UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Bill Tammeus | Feb. 5, 2014 A small c catholic
Hans Küng has long been an important prophetic voice, primarily within Catholicism but more broadly within Christianity.
He continues in that role in his latest book, Can We Save the Catholic Church?, just now published in the U.S. In it, he offers the sorrowful but hopeful pleadings of a priest and theologian who has sought for decades to reform the church in the liberating spirit of the Second Vatican Council.
Küng’s battles with the church’s hierarchy are well known, and much of that gets retold in this book. But what especially struck me about this volume is that Küng’s familiar arguments to salvage Vatican II reforms are overshadowed by a different, more important call to the whole of Christianity, not just to Catholicism.
Here’s how Küng puts it: “The crucial question is always the same: Does one’s church faithfully incorporate and reflect the original Christian message, the Gospel, which to all intents and purposes is Jesus Christ himself, to whom each church appeals as its ultimate authority?” And again: “Without a concrete and consequent return to the historical Jesus Christ, to his message, his behavior and his fate … a Christian church — whatever its name — will have neither true Christian identity nor relevance for modern human beings and society.”
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