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  An Open Letter from Dr Hans Küng to the
Catholic Bishops of the World

Fri, Apr 16, 2010

VENERABLE BISHOPS,

Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and I were the youngest theologians at the
Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Now we are the oldest and the only ones still
fully active. I have always understood my theological work as a service to the Roman
Catholic Church. For this reason, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the election of
Pope Benedict XVI, I am making this appeal to you in an open letter. In doing so, I am
motivated by my profound concern for our church, which now finds itself in the worst
credibility crisis since the Reformation. Please excuse the form of an open letter;
unfortunately, I have no other way of reaching you.

I deeply appreciated that the pope invited me, his outspoken critic, to meet for a friendly,
four-hour-long conversation shortly after he took office. This awakened in me the hope that
my former colleague at Tubingen University might find his way to promote an ongoing
renewal of the church and an ecumenical rapprochement in the spirit of the Second Vatican
Council.

Unfortunately, my hopes and those of so many engaged Catholic men and women have not
been fulfilled. And in my subsequent correspondence with the pope, I have pointed this out to
him many times. Without a doubt, he conscientiously performs his everyday duties as pope,
and he has given us three helpful encyclicals on faith, hope and charity. But when it comes to
facing the major challenges of our times, his pontificate has increasingly passed up more
opportunities than it has taken:

Missed is the opportunity for rapprochement with the Protestant churches: Instead, they have
been denied the status of churches in the proper sense of the term and, for that reason, their
ministries are not recognized and intercommunion is not possible.

Missed is the opportunity for the long-term reconciliation with the Jews: Instead the pope has
reintroduced into the liturgy a preconciliar prayer for the enlightenment of the Jews, he has
taken notoriously anti-Semitic and schismatic bishops back into communion with the church,
and he is actively promoting the beatification of Pope Pius XII, who has been accused of not
offering sufficient protections to Jews in Nazi Germany.

The fact is, Benedict sees in Judaism only the historic root of Christianity; he does not take it
seriously as an ongoing religious community offering its own path to salvation. The recent
comparison of the current criticism faced by the pope with anti-Semitic hate campaigns –
made by Rev Raniero Cantalamessa during an official Good Friday service at the Vatican –
has stirred up a storm of indignation among Jews around the world.

Missed is the opportunity for a dialogue with Muslims in an atmosphere of mutual trust:
Instead, in his ill-advised but symptomatic 2006 Regensburg lecture, Benedict caricatured
Islam as a religion of violence and inhumanity and thus evoked enduring Muslim mistrust.

Missed is the opportunity for reconciliation with the colonised indigenous peoples of Latin
America: Instead, the pope asserted in all seriousness that they had been “longing” for the
religion of their European conquerors.

Missed is the opportunity to help the people of Africa by allowing the use of birth control to
fight overpopulation and condoms to fight the spread of HIV.

Missed is the opportunity to make peace with modern science by clearly affirming the theory
of evolution and accepting stem-cell research.

Missed is the opportunity to make the spirit of the Second Vatican Council the compass for
the whole Catholic Church, including the Vatican itself, and thus to promote the needed
reforms in the church.

This last point, respected bishops, is the most serious of all. Time and again, this pope has
added qualifications to the conciliar texts and interpreted them against the spirit of the council
fathers. Time and again, he has taken an express stand against the Ecumenical Council, which
according to canon law represents the highest authority in the Catholic Church:

He has taken the bishops of the traditionalist Pius X Society back into the church without any
preconditions – bishops who were illegally consecrated outside the Catholic Church and who
reject central points of the Second Vatican Council (including liturgical reform, freedom of
religion and the rapprochement with Judaism).

He promotes the medieval Tridentine Mass by all possible means and occasionally celebrates
the Eucharist in Latin with his back to the congregation.

He refuses to put into effect the rapprochement with the Anglican Church, which was laid out
in official ecumenical documents by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International
Commission, and has attempted instead to lure married Anglican clergy into the Roman
Catholic Church by freeing them from the very rule of celibacy that has forced tens of
thousands of Roman Catholic priests out of office.

He has actively reinforced the anti-conciliar forces in the church by appointing reactionary
officials to key offices in the Curia (including the secretariat of state, and positions in the
liturgical commission) while appointing reactionary bishops around the world.

Pope Benedict XVI seems to be increasingly cut off from the vast majority of church
members who pay less and less heed to Rome and, at best, identify themselves only with their
local parish and bishop.

I know that many of you are pained by this situation. In his anti-conciliar policy, the pope
receives the full support of the Roman Curia. The Curia does its best to stifle criticism in the
episcopate and in the church as a whole and to discredit critics with all the means at its
disposal. With a return to pomp and spectacle catching the attention of the media, the
reactionary forces in Rome have attempted to present us with a strong church fronted by an
absolutistic “Vicar of Christ” who combines the church’s legislative, executive and judicial
powers in his hands alone. But Benedict’s policy of restoration has failed. All of his
spectacular appearances, demonstrative journeys and public statements have failed to
influence the opinions of most Catholics on controversial issues. This is especially true regarding
matters of sexual morality. Even the papal youth meetings, attended above all by
conservative-charismatic groups, have failed to hold back the steady drain of those leaving the
church or to attract more vocations to the priesthood.

You in particular, as bishops, have reason for deep sorrow: Tens of thousands of priests have
resigned their office since the Second Vatican Council, for the most part because of the
celibacy rule. Vocations to the priesthood, but also to religious orders, sisterhoods and lay
brotherhoods are down – not just quantitatively but qualitatively. Resignation and frustration
are spreading rapidly among both the clergy and the active laity. Many feel that they have
been left in the lurch with their personal needs, and many are in deep distress over the state of
the church. In many of your dioceses, it is the same story: increasingly empty churches,
empty seminaries and empty rectories. In many countries, due to the lack of priests, more and
more parishes are being merged, often against the will of their members, into ever larger
“pastoral units,” in which the few surviving pastors are completely overtaxed. This is church
reform in pretense rather than fact!

And now, on top of these many crises comes a scandal crying out to heaven – the revelation
of the clerical abuse of thousands of children and adolescents, first in the United States, then
in Ireland and now in Germany and other countries. And to make matters worse, the handling
of these cases has given rise to an unprecedented leadership crisis and a collapse of trust in
church leadership.

There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes
committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005). During the reign of Pope John Paul II, that
congregation had already taken charge of all such cases under oath of strictest silence.
Ratzinger himself, on May 18th, 2001, sent a solemn document to all the bishops dealing
with severe crimes ( “epistula de delictis gravioribus” ), in which cases of abuse were sealed
under the “secretum pontificium” , the violation of which could entail grave ecclesiastical
penalties. With good reason, therefore, many people have expected a personal mea culpa on
the part of the former prefect and current pope. Instead, the pope passed up the opportunity
afforded by Holy Week: On Easter Sunday, he had his innocence proclaimed “urbi et
orbi” by the dean of the College of Cardinals.

The consequences of all these scandals for the reputation of the Catholic Church are
disastrous. Important church leaders have already admitted this. Numerous innocent and
committed pastors and educators are suffering under the stigma of suspicion now blanketing
the church. You, reverend bishops, must face up to the question: What will happen to our
church and to your diocese in the future? It is not my intention to sketch out a new program
of church reform. That I have done often enough both before and after the council. Instead, I
want only to lay before you six proposals that I am convinced are supported by millions of
Catholics who have no voice in the current situation.

1. Do not keep silent: By keeping silent in the face of so many serious grievances, you taint
yourselves with guilt. When you feel that certain laws, directives and measures are
counterproductive, you should say this in public. Send Rome not professions of your
devotion, but rather calls for reform!

2. Set about reform: Too many in the church and in the episcopate complain about Rome, but
do nothing themselves. When people no longer attend church in a diocese, when the ministry
bears little fruit, when the public is kept in ignorance about the needs of the world, when
ecumenical co-operation is reduced to a minimum, then the blame cannot simply be shoved
off on Rome. Whether bishop, priest, layman or laywoman – everyone can do something for
the renewal of the church within his own sphere of influence, be it large or small. Many of
the great achievements that have occurred in the individual parishes and in the church at large
owe their origin to the initiative of an individual or a small group. As bishops, you should
support such initiatives and, especially given the present situation, you should respond to the
just complaints of the faithful.

3. Act in a collegial way: After heated debate and against the persistent opposition of the
Curia, the Second Vatican Council decreed the collegiality of the pope and the bishops. It did
so in the sense of the Acts of the Apostles, in which Peter did not act alone without the
college of the apostles. In the post-conciliar era, however, the pope and the Curia have
ignored this decree. Just two years after the council, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical
defending the controversial celibacy law without the slightest consultation of the bishops.
Since then, papal politics and the papal magisterium have continued to act in the old,
uncollegial fashion. Even in liturgical matters, the pope rules as an autocrat over and against
the bishops. He is happy to surround himself with them as long as they are nothing more than
stage extras with neither voices nor voting rights. This is why, venerable bishops, you should
not act for yourselves alone, but rather in the community of the other bishops, of the priests
and of the men and women who make up the church.

4. Unconditional obedience is owed to God alone: Although at your episcopal consecration
you had to take an oath of unconditional obedience to the pope, you know that unconditional
obedience can never be paid to any human authority; it is due to God alone. For this reason,
you should not feel impeded by your oath to speak the truth about the current crisis facing the
church, your diocese and your country. Your model should be the apostle Paul, who dared to
oppose Peter “to his face since he was manifestly in the wrong”! ( Galatians 2:11 ).
Pressuring the Roman authorities in the spirit of Christian fraternity can be permissible and
even necessary when they fail to live up to the spirit of the Gospel and its mission. The use of
the vernacular in the liturgy, the changes in the regulations governing mixed marriages, the
affirmation of tolerance, democracy and human rights, the opening up of an ecumenical
approach, and the many other reforms of Vatican II were only achieved because of tenacious
pressure from below.

5. Work for regional solutions: The Vatican has frequently turned a deaf ear to the well-
founded demands of the episcopate, the priests and the laity. This is all the more reason for
seeking wise regional solutions. As you are well aware, the rule of celibacy, which was
inherited from the Middle Ages, represents a particularly delicate problem. In the context of
today’s clerical abuse scandal, the practice has been increasingly called into question. Against
the expressed will of Rome, a change would appear hardly possible; yet this is no reason for
passive resignation. When a priest, after mature consideration, wishes to marry, there is no
reason why he must automatically resign his office when his bishop and his parish choose to
stand behind him. Individual episcopal conferences could take the lead with regional
solutions. It would be better, however, to seek a solution for the whole church, therefore:

6. Call for a council: Just as the achievement of liturgical reform, religious freedom,
ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue required an ecumenical council, so now a council is
needed to solve the dramatically escalating problems calling for reform. In the century before
the Reformation, the Council of Constance decreed that councils should be held every five
years. Yet the Roman Curia successfully managed to circumvent this ruling. There is no
question that the Curia, fearing a limitation of its power, would do everything in its power to
prevent a council coming together in the present situation. Thus it is up to you to push
through the calling of a council or at least a representative assembly of bishops.

With the church in deep crisis, this is my appeal to you, venerable bishops: Put to use the
episcopal authority that was reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council. In this urgent
situation, the eyes of the world turn to you. Innumerable people have lost their trust in the
Catholic Church. Only by openly and honestly reckoning with these problems and resolutely
carrying out needed reforms can their trust be regained. With all due respect, I beg you to do
your part – together with your fellow bishops as far as possible, but also alone if necessary –
in apostolic “fearlessness” ( Acts 4:29, 31 ). Give your faithful signs of hope and
encouragement and give our church a perspective for the future.

With warm greetings in the community of the Christian faith,

Yours, Hans Küng – (New York Times Syndicate) © Hans Küng

© 2010 The Irish Times