Thursday, April 22, 2010

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.)



***********************************************


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:




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.)


22 comments:

  1. Boy, if Vatican apologists think protest letters and blogs are quaint and archaic throw-backs to bra burning, they should be glad they are not Hindus! In India to behave in ways that are contrary to the faith one holds out to followers is a CRIME! In case you missed it, here is the reaction to one guru caught on video having sex with 2 women:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8634696.stm

    Follow the link and see the photo of the guru - being burned! Imagine if photos of bishops, including the pope, were being burned. Imagine if prelates were trying to hide out, because arrest warrants had been issued. Imagine states which prosecute religious leaders who behave contrary to what they preach!

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  2. "I have decided to live a life of spiritual seclusion for some indefinite time," the guru said in a statement.

    That's funny, that's kind of what a golf guru said too. You know--Tiger Woods. Only this year, that 'lefty' guy---who actually adores his wife---is the real Master. I'm sure his Holy Lob Wedges give him a spiritual advantage.

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  3. Mr. Dougherty's screed is a perfect example of the young fogey in action. He is not reacting to the 1960s as they really were, but as he imagined they were. Weigel has been out of clout since the demise of John Paul II. I wonder if Mr. Weigel has ever had cause to regret his impassioned defense of the undoubtedly guilty Maciel.

    I think you are right about Ottaviani undermining some aspects of Vatican II, and that the "remnant" can't hope to stop change.

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  4. Ah, yes, Colleen, but if only they did really STAY in seclusion. Still, nice to see India gets it!

    As a matter of fact they do. One reason why Christianity has never made many Indian converts is the lack of truly living the life they preach. Only saintly ascetics are venerated in India. And woe unto them if they betray the faithful!

    And yes, wasn't it wonderful to see Phil win that tournament? And Tiger's reaction... that he needs to rethink things. Again... if only...

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  5. I've always loved Phil. I used to practice all these bizarre lob wedge shots that had very little practical use. Except I did make a lot of money winning bets on whether or not I could really put a ball over a thirty foot tree twenty yards from the green. I could, but I really had to wind up the lob wedge.

    Kathy, I really am beginning to think Ottaviani is the source of the 'smoke' which entered the Vatican.

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  6. "And that is why Kung believes the Church is dying or in its worst crisis."

    ## Thousands of allegations of child abuse, many of them proven to be well-founded, molestation, lies, cover- ups, are not a crisis ? So what was the Reformation - a little local difficulty ? Kung has several bishops agreeing with him that that the RCC is in a very serious mess indeed.

    "And as Benedict allows for the emergence of the traditional Mass and begins the painful process of reforming the reformed liturgy," - and guess who gave us that liturgy ? A Pope who is now Venerable, & the very bishops for whom the writer has just shown such contempt. It was Ven. Paul VI, not some scatterbrained, heretical, crypto-Protestant, crypto-homosexual Communist tree-hugger, who gave us "the reformed liturgy". If it so wworthless, why should we have any confidence that Benedict XVI will not also make a pig's ear of things ?

    I don't want it changed to what it was - theologically it is an improvement on the 1962 Missal, because it is the worship of all the People of God, not of a tiny clerical caste. The old Missal was constantly reformed, for centuries - it did not fall from Heaven.

    "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..."

    ## All true - but I wonder how many "neo-con" Catholics would agree ? That does need to happen, urgently.

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  7. I love your commentary, Rat-biter! One has to wonder: How is it, why is it, that some simply fail to "see"? I recall that Jesus had the same problem....

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  8. Colleen -

    Point of information:

    The 1917 Code of Canon Law cites cleical abuse of boys as a crime warranting forcible expulsion from the clerical state (laicization).

    That Code was in effect in 1962 when "Crimens" was authored, as a procedural document. There was also some codicle written c. 1923 about the subject, but I cannot find it right now.

    The point: Clerical sex abuse of minors was obviously well known a century ago when Pius X mandated the revision/codification of Canon Law. This was finally completed under the tenure of his successor, Benedict XV & promulgated by himin 1917.

    Ergo....they have known of this for a LONG time.

    Anon Y. Mouse

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  9. Anon Y. Mouse:

    Yes, they knew. But to me, what does it accomplish to just throw them out of the priesthood? It only distances the church from someone who will simply go out and reabuse within society!

    That they failed to come up with a policy to turn these folks in to the proper authorities is simply inexcusable! Especially if they knew, over centuries, that these folks were incorrigible!

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  10. ## What follows was very good, I think; no comment of mine is called for, as it speaks for itself; except this: when the words of the "folk in charge" suggest they are "seeing" just how serious matters are, I want to recognise that; from now, if not before. That they are very serious seems to be recognised, by some clergy at least:

    ...Do we truly believe in the resurrection? The disciples encounter the first evidence of the light of resurrection precisely in a place of death, a tomb. Like them we find it difficult. To believe we need faith, not irrefutable proof. To believe fully above all we need to understand the resurrection as a mystery of love.

    The two factors which bring about a change in the attitude of the early disciples were their great love for Jesus and their willingness to be guided by the spirit to rightly interpret the scriptures.

    In our days there is so much scrutiny and examination of the Church here in Ireland. There are exposés of the failings of the Church; there is questioning of the role of the Church in Irish society in the past and in whatever our future may be. The role of the Church in Ireland is being examined under a microscope and from every possible direction. The spotlight of media and public opinion is focused on the failures and the betrayals of Church leaders and a damaging culture which has grown up in the Church.

    I am not criticising the media for that. That is their job. In doing their job some will feel the media have been unfriendly to the Church, even unfair; others will welcome and recognise valid criticism, from whatever angle it comes, even if it comes from people patently unfavourable to the Church. We have to remember that the truth will set the Church free, even if the truth is hard to digest.

    Identifying the failures of the Church may however be the easier task. There will be some who will hope that such exposure will mortally would an organization which they consider has gone irreparably astray. But what of those who love the Church? How do we overcome our disgust and shame for the sins of Christians?

    The sins of the Church can well be exposed by the spotlight of the media; but the Church will be converted, renewed and reformed only when it allows the light of Christ to inspire it and guide it. It is the light of Christ which will show the real significance of the darkness that has slipped into our lives.

    The light of Christ will expose the sins of Christians but the light of Christ does not abandon us naked and alone in the exposure of our shame and sin. The light of Christ heals, it leads; there is no way we can switch off or dim that part of the light that exposes the sad realities of the past; there is no way we should switch off or dim the light that can open the path to a new future. No generation is too sophisticated not to need the light of Christ; no generation is too sophisticated not to be able to comprehend that light and what it can bring to society....

    http://dublindiocese.ie/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1866&Itemid=920 - 3/4/2010 Easter Vigil Homily Notes of Most Rev. Diarmuid Martin Archbishop of Dublin

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  11. But what of those who love the Church?

    How do you define "church"? If yours is a broad definition, you know that Christ is with the church and that light can never be extinguished.

    Some hierarchies may fall. But not the church, broadly defined.

    I'm off to pray now... in the Orthodox Church - where we're celebrating the Vesperal Liturgy of St. George the Great Martyr (tomorrow's feast).

    He died for his Christian beliefs - not the hierarchy, I'd bet.

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  12. Rat-biter, Diarmud Martin better not drop the ball because I have had a feeling about him for well over a year.

    If he gets the Light thing and really believes it, he may just discern a way for a lot of Catholics, who love the Church and the love of Christ we have found in it, to not throw the baby out with the bath water.

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  13. bening"If he gets the Light thing and really believes it, he may just discern a way for a lot of Catholics, who love the Church and the love of Christ we have found in it, to not throw the baby out with the bath water."

    ## If he does, that would be very good news indeed :)

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  14. @Thera:

    "How do you define "church"? If yours is a broad definition, you know that Christ is with the church and that light can never be extinguished."

    ## In context,the Archbishop is referring to the RCC, or at least to the Irish part of it. It is after all the RCC - and so, its parts - that has been racked by these scandals; which is very painful indeed for those who love it. I'm entirely behind him.

    "Identifying the failures of the Church may however be the easier task. There will be some who will hope that such exposure will mortally would an organization which they consider has gone irreparably astray. But what of those who love the Church? How do we overcome our disgust and shame for the sins of Christians?"

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  15. Colleen, great point: "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."

    Some people have it worked up in their minds, such as Mr. Dougherty, a projection of what they think it was like back then. It is a very narrow and stereotypical mischaracterization coming from him and he gets it from a very few images or snapshots and takes that as the truth of the 60's. And you nailed it, Colleen, it is so immature.

    I vividly remember a somberness and queasiness in my junior and senior year in high school about the Vietnam War and all the guys in school, including my brother, were so concerned about being drafted. That is all we talked about was the War and there was no talk about the future. The future was on hold for many of us. I was strumming a guitar back then and writing to a soldier in Vietnam. That war killed him less than ten years after he got back. I met people who were conscientious objectors too and worked in hospitals.

    If there was a craziness in the 60's it definitely was from all the craziness that the young people witnessed from "adults." The craziness was from the adults: kids being sent to a war in the jungles in the midst of a Civil War there, a President killed, RFK killed, MLK killed, and right on television for us all to see how well the "grown-ups" were behaving in the world and causing so much death.

    The Mr. Dougherty's of the world do not understand the beauty of a Woodstock and those words "hell no, we won't go."

    The world's behavior was witnessed by us children in the 60's. We were too young to be at Woodstock, but we are projected as the image of pagans by right wing nut jobs that never cared enough about people to know who they really were or what they went through and witnessed during that time.

    Mr. Dougherty thinks he can speak for all Catholics. He can barely speak for himself.

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  16. Sorry if I got off topic there. The sixties are very vivid and Thomas Merton lived and wrote about that time as well. His writings are very helpful in understanding that time. I suggest Mr. Dougherty take the time to read Thomas Merton and get another perspective.

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  17. "But what of those who love the Church? How do we overcome our disgust and shame for the sins of Christians?"

    We turn to Jesus and He lights the way.

    I think the Church has just gotten too big for its own britches. Too much power, absolute power, and it corrupts at the hands of those at the top. The Church cannot survive in its present form. We can rebuild it on rock with the saving grace of God. Right now it is on sand.

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  18. Thanks Rat-biter. I did understand what the quote was referring to. But I was struck by that question.

    I do hope that if some, powerful enough to make it happen, do see/feel the light, that whatever changes are made, it will enlarge the church - in the sense of making it easier to unite with others in communion - the Orthodox for example. I'd love to see that! (as they were my fall-back, though to me it really feels like a deeper spirituality)

    As it is, the church has to crumble. God moves in when we crumble. It must be the same with institutions and prelates.

    I again recommend that wonderful little pamphlet on Humility by Andre Louf. I've read it twice. I'm sure I'll read it again. He talks of humility as the kind of brokenness - when we know we simply can't "save" ourselves.

    And by the way, I DO see the church in a broad brush way: One Lord. One Faith. One Baptism. I see the current brokenness as a sign - of the dying and always rising. I love a line from psalm 102 about Jerusalem in ruins: I love her dust, her very stones.

    That question the bishop asked is why I had to "leave" - but I couldn't leave for "nothing" only; I had to leave for something. Nevertheless, have I, have so many others "really left"? When I write at TPM, so many cafe regulars are former catholics - who seem just as troubled by what "their church" has done or failed to do. (so that question "reaches" into many corners)

    I see much hope here. (Then again I'm a hopeful person.) But crumbling, I think, will be part of any rising. A necessity more like!

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  19. I think, have discerned if you will, that the Irish Church is once again being called on to save Catholicism in a very dark period.

    First it has to save Irish Catholicism from itself, clean up and right it's own ship, and then the model could spread to the entire Church.

    What reinforced this thinking for me is that Benedict is much more actively engaged in the Irish crisis than he ever was in the American crisis. I'm not implying he or the Vatican is necessarily going to be helpful, only that he and the Vatican are zeroed in on the same Catholic region.

    I pray for Ireland a lot.

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  20. I wrote a fisking of Weigel's pathetic piece but lost it through computer malfunction. But you've done it so much better for another of these pieces. All of Kung's points are correct, except -- it seems -- his view of Ratzinger's role in the sex abuse scandal. In refuting Kung, people like Weigel and C Olson come perilously close to scoffing at Vatican II and Paul VI.

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  21. L'Osservatore Romano (which has changed so remarkably under the inspired editorship of Vian) has a piece that hits just the right note in response to Kung: http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2010/04/vatican-responds-to-hans-kungs-critique.html

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  22. Hans Kung deserves respect. Most people, including most theologians, do not measure up to his intellect and good well. And you even fail kindergarten's Basic Manners class also.

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