the priest that could be Pope

In 1989,  Hans Küng was asked in what language he would speak at a conference. He replied that German would be easiest for him and English would be easiest for his audience. Or he could speak in Latin, “so they could understand every word in Rome.” Küng was understandably cynical to the authoritative figures of Catholic church. In 1979 under the theologically conservative Pope John Paul II, Rome withdrew Küng’s license to teach theology at a Catholic university.

Küng emerged as a champion of reform in the 1960s at the Second Vatican Council, also known as Vatican II, where he was an official theologian (he was the youngest one there). Pope John XXIII had called the meeting to “let some fresh air into the church.” Küng saw the conference as only a beginning. He continued to press for more revisions in church dogma, including ending the ban on birth control and vows of celibacy by priests. Other scholars have been re-evaluating the papacy much more quietly — and have said far more radical things than Küng.

It was Küng’s tightly reasoned rejection of the doctrine of papal infallibility in his book “Infallible? An Inquiry” (1970) that led to his dismissal as an official church theologian. He maintained that the doctrine, which was adopted in 1870 and applies only to those extraordinary moments when the pope speaks officially as the vicar of Christ, was not supported by scripture. He gave copious examples of papal mistakes.

In 1965 Küng recruited Ratzinger to be a professor at the University of Tübingen. In 1968, at the height of the Europe-wide student protests, Küng and Ratzinger parted company, with the latter so unsettled by the unrest that he retreated to a more conservative university. The two met again in 2005 of course by then Ratzinger was the new Pope Benedict XVI. John Paul II had refused more than a dozen times to see Küng, but Ratzinger was keen to signal that the church under his leadership could be a bigger tent than before. It was not, however, big enough to accommodate Küng, whose interests had grown considerably wider since his licence had been removed. 

After Ratzinger resigned the papacy in 2013, Dr. Küng suggested that the pope had been out of step with “modernity” and that the church was in need of more progressive leadership. “In this dramatic situation the church needs a pope who’s not living intellectually in the Middle Ages, who doesn’t champion any kind of medieval theology, liturgy or church constitution,” he wrote, “a pope who stands up for the freedom of the church in the world not just by giving sermons but by fighting with words and deeds for freedom and human rights within the church, for theologians, for women, for all Catholics who want to speak the truth openly. ”

Despite the impression that this self-confident, clever and ever so slightly vain priest may have given, Küng was not one of nature’s rebels. His chosen approach would have been to work from within, but the Catholic church in his heyday was intolerant of such dissenting voices among its priests. If the choice was silence or uneasy internal exile, he was not going to bite his tongue.

When challenged about his maverick role in the history of modern Catholicism, he remained fond to the end of quoting one of his heroes, Pope Gregory the Great: “If scandal is taken as the truth, then it is better to allow scandal to arise than to abandon the truth.”

Hans Küng, priest, theologian and author, born 19 March 1928; died 6 April 2021