The way forward: a conversation with Hans Küng
Toolan, David
LThe way forward: Talking with Hans Kung ast November Commonweal's David Toolan spoke with Hans Kung in New York City. Among other topics covered were issues of authority and dissent in the...
...I am sure that under the present pope nothing will basically move to what I would call the post-modern paradigm — which implies another attitude in most fields...
...But the real way is not to .go back to Catholic Poland as he believes...
...Pushed by the American bishops especially, we also achieved the integration of the modern paradigm: freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, and a new attitude toward Judaism and world religions...
...It is said that the church is not a democracy, but it's also not a medieval, hierocratic, pre-modern system of the awien regime type either...
...toolan: Of course conservatives would claim that they are merely being faithful to the spirit of Vatican II, or to the tradition...
...cannot imagine that the Catholic clergy, sisters, intellectuals, and even ordinary people would be willing to go back to the medieval paradigm which prescribes everything in the bedroom...
...I think of a recent book by Robert Bellah and his colleagues on American culture where the argument is made that our individualism destroys any sense of public good...
...Or will we finally, despite this setback, move again under a new pope...
...It has the consequence of continually dividing people into smaller and smaller churches...
...Had we been, we would have had to introduce the marriage of priests or optional celibacy...
...So yes, 1 think" we could agree with much conservative criticism of both the Reformation and modern paradigms...
...But we were not absolutely consistent...
...TOOLAN: What would you say, however, if you were trying to find common ground with sensible, critical conservatives...
...K0NG: I think weprogressive theologians could agree to a great extent with conservative thinkers on such a criticism of the modern paradigm...
...I mean it is a medieval code...
...The words are Vatican If but the spirit remains that of medievaPclericalism, authoritarianism, and a passive laity...
...Sensible conservatives — not reactionaries — are concerned about some very real weaknesses in the Enlightenment paradigm...
...For instance, the code puts women in the same state of dependency and inferiority that they suffered in the Middle Ages and before modem times...
...The new code is precisely an expression of the medieval paradigm...
...44: Commonweal The principal compromise here was that, practically, the bishops were not able to integrate democracy in Rome...
...Restoration is the great illusion...
...I agree with the pope on many of his criticisms of modern society...
...The whole question today is who will ultimately come through...
...The way is to go forward on the line traveled by those people who showed in recent decades that religion can be, at one and the same time, preserving of the old values certainly, but also liberating, I do not see a contradiction in these two functions...
...The tension I see here seems to lie between the spirit of Vatican II and the Code of Canon Law...
...TOOLAN: What do you think of the Vatican's current actions...
...But if the proposal is to go back to an authoritarian religion, then we will only succeed in alienating people within the church and also Protestant churches...
...30 January 1987: 45...
...We integrated the paradigm change of the Reformation: vernacular language, participation of the people in the liturgy and the church, collegiality, people of God...
...We used-the arguments for the vernacular that Martin Luther employed four hundred years ago...
...1 am also a critic of the Protestant paradigm as divisive and destructive of the unity of believers...
...KUNG: If you want an explication of the context of Rome's present attitude, you have to see that the Catholic church in the Second Vatican Council achieved an integration of the two great paradigm changes after the Middle Ages...
...Will the pope and the ceria be able to reimpose oh the Catholic community the medieval, Counter-Reformation, anti-modernist paradigm...
...Among other topics covered were issues of authority and dissent in the Catholic church today...
...KUNG...
Vol. 114 • January 1987 • No. 2
