A column signed by the editor, Giovanni Maria Vian, in today’s (October 29) edition of the newspaper said the article by 81-year-old Küng published the previous day in several European newspapers, including La Repubblica in Rome, contained “lies and inaccuracies.”
The Vatican announced on October 20 that Pope Benedict XVI is to set up a structure to “allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church, while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony”.
Observers have said the scheme is directed mainly at Anglicans who disagree with the ordination of women and of homosexuals.
In his article, published in English by The Guardian newspaper in London, Küng described Benedict’s action as “a dramatic change of course: steering away from the well-proven ecumenical strategy of eye-level dialogue and honest understanding.”
He said the Vatican, in its statement announcing the move, had “impudently” referred to past documents of Catholic-Anglican dialogue to support the papal decision.
“People in the know, however, recognize that these three documents, subscribed to by both sides at that time, aimed not at recruitment, but rather at reconciliation,” Küng wrote.
Küng had his license to teach Catholic theology revoked by the Vatican in 1979 after he criticized such concepts as papal infallibility and the virgin birth, which are espoused by the Catholic Church.
The Vatican newspaper in its rebuttal, stated that Küng has distorted “an action that aims at restoring the unity [of the Church] desired by Christ, and which acknowledges the long and arduous ecumenical journey towards this goal, as an astute act of political power, naturally of the extreme right.”
Benedict, who was then Joseph Ratzinger, was a colleague of Küng when both were theology professors at Germany’s Tübingen University. But later Ratzinger, who in 1981 became the guardian of Vatican orthodoxy as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, came to symbolize much of what Küng despaired of in Vatican centralism.
The Vatican article noted that five months after his election in 2005, Benedict XVI had invited Küng, “to meet in friendship and to discuss the common ethical basis of religion and the relationship between reason and faith.”
However, “Since then, with influential media unfailingly repeating his words, Küng has several times criticized Benedict XVI harshly and without foundation,” Vian wrote in the Vatican newspaper’s editorial.
“It is not worth the trouble to highlight the lies and inaccuracies of this most recent article by Küng, whose tone once again fails to honor his own personal story, and in some sections borders on the comical, deliberately ignoring the facts.” Vian asserted.
In his article, Küng had written, “The Roman thirst for power divides Christianity and damages its own church. It is a tragedy.”
