GlobalPost
Jason Berry
In November 2012, on assignment for GlobalPost and National Catholic Reporter, I traveled to the University of Tübingen in Germany to interview Professor Hans Küng about the Vatican investigation of the main leadership group of American nuns.
Küng, along with Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), are the most renowned Catholic theologians of the last half-century. Their conflicts, which date back several decades, mirror a divided church.
In the early 1960s, when the shy, bookish Ratzinger taught at Tübingen, he had no driver’s license, and bicycled up steep hills of the medieval town. Küng drove a convertible and sometimes gave him rides. Both priests were liberal advisors at the reform-driven Second Vatican Council (1962-65). In 1968, when student protestors disrupted Ratzinger’s class, he began a steady move to the right. In 1979, as a Vatican cardinal, he revoked Küng’s license to teach theology for challenging papal infallibility.
Küng, with tenure, shifted his teaching focus but escalated his criticism of a monarchical papacy; he accused John Paul of reducing bishops to yes-men, undercutting Vatican II reforms. Later, he called Ratzinger “the Grand Inquisitor” after the cardinal who scorns Jesus, while persecuting heretics in The Brothers Karamazov.
With a ceaseless tide of books, speeches and interviews, Küng became an international figure, and as founder of Global Ethic Foundation, has drawn international leaders into dialogue on ethical norms for peaceful world development.
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