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fnr
Guest
I don’t think Hans Kung did, or should, back off from his critique.
I wholeheartedly agree with his “basic points,”
I wholeheartedly agree with his “basic points,”
- Bishops must not be silent on abuse, and the “united front” / pillbox / bunker mentality must stop. The teaching authority of the Church is sorely needed RIGHT NOW!
- Reform!!! Bishops, priests, EVERYONE! NOW! The institution is not the whole of the Church any more than the People of God are, unaided by clergy. Clericalism cannot be tolerated in the face of so monstrous an evil as the rape of children and adolescents.
“Is it not they who blaspheme the noble name that was invoked over you?” (James 2:7) - Bishops must act collegially! Vatican II declared it, Paul IV, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI have virtually ignored it. The bishops are the apostolic lineage.
- Bishops, please show some spine in dealing with Rome! Paul did not show total obedience to Peter at all times: “And when Kephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he clearly was wrong.” (Galatians 2:11)
Please, eminences! - In regards to the previous point on bishops acting together, the bishops should start thinking of “regional solutions” that address deep issues in a manner that requires less monolithic approaches. Let’s learn from the Eastern Catholic Churches, whose separate hierarchies have different disciplines (e.g., Maronite and Italo-Albanian ordination of married men).
- COUNCIL! Let the Curial bureaucracy tremble. But there are pews emptying in parishes that are hundreds of years old in THIS country, even more in Europe. Even more broadly, the Church must still come to grips with the Enlightenment and its children. We need basic, honest discussions about top-to-bottom issues in the Church, from ecclesiology, moral theology, even soteriology in light of modern neuroscience, psychology, geology, physics, cosmology, population genetics, astronomy, mathematics, and complex systems theory. For example, what does the lack of temporal alignment of our male and female most recent common ancestors (MRCA) mean for previous magesterial teachings on polygenism and therefore the doctrine of original sin and meaning of baptism?
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Darryl1958
Guest
The things I most appreciate about Küng he actually shares with Pope Benedict in full measure. They both speak about the relationship between reason and science beautifully. They both fully embrace the intellectual history of the rise of science and reason through the faith like only the Catholic mind is capable of doing.
The reform that is going to happen is probably not going to be what Küng might have hoped for. Reform that will work will likely bring us back from the liberal acceptance of homosexuality in the priesthood that is at the root of a lot of the abuse problems in the first place.
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fnr
Guest
I too appreciate their mutual respect for science and Tradition.
As a liberal, I’m totally offended by that statement. Ad hominem accusations against me and my philosophical “fellow travelers”
(hurry, run, tell everyone about the abomination in the church!) amount to scapegoating and of no help in addressing the problem. I’m not a secularist, or a communist, or a libertine, and I’m not going to label you either.Beyond my outrage at the personal affront, this response is nonsensical! Most gay men don’t rape children. There are gay men who work as school teachers, nurses, doctors, and many other professions where they are in a position of quasi-authority over young children, and they don’t rape kids with any more frequency than priests as a whole do.
The “abuse problems” have been with the church since at least the 7th Century (and probably earlier still), showing up in penitence manuals for priests before the codification of canon law by Gratian in 1140. Gratian’s codification talks about priests sexually abusing adolescent boys. From “Roman Catholic Clericalism, Religious Duress, and Clergy Sexual Abuse” by Thomas Doyle, OP, a Pontifical Doctor of Canon Law:
The reason for all the CATASTROPHIC damage to the heart of the visible Church, aside from the spiritual warfare waged against abuse survivors by authoritarian and clericalist Catholics looking to protect the authority and reputation of the visible institution of the Church, is desolation left in the hearts of Catholics like me who demand transparency and reform and see next to nothing done. Families are leaving the Church, not from lack of love of it, but because they see the utter hypocrisy of the hierarchy in following basic Catholic social teaching, which reflects the highest aspirations of their hearts for what the Church in the world can be! From Octogesima Adveniens:
The reality is that the vast majority of the abuse cases being discussed in the U.S., Ireland, and Germany happened in the 1950-1980 time frame: decades ago. Mostly before, during, and just after Vatican II, after which priests began leaving the priesthood by the thousands.
Yet most of what we’re talking about now is the response of the institutional Church to this crisis, a “circle the wagons” approach that began as early as the 1960s when ALL abuse cases were placed under the strictest code of secrecy under canon law, regardless of whether they involved the sacrament of penance. It bloomed in the early 80’s when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (a.k.a. Holy Office, Roman Inquisition) covered everything in secrecy. From Kung’s open letter to the bishops:
Yes, we need conversion, but personal application of moral theology is an insufficient response to an psychological and emotional problem among a small minority of clergy, the actions of which cry to heaven for public condemnation.
Five years after the Council of Trent, Pope Pius V issued a decree, Horrendum, which bears reading today:
Reform is coming. If not from the top down, then from the bottom up. Reformers desperately want the bishops to join the call. But we’re not going to wait for them too long. There is too much at stake to conflate humility with passivity.
manygift1spirit
New member
Both the sunshine blowing tone of the article and Mr. Kung’s apparent backsliding on his earlier statements are likely due in large part to the fact that he just got his intellectual and theological clock cleaned.
Reading over the last few posts, I have to say I am perplexed by fnr’s reaction to Darryl1958. Because of Darryl’s qualifier “a lot of”, his statement is demonstrably and transparently true.
Reading over the last few posts, I have to say I am perplexed by fnr’s reaction to Darryl1958. Because of Darryl’s qualifier “a lot of”, his statement is demonstrably and transparently true.
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the_phoenix
Guest
And it’s about time.
(pun intended)
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fnr
Guest
Short of polemics and tit-for-tat “he-said-she-said”-ism, In what way did Mr. Weigel’s article address the basic allegations Fr. Kung makes?
I would argue that his statement is not demonstrably true, and may in fact be demonstrably false:
The reform that is going to happen is probably not going to be what Küng might have hoped for. Reform that will work will likely bring us back from the liberal acceptance of homosexuality in the priesthood that is at the root of a lot of the abuse problems in the first place.
Looking at Darryl’s last sentence,
“…liberal acceptance of homosexuality in the priesthood that is at the root of a lot of the abuse”
it suggests that
there are gay priests because of very influential, non-homophobic liberals who influence admission into seminaries and the sacrament of Holy Orders;
- the ordination of gay priests has anything to do with the sexual abuse of minors;
- abuse occurs because of the licentiousness and moral failures of gay priests;
In the early 1970s, the US Bishops conference commissioned two studies to examine the psychological status of priests in the U.S. The results were shocking. One paper by Baars and Terruwe reported on 40 years of psychiatric practice of about 1,500 priests. As reported to the bishops, 20-25% of North American priests had serious psychological difficulties, while 60-70% suffered from emotional maturity. The paper states:
In some, the causes… go back to child and remained unrecognized during the seminary years. Others enjoyed a fairly normal childhood but became emotionally disturbed through misguided ascetical practices in the seminary (Baars, 1971, cited in Doyle, 2003)
The other paper, by Eugene Kennedy, reported that only 7% of U.S. priests were psychologically and emotionally developed, 18% were developing, 66% underdeveloped, and 8% maldeveloped. It is likely these 8% (maldeveloped) men from whom the vast majority of abusers came.
Clerical abuse of children happens when a psychologically and emotionally disturbed individual uses a child, manipulated via religious duress and traumatic emotional bonding, to fulfill some extremely dark self-justified compulsion. In religious educational institutions where many of the abuse cases happened, priests were often with boys, nuns often with girls. Boys were unfortunately in the presence of some of these monsters.
Pedophilia is a profoundly disordered psychological state, maybe a psychiatric illness. I see no evidence that being gay makes one any more likely to commit abuse of minors than does being heterosexual make one any more likely to commit incest upon little girls.
The discernment process takes place later in life now, thankfully. I believe that modern priests are much more “well” than their predecessors. Yet the shadow of abuse lasts for decades.
A small fraction of priests have been abusing children and adolescence for as long as there is a history of penance in the church. As early as 177, the sin was identified. Bede in 8th century England advised clerics who commit sodomy with children be given harsh punishment. There’s a long history of this evil in the church, but in the past, the Church was more oriented toward harsh punishment of the perpetrators. (Credit to Thomas Doyle, OP for the information)
Modern psychology has brought new light to the problem of priests, so we treat them differently than before. However, what kind of remedy is there for the thousands of survivors of abuse, whose stories cannot be denied, whose experience with the Church hierarchy are on display for all the world to see?
manygift1spirit
New member
Very good!
Actually my first post about Kung came off as more dismissive than was intended. In actuality he may very well recognize he grossly overstepped, both in his statements and his theology. Whle the tone of the article still leaves something to be desired, it may indeed be a good thing that he might be seeing the light. And having journalistic attention drawn towards it to boot. Let’s pray for him.
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the_phoenix
Guest
Hail and well met.
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Darryl1958
Guest
That’s right. To misrepresent our message as one that says most gay men rape children is a willfull subversion of what is being said.
Fortunately though, the Catholic Church is in a good position to reform on this front. Unlike many other traditional churches, which have altered their message and their theology in order to accommodate sin, The Catholic church remains bound to her traditions. Nobody, not even the pope—especially not the pope—are capable of changing any tachings which are the gift of the Spirit of Christ Himself.
The problem has been identified, and the true teaching on the body and sexuality itself is what will guide the Church to cease and desist in making accommodations to the gay lobby.
As offensive as the teaching is, as much as the left will continue to pontificate their gospel of how intolerant the Catholic message is, as much as we may want to cow and make concessions in the presence of the scorn and derision and willful misrepresentations of our message that the left will continue to heap upon us, the message itself will stand. The gates of hell will not prevail.
The Catholic Church is being purged as if by fire now. She cannot change her method, so she must change her ways. The world has served notice that homosexual relations between priests and teen-aged boys will not be tolerated, and this is a good thing. Episcopal may accommodate homosexuality in the priesthood, but caught between a rock and a hard place, the Catholic Church already is choosing the Rock.
Accommodating homosexual behavior as anything but sin is just not an option.
This will become less and less a Catholic problem, and more and more a societal one. Worse, such sexual relations may well become normalized in societies where the message of the Catholic Church becomes marginalized.
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Darryl1958
Guest
From its opening anecdote Küng and his bright red sports care, Weisel’s article centred on the character of the man. For most of us who are not insiders of Vatican affairs, whether or not Küng is to be believed in his slurs against the character of Pope Benedict XVI, his own character becomes important in order for us to decide.
For Weisel, it seemed to be more a question of whether Küng was a liar, or just incorrigibly ignorant(to paraphrase somewhat).
This statement by Küng which gives me ample indication of just what kind of character he possesses is this one:
Anyone who had actually read or heard the lecture would fully understand that Küng is totally misrepresenting what the pope was speaking about. Whether Küng was simply lying or commenting on things he was basically clueless about cannot be determined.
What is clear however is that in either case Küng has proven himself to be of a very low character indeed.
Dennis Prager has a line in which he says that “being from the left means never having to say your sorry”. So I guess for The Rev. Küng, backing off is about as good as it is going to get.
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Digitonomy
Guest
Can you point to where Kung backslid on earlier statements? I’ll admit I’ve only scanned through Kung’s open letter, but I didn’t see anything in the OP’s article that contradicted his earlier critique.
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