The Gay Catholic Priests' Blog
“When you rape children, cover it, rape them again, cover it up, rape them again, finally get caught, still cover it up, apologize, recant your apology, then blame the victim, you have zero moral authority to lecture others about their supposed sins.”
– John Aravosis at AMERICAblog, writing about the Catholic Church’s most current bit of pearl-clutching over marriage equality.
By PATSY McGARRY
How can today’s young people be invited “to commit themselves to a male-dominated, authoritarian institution which suppresses dissent and attempts to control what its members may even discuss?” social justice campaigner Fr Peter McVerry has asked.
The founder of the Peter McVerry Trust for homeless people was speaking in Dublin last night at the first annual general meeting of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP). The meeting continues today.
He said there were “many priests and religious . . . who experience only condemnation, exclusion and marginalisation by the very church which was mandated by its founder to reach out to all in compassion, love, and tolerance”.
The church established by Jesus “was to be a community of brothers and sisters, free of all domination”, he said. Jesus warned against “replicating the relationships of power that existed in the wider society”.
“Whatever little theology I have, I learnt from homeless people,” he said. Listening to them had “changed my understanding of who God is and what God wants”.
Fear
Fr McVerry said the wealth, power and status of the church, and its “fear of losing them”, may have filtered “understanding of the message of Jesus”. Such fear was seen recently in the church authorities’ response to child sexual abuse.
He recalled that “for the religious authorities at the time of Jesus, God was a God of the law” and that “the church, too, has often proclaimed a God of the law”. It meant “anyone, like Jesus, dissident priests, organisations like the ACP who challenge this understanding of God, is seen therefore as a threat . . . to be got rid of”.
“Jesus . . . was just ‘the carpenter’s son,’ one of the laity no less” who “was moved by the suffering of his people. And Jesus proclaimed a different God, a God of compassion”.
He wondered whether this was why today the message of the church was seen by so many as irrelevant to their lives.
Complete Article HERE!
At Baltimore’s St. Vincent de Paul Church, Rev. Richard T. Lawrence read the archbishop’s statement urging a vote against the marriage bill referendum. He then told his parishioners why the archbishop was wrong.
A Maryland priest bucked the Vatican — and his own archbishop — Sunday by telling his parishioners that he sees a future in which the Roman Catholic Church could recognize “the total, exclusive and permanent union of gay and lesbian couples as part of the sacrament of matrimony.”
The Rev. Richard T. Lawrence drew a quick response from the local Catholic hierarchy. Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori asked that a copy of Rev. Richard T. Lawrence’s homily that had been posted online at the church’s website be removed because it ran counter to Catholic Church teaching on the subject. Lawrence complied, Lawrence’s pastoral associate, Chris McCullough, told BuzzFeed on Thursday.
Lawrence acknowledged in his sermon that the sea change he predicted won’t happen in the near future, but in the meantime he told parishoners at Baltimore’s St. Vincent de Paul Church on Sunday that “even if we do not believe that gay marriage ever could or should be allowed in the church, we could live with a provision that allows civil marriage of gay and lesbian couples.”
Lawrence’s striking opposition to the Catholic Church’s strong teaching against the recognition of same-sex couples’ marriages, reported first in the National Catholic Reporter, was, in and of itself, unexpected in light of the dogmatic path set by Pope Benedict XVI.
What made Lawrence’s presentation of his view more remarkable was that it was preceded by his reading the letter written by Lori, who as archbishop oversees Lawrence, urging the congregation of the importance of opposing the referendum in Maryland on Nov. 6 over the marriage equality bill passed and signed into law earlier this year. Lori told all parishioners in the letter, read by Lawrence, that they faced “the momentous choice of whether to maintain marriage as the union of one man and one woman in Maryland, or to irrevocably dismantle our state’s legal recognition of the most basic unit of our society — the family unit of mother, father and child.”
Lawrence, after finishing the archbishop’s letter, then told the congregation of his views and asked them, “[C]ould not civil law be allowed to progress where church law cannot go, at least not yet? Personally, I believe that it can and that it should.”
He concluded: “So there you have it: the official teaching of the church and my personal reflections.”
According to the Catholic Reporter’s Arthur Jones, the parishioners gave Lawrence a standing ovation.
Lawrence’s move fits with his biography on the church’s website, which notes that he has been “active in social justice ministries all his life, starting with the Civil Rights movement in the [1960s] and the Peace movement in the [1970s], and is today one of the leaders in the Inclusive Housing movement.”
Moreover, on Thursday, Chris McCullough, the pastoral associate at St. Vincent de Paul Church told BuzzFeed that, although the homily had been taken down from the church’s website, the Catholic Reporter article provided “a very solid, essential synopsis of the homily.”
Of the archbishop’s response, McCullough said, “We knew there would be repercussions.” He added, “I think it’s gracious that there wasn’t further punitive action taken.”
McCullough said, despite the pushback from the archbishop, Lawrence gave the homily because he wanted parishioners to know “there are other opinions” and “to keep [those opinions] in dialogue.”
Complete Article HERE!
The town of Ballina has been rocked by the sudden death of a local priest in what is believed to be the first case in recent years of a Catholic cleric in Ireland taking his own life.
Residents in the Co Mayo town yesterday expressed shock at news of the death of Fr Muredach Tuffy, a popular curate and director of the Newman Institute — an educational centre known as Ballina’s “Catholic university”.
The body of the 39-year-old was discovered early yesterday in his apartment, attached to the institute at Cathedral Close.
Local sources said no foul play was involved.
Fellow priests in Ballina and the Diocese of Killala were too upset to comment when contacted by the Irish Examiner yesterday.
Fr Gerard O’Hora, the parish priest of Ballina and spokesman for the Bishop of Killala, Dr John Fleming, was also unavailable.
A native of Castleconnor, Co Sligo, where he was ordained in 1999, Fr Tuffy had worked as director of the Newman Institute since 2003 and has been instrumental in its development and growth into a centre for adult religious education.
He was also the diocesan director of pastoral renewal and diocesan vocations director, as well as lecturing in applied theology at the Newman Institute. He also acted as Bishop Fleming’s spokesman.
Fr Tuffy officiated at the wedding of a friend in his home town of Castleconnor last Saturday.
Local Fianna Fáil TD Dara Calleary, who attended school with Fr Tuffy at St Muredach’s College in Ballina, said Ballina was “shocked beyond belief”.
Enniskillen-based priest and well-known broadcaster Fr Brian D’Arcy spoke earlier this week about the pressures of being a priest in Ireland amid the fallout of various clerical sexual abuse scandals, as well as grappling with controversial Church teaching on issues such as clerical celibacy, contraception, and homosexuality.
The Association of Catholic Priests yesterday expressed disappointment and sadness at the response of the Hierarchy to their request for greater engagement with the group about the future of the Church.
The organisation claimed there was often a “palpable sense of dejection, depression and sometimes almost despair when clergy gather as a group”.
The Irish Episcopal Conference told the ACP that engagement would best be conducted at local level using established structures.
Complete Article HERE!
The finances of the Roman Catholic Church tend to be well concealed. But a spate of bankruptcy cases in the US (8 out of 196 dioceses, with Honolulu teetering on the brink) has enabled The Economist to examine the situation in that country in more detail than is usually possible.
There are 74 million people in the US who describe themselves as Roman Catholic, and the expenditure of the Church is estimated as $170 billion in 2010. Of this, 57% was spent on health-care networks, 28% on colleges and universities, 6% on dioceses, parishes and schools, and 2.7% on charitable activities. Over 1 million people were employed (by comparison, the Walmart supermarket chain employed 2 million people). Less than a tenth of the income comes from church offerings; much of the rest comes from investments, property, wealthy businessmen, and local and federal government support for the hospitals, universities and schools. The Church in the US probably has about 60% of the total wealth of the Roman Catholic Church worldwide.
The Church has paid out $3.3 billion in settlements for child abuse over the last 15 years and this figure is expected to rise considerably. The dioceses are financially independent and the settlements are made by individual dioceses, which is why a number of them have gone bankrupt as a consequence of these settlements. Ten states are considering relaxing the time limitation on investigating child abuse, which could lead to the bankruptcy of several more dioceses. It is estimated that the Church is spending somewhere between $100 000 and $1 million a year in opposing the relaxation of this time limit. The child abuse scandal has led to a considerable reduction in donations to the Church and, at the same time, the shortage of priests and nuns has reduced the amount of the cheap labour available to the Church and has increased the running costs.
The rest of the report is somewhat technical but the following points emerge. Several dioceses have responded to their financial difficulties by raiding the priests’ pension funds. Between 1986 and 2002 the Diocese of Boston collected about $70-90 million in Easter and Christmas offerings, none of which was paid into the clergy retirement fund, although many parishioners thought that this was where the money was going.
Some dioceses have presented their funds as consisting of numerous different accounts for parishes, schools, hospitals, etc, when in fact there is just a single account. The parishes, schools and hospitals have then lost all their investments when the diocese has gone bankrupt.
Other dioceses, threatened with bankruptcy, have tried to shield their money by moving it out of diocesan accounts. In the ongoing Milwaukee bankruptcy case, the Archbishop of Milwaukee authorized a transfer of $55.6 million from the diocesan account into a cemetery fund. One Californian lawyer who has been involved in several of the bankruptcy cases says, ‘We have seen a consistent tactic of Catholic bishops to shrink the size of their assets, which is not only wrong morally but in violation of state and federal laws’. A whole city block in downtown San Diego was valued in the diocesan accounts at $40 000, the price that had been paid for it in the 1940s. The judge in the case was so irritated by the various ‘shenanigans’ that she ordered a special investigation into the diocesan finances.
The Economist report exposes considerable financial corruption in Roman Catholic dioceses in America but, as so often when dealing with the Church of Rome, there is a reluctance to draw conclusions. Somehow the idea is preserved that the Church of Rome is doing a lot of good in America. One would hope that, from her financial corruption, people would readily deduce her spiritual corruption, but they are remarkably slow to do so.
Complete Article HERE!
The folk mass hymns and gospels were familiar, the response “And with your spirit” recited Sundays in church by millions of Catholics, but the 120 faithful gathered outside Seattle’s St. James Cathedral on Sunday afternoon were praying for a cause their bishops are campaigning against.
Mobilized by Catholics for Marriage Equality, they celebrated a “Liturgy of Love,” praying for the recognition of same-sex unions and the passage of Referendum 74, which would legalize marriage between persons of the same gender.
“I would just say the God I have come to know is not one to tell people they are not equal,” said Robert Gavino, a Seattle University student.
John House, a parishoner at Our Lady of Sorrows parish in Snoqualmie, added: “Catholics believe Christ’s primary message is one of love, and Catholic social teaching teaches us that God loves everybody. We are standing up for centuries of Catholic social teaching.”
They are also standing against their bishops.
Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain has issued a pastoral letter denouncing Referendum 74, and put three anti-74 videos on the diocesan website. “R-74 jeopardizes freedom rather than expands it: It endangers our religious liberty and the right of conscience,” Bishop Joseph Tyson of Yakima claimed in a particularly strident letter to the faithful.
We disagree, said those on the steps of St. James Cathedral.
“I find (bishops’ claims) perplexing:. Nothing about marriage equality in the state of Washington is any infringement on liberty. This is about civil marriage and civil law,” said John Morfield, a longtime parishoner at St. Mary’s Catholic Church.
And Barbara Guzzo, organizer of Catholics for Marriage, argued that the bishops have brought “anguish, division and sadness” to the faithful, “particularly those with a gay person in their families, the hurt that this has caused.”
Fr. John Whitney, S.J., pastor of St. Joseph Church, has encouraged discussion and helped a recent meeting to promote reconciliation between those who share the bishops’ passionate opposition and those who back Referendum 74. “Authority never supplants conscience,” he told parishoners in a recent “e-blast.”
But stridently conservative bishops across the country have brought politics to the pulpit — and delivered dictates of what belongs in the consciences of those in the pews.
“A properly formed Catholic conscience will never contradict the Church’s teachings in matters of faith and morality,” Bishop David Kagan of Fargo, N.D., said in a weekend letter. The letter contained no mention of social teachings or poverty or human rights, but among things “never acceptable” was “not recognizing the unique and special role of marriage as a unique union of one man and one woman.”
In Washington, however, more than 60 resigned Catholic priests have endorsed Referendum 74. More than 100 retired and former priests in Minnesota have denounced Archbishop John Nienstedt for his efforts to write a one man-one woman definition of marriage into the state constitution.
State Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, present at St. James on Sunday, is a practicing Catholic and chief sponsor of marriage equality in the Legislature. Murray said he was outside the cathedral as a demonstration of his faith.
“I think any time we show solidarity with those on the margins of our society, it is an expression of our faith,” said Murray. “We (gays) are certainly on the margins . . . at least in the hierarchy’s structure.”
The “Liturgy of Love” took place at the same hour as the weekly Solemn Vespers and Benediction inside St. James Cathedral. Earlier this year, the cathedral refused to serve as a collection center for petitions to force a vote on same-sex marriage.
The liturgy outside was familiar.
It featured singing of the Prayer of St. Francis:
“Make me a channel of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me bring your love; where there is injury, your pardon, Lord; where there is doubt, true faith in you.”
Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign — the largest national group campaigning for gay and lesbian rights — spoke at the end of the liturgy. A Georgetown product, he said of his Catholic education: “Nowhere, ever, did it tell me to oppose a right that I might have. Or to support discrimination against my brothers and sisters.”
“The other 49 states are watching,” said Griffin.
Later, in an interview, Griffin noted the long string of defeats for same-sex marriage at the polls. But this year, he predicted, will be different. “Scare tactics, false headlines and lies are not working as they used to,” he said. “It’s close, but I’d rather be where we are than where they are.”
Where gay marriage supporters are is ahead in the polls in three states — Washington, Maryland and Maine — that are voting on marriage equality. In a race where polls are neck and neck, Minnesotans will vote on the constitutional amendment, heavily backed by Catholic bishops, that would write a ban into their state constitution.
Across the North Star state, however, lawn signs have sprouted with the message: “Another Catholic voting No.”
Complete Article HERE!
Kate Kenna, a lifelong Catholic, career social worker and political progressive in Grand Forks, has mounted a reaction to news of a North Dakota bishop’s call to the faithful concerning voting.
A letter from Bishop David Kagan of Bismarck is to be read Sunday from all the Catholic pulpits in the state urging them to not support abortion, stem-cell research or same-sex marriage when voting.
Kenna bought a “City Briefs” ad in the Herald with a short message: “The bishop is bringing politics to church. Please wear a political button to Mass on Sunday to support the candidate of your choice.”
It began running Thursday online.
Kenna also called Joel Heitkamp at KFGO radio in Fargo, who talked about it Thursday on the air.
And Kenna has organized a sort of demonstration Sunday at her own parish, Holy Family. She and others, including her friend Thomasine Heitkamp, will be standing with others outside the church to show their disagreement with the bishop. The Heitkamps are siblings of Democratic Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp.
Democrats upset
Kagan was appointed bishop in Bismarck in November and named apostolic administrator of the Fargo diocese this summer until a replacement bishop is announced.
It came to light the past week that Kagan sent a letter to all priests in the state to be read Sunday.
The bishop declined to release the letter pending its being read Sunday in churches. But he announced Thursday he will discuss the letter at 9 a.m. Tuesday on Real Presence Radio at 1370 AM in Grand Forks and 1280 AM in Fargo.
State Sen. Tim Mathern, D-Fargo, released the text of the letter and criticized it in a Forum Communications story Wednesday, saying it went over the line in directing Catholics how to vote.
Although Kagan’s letter does not mention parties or candidates by name, Mathern said it clearly was pointed at Democrats because of the party’s known support for the issues Kagan mentioned.
Plus, Mathern said the phrase used by Kagan telling Catholics not to vote for “the most likable” candidate appears to echo Republican ads referring to Heidi Heitkamp.
Friend of Heitkamps
Kenna said that’s how she sees it, too, especially as a longtime close friend of Thomasine and Heidi Heitkamp.
Catholics are taught to follow their own conscience, she said.
“I think I have a perfectly formed conscience,” said Kenna, who credits growing up going to St. Michael’s Elementary School and St. James High School in Grand Forks. That’s led her to devote her life to social work and to support the Democratic party because she sees it as caring for people.
“We can’t just look at being pro-life as just being pro-delivery,” Kenna said. “Being pro-life means all of life and that means people who are here, also.”
The church is a place where people of all political persuasions should feel welcome and be united in faith, not in politics, she said.
Church response
Christopher Dodson, executive director of the North Dakota Catholic Conference, a public policy and lobbying effort of the two dioceses in the state, agrees that partisan politics doesn’t belong in church. Nor does Bishop Kagan, who does not refer to any individuals or parties in his letter, Dodson said.
“There’s nothing new in the letter, it’s all Catholic teaching on how to form one’s conscience,” Dodson. His office has been sending similar messages to parishes in the state regularly since about Labor Day, he said.
The bishop’s reference to not voting for someone because they are “likable” reflects long-held Catholic teaching that the faithful should look at deeper issues than either pocketbook issues or a person’s personality, Dodson said. It’s not about Heitkamp or anyone in particular, he said.
“It’s not about influencing elections, it’s about the care of souls,” Dodson said. That’s why the bishop has been reluctant to discuss his letter before parishioners hear it themselves in church, not in a partisan debate on radio or television, Dodson said.
“People who are really involved in partisan politics get hyper-partisan around election time and everything they see gets interpreted through those partisan lenses,” he said. “I think parishioners will be pleasantly surprised when they finally hear the letter and see that it doesn’t deal with partisan politics.”
Faith and politics
Kenna long has taken her faith and her politics seriously.
In the fall of 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War, a woman regularly stood across the street from St. James High School, holding a sign protesting the war, Kenna remembers. “She wasn’t allowed to come on the school grounds.”
A junior, Kenna invited the woman to speak to her current events class.
“I got suspended for three days,” she said with a laugh.
Now she feels she must react to the message from the bishop that she might be voting the wrong way.
“I think the bishop of Bismarck has brought this to a new level where he is bringing politics into church and as a responsible voter I have to say that’s wrong, and how do I respond that?” she said.
“I could stand up and walk out of church (while the letter is read) but I think that would be disrespectful to our priest,” she said.
Instead, she and others plan to stand outside Holy Family during Masses on Sunday.
Although she will wear a Heitkamp button, it’s not about campaigning, she said, adding she hopes many wear buttons of all sorts.
“I don’t think it’s a protest; I think it’s just an awareness-building exercise,” she said. “I just want people to examine their consciences and then vote the way they feel is consistent with their beliefs. I don’t want to be told that in church.”
Complete Article HERE!
By Jerome Christenson
Jesus didn’t come to found a Super PAC. So how do I explain the role of the Roman Catholic Church in this election?
How is it that we find an organization that styles itself “the Bride of Christ” whoring after votes like Tammany Hall with pews?
For months, Minnesota Catholic bishops have been behaving more like old-time, big-city political bosses than pastors of a troubled flock. As a Catholic, I am angered and embarrassed that the leaders of my church have chosen to devote more than half a million dollars to writing language into the Minnesota Constitution that would deny legal rights, protections and privileges to women and to men based solely upon their gender.
Of all the rituals of the church, there is none I find so challenging as the annual re-enactment of Jesus washing the feet of his Apostles, with the concluding admonition of “I have given you an example.”
And what is the example Jesus gives? To go beyond what is comfortable, what is easy, what has been done before. To reach out to the poor, the weak, the put down and oppressed. To those without power, to those who have been denied.
“Come unto me,” he said, with a door open in welcome.
But rather than stand with Jesus in welcome, the prelates are calling upon us to stand with those who would slam the door.
They would have us deny our brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, friends and relations recognition of the most intimate and profound human relationships — and they are so very wrong to do so.
To those who tell me this vote isn’t for or against discrimination, I just repeat what my dad told me: “You’re known by the company you keep.” On this ballot question, on which side do we find the bigots, the homophobes, the haters? And on which side do we find the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church?
The wrong side.
Clearly, the wrong side.
And I am embarrassed and ashamed.
I know, there are plenty of folks who will say, “If you don’t like it, leave.”
No.
This is my church as much as it is the church of the hierarchy — ultimately all are equal before God. I go to Mass for prayer, not for a political rally, and prayer will continue long after the electioneering is over.
And if I claim it as my church, I also share responsibility for what the church does and what it stands for. And in this matter I take my example from the unlettered son of a Nazarene carpenter who dared say to the scribes, elders and pharisees, You are wrong.
And on this matter our bishops are wrong. How do we claim to live according to the great command, Love one another as I have loved you, and say with our words, our money, our votes that some of us are not worthy of — or capable of — what may be the most profound, selfless love humans may experience.
This is something I do know a bit about.
Had she lived, Gayle and I would have been married 35 years this July. If my mom were still living, she and Dad would be celebrating 62. Having lived better and worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health, lived it until parted by death, I know the love that sustained us in joy, anger and sorrow was rooted in our souls, not in our genitals.
To stand between any two people and deny them the expression of such a love is no less a sin than to stand between them and the very love of God.
Complete Article HERE!
File under the category: The Church hates the gays more than it loves its own. Churches are closing, schools are closing, food banks are underfunded, and shelters for homeless people are shuttered. More and more people are living on the edge of financial collapse…
BUT
Catholic Church Ponied Up More Than $1 Million To Fight Marriage Equality
Forget that vow of poverty: The Roman Catholic Church has shelled out more than $1 million to fight various marriage-equality initiatives, according to a new report from the Human Rights Campaign.
The study shows that the millennia-old institution has donated more than $1.1 million to anti-equality initiatives, including ones fighting gay-marriage measures in Washington, Maryland and Maine—and one supporting a gay-marriage ban in Minnesota, where it has given more than $608,000 to support a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. (That’s more than half the campaign’s budget.)
Today, the Church is now the top religious donor for anti-equality efforts, with more than $640,000 coming from the Catholic fraternal organization the Knights of Columbus.
Fortunately it looks like gay-rights advocates have been able to raise considerably more funds overall than anti-equality cronies. (HRC has contributed $7.3 million to marriage-equality campaigns in the past 12 months.).
Given that a majority of everyday Catholics actually support gay marriage, HRC president Chad Griffin says “The Church hierarchy owes the laity an explanation as to why they are spending this much money on discrimination, and at what cost to other crucial Church programs.”
In a statement, Jason Adkins of the Minnesota Catholic Conference replied, “Our marriage amendment activities, like our other activities, are aimed at fostering the common good.”
Thanks but no thanks, pal.
Complete Article HERE!
Hans Küng urges confrontation from the grassroots to unseat pope and force radical reform at Vatican
One of the world’s most prominent Catholic theologians has called for a revolution from below to unseat the pope and force radical reform at the Vatican.
Hans Küng is appealing to priests and churchgoers to confront the Catholic hierarchy, which he says is corrupt, lacking credibility and apathetic to the real concerns of the church’s members.
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Küng, who had close contact with the pope when the two worked together as young theologians, described the church as an “authoritarian system” with parallels to Germany’s Nazi dictatorship.
“The unconditional obedience demanded of bishops who swear their allegiance to the pope when they make their holy oath is almost as extreme as that of the German generals who were forced to swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler,” he said.
The Vatican made a point of crushing any form of clerical dissent, he added. “The rules for choosing bishops are so rigid that as soon as candidates emerge who, say, stand up for the pill, or for the ordination of women, they are struck off the list.” The result was a church of “yes men”, almost all of whom unquestioningly toed the line.
“The only way for reform is from the bottom up,” said Küng, 84, who is a priest. “The priests and others in positions of responsibility need to stop being so subservient, to organise themselves and say that there are certain things that they simply will not put up with anymore.”
Küng, the author of around 30 books on Catholic theology, Christianity and ethics, which have sold millions worldwide, said that inspiration for global change was to be found in his native Switzerland and in Austria, where hundreds of Catholic priests have formed movements advocating policies that openly defy current Vatican practices. The revolts have been described as unprecedented by Vatican observers, who say they are likely to cause deep schisms in the church.
“I’ve always said that if one priest in a diocese is roused, that counts for nothing. Five will create a stir. Fifty are pretty much invincible. In Austria the figure is well over 300, possibly up to 400 priests; in Switzerland it’s about 150 who have stood up and it will increase.”
He said recent attempts by the archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn, to try to stamp out the uprising by threatening to punish those involved in the Austrian “priests’ initiative” had backfired owing to the strength of feeling. “He soon stopped when he realised that so many ordinary people are supportive of them and he was in danger of turning them all against him,” Küng said.
The initiatives support such seemingly modest demands as letting divorced and remarried people receive communion, allowing non-ordained people to lead services and allowing women to take on important positions in the hierarchy. However, as they go against conventional Catholic teaching, the demands have been flatly rejected by the Vatican.
Küng, who was stripped of the authority to teach Catholic theology by Pope John Paul II in 1979 for questioning the concept of papal infallibility, is credited with giving the present pope, Joseph Ratzinger as he then was, the first significant step up the hierarchy of Catholic academia when he called him to Tübingen University, in south-west Germany, as professor of dogmatic theology in 1966.
The pair had worked closely for four years in the 1960s as the youngest theological advisers on the second Vatican council – the most radical overhaul of the Catholic church since the middle ages. But the relationship between the two was never straightforward, with their political differences eventually driving a wedge between them. The dashing and flamboyant Hans Küng, by various accounts, often stole the limelight from the more earnest and staid Joseph Ratzinger.
Küng refers to the “heap of legends” that abound about himself and Ratzinger from their “Tübingen days”, not least the apocryphal accounts of how he gave lifts in his “red sports car” to the bicycle-riding Ratzinger.
“I often gave him a lift, particularly up the steep hills of Tübingen, yes, but too much has been made of this,” he said. “I didn’t drive a sports car, rather an Alfa Romeo Giulia. Ratzinger admitted himself that he had no interest in technology and had no driving licence. But it’s often been turned into some kind of pseudo-profound metaphor idealising the ‘cyclist’ and demonising the ‘Alfa Romeo driver’.”
Indeed the “modest” and prudent “bicycle-rider” image that pope-to-be, now 85, fostered for years has all but evaporated since his 2005 inauguration, according to Küng.
“He has developed a peculiar pomposity that doesn’t fit the man I and others knew, who once walked around in a Basque-style cap and was relatively modest. Now he’s frequently to be seen wrapped in golden splendour and swank. By his own volition he wears the crown of a 19th-century pope, and has even had the garments of the Medici pope Leo X remade for him.”
That “pomposity”, he said, manifested itself most fully in the regular audiences who gather on St Peter’s Square in Rome. “What happens has Potemkin village dimensions,” he said. “Fanatical people go there to celebrate the pope, and tell him how wonderful he is, while meanwhile at home their own parishes are in a lamentable state, with a lack of priests, a far higher number than ever before of people who are leaving than are being baptised and now Vatileaks, which indicates just what a poor state the Vatican administration is in,” he said, referring to the scandal over leaked documents uncovering power struggles within the Vatican which has seen the pope’s former butler appear in court. The trial ends on Saturday.
It was in Tübingen that the paths of the two theologians crossed for several years before diverging sharply following the student riots of 1968. Ratzinger was shocked by the events and escaped to the relative safety of his native Bavaria, where he deepened his involvement in the Catholic hierarchy. Küng stayed in Tübingen and increasingly assumed the role of the Catholic church’s enfant terrible.
“The student revolts were a primal shock for Ratzinger and after that he became ever more conservative and part of the hierarchy of the church,” said Küng.
Calling Pope Benedict XVI’s reign a “pontificate of missed opportunities”, in which he had forgone chances to reconcile with the Protestant, Jewish, orthodox and Muslim faiths, as well as failing to help the African fight against Aids by not allowing the use of birth control, Küng said his “gravest scandal” was the way he had “covered up” worldwide cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics during his time as the head of the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as Cardinal Ratzinger.
“The Vatican is no different from the Kremlin,” Küng said. “Just as Putin as a secret service agent became the head of Russia, so Ratzinger, as head of the Catholic church’s secret services, became head of the Vatican. He has never apologised for the fact that many cases of abuse were sealed under the secretum pontificium (papal secrecy), or acknowledged that this is a disaster for the Catholic church.” Küng described a process of “Putinisation” that has taken place at the Vatican.
Yet despite their differences, the two have remained in contact. Küng visited the pope at his summer retreat, Castel Gandolfo, in 2005, during which the two held an intensive four-hour discussion.
“It felt like we were on an equal footing – after all, we’d been colleagues for years. We walked through the park and there were times I thought he might turn the corner on certain issues, but it never happened. Since then we’ve still kept exchanging letters, but we’ve not met.”
Kung has travelled widely in his life, befriending everyone from Iranian leaders to John F. Kennedy, and Tony Blair with whom he forged close links a decade ago, becoming something of a spiritual guru for the then British prime minister ahead of his decision to convert to Catholicism.
“I was impressed how he tackled the Northern Ireland conflict. But then came the Iraq war and I was extremely troubled by the way in which he collaborated with Bush. I wrote to him calling it a historical failure of the first order. He wrote me a hand-written note in reply, saying he respected my views and thankyou, but that I should know he was acting according to his conscience and was not trying to please the Americans. I was astounded that a British prime minister could make such a catastrophic mistake, and he remains for me a tragic figure.” He described Blair’s conversion to Catholicism as a mistake, insisting he should instead have used his role as a public figure to reconcile differences between the Anglican and Catholic churches in the UK.
From his book-filled study, where a portrait of Sir Thomas More, the 16th-century English Catholic martyr, hangs on the wall, Küng looks out on to his front garden and a two-metre-tall statue of himself. Critics have called it symptomatic of Kung’s inflated sense of his own importance. He is embarrassed as he attempts to explain how it was a gift from his 20-year-old Stiftung Weltethos, (Foundation for a Global Ethic), which operates from his house and will continue to do so after his death.
Far from putting the brakes on his prolific theological output, Küng has recently distilled the ideas of Weltethos – which seeks to create a global code of behaviour, or a globalisation of ethics – into a capricious musical libretto. Mixing narrative with excerpts from the teachings of Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, Küng’s writings have been incorporated into a major symphonic work by the British composer Jonathan Harvey that will have its London premiere on Sunday at the Southbank Centre.
Küng says the musical work, like the foundation, is an attempt to emphasise what the religions of the world have in common rather than what divides them.
Weltethos was founded in the early 1990s as an attempt to bring the religions of the world together by emphasising what they have in common rather than what divides them. It has drawn up a code of behavioural rules that it hopes one day will be as universally acceptable as the UN.
The work’s aim is arguably high-minded – Harvey described the demanding task of writing a score for the text as an “awe-inspring responsibility”. But Küng, who has won the support of leading figures including Henry Kissinger, Kofi Annan, Jacques Rogge, Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson and Shirin Ebadi, insisted its aims were grounded in basic necessity.”At a time of paradigm change in the world, we need a common set of principles, most obvious among them the Golden Rule, in which Confucius taught to not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself,” he said.
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