Can We Save the Catholic Church? Paperback – February 4, 2014

Can we start again please?This is a book of contradictions and challenges for anyone who remotely has any attachment to the Catholic Church. Its central contradiction lies in the fact that one the one hand it presents an historically detailed litany of the untruths, corruption and organisational failures of the Church over Millennia. Be it competing popes, the selling of indulgences, yet alone the outrage of systemic child sexual abuse occurring at all levels of its hierarchy. Yet on the other hand Kung writes, at times passionately, about what one can do to save the Church. Central to this contradiction is the fact that for some of us, we did (do?) experience something positive from involvement with the Church and that is the finding of God, experiencing God and the awesomeness of being part of such great, supportive, fun communities. And thus the central question arising in this book is whether or not we can save what we value from the shipwreck which is the institutional framework within which we currently operate.Like it or not, in a world saturated by 24/7media, we are children of the reformation and the enlightenment. Even if you wanted to, you cannot escape what is almost a daily reporting of institutional failure. And at the same time, as a collective we are no longer prepared to put up with, what Kung makes evident to be, the way the Catholic Church has trotted out ideological, unsubstantiated, nonsense as divine truth.In the West, we may not have to save the Church as it is likely to die of old age in the foreseeable future. Our Catholic Schools are filled to overflowing yet less than 5% of these young people will be with the church post-school. As Kung demonstrates, the failure to effectively manage the transition from Vatican II (throwing the baby out with the bath water) lost many. Then humane vitae - what a disaster. If ever the people of God were ever messaging a hierarchy that had no sense of the faithful - this was surely the most resonant message sent thru the Church since the Reformation, with almost uniform rejection of what is propagated as all but infallible teaching.After depressing the reader with awesome detail of the many failings, contradictions and limitations of the Church and its teaching (which, if read in conjunction with Spong's deconstruction of much of the 'truth' of the gospels) one is left seriously wondering as to what is left to deal with here. Yet both writers converge on a central point - and that is their respective experience of Jesus and it is this that moves them forward. Despite all the stuff, there is still a pearl of great value to be enjoyed - but how do we find it or retrieve it?Kung provides quite a detailed list of necessary changes, hopes and aspirations. But to be honest, it left me disheartened. There is a long list of things that just have to be done,. The list includes married clergy, the ordination of women as priests and bishops, cleaning up (out?) the Curia, people electing their own priests and bishops, getting rid of the Vatican bank, people of God taking their place in the college of cardinals, recognising that marriage both recognises the uniting of the natural bond, but that divorce also passages its dissolution. And of course, a broader insight into sexuality more generally. But for me, these are simply the cost of entry, the very basics that we need to do to begin a change process. I both agreed and disagreed with Kung's suggestion that the change process really has to start with us, with us saying enough is enough. We want change, we want equal participation in decision making. We want to be listened to. We have had enough of the nonsense. While on the one hand there is a growing mass of people ready to support such a process, my experience is that we are in a minority. Those of us who speak out are marginalised. Our friends and family agree with much of what we think, but they are not prepared to risk their links with community to assert their concerns.For me Kung misses two three points which are central to change - awareness raising, a point of focus and spirituality.For change to occur we need to undertake systemic awareness raising. What Kung's work adds to the process is a consolidation of material that can we use for consciousness raising. Yes, if we want change, we need to educate our friends and families of the extent to which this game is over. To this end (and on a lighter note) perhaps you would consider using the material in this book for an awareness raising parish trivia night? Just think of the kinds of questions you can have! Which popes were married? Which had the most children? Which died from STDs? Who appointed the greatest number of their relatives as cardinals? Who was the youngest cardinal ever appointed and at what age? How many 20th century religious orders of pontifical right were founded by men who in turn sexually assaulted their young recruits? Name their founders! Which bishop was recently convicted for sexually assaulting their nephew? Name three popes or bishops who were found out for theft, fraud, corruption or murder? Just imagine printing just one of the many insights in Kung's book in the weekly parish bulletin. Imagine the bumper stickers? Perhaps a deck of playing cards - trivial pursuit Roman style? Too much fun to be legal!There needs to be a catalysing event(s) that brings people together to demand change. Now you'd think that the outrage of systemic child sexual abuse would be sufficient to catalyse systemic change. But it hasn't. You would think that documenting the excesses and failures of the institution, at a global level would be sufficient to catalyse systemic change. But it hasn't. I really wonder, what will it take for the people of God to unite to the point of saying enough is enough? And to say we are taking control!And then there is the question of where we find God in all of this and it is something that Kung takes for granted - that beyond the God talk there are ways in which we can still find God in the Church today and if we can't then we need to attend to this as well. Evangelical God talk is not enough Dr Kung. As I look around our parishes, I see a lot of very tired old men who are our priests, they need a rest and we need fresh, energised people. There a few, if any places where our ministers are enabling us to open to the experience of God, who can teach us how to do this, and who can guide us through this process. If they could, they simply don't have time! The (re)birth of meditative movements are a good step in this direction. And again, in bringing such a process forth we need rethink our notion of who it is that will minister to us today.The church can only be saved by the People of God. But in reality many of us do not want to save it, we want to start again. And the challenge for our new pope is this (resonating the finale from Superstar) - can we start again please?

Pope Francis thanked Fr. Hans Kung for sending him this book. Let us hope he and his advisors read and apply it soon!Hans Kung has been a leading international Catholic scholar and a best selling author on church history and theology for over a half century. His efforts to promote world peace through interreligious dialogue have earned him major awards and the friendship of world leaders. He has also incisively and understandably engaged modern physical and social sciences in explaining well Jesus' ongoing relevance.Fr. Kung has engaged over more than a half century with, or influenced, several popes, including his former university colleague, Joseph Ratzinger (ex-Pope Benedict), as well as John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and even Pius XII. Cardinals and bishops have sought his advice, as early as his time serving as a key expert with Ratzinger at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). No one has seen more of, or knows better how to cure, the Catholic Church that Ratzinger left for Pope Francis in very bad condition.Hans Kung has written here a unique and readable summary of how self-interested hierarchs have for centuries diverted the Catholic Church from Jesus' Gospel message to bring the Church to its present dysfunctional and unChristian condition. In a methodical and intelligible manner, he lays out how current problems had developed and how they can be resolved constructively, but only if Pope Francis wants to do more than just help to keep some cardinals out of bankruptcy and criminal courtrooms.All Catholics, indeed all people of good will, should read this incisive, hopeful and concise book. They will, I believe, be glad they did. I surely am.The book coherently shows the surprising relationship of the centuries' old patriarchical "will to power" and the disabling, but curable, Vatican obsession with enforcing unbiblical sexual taboos, often at the expense of children and women. Hans Kung in simple and direct language outlines how the original Gospel message can be applied to resolve many current controversies, including those related to unaccountable bishops who protect child abusers, contraception, mandatory celibacy, women's ordination, divorced Catholics and homosexual love.Hans Kung is no dreamer, but is a pastoral priest who knows what is wrong and how to fix it. His suggestions make a lot of sense. Despite the unfair treatment he received in 1980 from the Vatican for questioning papal infallibility, his book is clearly motivated by his love of Jesus and not influenced by his bad treatment.Francis would be wise to add Hans Kung to his Council of Cardinals, as a prudent, informed and disinterested advisor, who loves the Church.Hans Kung offers some perceptive suggestions on what Catholics can do to accelerate these positive reforms. While he addresses governmental Church subsidies and priest child sexual abuse, these two topics warrant additional discussion--in particular, encouraging Catholics to advocate for (1) eliminating the unnecessary and discriminatory annual multibillion dollar compulsory Church subsidies funded by taxpayers in Germany and elsewhere, and (2) prosecuting more diligently many bishops who still protect priest child abusers with impunity while hiding behind sham procedures.As is clearly the case with the current compulsory reform of the corrupt Vatican Bank, the Vatican has so far only really responded to, and likely will only respond to in the future, international governmental regulatory and prosecutorial pressures to clean up its ongoing scandals. This pressure must be increased.The often Machiavellian Vatican pays little heed to the many pleas to reform from well intentioned, but insufficently organized and mostly ineffective, reform groups, even of priests. Vatican hierarchs are subject to civil laws that so far have not been adequately enforced against them. That is changing, but not soon enough to protect children adequately.Politicians. including President Obama and Chancellor Merkel, must now reject Vatican economic and political enticements and enforce existing laws to protect defenseless children and to preserve Catholics' contributions. And sincere, but naive, Catholics must end their complicity and stop funding this evil Vatican enterprise, unless and until it reforms. The solutions are there waiting for implementation by Pope Francis and national leaders. Catholics have been waiting for centuries and are increasingly fed-up with waiting.Hans Kung has also recently published in German the third and final volume of his unique and fascinating memoirs, that covers John Paul II's papal period. Hopefully, the memoirs, which provide important details about John Paul's private character, will be available in many translations before his scheduled canonization date next April. The first two volumes are already widely available in many languages. They offer a unique view into how the Vatican really behaves.Finally, many of Hans Kung's other earlier outstanding works are of continuing relevance. Joseph Ratzinger appears to be planning to put online, with Archbishop Mueller's help, Ratzinger's often inferior academic writings. I hope Hans Kung will get his staff to make available online inexpensively many of his other works in various translations, along with his informative videos. This can be done easily and cheaply by technicians at present.Otherwise, going forward, few will have access to and read Hans Kung's important works. This would be a real shame and a waste of a unique contribution to the Catholic Church. Hans Kung, a clear and informed writer on many modern subjects, shows how Jesus message is as applicable and hopeful today as it was when Jesus first delivered it.

This is a disturbing book. Indeed having read it I felt physically sick. If the Roman Catholic Church is as Kung describes, then it is unreformable and his hopes for reform are tatters of mere optimism. It is unreformable because, if it is as he describes, it is the bed of evil many Protestants have always held it to be.However, too many allegations Kung levels at the Church and her ministers are unauthenticated. However thorough a scholar Kung may be we cannot merely take his word for all these profoundly serious allegations. Documentation and authentication is essential.Towards the close of the book Kung states that he does `not want to paint everything black'. Freud remarked that this type of negative statement ought to be heard as an affirmation of the contrary! And so the book proves to be. Accurately or inaccurately, Kung has painted everything black. Indeed he has painted everything red - the biblical colour of sin! He inveighs against the centralisation of the Church in the Pope but the larger part of his book is a diatribe against the Popes - he is fixated on the papacy and has little to say about any other feature of the Church.However, a strange pattern emerges from his survey and assessment of the Church's appalling failures: it is a replica in almost every way of the patterns of conduct and sinful failures of our Lord's chosen disciples and of the first 100 years of the life of the Church - all we find in the New Testament levelled at the pride, self-aggrandisement, cowardice, untrustworthiness and multiform failure of the Church and the disciples is echoed in Kung's analysis. (Although his sketch has little if anything to say of the way in which the positive and priceless features of the Church's life and teaching through the centuries also echoes those of the Church in her infancy.)I do not understand why, if Kung believes what he alleges - and I have no doubt he does - he, like Luther, does not leave the Church - Luther, one might argue, had lesser reason than Kung, for the Church has added five hundred more years to its tally of iniquity. It would seem, in the light of what he writes, if what he writes is accurate, that that is a moral duty.The Kindle version allows easy searching. It yields interesting results: `Luther' records 31 hits; Rahner 15; de Lubac 1; Balthasar, 0; Newman 0; Enlightenment 20. And of the Cross, as the Cross of Christ's sacrifice, there is no mention within the book at all! Oh, and 'Pope' exactly 100 'hits'!Kung's `advocacy' of the Enlightenment `freedom' reminded me of some words of Hans Urs von Balthasar:`In the religion of the Enlightenment, the truly enlightened person himself is the truth; in the religion of Jesus Christ, he alone is the truth that exposes the falsehood and sin of man and atones for them on the Cross. The two models of religious universality are incompatible: Jesus' absolute claim cannot be subordinated to an `intrinsically good' human nature that of itself knows the truth and can come to possess it.' (New Elucidations, 77)G. K. Chesterton understood the implications: he understood that Tradition is `trusting to a consensus of common human voices, rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian against the tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing to aristocracy. Tradition is the democracy of the dead.' (Orthodoxy, 43)So you choose: the 'infallibility' of Tradition or of Hans Kung?PS My 'star rating' of this book is wholly arbitrary - and hence meaningless.

Challenging - a famous theologian reviews the state of the Roman Catholic Church from the perspective of one who played a major part in Vatican 2 and was a peer of Pope Benedict 16.His analysis of the present state of the church is pessimistic but he lays out a programme for recovery. This depends very much on the path Pope Francis chooses. I have read about 9/10 of Kungs work that are available in English and would never have described him as bitter or waspish. Unfortunately at this stage he comes across as both when discussing his former colleague Ratzinger.

This is a first class analysis of where the problems faced by reformers came from and why.This is certainly the best understanding of the post Vatican 2 paradigm I have encountered written in a straight forward way. Incidentally this also serves as a wonderful history of the Church told without the mythology added by those with an anti women or anti marriage axe to grind.Finally solutions from Vatican 2 and scripture are proposed.Most importantly this feels good and true.

Have been in awe of Hands K since his 'On Being a Christian' I'm not a Roman Catholic but feel King's obvious pain at the state of the church he love. Sadly his excoriating essay sounds only too true in it's scholarly examination. Sadly I doubt we shall see the changes he longs for in our lifetime but change the church must if is to have any relevance in a fast changing world. Just as a sideline, it's also well written and a gripping analysis.

Hans Kung writes with scholarship and passion. He is indeed a modern prophet. He loves the Catholic Church, but does not refrain from sharp critique. He has a great vision of a genuinely Petrine ministry for the papacy. He hopes much from Pope Francis. Will this hope be rea!ised?