.)

So long as boomers make decisions in the media, we'll be stuck with documentaries extolling the 1960s counterculture. Similarly, we will stop hearing about "the spirit of Vatican II" (and probably most of the texts) once those boomer priests are falling into their graves, as they are starting to do. (What kind of education did you receive that you truly think the 60's were all about free love, folk music, and drugs? Google John and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, civil rights, Richard Nixon, and the Vietnam war.)

And that is why Kung believes the Church is dying or in its worst crisis. His "Church" really is as gray-haired and grumpy as the one he imagined euthanizing at the Council. Go to the most liberal parish in your area; along with the Marty Haugen and guitars, you'll find expanding guts, ladies with short-cut gray hair. At a traditional-leaning parish, like my own St. Mary's in Norwalk, Connecticut, you'll find young families, lots of kids, women with long hair sometimes tucked under mantillas. (I have long hair. Does that make me one of your kind of women? I guess not, I tend to tuck it under a golf cap complete with sunglasses perched on the brim---not Oakley's though.)

Here's some real talk: The generation of priests and bishops who made it their mission to "implement the Council" -- the ones who expected ongoing revisions to liturgy, faith, and morals in the Church -- are graying fast. Already the Church's soixante-huitards are being replaced by a clergy that came into the Church because they were inspired by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. And as Benedict allows for the emergence of the traditional Mass and begins the painful process of reforming the reformed liturgy, traditionalists like myself will begin to recover from their battered-child pathologies. (Google Archbishop Mixa, before you start in about battered-child pathologies. He's one of your kind of traditional clerical 'blue hairs'.)

Kung's vision of the reformed Church deserves to die, but I find it hard to be angry about his protests. He is a revolutionary whose ideas enthralled his world for a time before slipping away. He never succeeded in changing the Church forever. And despite his pretensions to persecution, he never got the satisfaction of the heretic who nobly troops to the pyre, either. Between now and his obituary, he has only the op-ed pages. (You are in for a rude awakening. Your remnant can not sustain the Vatican Church in all it's splendor. Economic reality will win out over your fantasy. Changes are coming. The Holy Spirit is moving and She is not moving backwards. She never does. You might even see her burning a Fiddle back chasuble in St. Peter's Square. Maybe you can ask for your own rite--like those traditional Anglicans.)

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George Weigel's commentary is better only in that he uses big words and doesn't call down the entire 'boomer' generation. He keeps his attack focused on Kung, but is little better in addressing Kung's points.

I admit I found Kung's letter to the worlds bishops a bit over the top. For instance, I really can't blame Pope Benedict for being:

"directly responsible for engineering the global cover-up of child rape perpetrated by priests, according to this open letter to all Catholic bishops."

I can question Benedict's courage to act on his conscience when he implemented the strategy of JP II. I can question the level of his real authority in his apparent failure to have any sway with the Hoyos and Sodano's of the Vatican world. I can question why he continued to operate in and support a culture he apparently found corrupt and 'filthy'.

Unlike Kung, I think the real roots of the clerical cover up lay with Cardinal Ottaviani. It was his dicastery which issued the original letter, Crimen Sollicitationis in 1962. It was Ottaviani and his supporters who surreptitiously changed parts of the final documents of Vatican II. It was Ottaviani who was most instrumental in sabotaging the work of Pope Paul's Birth Control Commission--along with one Archbishop Wojtyla. The pews started emptying with in days of Pope Paul issuing Humanae Vitae. The incredible hope the laity had, that finally the Vatican would get out of their bedrooms, was crushed. The incredible hope the clergy had, that celibacy would be made optional, was crushed. The ranks of priests emptied and the seminaries closed.

If the 60's were about anything it was about the empowerment of marginalized classes of people like racial minorities, women, and oh yea, young men forced by the draft to participate in an ugly war. "Hell no, we won't go" was a more common refrain than Kumbaya. The NCAA shots heard round the world were the real ones fired at Kent State. This is not to disparage the shots fired by Texas Western's all black stating five in 1966 when they upset an all white Kentucky team for the NCAA basketball championship. They were quite a statement themselves. There was no women's basketball championship in 1966 because the bra burning hadn't started yet. There were dead women at Kent State though. Empowerment sometimes got you killed, not pregnant.

The same surge for individual empowerment was felt by John XXIII and given voice in the council. I'll be the first to admit, there wasn't always a concomitant understanding that personal empowerment also meant personal responsibility and personal accountability. That understanding was always going to be a difficult concept to get across when the society itself previously addressed that notion by reinforcing the idea that personal choice was best left to one's betters. This is why Catholics accepted the rightness of the Vatican intruding in their bedroom. They were conditioned to give those choices to their clergy and Vatican teaching. The combination of Vatican II and the 60's movements of empowerment spelled the end of that kind of thinking in the West.

The personal empowerment genie is not going back in the bottle and no amount of Latin is going to magically make that happen. Benedict is in the unenviable position of leading a hierarchy that let their 'betters' make their decisions, shirking their personal responsibility. Society doesn't much tolerate that kind of thinking any more. Now Benedict has to face the fact the it was the duplicitous restoration started by Cardinal Ottaviani and Ottoviani's supporters in the Vatican, carried through in JPII's papacy, and fully supported by himself, that engendered the kind of lock step global cover up he and his bishops engaged in and for which they are soundly being castigated.

However, there are some bishops who are getting this whole notion of failure to accept personal responsibility and they are willing to pay the price:

Statement from Bishop Jim Moriarty on the Holy Father’s acceptance of his resignation as Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin

The Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI has today formally accepted my resignation as Bishop of Kildare & Leighlin, which I offered on 23rd December, in the wake of the Murphy Report.
The decision to offer my resignation was the most difficult decision of my ministry. I did not anticipate resigning when I first read the Murphy Report, because I was not directly criticised.

However, the Murphy Report covers far more than what individual Bishops did or did not do. Renewal must begin with accepting responsibility for the past. I served as an Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of Dublin from 1991 until my appointment to this diocese in 2002. I was part of the governance of the Archdiocese prior to when correct child protection policies and procedures were implemented. Again I accept that from the time I became an Auxiliary Bishop, I should have challenged the prevailing culture. Once more I apologise to all survivors and their families. (The most refreshing part of this is that Bishop Moriarty is using all "I" statements. There is no attempt to spread blame by using 'we' statements.)

I know that words of apology are not enough. Before speaking on other matters, it is important to be able to report that, learning from the past, the Irish Church now has excellent child safeguarding procedures in place. Kildare & Leighlin Diocese has fully subscribed to the definitive ‘Standards and Guidance’ document published by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in 2008. This is exemplified in the policy document we subsequently produced ourselves, in our training programmes undergone by priests and lay people, many of the latter having volunteered to act as ‘designated person’ in their parish, our use of Garda vetting and our co-operation with civil and Church audits. We remain keenly aware of the need for constant vigilance and updating to ensure that the Church is the safest possible place for children.

When I announced before Christmas that I was offering my resignation to the Holy Father, I explained what I hoped it might achieve - I hope it honours the truth that the survivors have so bravely uncovered and opens the way to a better future for all concerned.

(Clerical abuse survivors exemplify another very difficult path of personal empowerment in the face of incredible opposition from entrenched power.)

The truth is that the long struggle of survivors to be heard and respected by church authorities has revealed a culture within the Church that many would simply describe as unchristian. People do not recognise the gentle, endless love of the Lord in narrow interpretations of responsibility and a basic lack of compassion and humility. This has been profoundly dispiriting for all who care about the Church. As I stated in my contribution at the recent gathering of Irish Bishops with the Holy Father. Let us be clear, our failures have damaged our peoples faith and the strength of our witness.

The truth is also that the Church is at the same time holy and always in need of being purified, always follows the way of penance and renewal (Lumen Gentium 8). I believe the spiritual well-being of the People of God demands that this principle of the Church as always in need of reform, which was embraced at the Second Vatican Council, should again come to the forefront of Church life. I believe, as I said at the recent Vatican gathering that the goal should be a new fellowship (cf. Acts 4:32-37); a deeper sharing of the mission that transcends the kind of clerical culture that led us here..... (Read the rest of Bishop Moriarty's statement here.)