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When I was a precocious sophomore in high school, I once barged into the office of the Capuchin priest who was in charge of our religion curriculum to inform him that I had serious intellectual reservations about the Catholic faith, and I found the answers being supplied in class unsatisfying. Father Mike Scully looked at me for a moment with what, looking back, I now recognize as a bemused smirk, and then wheeled his chair across his office and produced a thick book off his shelf: On Being a Christian by Hans Küng. “Go read this,” Scully told me, “then...

Hans Küng, a controversial Swiss Catholic theologian, professor and priest, who was once censured by the late Pope John Paul II, has died at age 93. Küng, who was known to be critical of Catholic theology, passed away at his home in Tübingen, Germany, on Tuesday, according to a report by Vatican News. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, himself the subject of critique by Küng, released a statement quoted by Vatican News commending the late theologian for trying “to revive the dialogue between faith and the natural sciences and to assert, with regard to scientific thought, the reasonableness and necessity of...

The influential and controversial Swiss theologian Hans Küng died Tuesday at the age of 93. The German Catholic Church’s official website said that Küng died on the afternoon of April 6 at his home in Tübingen, southwest Germany. Küng served as a theological adviser at the Second Vatican Council but repeatedly clashed with Rome in the years that followed. The tensions culminated in a 1979 declaration by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) that Küng had “departed from the integral truth of Catholic faith, and therefore he can no longer be considered a Catholic theologian nor function...

Next week, Hans Küng, the Catholic priest and Swiss theologian, will mark his 88th birthday. The fifth volume of his complete works, titled Infallibility, has just become available from the German publishing house Herder. In connection with the release of Infallibility, Küng has written the following “urgent appeal to Pope Francis to permit an open and impartial discussion on infallibility of pope and bishops.” The text of his urgent appeal is being released simultaneously by National Catholic Reporter and The Tablet. It is hardly conceivable that Pope Francis would strive to define papal infallibility as Pius IX did with all...

Pope should be deposed if he accepts the SSPX back

Pope Benedict XVI. "The Church is sick, and it's the sickness of the Roman system," says theologian Hans Küng. SPIEGEL: Professor Küng, your former faculty colleague Joseph Ratzinger is coming to Germany this week for a state visit. Do you have an audience scheduled with him? Küng: I didn't request an audience. I am fundamentally more interested in conversations than audiences. SPIEGEL: Does Benedict XVI even talk to you anymore? Küng: After his election to be pope, he invited me to his summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, where we had a four-hour friendly conversation. At the time, I hoped it would...

ROME (CNS) -- Dissident theologian Father Hans Kung criticized Pope Benedict XVI for his recent opening to discontented Anglicans, charging the pope was "fishing" for the most conservative Christians to the detriment of the larger church. Father Kung said the invitation to traditionalist Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church went against years of ecumenical work on the part of both churches, calling it instead "a nonecumenical piracy of priests." The pope's basic message is: "Traditionalists of all churches, unite under the dome of St. Peter's!" Father Kung wrote in an editorial Oct. 28 in the Rome daily La Repubblica....

World-known theologian Hans Kung, ever a sharp thorn in the side of the Vatican, imagines what it would be like if Obama were in the Vatican instead of the White House. Who better at this moment to challenge Pope Benedict’s recent un-excommunication of four right-wing prelates than another 81-year-old? The recent papal edict re-enfolding Bishop Richard Williamson, a British holocaust denier and misogynist, has offended Jews, set interfaith relations back fifty years, repudiated Vatican II’s own views, and left the 40 or so women recently excommunicated because of their illicit ordinations breathless with indignation. It has also has provoked a...

One of the Catholic Church’s most senior theologians, and former mentor to Pope Benedict XVI, has launched a stinging attack on the Vatican. Father Hans Küng, 80, a Swiss priest and professor at Tübingen university said it was a “tragedy” for the Catholic Church that Rome had failed to follow the path of liberalisation set out by the Vatican II council in 1965. In his autobiography, My Fight for Freedom, Fr Küng said he was responsible for Benedict XVI’s appointment as a professor at Tübingen 1966 when he was dean of the Catholic theology faculty. Unusually, Father Küng put...

MISSION The CENTER FOR GLOBAL ETHICS coordinates the work of thinkers, scholars and activists from around the world, who are working to define, implement and promote policies of responsible global citizenship. As profoundly interconnected members of a global community, we recognize the need to develop and advance the acceptance of a viable and sustainable Global Ethic. Global Ethic Foundation Prof. Dr. Hans Küng, President Declaration of a Global Ethic Hans Küng Declaration of a Global Ethic Leonard Swidler "Ethics Statements of Human Activities and Professions," particularly on an international level, e.g., business, labor, law "Ecological Ethics," especially though not...

The renowned Swiss theologian, Hans Küng, is to receive an award by the Japanese Niwano Peace Foundation. The laureate said he would use the prize, which is worth SFr224,000 ($192,275), for his Global Ethic Foundation. The award ceremony is to take place in Tokyo on May 11. The panel said the understanding and insight of the Catholic theologian were indispensable for peace in the world, notably in the Middle East, Iraq and Sri Lanka. "Together with his contributions to interfaith dialogue and cooperation, Dr Küng’s advocacy of a global ethic as a way of realising peace has won him recognition...

NEWS: August 19, 2003 Bird’s Eye View of the News Atila Sinke Guimarães RATZINGER, A TOOTHLESS LION - For the last 20 years Sr. Jeannine Gramick, SSND, and Fr. Robert Nugent, SDS, have been two leading American religious stars in the Catholic “ministry” with gays and lesbians. Their innovative progressivist positions on the topic have generated a lot of publicity, so I don’t need to remind my reader who they are. On July 13, 1999 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued to both Sr. Gramick and Fr. Nugent a formal condemnation along with a permanent prohibition to...