wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Pope meets with rebel theologian Hans Kung

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #8937 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05223
Sept. 28, 2005

Pope meets with rebel theologian Hans Kung
 
by Luigi Sandri
Ecumenical News International  

ROME - After meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the pontiff's summer
residence, dissident Roman Catholic theologian Hans Kung says he is hoping
for new openness from the Vatican.

	"I hope that my meeting with the Pope is a sign that the great
problems facing the church and its faithful will be re-discussed in an open
fashion," Kung told the Italian daily newspaper, La Republica, after the
Sept. 24 meeting.  
  
	Kung's license to teach Catholic theology was revoked by the Vatican
in 1979 because he departed from church dogma on concepts such as papal
infallibility and the virgin birth. Kung's efforts to arrange a meeting with
Benedict's predecessor, Pope John Paul II, were unsuccessful.  
  
	Kung, a native of Switzerland, is known as a pioneer in dialogue with
non-Christians through his Global Ethic Foundation. He and Pope Benedict met
in a "friendly atmosphere," according to Vatican spokesperson Joaquin Navarro
Valls.	 
  
	Kung and the pope agreed that it made "no sense, in the framework of
the meeting, to enter into a dispute on the persistent doctrinal differences"
between Kung and the Vatican.  
  
	Instead, Benedict praised Kung's efforts "to contribute to a renewed
recognition of the essential values of humanity through the dialogue of
religions and the encounter with secular reason," Navarro Valls said. Kung
applauded Benedict's efforts to foster dialogue between religions.  
  
	Benedict was known as Joseph Ratzinger when he was Kung's colleague
at Tubingen University in Germany. After 1981, when Ratzinger became the
guardian of Vatican orthodoxy as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith, he and Kung found themselves at odds.

	Kung told the German newspaper Die Sueddeutsche Zeitung that his
meeting with Benedict was a "sign of hope."  
  
	In August, the pope met with Bishop Bernard Fellay, a leader of the
Catholic traditionalist movement founded by the French Archbishop Marcel
Lefebvre, who opposed the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and was
excommunicated in 1976 by Pope John Paul II.  
  
	The Italian media have reacted positively to Pope Benedict's
willingness to talk to the Vatican's doctrinal opponents.  
  
	The Catholic news agency Zenit described the meeting between the Pope
and Kung as "a further gesture of conciliation." The Milan newspaper Corriere
della Sera wrote: "The Pope's meetings with Bernard Fellay and Hans Kung have
not resolved any issues, but have broken the ice in which Pope John Paul II
had frozen contacts with dissident sections of Catholicism for a quarter of a
century."

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