Gosh, what an awful title. Not because it might be true - which it isn't, because Christ promised that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church - but because it paints an inaccurate picture of the Catholic Church, something so far from the truth it's nearly laughable. Saved? Saved from what? Saved from whom?
I predict that as long as there are sinners in the world, there will be a Catholic Church. And that gives hope to a rotten sinner such as myself, because it means there's a place for me, a safe haven in which I can receive the graces necessary for salvation. Poor Hans Küng - he must think that the Church will be going bye-bye soon. O ye of little faith. No wonder he worries.
Here's the story about his new book, from The Christian Century:
The Catholic Church is seriously, possibly terminally ill and only an honest diagnosis and radical therapy will cure it, one of the sharpest critics of Pope Benedict XVI, the Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Küng, has written."Terminally ill"? Rather melodramatic, isn't it? "Radical therapy"? What, tearing out statues, dismantling sanctuaries, liturgical abuses and novelties weren't radical enough?
Speaking at a sold-out event in the Literaturhaus (Literary Centre) in Munich on 2 May, Küng who is a former colleague of the pope at the University of Tubingen, introduced his new book, "Ist die Kirche noch zu retten?" ("Can the Church Still Be Saved?").
Küng argues that the malady of the church goes beyond recent sexual abuse scandals. According to him, the church's resistance to reform, its secrecy, lack of transparency and misogyny are at the heart of the problem.
He said that the Catholic church in the United States has lost one-third of its membership."The American Catholic church never asked why," he said."Any other institution that has lost a third of its members would want to know why." He also said that eighty percent of German bishops would welcome reforms.
It seems to me his book's title his incomplete. Perhaps he should have called it "Can the Church Still be Saved...From People Like Pope Benedict XVI?" Because in his mind, the Holy Father, along with Blessed Pope John Paul II, are the ones responsible for the "mess" the Church is in today. And it's up to people like Küng to save it.
Yeah right. That's like asking the fox to repair the door of the chicken coop it damaged the night before. Pope Benedict XVI is much too wise to fall for that canard.
I wonder how many books he hopes to sell at the upcoming American Catholic Council being held in Detroit next month. The folks there will just lap this stuff up. They believe they are the ones we have been waiting for. They think they have the solutions - doctrine and dogma be damned.
No - heresies and fallacies do not possess the power to build up. They only have the power to divide and destroy.
Here's a bit more from the article:
He told the mostly elderly audience in the Diocese of Munich and Freising, the former diocese of Benedict XVI, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, "I would have preferred not to write this book. It is not pleasant to dedicate such a critical publication to the church that has remained my church.""Mostly elderly audience"...it's what the ACC will feature too. That's a trend amongst the Catholycs. The Holy Father and most of the Vatican are elderly and older men, but that's what you might expect at the top of a large, global organization. Those with experience tend to lead (current President is an exception). Thing is, with these Catholyc groups, elderly and older folks permeate the entire organization, from top to bottom, from leadership to the regular member. There is very little youth to speak of.
He said he had hoped that Benedict would find a way forward in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) which in the early sixties reformed the church in a number of ways, such as the celebration of Mass in local languages instead of Latin.
And I wish Küng and other "intellectuals" like him would be a bit more intellectually honest. Last I checked, the Summorrum Pontificum, which liberated the use of the Extraordinary Form, didn't curtail or eliminate the celebration of the Mass said in local languages, did it? And yet many claim that Vatican II did away with the Latin Mass, despite the fact that nowhere in the Vatican II documents is that stated. What are these people afraid of?
That's a rhetorical question - I know what they're afraid of: that more and more people will see how irrelevant and destructive the Catholycs' ideas have been and are. And it's becoming more evident with every book they publish.
note: I haven't read Küng's book, and I don't plan to. My opinion is based solely on this article and my familiarity with Catholycs.
